August: A Ghost Story

She eventually pulled away from him and came over to stand by me. She pointed to me.

"Frank, this is Lillian she's in my sorority."

Frank nodded to me and extended his hand. I just looked at it for a moment until he put it back down at his side. He sighed heavily and turned back to address Summer. "I would say call me but..." he let the sentence fall away.

Summer looked up at him and giggled at the obviously inside joke. Then she turned and walked toward the house and our friends waiting inside. I stood my ground for a moment and then took a step toward the tall biker guy. I put my finger in his chest and looked him right in the eye. "I think you're a pig!" I said and then turned on my heel to walk away. To my surprise he grabbed my arm and spun me back to face him.

"I don't care!" he said with a smile and pushed me away toward the house. I scurried away like a frightened mouse expecting never to see him again.

Summer and I rejoined the group and on the drive home she responded with mild apologies and silence when asked where she had disappeared to for so long. I kept my lip zipped until we had all piled out of the Sabrina's little station wagon and all the girls went inside. Summer stood against the car until all of them were out of sight. I asked her why she was so timid about walking in with the group and she turned around to show me the large wet stain across the back of her skirt.

"Sabrina's going to be pissed when she notices the mess on her seat cushions," she said, looking through the rear passenger window. "That can't be good for the leather."

Summer leaned against the car and looked up into the leaves of the tall elm trees that stood all around our old sorority house. I could tell she was thinking about what had just happened to her, the sheer animalistic frenzy, the raw passion, the sticky mess I was sure still felt moist in her panties.

As she took out a pack of cigarettes and stuck one into her mouth, I stepped forward. "He wasn't even wearing a condom," I said, as the corners of her mouth drifted upward into a smile.

She lit the smoke and sucked in a deep breath and shook her head. "I'm on the pill," she said dismissively. "Besides, I know him well enough. He's safe."

I had the impulse to chide her anyway, but bit my tongue as I realized it was pointless. I didn't know much about sex then but I had an inkling that I was seeing a very pronounced case of postcoital euphoria. I just looked at my shoes.

"Was he your first?" I asked, pretending to be interested in the few stars that were visible through the trees.

"No," she said with a giggle, tossing her cigarette away. "I've had lots of guys, Lily."

I looked into her eyes, displaying my shock.

I'd roomed with Summer for the entire previous year and in that time she'd never once opened up to me about men. To be honest, I'd always thought of her as a bit of a prude. "How many?"

She shook her head and giggled. "I don't fuck and tell."

"But that guy tonight. The way you were together..."

"Oh, Frank is definitely the best by far. Like when I said no and he kept going. Oh, God! I had no idea a man could get inside me like that."

"Didn't it hurt? I mean, I saw you and you looked like you wanted to scream."

She walked over to a stone bench under one of the elms and sat, taking care not to sit down too fast. "It still hurts," she said, but grinning nonetheless as she leaned back on her hands and stretched out her legs. "Mmm, but it's such a weird and wonderful kind of hurt, Lily. If I were a poet I'd probably know the exact word for this pleasurable agony I feel down there."

I dragged my toe through the dirt, drawing a little circle. "He was really cute."

"For a pig, right?"

I looked up to see her smiling at me. Despite my guise of neo-feminist disgust I let myself smile too. "Has he got a brother?" I asked.

Summer threw her head back and rippled with laughter. She knew just as well as every girl in the house that I was still a virgin much to my chagrin. When her chuckles subsided she looked at me, amusedly but with a hint of calculation. In a moment she stood up and dug in the front pocket of her sweater. She took out a slip of paper and passed it to me. "You can have him if you like."

My eyes widened. Was she serious? I mean, a guy like that was first of all not my type in the least; too big, too rugged, too -- dangerous. And second of all I'd called him a pig. There was no way he would want to even talk to me, let alone...

"He thought you were cute," Summer said, pressing the slip of paper into my palm. "Otherwise he would have stopped everything when we heard the gate creak open." She brushed past me and went into the house, leaving me to hug myself in the cold night air. I looked down at the note scrawled in smudged black ink.

