Heaven or Heathen for Vicki

Laughing at Mother's hasty exit, Vicki asked, "Goodness she's in a rush. Where is she going?"

I couldn't resist, "They call it their Wednesday Card Party, but I suspect instead of Bridge, they play Strip Poker."

"What!"

I was roaring with laughter, both at Vicki's response and my own observations. "A number of times, I've seen her come home sometime after dark, her dress is buttoned wrong, one or both of her stockings are missing and once I saw her bra rolled up in her handbag. I don't know how many of them play every week, but it's somewhere around eight or ten of them in their sixties, seventies and at least one is in his eighties."

"Haven, are you serious?"

"Yes ma'am I am. The party is here, in this house, every couple of months. Last time, I found a few condoms when I emptied the trash. Mother washed the sheets on all the beds twice that week, once before the party and again the day after the party."

Shocked, Vicki asked, "They used your bed?"

"No, Baby, I live above the garage. I just brought you in the house to meet Mother. Come on," I grabbed her hand and pulled her behind me, out the back door, down the short sidewalk, and up the stairs to my lair.

As soon as I had the door closed, I took my watch off and handed it to Vicki. "I don't have a timer, but I want Chapter Two."

Vicki took a step back, "Haven, I can't...I, ah...I'm not sure I can tell you about Chapter Two."

I didn't reach out for her, although I wanted to, desperately. I wanted to touch her, hold her, and kiss her again. "I want to hear your Chapter Two and I'll tell you my Chapter One. I need to do that before we go see Taylor."

"Then tell me about your Chapter One first," Vicki bargained. "It'll give me time to put my thoughts together. I've never told anyone about it before."

"Okay, I guess that's fair." I pointed to the couch in one corner of the big room, "Go sit down. I'll get us a beer, or do you want something else?"

"A beer, or a cola if you have one though, I'm not much of a beer drinker, it makes me sleepy."

I leered at her and grinned, "I'd like to see you sitting on my lap, sleepy and relaxed."

Vicki blushed, "The cola then, definitely the cola."

"Spoil sport," I said as I went to the corner kitchenette and returned with a glass of ice, a can of cola, and a beer for me.

After I was sitting comfortably, I told Vicki I was ready to tell her my Chapter One. From my earliest memory, Taylor and her family lived across the street and two doors down. We were less than a month's different in age and we were inseparable. Our parents must have conspired at birthday and Christmas time. If I got roller skates, Taylor got them too. If I got a B-B-gun, Taylor got a B-B-gun. My bicycle was blue and Taylor's bicycle was red. My Dad was a telephone technician and a week-end carpenter and Taylor's Dad was an professional electrician. They built the big room above our garage and it was our playroom, our fort, where we slept on Friday nights, and where we watched Saturday morning cartoons. We collected an amazing amount of furniture. If anyone in the neighborhood bought a new bed, a couch, or a chair, we drug the old one up the stairs and then stacked the older one in the corner. We lived on the newer old one, pushed the stuffing back into the holes, and spilled food on them when we carried our snacks up those stairs. At one time, we had six mattresses stacked up, one on top of the other, like some Matterhorn we had to climb. Then we would roll down the other side and then do it again until we were so dizzy we couldn't walk.

When Tony's family moved into the neighborhood, he became the third member of our club. He was a few months younger than Taylor and me, but we told him he could have his birthday the same time we did and we would pretend he was the same age as we were. The school didn't want to see it that way, which meant Tony was going to be a year behind us. His Dad went to the school and they let him start early. I think the three of us walked on air for a week when his Dad read the letter.

Tony's dad did all the plumbing and we no longer had to go into the house for a drink of water or to use the bathroom. That was the year when we discovered Taylor was a girl. She didn't have a brother and she was fascinated that we could stand up to pee. That was about the same time we learned about some other differences between boys and girls. However, we made a pact that we were never going to let those differences cause a rift in our friendship. We kept that promise until we were in junior high school.

