May & December

His eyes met mine then, and I flushed. How terrible to have such a weakness, I thought, reflecting on my many shortcomings…something that telegraphs your emotions so completely… something that strips you to the bone in the most public of places. What would he do now, I wondered? What would he…

And then I knew.

Clutching his tray in one hand, and a manila folder in the other, he rose and made his way through the lunchtime chaos toward my table.

“Mind if I sit here?” he asked, his eyes smilingly disarming. “I have the notes I promised you, and, well, I thought we should talk. Sound alright to you?”

What could I say? My heart was pounding in my throat, and my lips had gone dry. Ben Gates had turned me into a gibbering idiot.

“Certainly.” I tried to say, but it sounded a lot more like “shirt-in-fly”. I flushed again as he checked the front of his pants. Why was this happening to me?

“Are you trying to tell me something?” he laughed. “I haven’t had zipper problems in quite a few years, but I always wanted to make an outrageous entrance.”

Ben laughed again, and my flush grew deeper.

“Take it easy, Jillian. I was just joking! But that’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. You shouldn’t worry so much about what happened yesterday…I’m not. If it’s the last embarrassing moment either one of us has, it’ll be a miracle.”

I tried to meet his eyes then…to read the gentle openness that seemed to sooth my discomfort.

“Here, wait a minute.” He smiled. Then rising, he vanished into the melee along the serving line for a few minutes. When he returned he was carrying two small, but lethal plates.

“Cheesecake!” I howled. “How did you know! And it’s the ‘turtle’ kind, with nuts and caramel! I think I’m in love!” I blurted easily, the thought of the sweet delight moistening my palate. Then I realized how inappropriate I must have sounded and glanced in horror at Ben.

Ben only laughed all the harder. “I think I am too,” he gasped between guffaws. “I have it on sound reconnaissance that this is the perfect ‘peace pipe’. Whaddya think?”

I smiled then, the kind of smile you get when you settle yourself beside an old friend. “I think your reconnaissance team may have been peeking in my window.” I laughed. “And you’re right. Life’s too short to get twisted up over something so unnecessary. So does this mean we’re going to be friends?”

Ben smiled an impish grin then, and as though he couldn’t help himself he replied: “After yesterday, I think it’s mandatory.”

I rolled my eyes, and he roared his infectious laugh once more. Ben Gates was indeed a special man. I was lucky to count him among my friends, I thought. But was that all I wanted?

And so it went, each morning opening into the next until a day without the sound of his voice or the touch of his hand on my arm was a day without sunshine. I found miracles in the world once again, and longed for the moments when I would get to share them with him. Though only a matter of weeks, it seemed as though I had known Ben for a lifetime. I wanted him desperately, but how could I tell him something like that?

Finally the Fourth of July weekend loomed on the horizon, a full four days with nothing to do but relax and enjoy the few pleasures that the horrendous heat in the “Valley of the Sun” had left to offer. It was over coffee in the MU that it first came up.

“So, are you going to bury yourself in paperwork this weekend?” I joked. “Even you must need a break sometime.”

He stirred a little Equal into his mug and smiled. “Nope. I have my weekend all planned. I have a little sloop over at Lake Mead, and I plan to use the time getting her ready for a trip.”

“A trip?” I grinned. “How far do you plan to take a sloop on Lake Mead? I mean, it’s a great lake, but isn’t it a little small for a sloop?”

Visions of the deep-water expanse behind Hoover Dam crossed my mind, and in the very middle a sailing ship searching for a good wind to nowhere.

“Well…it’s not the biggest sloop in the world…44 feet, first off. But, I never planned to leave it there anyway. I’ve only had her at Lake Mead while I reconditioned her. In a few weeks I’ll be hauling her to San Diego for some serious sailing.”

“Wow, lucky you!” I burbled. “What a weekend. I’m jealous, you know. I’ll be thinking of you every time I have to wrap a bandana around the car door handle just to get it open. You’re torturing me...you know that?”

“Well, it’s not much cooler at Lake Mead, if that’s any consolation,” he murmured softly, studying his mug. “But the wind on the Lake helps, and you can always jump overboard when it gets to be too much.”

He paused then, as if wondering how, or if to proceed, then set his jaw and continued. “Jillian, I usually take a few of the kids with me on these junkets to the lake, but I just didn’t see any I was comfortable inviting this weekend. Would you like to go? I mean, you’d have your own room and all…no strings attached. I won’t be insulted if you say ‘No’.”

