Turq Ch. 01

Prologue

The Real Estate Office was my father's business long before it was mine. In fact, I had little interest in it, beyond the obligatory summers between school terms when I helped around the office to earn extra money

I spent my early teen years playing baseball, swimming in the Bay or devouring sports novels from the Book Mobile which came down our street weekly. Later, I would acquire a chemistry set (one of several) with which I made black powder and ignited on my workbench. The sulfurous smoke pouring forth from my workbench soon filled our small house and brought the terror of fire to my mother.

Black powder experiments were banished from the house and I began making rockets to launch into the Bay, using spent shotgun shells as the rocket body and mixing the sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate in a homemade powder mill, where steel ball bearings and the rotating mill ground the power into a fine mixture.

In High School I read Classic books along with an occasional spicy novel (tame by today's standards), played baseball on the High School team and was generally bored in school until Algebra came along. Afterwards, I was hooked on mathematics, later on Physics also. I painstakingly wrote the equations of motions for an electron rotating around a nucleus and spent even more time transferring these equations onto stiff manila colored art paper for display.

In hindsight I neglected the well-known effect of a rotating charge which by constantly accelerating radiated light, lost energy and quickly crashed into the nucleus. The math was correct; the physics wrong. None of the Science Fair judges commented on this fault and I won some kind of prize, undeserved in my mind when I later discovered my mistake.

A few of my high school teachers inspired me. The algebra and calculus teacher impressed all of us with long, elaborate calculations which filled the blackboards, finally producing an answer just before running out of room to write. He also terrorized us occasionally by loud and stern tirades when we neglected to study.

An English teacher seemingly spent more time correcting some of my sentence diagrams than I did doing them in the first place, took personal interest in us and even took some of us to a concert at a College two hours away. He shamed me with his genuine interest in our learning experience. Somehow, I managed to take three years of Latin without learning anything, so the inspiration was spotty and insufficient to carry over into all my classes.

I went off to attend the State University and chose a major in Physics. When I somehow became convinced that one had to be a genius to do serious work in physics, I switched to Electrical Engineering and obtained a BSEE degree. I switched back to math and physics in graduate school and was anticipating an academic career when my father suffered a debilitating heart attack and I returned to East Witch to take over the family Real Estate business... at least for a short term.

My mother showed little interest in the business, however, and the short term turned into a career, and not the one I had planned either. I married my wife Annie somewhat late...at the age of 25 and we settled quickly into the easiest, most natural experience of my life. I could not imagine such contentment with anyone else. Then, Turq came into my life, only to leave for reasons I won't yet reveal. These are my thoughts from my letters to her after we finally parted.

Chapter 1

I hired you to help out in my office. When I interviewed you, you had a cute, somewhat nerdy look with those glasses and I thought you might be good with cameras and computers. I operate a Realty Office where such skills are handy. My wife had been urging me for months to hire someone so I could spend more time at home.

You were very good helping around the office, but I began to notice your tight jeans and perky breasts beneath your shirt. Still, you had an innocent almost bookish look so I let you go about your work undisturbed. Since we were together so often, I began to like you a lot. I started wondering about your personal life. Does she have a boyfriend, I wondered...maybe a girlfriend...hmmm maybe both but certainly there must be someone, because you were so attractive and went so far out of your way to help people on the phone and in the office. You were, in fact, a little shy and I began wondering if you were still a virgin? Could that be possible, I thought? It was certainly none of my business. One day you were late coming in and seemed a little rushed. I wondered if you had spent the night with someone and had slept too late. It's none of my business I realized and tried to repress such thoughts.