The first real rift happened when some guy insulted Taylor and she socked him. He hit her back and I joined the fight. Tony did not help me when a couple of the other guy's friends started punching on me. We got over it, but Tony seemed to keep his distance from Taylor after that. I was stuck in the middle, with one best friend on one side, and my other best friend on the other side. That's about the same time Tony discovered girls. To both him and me, Taylor was never a girl. She was Taylor.

My dad worked for the telephone company. He was transferred right before my senior year of high school. That's about the time the phone companies started getting into computers, in a big way. He was going to some schools and they told him it would be a couple of years but he would eventually get to come back to the same town where he had grown up and lived all of his life. For that year, I lived with Tony's family, but really, I lived above the garage. Dad moved the stairs to the other side of the building and they rented out the house.

A few times, mostly for a school dance, or a party, Taylor and I went together, but if anyone had suggested that it was a date, both of us would have denied it. That's about how it was for our junior/senior prom. Somewhere around the house is a photo of Taylor and me in our formal clothes. I saw that picture sometime while I was in college and thought, "My God, where was my head." I had my arm around the most beautiful girl in the whole school and all I knew was that I hoped we could hurry up and get the night over with so we could put our jeans on and watch the late movie. It was a horror that neither of us had seen before. We had a six-pack of beer hidden in the bottom of the old clanking refrigerator, a whole box of popcorn, and someone's old microwave oven.

Sometime during the summer between our college freshman and sophomore years Taylor asked me to do her a favor. I said, "Sure, what do you want." She said, "I don't want to be a virgin anymore." I told her, "Okay, take off you clothes." I'd done some heavy petting in high school and had sex with two or three girls, but I really didn't know what I was doing. I did know this; it was better than jerking off. However, I certainly didn't know how to give a woman the pleasure she deserved. My sexual exploits in my first year of college weren't much different. By that time, I'd moved all my stuff up to the room and it looked more or less, like it does now, except the furniture wasn't as good and I had twin beds. All three of us spent a lot of time up here. Tony brought his girlfriends up here. Sometimes he'd bribe or cajole Taylor and me to leave and a few times, he'd have sex with some girl while we watched television.

Taylor knew a helluva lot more than I did and she proceeded to teach me. By the time we realized it, it was nearly dawn, we had gone through several rounds of oral sex, I'd had four or five climaxes, and Taylor says she had at least twenty orgasms that night, but she sometimes exaggerates things. At about four o'clock on the morning on her nineteenth birthday, Taylor was no longer a virgin and I was a quivering mass of mush, barely able to walk.

All summer long, we had sex almost every day. My folks hadn't moved back yet and I didn't really have anyone watching me. All through our next couple of years in college, we came home on weekends and had sex half of the weekend. When I finished college and while I was going through the police academy and field training, Taylor was finishing her final year in college. As soon as she graduated, we got married.

It was two or three years before we figured out that we didn't love each other. I don't mean we didn't like each other, and as far as I know we were faithful to our marriage, but we weren't in love. We had finally gotten over the lust part of our relationship, but there wasn't anything left without the sex. We talked about a separation and then about a divorce. We moved her stuff into an apartment, but after a few months she moved back in with her folks, they weren't doing very well, health wise, and she wanted to be close enough to help, if she could.

We finally got the divorce and the day we signed the papers, we spent that night in bed celebrating. It was probably the best night of sex we had ever had, but it was also the last night we spent together. We were tempted a few times, but we'd made each other a promise and we kept it. I'd set her up with blind dates, introduce her to my friends, invite her to things when I needed a date, and she did the same for me when she needed an escort. Sometimes we'd slip up and I'd introduce her as my wife, and then have to correct it to say ex-wife. I guess she did it about as often.

We didn't really stop seeing each other and spending time together, until Tony's wedding. We were usually dating other people, but never anything serious. I guess we were getting the sex we needed from other people, so we could spend friendly time together without the stress of wanting it to get physical. Taylor started dating Tony's partner and Sheri and I started climbing that mountain I finally jumped off of a couple of weeks ago. Helluva thing for a thirty-five year old single male to admit, that I'd only had two serious female relationships in my life.