I paused then, everything inside of me screaming “Yes!”, but knowing that Ben meant exactly as he’d said…”no strings attached”.

The more I’d come to know Ben Gates, the more attracted I’d become. I wanted more from him than a fishing expedition, much more, something that perhaps he wasn’t willing to share.

The fantasy had grown in my mind over the past few weeks, the wonder…what would have happened that morning if Ben hadn’t called a halt? What would it have been like? The gentle touch of his fingers on my heated flesh, the intimate tones of his deep, rumbling voice as I rushed headlong into the maelstrom… the slow drift to earth as we held each other in the afterglow. That was what I wanted from Ben, but that was what I couldn’t have.

What should I say, I wondered frantically, what should I say? And then it came to me.

“Yes.” ------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 6

Lake Mead was like another world.

All around me the weathered cliffs of this flooded chasm along the Colorado River called to me, beckoning to my flickering presence like a voice from time immemorial.

Ben’s impressive sloop lay at anchor in a secluded cove called Bonelli Landing. There, in the shifting blue-green water of the harbor it held court over the seemingly insignificant motor boats that paid it homage. She was beautiful, if that’s the word one uses for such things, easily riding the wake of all who passed to admire and sigh in appreciation.

“Big boat”, I commented inadequately, noting that nothing anywhere as large seemed to be at anchor in the cove. “It must be hard to sail a ship like that in a lake.”

Ben smiled and nodded his head. “It is. It isn’t often that I can hoist the sails and give her a run. I have to use the motor most of the time. But it’s only temporary…just a place to work on her, and enjoy her a little. Pretty soon I’ll be hauling her to San Diego for a real outing.”

“A real outing?” I replied. “Where to…around the world?” I laughed.

Ben grew silent then, as though a cloud had passed in front of the sun. “Actually, yes. We’d been planning this for more than 20 years, for when I retired. Just three more weeks to go, and I’m off.”

The word “we” caught me a little off guard, and I could sense the sorrow inherent in the past tense. Something had gone wrong here, terribly wrong, but I recognized the need for privacy, and so I remained silent.

“She’s beautiful,” I observed, the warm glow of her polished decks and gleaming brass creating a breathtaking focus for the many shutterbugs that tootled alongside in their motorboats. “She’s a real star”.

Ben swelled with pride. “That she is. She’s from another world…another era when things took time and caring…patience and a slow hand. A remnant from bygone days, sort of like me, I guess. We fit.”

The allusion to a “slow hand” brought a flush to my cheeks. Yes, I thought, Ben would have a slow hand, one that took its time and brought out a woman’s inner glow, one that would make her sigh as she quickened beneath him. But a remnant… somehow I doubted that. Ben would be that one great love to which all women aspire, the dream that fills our waking moments and caresses us in the depths of sleep. Like the graceful sloop before me, Ben Gates was a classic.

Quickly, he pulled alongside the dock and began to inflate the rubber Zodiac that would take us out to the sloop. The tiny motor hummed, filling the small conveyance, until in a few moments we were ready to leave. Ben loaded a few plastic sacks of perishables and my small carryall into the front of the inflated craft, and we were off.

The waves lapped gently against my fingers, bringing back memories of other times, other people. Visions of my beloved Amora flickered behind my eyelids, the sights, sounds and silken feel of her as we’d made love beside the sea on our last night together.

“Did you think that passion has a gender?” she’d said to me once. “Who would know better how to please a woman than another woman?” And then she’d opened up another world for me to share.

Our last night together had been glorious. It was for her a soulful parting, and for me, oblivious to what was to come, a crescendo. We had dined on the beach, far from prying eyes. A flaming bonfire had lent her gaze a luminosity that I would never forget.

Reliving the moment, I closed my eyes as I had then, and felt once more her delicate fingertips stroking my body, her lips exploring my willing flesh. She had taught me something new that night, a peculiar configuration that had brought the bursting kernels of our sex into mutual alignment. Then, rocking gently in an intimate “pas de duex” we flowed together until our time neared. It was only then, pulses racing, gasping the thin, curling fragrance of the night, that we had exploded in moist profusion, sharing the proof of our passion beneath the unseeing stars.