But trying not to think of you made it even worse. Damn it, I thought. I'm glad my wife cannot read my mind. That made my condition even worse than before. I had not done anything wrong and already I was worrying about my wife finding out. What the hell is wrong with me? I am a grown man and I am having fantasies about this girl. The jeans you often wore started it. Your little butt looked so good with those pants stretched tight across it...so round and firm with a narrow waist accenting your shape. Your work didn't help either. You had to search file cabinets, sometimes bending over. If your back was toward me, I looked at your perfect little bottom...so inviting. If you were facing me, I sometimes saw your pants stretched tight between your legs and this little "V" area began to attract my attention. I wondered what kind of panties you wore...what color. Once you wore a skirt and I'm positive I got a glimpse of your panties when you sat on the floor to look thru some files.

Now, to say I was obsessed with you would have been misleading. You were a welcome asset to the office and I certainly enjoyed watching you from time to time. Smitten is a better word; our relationship was friendly but I was older than you. Knowing that younger women often did not have the maturity to keep emotional balance, I did not want to threaten my marriage with an affair that might grow out of control.

I noticed your people skills quite early. You were invariably polite to customers and went out of your way to help people, especially the young couples looking for their first house. I began to give you extra work, such as driving around taking pictures of newly listed properties. You bounced in and out of the office during the day like a kid, always with a smile on your face, lugging your camera over your shoulder and smiling goodbyes at everyone.

Freed from the duty of taking my own property pictures, I was able to keep up with my work. You kind of bopped into the office in the mornings, did the needed paperwork and bopped out again, but always with that quick smile and a "see ya later" wave as you lugged this large bag thru the door, always banging it with your shoulder to open it. You were like a sprite, a Peter Pan of a girl. You wore jeans almost exclusively then because of your outside duties and often my only memory of you was this small young lady, that enormous camera bag and a cute little ass flitting out. Weeks passed in this way without incident.

It was a sunny fall day and I had just finished my coffee at a local diner when I caught a glimpse of you across the street. At first, I thought you were a boy, because your jacket was something a boy might wear, like a plaid or maybe a flannel quilted shirt and with a knit hat pulled down to your ears. Your pants gave you away. Boys don't have butts like that. I paid the bill quickly and stepped out into the chilly air in time to see you duck into a Homeless Shelter down the street. Now I admit to curiosity as to why you were there, so I found a bench at a nearby bus stop, sat down and waited. The fall sun was low in the sky and the air nippy. I pulled the collar of my coat up high on my neck, put my hands in the coat pockets and sat there waiting. I didn't wait long, maybe ten minutes, when I saw you leave, walking away from my direction and soon turning a corner, you were gone.

Blowing yellow and red leaves hit me as I hurried across the street and entered the Shelter, a blast of warm humid air, the smell of soup and stale bodies greeting me. Approximately six people were seated at long tables, spooning soup into their mouths, only one or two barely looking up as I passed their tables. The tables were covered with Formica of a faded yellow and the chairs were the metal folding kind, often found in schools and churches, painted grey or brown... not an attractive place to eat, but the soup smelled good. A young black man was loading dishes into a washer in the back and I went up to the only other person not seated and eating soup. I learned from him that you came in every couple of weeks and gave the customers cash from your own pocket, usually about fifty dollars and then you left.

I was puzzled. Why would you give perfect strangers money, I wondered?

Evidently, you had done it before. Charity of course, but most people are satisfied to write a check to a Charity or drop change into a kettle. But you did it personally and it was this difference that caused me to think there was a layer of personality beneath what I had seen. I wanted to know more and it was this intent to know more about you that started changing our relationship forever.

On the following Monday the trap was sprung, not knowingly by my hand though and certainly not by yours. Those people who believe in fate would ascribe events that followed as inevitable clockwork of an unknown force. Romantics would point to Cupid and his gentle arrow of innocent passion. I believe we each had a hand in setting the trap, unknowing of the consequences and for our own reasons. Each trap by itself was of little importance in the events that followed, but together we moved our relationship forward and small events combined to seal us together.