It said simply, "English Department Ext. 4481. ~F. Collins"

Maybe it was the chill in the air but as I looked at the tidy masculine scrawl I felt my nipples hardening and my lips becoming very dry. Was tomorrow too soon? Was now too soon? I closed my eyes and saw him again, his lean hips, his massive shoulders, the dark and wild hair that fell in several commas over his forehead and matched the curly tangles from which had jutted his long and pulsing purple headed prick, only this time it wasn't Summer he had pressed up against the fence in the alley, but me. It was my back he was rubbing as I shuddered and gasped; my hips he grabbed and pulled back against his as my hot wet fluids mingled with his in that last abrupt and all too violent explosion. I walked over to the cold granite bench where Summer had sat and lay down on it looking up into the branches of the trees. I wanted to feel the cold air against my lower regions, simulating the way it would have felt for Summer, as her panties were pulled down and her skirt flung up. I looked around to make sure no one was in sight and then, I slowly reached up under my own skirt and pulled my underwear down so that I could feel the hard cold stone against my back through my clothes. With another glance around I decided it was secluded enough to throw more caution to the wind.

I lifted my own skirt and kicked my panties off completely letting them lie on the grass. I first let my fingers mingle with my own little pubic hairs and then I went lower to find my own little pink pleasure button.

In less than a minute I felt the quick contraction and felt a fresh flow of liquid pulse out of me and onto the stone bench. I sighed and lay there for a moment, my skirt still up around my waist letting the wind gently brush its invisible fingers over my skin and through the hair mound of my naughty place. When I'd finally come all the way down I sat up, reached across the grass for my panties and, stuffing them into my little handbag, walked in to take a quick bath before crawling under my cozy little pink frilled comforter in my cozy little pink frilled room.

THE PRESENT

Chapter Nine:

We were still staring at each other, the question still in the air.

"What are you doing in my house?" he repeated.

"Your house?" I felt like stamping a foot and screaming like a toddler. "My house! I bought the place this afternoon."

"Well, I was born here." He calmly knelt down and began pushing the larger bits of broken plate together in a manageable pile, speaking to my feet as he did so. "The title is in my name!"

He looked up from the mess with an expression that was almost forlorn. I looked down at him thoughtfully a moment and then, both of us realizing we were locked in a stare, we looked away, me to the corner of the room, he to the mess on the floor. His hair was cropped shorter with what looked like little strands of gray starting to show at his temples. The cheeks were paler with thin but noticeable crow's feet lightly marking them at the tops. But his eyes -- deep and blue like a northern sea, choppy and treacherous like frigid winter -- they were the same eyes whose gaze I'd felt powerless under when I'd stared into them all those years ago.

As he cleaned up the mess I was shocked to see how much he'd changed and yet stayed the same. Still tall and strongly built, if a little less rugged to the close observer. "You cut your hair," I said, stupidly.

He glanced in my direction, not at my face but at my bare feet. "Grunge went out, didn't you hear? Besides they have a dress code where I work. We teachers of English and American Literature must look as much like Ward Cleaver as possible." He stood abruptly and I took a tentative step toward him, showing him that I was over the initial shock of the surprise. "Stay over there," he said. "I'll get the broom and..." He turned and walked back into the kitchen leaving the sentence unfinished.

I heard the tinkle and thunk of the broken china tossed into the garbage bin and in a minute he had returned with the broom and swept the glass from around the edges of the large Persian rug.

"Teacher?" I said, casually.

"At the high school. In fact, if you're the new Spanish teacher Gene told me to look out for this morning, your room is just three doors down from mine. Want a beer?"

"You're shitting me. That -- that's impossible. You're a writer. You write books. You live in New York."

He made a sort of mechanical little chuckle. "Ha, well, I was a writer and I did write books, and I did live in New York. I lived very happily in New York. I wish I still did live in New York, but..." he shrugged and waved a hand dismissively. "Life happens. Would you like a beer?"

"Sure."

"Alright, then." He finished sweeping the shards into the dustpan and then stood. He was about to turn and walk into the kitchen but he paused, looking over my shoulder. I turned to see that he was staring at the brown leather jacket I'd draped over the dining room chair. When I turned back he was staring thoughtfully at me. His eyes focused on the little charm around my neck and for an instant I thought I saw a hint of a smile trying to sneak across his face.

He quashed it though, clearing his throat. "I saw you today in the street," he said. "Almost cussed you out for darting out in front of me like that."

