Out of Focus Pt. 01

Needless to say, I was a bit nervous when I did pick up Alicia at her house. I did not want to anger her parents, after all. But, it turns out that Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were out for the weekend themselves; so I did not expect to have to confront their ire either when I picked up Alicia or when I dropped her off afterwards.

As it turns out, we had a great time at her Spring Dance. Alicia told me partway through the evening that she had asked me for two reasons: it would twist her daddy's tail that she was dating one of his employees; and having an 'older guy' would impress the other girls at her school. Girls outnumbered the guys at her private high school by four to one, and the guys who attended there were not considered by most of the girls to be 'date material.'

Before the evening was over, I had grown very comfortable in the presence of Alicia Thompson and she appeared to have more appreciation of me. When I say that, I mean that I had been told by some women my own age that I was reasonably good-looking; and, thanks to my mom's insistence that I participate in cotillion when I was a teen, I knew how to dance well and handle myself in social situations requiring the proper manners.

This evening, all of that youthful preparation and effort was paying off by the number and intensity of smiles I was receiving from Alicia. Even the school's chaperones for the dance, who had frowned at my presence early in the evening, were smiling in appreciation at the gentlemanly manner in which I was escorting Alicia.

I got called into Mr. Thompson's office when I got to work on Monday and was admonished that, while Alicia could have me as her escort for such things as her high school dance, I should definitely NOT consider myself an appropriate suitor for her affections or a long-term relationship. By this time, I was getting a bit angry at his presumption, but I held my tongue and simply nodded my understanding.

Regardless of her father's warnings to her, Alicia arranged to see me more often after that. She would be waiting at my apartment in her convertible, and we would go out for dinner or a movie. Or, we would arrange to meet somewhere and share the better part of an evening.

Alicia still complained about having missed out on the trip to Africa with her friend. But, now that she and I were seeing each other occasionally, these complaints diminished. Her attentions now tended to focus more on enjoying her last summer before college--with more of that time being spent with me.

By the end of June, Alicia told me that she did not care what her parents thought about my so-called 'unsuitability' as a suitor. She was enjoying my company and she said that she would like to step up our relationship over the rest of the summer and into the fall, even after she started at Scott--yes, that acceptance letter had arrived in February with a personally penned note apologizing for its lateness from the Registrar himself.

I was ecstatic! And Alicia and I became an 'item' from that point on, even if it was sort of on the QT. I did not say anything to anyone at work, and I don't know what Alicia had told her father, but we began to see each other seriously, including the enjoyment of sex together. Since we were both rather inexperienced, we began learning together over the rest of that summer and, when we got to a point in time that was within a few weeks of her starting college, we were both a lot more experienced at sex and a lot better at pleasing each other. We had been reading and experimenting a lot and discovered just how to expand our sexual horizons together, including oral and role-play; but we stayed away from anal at Alicia's insistence.

I will admit as well that I was becoming more deeply attached emotionally to Alicia. But I knew that it would be best not to push things in a more permanent direction until she was closer to graduating from college in a few years.

One of the stranger things that had been happening at work during the approach of the end of summer was the very sudden change in Francine's attitude toward me. At first, I noticed that she was actually speaking to me in personal situations, like meeting in the break room or passing in the hall, instead of only in business meetings. She was also now actually smiling at me more often, for some reason.

Idiot that I was, I just assumed that Francine was becoming accustomed to my presence in the office, or else she and Alicia were talking about all my 'good' qualities--ha-ha. At any rate, Francine and I seemed to be getting along much better than we had earlier in our acquaintance, and before the situation had developed between her sister, Alicia, and me.

Finally, Alicia had had enough of the ambiguity of the situation and she invited me to her family's home one Friday in August, ostensibly to let her father and mother know, right out in the open, that she had decided to be in a serious relationship with me. Before the meal, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson listened and questioned both Alicia and me--they also lectured us and tried to dissuade us from getting in too deeply, as it was still the season of education and preparation for Alicia.