For my part I blame sexual attraction first, the lure a young woman has to an older man. Nature is to blame for this. She turns a young girl into a sexual woman attractive to all men, young and old alike to ensure species survival. So, I don't apologize for watching you. I took joy in it. I watched your quick smile, sometimes catching my breath as its sudden light flashed and hit me in the chest. I watched your grace as you moved around the office, balancing files in your arms as you closed a drawer with one foot, a wooden pencil often held between your teeth, movements that only a young woman can make.

I watched your body, a shirt stretched tight across your breasts so pert as you leaned backwards. I watched your bottom as it moved beneath your jeans in a simple walk, a natural sway to your hips, causing your round little cheeks to move so enticingly that I had to stop what I was doing and watch. I watched your face for its girlish, unconscious animations and smiled at nature's trick which made you so appealing. Your somewhat nerdy appearance combined with your habit of wearing flannel shirts gave you a tomboy look, belied by your physical attractions. I watched your generosity as you helped everyone in the office, often volunteering to fetch lunch from a local carryout even in bad weather. In truth, I watched you a lot as the trap sat somewhere in my mind, precariously balanced.

For your part I can still only speculate. I imagined your boyfriends as fumbling, lustful and possessive in their youth, too immature to fathom your special needs. I imagined your girlfriends, if you had any, as timid and uncertain in their sexuality, flighty and overly dramatic. I imagined you as wanting the experience, stability and maturity of a man, wanting to know your innermost thoughts, feelings and ambitions. I speculated a lot of things. With hindsight I know now that your trap was also just balanced, waiting to trip. I could never have predicted the course we were to follow.

I was late getting to work. As my car rolled into the parking lot, I saw your little jeep, already parked a little crooked in its space. My heart skipped a beat and I caught my breath. Whoa, I thought to myself. What is going on here? Emotion flooded my chest and I found myself nervous suddenly. Now, this was something I had not experienced for years. I was as if a giant hand reached down and squeezed me with its fingers. I was momentarily scared I was having a heart attack. I can imagine you smiling as you read this and of course there was no heart attack. I sat there unwilling to move.

When I did, it was with unsteady legs as I entered the office. Now, if you think this was the springing of the trap, let me remind you of what happened next. And don't pretend you don't remember because we talked about it weeks later. This moment was not the springing of the trap but a mere warning rumble of a coming earthquake.

The familiarity of the office started my daily routine... briefcase dumped on my desk, coat hung on a hook and a hot cup of coffee, courtesy of whoever came in first that day. Then, no longer protected by routine, I looked for you in one of the hall offices and found you at a conference room table. You were thumbing thru a magazine, turning stubborn pages by wetting you index finger between your lips with a little suck.

Your head turned as you sensed my presence and my brain snapped a photograph of you, my darling that still lasts to this day. How many times in the coming years did I view that image, simply by letting my attention wander? You will never see it, of course. I caught you with lips slightly open, the tip of your pink tongue just visible as you wet your finger.

Our eyes met and we both froze. Seconds passed long after propriety would have been to look away; yet our gaze persisted. Then, you stuck your index finger back between your lips, withdrew it slowly and smiled. Both traps shut and from that moment on our lives were intertwined as were our limbs when we could manage it. I don't even remember walking toward you; maybe I levitated or maybe even space stopped existing, but suddenly there was no room between us.

Our lips met in a frantic kiss; our bodies seemed to flow together so there was no space between, my leg between yours pressing against you. I felt your breasts as two pressure points against my chest, soft yet firm. My hands were all over you bottom, squeezing those shapely cheeks that I had stared at all these months and I became instantly hard. I know you felt that. You could not have failed to do so. Our tongues met and danced together. I can still smell the scent of your hair, another one of natures tricks...the scent encoded somehow in my brain different from the images and magically arousing me as I pass another woman on the street with the same shampoo scent.

What seemed timeless probably lasted only a couple of minutes and we unwrapped ourselves from each other. I finally managed two deep breaths with eyes closed. "Whew, God" was all I think I managed to say and when I opened my eyes, you were gone. So that, my little communist, was how the traps closed. Even to this day, years after that chance encounter, the memory is still vivid.