Breathlessly we had lain together, and it was then Amora had told me that in the morning I must leave. She’d said that I must spread my wings and find a place in the world that was truly mine, as her beloved hacienda, “El Capitan” was hers. And thus, she’d left me along the shore… the last time I’d ever seen her.

I’d cried that night, unwilling and unable to part from the only pure and unselfish love that I’d ever known, but Amora was right. She’d created a cocoon for herself at El Capitan, and would never leave. I, on the other hand, had finally discovered the strength to find my place in the world, and needed her to nudge me from her nest.

Once more I fingered the tiny silver key that I wore always about my neck, her parting gift to me. I had found it in an envelope above my car visor as I was about to drive through customs the next morning. It was very old, a symbol of adoration and undying loyalty that had survived centuries in the care of her ancestors. With it came her undying vow of love, and the assurance that El Capitan would always be a waiting haven, should ever I find the need.

“If you love something, set it free,” they say…”and if it truly belongs to you, it will return”. Would I return to Amora one day, I wondered. Was she still waiting?

The sudden jarring of the Zodiac alongside the sloop brought me back to the present. “Jennie’s Dream” it read, the name painted in delicate calligraphy along the side. “Jennie” I wondered. Who was Jennie? Had Ben a mysterious past as well?

I turned to him, the question shining in my eyes. “Jennie?” I asked. “Have you been holding out on me?”

He was silent for a moment, as though he’d heard the question even before I’d spoken it…as though he’d been dreading the inevitability of it.

“Jennie”, he replied in softened tones, “Is my wife.”

I was startled! His wife? He hadn’t told me he was married, but then was it such a surprise? A man like Ben would have been too sought after to have come so far without someone special in his life. But where was his Jennie now, I wondered. Would I meet her onboard? Why hadn’t he said anything before?

I cleared my throat and tried to erase the startled expression from my features. “Your wife?” I replied. “Is she onboard? I suppose I should have asked, but I just assumed…”

“I’m a widower,” He continued quickly, as though he couldn’t bear the pain of rehashing it. “I thought you knew. I lost my wife two years ago. This was our big fantasy. We bought ‘Jennie’s Dream’ when she was about to be sold for salvage…restored her to her original glory…then planned to sail her around the world the year I retired. We hadn’t planned on…”

There he stopped, a wall of memories blocking his path. Jenny was gone, but in a way she was still here. You could tell by his gaze that Ben could see her in every polished inch of teak, every shiny gleam of brass. “Jennie’s Dream” had become Jennie herself in the end, and soon they would be heading off to sail the seven seas.

Ben reached up and grabbed the railing, swinging himself effortlessly onto the deck, then reaching behind for my hand. His grip was sure and strong, confident and steady, and I felt safe in his hands.

“Why don’t you look around while I unload?” he asked, then pointed aft towards the hatchway leading below deck. “Make yourself at home. Your cabin is on the left. I’ll show you how to use the ‘head’ as soon as I get there. It’s not difficult, but it’s a little finicky.”

The head, now that was a word I knew from old seafaring movies. I hadn’t thought about the bathroom being different, but that wasn’t surprising.

Slowly I took the softly glowing wooden stairs down into the heart of Jennie, down into the comfortable lounge and galley that dominated the frontal portion of the cabin. Everything had been cleaned and polished with a loving hand, I noticed…everything in its place, immaculate.

I passed along the narrow hall to a series of doors, and opened the one on the left. A small stateroom lay behind, its single bed adorned with a blue and white quilt that matched the ruffled curtains over the brass-bordered porthole. It was perfect…a picture from a dream…Jennie’s Dream.

A little sadly, I dropped my soft-sided suitcase on the floor beside the bed, and began to find places for everything. Ben had said there would be only the two of us on the sloop this weekend, but already I could see the fallacy in his thinking. There would be three, Ben, me…and Jennie. I couldn’t help but wonder…was there room enough?

By the time I’d finished and changed into something more vacation-like, Ben had come aboard and was squaring things away in the galley. Everything had a place, it seemed. Did I?

“So, what’s on the schedule for today?” I asked, stretching until my fingertips tickled the overhead paneling. Ben turned to answer, then paused, his voice momentarily caught in his throat. I’d taken the liberty of changing into something light and airy, white gauze, and abandoned my cumbersome bra. Had he noticed? Apparently he had. There was hope here yet.