"It was you on the bike, then?"

He nodded and backed through the kitchen door, nodding for me to follow. "Yep. There are some things dressing like Ward Cleaver can't change." He dumped the last flakes of china in the bin and then put the broom away in the cupboard before crossing to the refrigerator and taking out two bottles of beer. It was a nice old fashioned kitchen with a red-brick fireplace and a wooden floor and white painted cabinets. He handed me the beer and I opened it, taking a healthy swig before continuing the conversation.

"So you were born here? That's why you live here?"

He shook his head and leaned against the counter, folding his arms over his chest so that his biceps bulged a bit in the sleeves of his plain white T-shirt. "I was. And no. This was my dad's place. He left it to me when he died. I had been trying to sell it from New York until about two years ago, but now..."

"Now?"

He face went a little harder, the cocky smile folded back a bit. "Now it's off the market I'm afraid."

"Tell that to your real-estate agent. She sold it to me this afternoon for a song. Paid cash for it. Of course, she said the house was hers. She lived here with her..."

Our eyes locked for an instant and he shrugged. "We never actually lived here -- we lived in town."

"That's why you moved back?"

"Emma." His expression shifted again to one that was hard to describe, something like anger but far more detached, a kind of expression that appreciated the humor of the situation. "My attorneys told her yesterday that she wasn't getting a dime. I thought she might do something rash, you know, burn the place down, wait in an alley and run me over... that sort of thing."

"What are you talking about?"

He ran his fingers through his hair walking over to take a cordless phone out of its jack and begin dialing. "A whole lot of life and a very nasty divorce," he said, almost chuckling. "Hold on a second. I'll get the sheriff on it."

I tensed, took another healthy swig of my beer and said, "Give it to me straight, Frank."

"My guess is she's halfway to Mexico by now, a nice chunk of your money serving as her escape fund."

"So she ripped me off?"

"I'd guess so." He jerked his head, holding up a finger. "Hey, yeah, Dick? Frank Collins. Listen, you think you could send a car by Emma's office, see if she's there?" He turned to look at me. "Tell me, how much did you give her?"

I had to suck on the beer three or four times before I managed to admit, "Eighty."

Frank whistled and then proceeded to tell the sheriff the particulars as I seriously considered putting my head in the old gas range oven. By the time he hung up he was all smiles, taking the last swig of his beer as he crossed the room chuckling.

"Don't laugh at me like that."

"Eighty-thousand, huh?" He put his empty beer bottle down on the kitchen table and walked over to the fridge, opening the door and leaning on it. "That's interesting." He reached in a grabbed a second bottle of beer and opened it before holding it out to me. "Would you like another of these?"

I quickly emptied my beer, set the empty down next to his and crossed to take the beer, trying very hard not to notice that for a moment my fingers brushed his in the exchange.

"I had it marked lower than that when I first put it on the market, never could get anybody to buy it. Had a couple of short term leasers, who offered me 300 a month, but they skipped out before rent was due." He took some ham and cheese out of the fridge and took them over to a cutting board by the breadbox. "Eighty is a lot. I'm surprised you paid it. What were you thinking, fix it up, maybe? Sell it at a profit? How'd you get that kind of money in cash, anyway?"

"I, uh... Well, I was married too."

"Oh, took him for a lot, huh? What was he, a doctor? Lawyer?"

"Dentist."

"You married a dentist?" He tossed his head back and laughed. "Why does that not surprise me? Sounds stable, smart, very you."

"I'll have you know it was a very spontaneous marriage."

"Just like buying this house, was spontaneous, huh? How much you take him for altogether?"

"I just picked the house at random," I said, ignoring his second question.

"Random?"

"I was being adventurous."

He considered this for a second. "Well, there's adventurous and there's stupid. $10,000 is too much if you ask me. The roof leaks, the wiring is from the Taft administration, the basement has a wonderful spider infestation -- you're still afraid of those, aren't you? -- and the surrounding farmland isn't fertile enough to grow weeds. If the place were still for sale nobody in their right mind would want to buy it, let alone live here."

"So why are you here?"