Vicki hadn't said much while I was telling her about Taylor. I really didn't want her to analyze our relationship. Taylor and I had done enough of that for far too many years. When I looked at Vicki, she was smiling.

"Oh wow, when do I get to meet her?" Vicki was on her knees, crawling across the couch, grinning. "She knows all your secrets."

I grabbed her and pulled her over to sit on my lap. "I'll take you over there in a little while. She sees clients until six o'clock, but she won't tell you any secrets. There aren't any."

I held Vicki for a few minutes and kissed her softly a few times. However, what I really wanted to do was just hold her. I picked up her hand and looked at the very faint bruising around one wrist. I could not apologize enough for hurting her. She brushed her finger down the fading bite mark on the side of my neck and said we were probably even. Both of us described and laughed about a few other bruises or soreness we experienced over the next day or two.

"Where did it come from? The need I had for you that night," I asked shaking my head. I still could not understand how I could have treated her so roughly and then just left.

"I think I started it," Vicki admitted. "I think that's sort of what my Chapter Two caused, the need for some kind of exorcism of a demon."

Almost tentatively, I rested my palm on one of her breasts. My other arm was around her back and I held her to me, as tight as I dared, letting her know that I agreed about the attempt at exorcism. I'd had my own demons to drive out, too. She put her arms around my neck, rested her head on my shoulder, and did not move for several very long minutes.

Vicki took a deep breath and slowly let it out. When she first started talking her voice was low, I had to listen carefully to hear what she said. If she whispered I didn't ask her to repeat anything, I figured I could fill in the blanks with what ever came next.

One of the reasons Dawson Construction won the bid to do the work on the nearly eighty-year-old house Vicki and her mother bought, was because Robert Dawson understood they were going to live in the house during construction, and that they would decide what they wanted done during that time. They wanted it done well, not just fast. Some of the work the company would do depended on other problems they might find along the way. Every other contractor gave them a price for the whole job and Robert suggested he price out each individual change and let them see where their rehabilitation money went. It also allowed them to upgrade anything they wanted. The first thing he did was to put a foundation company under the house to make the entire building sturdier. He said everything he did after that was just window dressing.

Vicki was fascinated when they raised the garage off the ground and put a new concrete foundation under it. The job included installing and working around the plumbing in what had been garden and storage rooms, turning them into what she thought was going to be her four-room apartment for many years to come. Robert's suggestions were economical in some areas and luxurious in others.

Almost every day, Robert's younger sister, actually his half-sister, came to the site. She was divorced and lived with him. She was also his office manager, bookkeeper, kept track of special orders, and ordered supplies. Theresa also paid the employees and sub-contractors and left Robert to do the manual work. Robert, and usually one other man, his younger half-brother Charles, did most of the interior work. Occasionally Theresa was there to help with a few things that needed special attention, such as matching the house's original paint colors, finding and replacing a hinge, a knob, or a handle that had ceased being manufactured for thirty or even fifty years. Theresa Engels was a true artist. One room had some old and badly damaged wood paneling. Rather than paint the room, which no one wanted to do, Robert replaced the damaged wood. Theresa used several colors of paint to match the rest of the room's natural wood grain. Most of the kitchen improvements were Theresa's ideas, as was much of the master bath. She also selected and placed almost every piece of tile in the master bath.

After the major construction work was finished, Vicki and her mother called Dawson Construction to come back and do a few additional changes, or fix a problem the construction had uncovered. It was during those small two or three day jobs that Vicki really began to fall in love with Robert, or that was when Robert began to pay attention to her. Theresa seemed to encourage their courtship, at least at first. Then she grew increasingly jealous. When Robert asked Vicki to marry him, Vicki's mother moved into the garage apartment, saying she was giving Vicki the house without her mother's presence to cause interference. It also allowed Gwen Adler to see her male friends without Vicki interfering in her mother's lifestyle.

Not long after the wedding Theresa visited Vicki one day and told her that she was going to do everything she could to break up her brother's marriage. She simply wanted him back. Robert still kept his office in the home the brother and sister had occupied, which was also their business office.