Slowly, his eyes roamed down the expanse of my bare legs, encased now only in short cut-offs. Noisily, he cleared his throat.

“Nice outfit.” He commented, a little hesitantly. “Looks comfortable.”

I smiled. “Well, you told me to pack as though I were going to be in my own home, and this is what I usually wear. Is it okay?”

Ben turned quickly away and continued to place items in the cupboards. “Sure,” he replied. “I want you to be comfortable. No sense having a vacation that isn’t, is there?”

I noticed then the sudden disarray that Ben was making out of his pantry, and closed the gap between us. “Let me help?” I offered, sliding next to him and taking a box of Khashi from his hands. “You like this stuff too? I’m crazy about it. I like to eat healthy when I’m not stuffing my face with junk food, to kind of balance things off, you know?”

Then I leaned forward and placed the Khashi next to a box of Cheerios, mentally congratulating myself on my minor coup before I realized that Ben had gone stone still. What was…had I…and then I realized what was wrong. In my eagerness to assist, I was pressing full-length against him, the sway of my unfettered breasts brushing against his chest, the jut of my hip nestled firmly between his…

Oh my! Perhaps Ben gates wasn’t quite as platonically inclined as I’d dreaded. There was hope here yet, if the throbbing pulse against my hip was any indication.

Ben heaved a sigh of discomfort and turned away. “Let’s see if we can find a nice place to drop anchor tonight,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “The lake will probably be crowded this week-end, and the best places are going to vanish fast.” Then, with a familiarity borne of years of repetition, he trotted up the stairs and vanished into the sunlight.

Ben was in a class all his own, I thought…a graduate seminar. But, he was worth it. The next four days would bring us closer and closer together, I hoped, and maybe somewhere along the way we could erase the barriers between us. Time and a slow hand…it would take both. Did I have what he needed?

Ben hauled up the anchor, then turned on the motor. There were far too many boats on the water today to even try to hoist the sails. Soon, we were making our way out of the boat harbor and feeling the clear, brisk air of the lake surrounding us. The light gauze of my blouse ruffled gently against my skin, bringing my nipples into full alert. Was Ben watching, I wondered? Did the sight of my body once again fill him with thoughts of intimate potential?

I stretched out on the deck, curling like a cat in the sunshine. I was brazen, and desperate. Oh, how I wanted him to notice me! What I wouldn’t have given to know that he felt something like the warm, moist response I was holding at bay. [Come, Ben, come,] I thought silently. [Look at me. Touch me. Let’s ‘rock the boat’.]

But he didn’t.

For the next few hours Ben kept himself safely ensconced behind the helm, steering us toward places unknown, until finally he aimed toward a secluded cove that seemed abandoned by one and all.

It was lovely there… no, breathtaking is a better word. “Lovely” would have been wasted on the magnificence of that place. All about us stood towering cliffs, carved by the hand of God through millenniums of formation and upheaval, the tiers of a million years open and vulnerable before us. We were encased in eternity…lost in time. What were a few mortal years in a place like this?

“It’s wonderful!” I breathed slowly, afraid that my mere presence would break the spell. “How did you know…?”

“It’s a favorite of mine,” he answered, satisfied that I was as awe-struck as he’d hoped. “This area is an extension of the Grand Canyon, the lower Colorado River. It’s incredible, isn’t it?”

I nodded silently and let my gaze travel along the multicolored layers of nature’s geological time capsule. This place had been here long before the advent of man, and would probably survive us all if we would just leave it alone, I thought. How much had Lake Mead covered from view when Hoover Dam was constructed, I wondered? How many of the ghosts of prehistory lay below us?

Curled as we were between the cliffs of this magnificent place, the sun was early to set, and soon we watched the blazing orb sink below the western horizon in a ball of flames. The deepening shadows cast long fingers across the cliffs, coming to settle against Ben’s desert-kissed flesh, and once more a sense of longing overcame me.

I glanced down at his hand, resting against the deck beside me as we watched the last flickering light of day vanish onward toward places far away. So strong, I thought…so competent. I could curl myself in his palm forever, ride the easy waves of passion that swirled against me until time passed beyond knowing.

Slowly, my breath held captive in my chest, I raised his hand upward and brushed my lips over his palm.