I found my own feelings to be a mixture of terror and confusion. Naturally, I was scared of pissing off my boss and his wife; but I was confused as well. During the entire exchange, it appeared that Mr. Thompson was being stern but unusually relenting. Mrs. Thompson was taking the lead from Mr. Thompson, but she obviously held quite a lot of what she was thinking and feeling inside; I got the feeling that she was being restrained, for some unknown reason, from really unloading on me and sending me on my way.

Additionally, during the conversation with Alicia's parents, I noticed the other presence in the room. Francine was there as well, but she simply smiled at me with an intriguing expression. If I had been at a bar somewhere and had seen her giving me that look, I would have thought she was coming on to me. But, surely, she would not be doing that in her own house ... and to the apparent suitor of her younger sister; would she?

The mild tension among us was broken just a bit by the call to dinner.

After a nice meal prepared by the family's hired cook, everyone retired to the recreation room for drinks. Mr. Thompson might not have been totally pleased about Alicia's and my relationship, but he still did not voice any outright displeasure. Even though Mrs. Thompson appeared to tolerate me well enough by the end of the evening, I could still detect some bottled-up feelings that I could not recognize coming from her as well.

Mr. Thompson, after a while, said that he needed to get to bed so he could be fresh for golf in the morning--sensitive fellow that he was. He appeared to give a deliberate and hard look in Francine's direction as he left the room.

I noticed that Francine had simply sat through the evening after dinner in relative silence, with that same strange expression on her face I had seen earlier. She had mostly listened to her sister and other family members discuss Alicia's intentions for us as a couple while she sipped her drink or enjoyed her meal. Now Francine seemed to be enjoying an aperitif, which she had poured for all of us and handed out personally, since the staff had left for the evening.

Alicia had invited me to stay in one of the guest rooms that Friday evening, for propriety's sake. I am not a heavy drinker and I did not think that I had drunk that much that evening. But, not very long after enjoying my aperitif, I had begun to feel groggy and unstable. I had needed assistance in getting up the stairs to my guest room, as I was overtaken by major unsteadiness, as if I were high or something.

I do not know how I got into bed that night or who might have undressed me. I was definitely out of it.

I was awakened in the early part of the morning by a shout of indignation. When I opened my eyes, and sat up, I saw Alicia standing in the doorway to my guest room with a look of combined rage and anguish.

"You bastard! How could you?" Alicia shouted. I shook my head--mistake number one, as I had a roaring headache. But, still, I could make out that something just was not right.

That something turned out to be the warmth and proximity of a naked female body in my bed--and the female was NOT Alicia. I pulled the covers back to get a better look.

Francine smile up at me! Correction--a very naked Francine smiled up at me. And it might have been a pleasant smile, but I did not care at the moment. I was so stunned at this turn of events that I could only gape in silent, just-awakening, very-hung-over-for-some-reason, uncertainty.

Mrs. J. Carter Thompson, with a modest robe covering her nightclothes, appeared next to Alicia and put an arm around her younger daughter as she glared at me and said, "Young Man; I expect you to be out of my house before my husband gets back from golf today. Otherwise, you may end up being physically harmed." With that, she stalked away, leading an obviously distraught Alicia with her down the hall.

I finally got my voice and turned, dazed as I was, toward Francine. "Francine; what ... I mean ... how ... why are you here?"

Francine, obviously unashamed by her nakedness, said, "Louis," which was a change; she had always referred to me as 'Chandler' before, "I simply could not resist being with you. I have had a crush on you for quite some time now. Knowing that you were right here in my own house and available, I simply had to take the chance." She smiled at me with an almost-believable expression of affection. "And you did not disappoint me last night either."

Francine even did the demure look of a sexually satisfied woman well. I was not necessarily buying it, as I did not feel the after-sex twinges and itches that I had routinely been feeling in my groin area on the mornings after the times when Alicia and I had had sex. But that strange dizziness that I had had the night before--and my losing track of events after that--left me at the mercy of Francine and whatever was being laid at my feet as consequences for my actions--conscious or not.