"It's my home," he said, slicing off some ham and putting it on a plate. "The family estate, the land of my forbearers -- and it's cheaper than a motel." He peeled the cellophane wrapping off of a slice of cheese and added it to the pile of ham. He opened the bread box and took out a package of white bread. As he began stacking the meat and cheese haphazardly he added, "Anyway it's only until I get tired and they can hire a replacement for me at the school. Still, I must confess after two months the place is growing on me. It's kind of nice to visit the old homestead. I never spent much time here as a kid. Mom and dad split when I was three so..." he finished putting the two sandwiches together and tied the twist-tie back on the bread and put everything else away.

"So?"

He looked up. "So, I spent the odd weekend, but for the most part I didn't get too attached to the place. It was just 'dad's house.' I mean, I knew the address, it's where all my birthday and Christmas cards came from," he pointed at the charm on my neck. "When I told him I'd started dating you he sent me that to give to you."

I realized that I'd been unconsciously playing with the charm around my neck. I stopped and Frank continued talking, oblivious. "So dad died a few years ago, I came out here from New York to settle things up -- he tried leaving it to mom but mom deferred -- said I should sell it. So I hired a real-estate agent, a very, very pretty real-estate agent," he paused, "almost too pretty, wouldn't you agree?"

"Didn't strike me as your type, you like deflowering innocent girls."

"Oh, she was innocent when we met, believe me. I guess I have that effect on women. Anyway, the place wouldn't sell and wouldn't sell and my meetings with the real-estate agent became lunches and the lunches became dinners and the dinners became drinks at her place... Next thing I knew I was married and teaching English literature at the local high school, pretending to write a book. Funny how life works out, huh?"

"Yeah, funny."

He chuckled. "And you paid cash?"

"Drop it, okay?"

"You're right, none of my business. You ripped off your dentist ex-hubby and my real estate ex-wifey ripped you off back. Poignant. But as far as Emma is concerned don't take it personally. She's a sociopath. Guess you'll just have to find another place to live."

"And pay for it how?"

"Was the eighty-grand all you had?"

"I've got some left over, about thirty or so."

He nodded. "Yep, sounds like you're up shit creek, honey."

"Thanks for being so charming, Frank." I set the open bottle of beer on the counter, stood and went to the kitchen door. I pushed through into the dining room, grabbing the jacket on my way toward the door. Through the dining room windows I could see the wind was up and the rain was blowing in against the glass in torrents.

"You're not going out in this are you?"

I turned and found him leaning against the kitchen door, opening the second beer and standing with it poised to take a sip. The look on his face was almost mocking, he was enjoying this. I headed for the door not wanting to hear the laughter in his voice. When I opened the door, a cold wind blew in causing the crystal of the chandelier in the hall to tinkle.

"I'm serious, Lily. Don't go."

There was something in his voice. It made me turn and look at him. Then I looked up at the high dark ceiling of the main hall, the large pictures hung on the wall. The house was massive and the pictures were faded portraits and photographs of long-dead people. Frank was small in the kitchen door, the light behind him in the kitchen the only warmth about the place. He was big, broad and strong, and yet the house seemed to envelope him with its hugeness. He was dwarfed by it.

The look was on his face. The look I'd always remembered. The one he'd worn when I'd kicked him out of the apartment we'd shared my last semester of college and he'd driven off, leaving for God knew where. It had been raining then, too.

Looking out the front door, I saw the muddy driveway and the dark sky that seemed bigger here in the Midwest than it did anywhere else in the world. The sky was full of lightning and thunder and the anger of the storm. I felt him behind me then, and then I felt his hand on mine helping me to push the door closed.

"You can stay here, tonight," he took the jacket off, and hung it on a hook by the door, next to the dark brown one he'd been wearing in the street earlier that day. He handed me the opened beer. I took it grudgingly and took a sip.

THE PAST

Chapter Ten:

After three months and a winter vacation, I'd managed to lose Frank Collins's number along with any real lasting recollection of him. Not shocking, really, if you think of the sea of people that flow in and out of your life in a given year at college. Yes, the image of that night was burned in my memory with all of its raw, heated, sexual energy. But that was all it was, an image of some guy fucking my friend in an alleyway behind a house and the look on her face of total abandon and wanton sexual satisfaction. But as for the man, he'd dissolved to nothing but a thought, a form in my mind, a psycho-sexual aid for the odd moment when I found myself locking the door to my room for privacy.