I didn't see you for the rest of the day. For my part, I scarcely remember how I filled that day. I did no work. I remember numerous cups of coffee; I remember wandering the office and a strange look from Dottie, our timeless Receptionist and Bookkeeper. I revisited the conference room, as if seeking evidence of our encounter, and found it in the magazines you had left there and your chair, a long way from the table where I had pushed it to get at you. From a window I even imagined the phantom outline of your jeep.

Near the end of the day an email from you popped up on my computer, apologizing for your absence and speaking of some forgotten personal commitment, ending with a "See you later" and a smiley face. "No problem", I replied but I included several smiley faces in my haste to touch you again in some way, instantly regretting this slight advancement in our affair. Shouldn't I think more about this, I asked myself? It was too late, of course and I was glad. I read and re-read your email, savoring the few words, each time replacing the smiley face with an image of your own smile.

I spent the next three days out of town at a Realtor Symposium on changes in license law, appraisal requirements, truth-in-lending and other dry subjects, peculiar to my business. Each day I checked my email for a message from you but received none. The following day was a Friday, your flex time day off and tired from the trip, I stayed home also. Thus, the workweek passed without incident and another bright sunny fall day greeted the town on Saturday.

I was up and out of bed early, started the coffee dripping and sat down at the computer. Sunlight streamed thru the window and I felt good and well rested from my trip. While the computer was booting up, I stole a half cup of coffee from the still-dripping machine. Checking email, my thoughts turned to you yet again and I re-read your last message, although by this time I had it memorized. Images of our encounter flooded my mind. My stomach seemed to drop as if falling and sudden warmth spread throughout my chest. I wanted to see you and Monday was an eternity away.

"If you're downtown this morning, how about a cup of coffee at Mary's?" I typed. And then I hit the send button before I could change my mind. I waited, wondering if you were up yet, what you might be wearing and if I would even get a reply. I was reading the news when my email popped up. "Meet me on yahoo", your message said and gave me your identity.

It didn't occur to me to keep a chat log. I'm glad I didn't because I would have worried someone would see it. I remember saying I was thinking of you and you replied you were glad I was. "How could I not be?" I asked and your reply was a smile.

"I hope you're not sorry."

"No, I was wondering if you even noticed me most of the time"

"How could I not?"

"Smiley face", you typed.

"You stir me up a bit."

"Another smiley face from you and

"Oh...how is that...Boss?"

"Those jeans you wear maybe."

"Glad you noticed" and another smiley face, courtesy of Yahoo

"You are huh?"

"Of course," you typed.

"Wow, Sweetie" was all I could think of.

It was in such a way that I drew you further into my life.

We met for coffee, but I barely remember what we talked about. Leaving the diner, we just walked together, barely talking. At the edge of town is a small park and I sat on a bench. Instead of sitting beside me, you sat on the ground, your back against my knees. It was impossible not to touch you. I massaged your shoulders thru your jacket and felt your body stiffen and then relax. My fingers found the back and sides of your neck and I gently and nervously let them wander around on your warm skin. Your back arched and we both took deep breaths. Leaning forward, I kissed your hair and saw your eyes close. I felt flushed, my body hot all over, despite the cool wind. We were silent, at least as far as words go, but I could hear your breathing as I could my own. How long we sat there I cannot say.

I better get going...errands to run and the car dealer parts people quit at noon," I finally managed to say. "I would like to stay forever."

"Me too," you replied.

Saturday passed but I barely remember the rest of the day. In the evening, I went back to Yahoo and just stared at the screen. Finally, I logged in, sent a "Hello" off in your direction and just waited. To say we became lovers that day in the park is a slight exaggeration. Before that Saturday, either of us could have retreated. After that day, the affair was still just balanced on the edge. It had become physical in a tentative, fumbling, tender way. It would take the sharing of our thoughts to open the door further. That evening on Yahoo would change us forever.