I finally said, "Francine, while I am gratified at what you are saying, I must tell you that I only have feelings for Alicia. And, thanks to you, I am going to have to try to mend things with her."

Francine's eyebrows furrowed as she said, "And just how do you intend to do that ... My Love?" The way she said the last two words made me shiver--and not from excitement; there was, rather, a feeling of dread in those two words; 'My Love' as Francine had voiced them.

"I ... I don't know ... but I simply have to tell her ..."

Francine cut me off and hugged her beautiful naked body to mine. Then she said, "Well, you had better figure out a way to do so later and far from here ... My Love ... because, in her current state, and with the way my mother reacted a few moments ago, you need to get going. I would hate to think of what Daddy would do to you, given the way things are. I ... I am sorry, in a way, for causing you any distress, My Darling. I really want us to be together; and I will speak to Momma and Daddy and try to smooth things over ... for us. Maybe even ..."

Then, Francine stopped speaking, rose up, and kissed me. Her full lips would have felt wonderful against mine a few months before. Now, they felt like more of a warning of an approaching storm.

Why was this happening to me? Exactly WHAT was happening to me?

But I realized that I was in an untenable situation right then. The coward in me was in full control. I dressed quickly and got the hell out of there.

****

I lived in a perpetual state of terror for the next three weeks. It had taken me three days of calling in to work and feigning sickness before I actually got up the nerve to go into the office. When I did, I was very surprised that I was not called into Mr. Thompson's office to get my pink slip, my ass kicked, or both.

Needless to say, I tried to contact Alicia, but all my calls went to voicemail. When I tried to call the house, the servants would say she was not available and Mrs. Thompson simply hung up the phone on me. Email was a waste of time as well; as Alicia did not answer any of the ones I sent--trying to explain that I had no memory of any intimate activities with her sister, and that I still loved only Alicia.

"Louis," said the voice that startled me at my work station one morning. Francine had sneaked up on me in my office near the three-week anniversary of the night of my personal train wreck. Quaking internally, I swiveled my chair around to face her. She had tried to talk to me in passing since that awful morning, but I had been able to avoid being in private with her, and she certainly did not want to speak of our situation with other co-workers around to hear. She had written me two snail mail letters, but I had been too intimidated by all that was happening with her to open them and read them.

Now, for some reason, Francine was absolutely glowing today. She was so beautiful; and her smile seemed to light up the room. Even with that, I still felt darkness grip my heart because of the situation that had developed around me as a result of my relationship to the girls in the Thompson family.

"What is it, Francine?" I finally asked.

"Sweetheart," hearing that term of endearment should have thrilled me; but it only intrigued me--and made me wary; "I have some news that I wanted to share with you, as the first one to hear. It's important ... for us." Francine's smile slipped a bit as she looked around to see if anyone in the nearby office spaces could hear us. Then she said the two words that would have profound impact on me for the next decade or more.

"I'm late!"

I must have looked confused. I mean; it was the middle of the morning and we were both here at work, so we were both here on time. What did she mean by saying that she was late?

"What do you mean you are late, Francine?" I asked at last.

Francine gave me a demure downcast smile and said, softly, "My period."

Time stood still as I attempted to register this second set of two-word blows to my life. Maybe I should have been just a tad more gallant, but I just had to say it. "You mean ... you ... me ... us ..."

Francine looked up at me with a grin tinged with condescension, as if she were speaking to a small child. "Of course ... you ... me ... us!" She moved closer to me inside my office, placing a hand on my chest, and invading my limited space with her presence and her perfume and her beauty and ... Oh, God! What a mess!

"I am going to have to tell some other people soon. I took the home pregnancy test last night and it confirms it. We will need to tell Momma and Daddy soon, so that we can prepare for the next step." Francine had said all of this with a calm tone; quite different from what I would have expected from what folks a generation before mine would have termed, 'a girl in trouble.'

"Next step ... what ...?" I was still having trouble processing all of this; and what about Alicia?