At first, Vicki was too young and insecure to challenge Theresa and did not understand everything Theresa threatened. However, as the situation grew increasingly difficult, Theresa made it plain to Vicki that there had been some kind of physical relationship between Theresa and Robert. Theresa's comment that she didn't care how many affairs he had as long as he came home to her at night did not fully register in Vicki's mind until much later.

At her mother's funeral, Theresa stood nearby and as she offered her final condolences to Vicki, she said, "Now neither of us has anyone to love."

The next day, at the funeral for Vicki's husband, Theresa stood beside Vicki to receive the final condolences from the people attending the funeral. Just as Vicki was turning to leave Theresa said, "See, I told you if you didn't give him back I wouldn't let you keep him."

Two weeks after her brother's funeral, Theresa Engels took a hot bath and slit her wrists while in the bathtub. There was no indication of foul play and no reason to believe anyone had any involvement in her death. It truly was a suicide. She had mentioned to several friends and her brother, Charles, that after the death of Robert, she had no reason to live.

It was really some time later, after the initial shock and misery of suddenly becoming an orphan, and a young widow, that everything Theresa had said began to bother Vicki. Although she never really discussed the comments of her sister-in-law with anyone, they were curious and bothersome.

As suddenly as Vicki told me about Theresa Engels, I sat up straight and almost dumped Vicki off my lap. I grabbed her and held her, but I was hyperventilating and could barely catch my breath.

"Damn, damn, damn." I knew that name was ringing a bell. I was sputtering and almost speechless. I was not going to tell Vicki, but I seemed to recall there was a small newspaper article in the curious or unresolved death file of Robert Corley Dawson, which described the discovery of a woman's body, Theresa Marie (Cooper) Engels, in the home and office of Cooper Construction, formerly Dawson Construction. If I remembered correctly, her brother, Charles Edward Cooper, had returned from a day's work to find his sister's body. I wasn't sure how good my memory was, and at the time I was looking at the file, I don't think I realized the relationships of the people or why the article was included in the file.

"What, what, Haven?" Vicki was attentive to my agitation, but I was able to avoid telling her my thoughts, Instead, I said I was just thinking about something I had been researching at the office earlier in the day. I helped her off my lap and went across the room to look out the window to see if the last client's car was gone from the front of Taylor's house. The next day, or the first opportunity I had, I would add any information I could find about Theresa Marie (Cooper) Engels to the stack of files I was going to review.

"Come on." I grabbed Vicki's hand, led her across the room, down the outside stairs, and was half way across the street before she caught up with my stride.

"Slow down," she complained.

"Sorry," I apologized. "I forget you're kinda short."

"I am not short. I'm average size. You're just a giant."

"Yeah, well, I am used to a taller woman. You'll see."

After ringing the doorbell, we stood at Taylor's front door, one of the few times I didn't just walk in to her house as if I lived there. Vicki tapped the small wooden sign beside the doorbell, which said, "Taylor Church, Clinical Psychologist."

"Yeah," I shrugged my shoulders. "She says she's not giving it back. She likes the name better than her old one. It's hyphenated, and it's got about fifteen letters in it. Church is a lot easier to say."

Vicki understood what I meant by being used to a taller woman when Taylor let us into the house. I watched Vicki look from the sneakers on Taylor's feet to the top of her six foot one inch head and then at my six foot three inch head and she grinned.

"Taylor, sweetheart, this is Vicki Dawson." I leaned over and whispered, "She doesn't know it yet, but she's gonna marry me."

Vicki stood staring at me. Her mouth was half-open and her eyes were blinking.

Taylor slapped me on the arm, and then she chastised me, "You nut. You're supposed to ask her before you tell you ex-wife about it."

"Oh, well," I shrugged my shoulders. "I gave the ring back to Bat's wife and now I'll have to wait until I can have another one made."

"Haven!" Taylor declared in exasperation. "Maybe you should let Vicki have a say in what kind of ring she wants."

I was looking from Vicki to Taylor and back to Vicki. I don't think I'm dense, but I sincerely didn't know. "Do women really want to do that? Or, do they just want the guy to decide?"