"Yes, the next step ... My Love," Francine said, although there did not appear to be the heartfelt feeling behind her term of endearment that one would expect. "You are not going to leave a girl in the lurch, are you? I mean; what kind of man could to that to the woman carrying ... his child?" She suddenly had what appeared to be an uncertain and fretful look about her.

My father had raised me to be responsible. Even if he had not had any luck trying to get me to be more assertive and to face confrontation confidently, rather than avoiding it, he had instilled in me a sense of what a man had to do to make things right when it came to something like this.

"When do you want to tell them? I ... I can come by your place any evening this week. I mean ..." I let what I was saying trail off, waiting for Francine's input.

"We can tell Daddy this afternoon in his office. That way, he can vent and get his feelings out of the way before we confront Momma." She had this all figured out. And she knew her parents better than I did. I guess she figured she could wrap her father around her finger, regardless of the strange circumstances. Then she could co-opt him so that he would at least not add to the sure condemnation that she anticipated from her mother.

Needless to say, I got my ass reamed that afternoon in Mr. Thompson's office, as did Francine; but he was especially scathing toward me--I was not his princess, after all. I was the cad who had gotten said princess into the situation known colloquially as the 'family way.'

Nevertheless, for some reason known only to God and Mr. Thompson, he did not simply fire me. Oddly, at the end of the workday, I was still employed and had not had any of my body parts removed. Given the circumstances, I would have thought that Mr. Thompson would have been on a major tear. But he was more reserved than I thought I would be, if I were the one in his shoes.

That evening, still somewhat surprised at the overall turn of events, I got hit with stage two of the family acrimony--her mom's blast was positively venomous. Mrs. Thompson basically accused me of being sixteen different kinds, colors, shades, and textures of motherfucker--although she never swore nor used anything close to such street slang during her entire tirade; but that was the message she wished for me to internalize.

Mr. Thompson, again, surprisingly, simply stood by and let his wife cut into me. Alicia was nowhere around. Francine, bless her little heart, stood by me and held my hand during the whole tirade.

After everyone had had a say that evening, Mrs. Thompson finally looked at me and, with venom dripping from every word, asked, "And what do you plan to do now, Young Man?"

I looked briefly at each of Francine's parents, and then at Francine, and told them what I planned to do.

The save-the-date cards for Francine's and my wedding went out in the mail before the end of that week.

****

"Passengers for Delta Air Lines flight 1991 with non-stop service to Atlanta--we are boarding now at Gate G2. Anyone needing assistance or traveling with small children ..." The voice of the Delta gate agent in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport brought my thoughts back from the abyss of my miserable past and into the present.

This was the early morning flight out of MSP, and it would actually get me back into Atlanta in time to catch a late breakfast at one of the places on Virginia Avenue. Folks in Minneapolis or St. Paul wouldn't know what 'grits' was if a spoonful of it hit them in the face.

I stowed my laptop in the overhead compartment, having checked my one bag at check-in time. I had the latest W.E.B. Griffin book loaded on my Kindle, but I was now checking my Smartphone for any email or text messages before the flight attendant could ask me to shut it down for takeoff.

Finishing up, I put my phone in 'Airplane' mode and leaned back against the headrest and pondered the miserable sack of shit that was my life now. It had been bad enough before I had met Francine Thompson. Then, I had had a brief glimpse of happiness with her sister, Alicia; only to have that glimpse snuffed out by the strange turn of events that had left me preparing to marry her sister ...

****

"What do you mean--pre-nup?" I asked, confusion obvious in my expression. Oh, yeah; I was still as naïve as they come back then.

We were a week out from the date of the wedding. I had been summoned to Mr. Thompson's office to meet with Thompson himself, Francine, and Thompson's lawyer, a man with a very nice suit and a mouth full of very white teeth. I would only discover later just how sharp that shark's teeth actually were.

I was so overwhelmed by the fast pace of recent events and the powerful presence of Mr. Thompson and his lawyer that I caved and signed where they pointed. Francine also signed where designated and then sat back. She and her father shared a rather satisfied smile between them.