Fall 1970 Ch. 02

Joni came out of the bathroom in a tan waitress uniform, hair and makeup done nicely.

"You did the dishes? You're a sweetheart babe, you're a keeper! What's your plan Davy? Gonna stick around and wait till she wakes up? It'll probably be around 2 before she gets up. Hang around if you want, not much to do around here until she wakes up. Plenty to do after she does though" Joni said with a wink.

"No, I guess I'd better head home. I don't even know where I am" I said while getting my wallet and keys off the table.

"If you want I'll walk with you some and point you in the right direction. We're going the same way and I got quite a hike myself.

We headed toward the door, but I stopped and looked around for a piece of paper. I tore off part of the bag our beer was in and wrote my name and phone number on it and underlined 'call collect', Love, Dave. I ducked in the bedroom and kissed Doreen on the forehead. She seemed to smile a bit and I was so tempted to climb in next to her, but didn't.

Joni and I headed out to the street. In the morning light the area seemed even shabbier than it did the night before. The whole city did. Garbage was all over the place and people were snoozing in doorways. The whole city reeked of some foul indescribable aroma.

There was a guy just ahead who was relieving himself against the front of a store. I was stunned at this and looked at Joni, who didn't blink or even break stride when she stepped over the stream of piss that trickled down the sidewalk in front of us on its way to the gutter.

We talked non-stop on the way to her restaurant, lighter conversation than before. We spoke about Doreen, how she was not doing well in school and might bomb out if she didn't get serious. Joni said that Doreen had a part-time job in a coffee shop nearby. "Chock Full O'Nuts ain't just the name of the coffee there either!" Joni said while laughing that marvelous husky laugh of hers.

I asked how they ended up together. It seemed they had found each other by chance. It had been Doreen's apartment and her roommate had bailed out on her. Joni heard from a co-worker about a friend of hers needing someone to share expenses, and the next thing she knew they were roommates. They had been there almost a year together, she announced proudly and when she told me the rent I about keeled over. That place cost more than my parent's mortgage.

"Yeah, this is one expensive place to live, babe. We're hanging on by the skin of our teeth even with all the hours I work. Dor's gonna have to get more hours or something, but of course if she flunks out of school she'll have lots of time to work" Joni suggested.

"You really got off on that girl-girl stuff didn't ya, babe" Joni asked mischeviously.

"Uh, yeah I guess I did. I never saw anything like that before, in person I mean."

"I'm not a lesbian or anything like that you know darlin', I want you to know that, for some reason" Joni offered. "Doreen seduced me right after I moved in with her. I didn't stand a chance. I had never done anything like that before in my life. Dor's kind of, well she's got a way about her, she can get you doing stuff you never even thought of before. It's hard to spend any time around that gal and not fall in love with her."

"Yeah, I know." I responded.

"I don't wanna sound like I don't enjoy doing it, cause I do. I'd just never do it with any other woman though, at least I don't think I would. Ah, who the hell knows? Well here I am, hell sweet hell."

We stopped in front of the restaurant and Joni gave me directions and we said our goodbyes. I told Joni that I had left my number on the table and they should call me collect, because I would love to come down again sometime soon.

"We'd love to have ya, babe" Joni said. "I wish you were a local. You'd be real good for Doreen. She needs someone like you, somebody solid, an anchor or something like that. Someone to point her in the right direction. Ha! Listen to me. Some authority I am!"

Joni gave me a hug and a kiss before leaving.

"You seem like a good guy David, don't ever change." Joni said softly. She reached around, gave my ass a squeeze, winked and ducked into the restaurant.

I floated down to Port Authority Bus Terminal like I was on a cloud. As soon as my butt hit the bus seat I closed my eyes and relived everything that had happened, and dreamed about future visits down here.

I couldn't wait until Doreen or Joni called me up. Maybe when my friend Kenny came home for the holidays we could come down here together. Who would I be with? Who did I love more? I honestly did not know.

It was a pleasant way to drift into sleep, and the next couple of hours were spent blissfully thinking about the incredible night and morning that changed my life so much back in the fall of 1970.

epilogue...

When I got home I waited by the phone for a call. I left strict orders to accept any collect calls for me. As the days went by, and the days became weeks I became a little depressed but still hopeful. Christmas came around and I picked out a card that I thought was funny and sent it to them. I signed it 'To Doreen and Joni All my love David', and started to fill out the envelope.

Doreen and Joni. No last names. I didn't know their last names. What an idiot I was, never even finding out their last names! I did know the address, remembering to write that down as I left, so I addressed it just Doreen and Joni and the address.

A few days after Christmas I got a card in the mail. It was the card I had mailed to them, returned stamped 'moved no forwarding address'.

It must have been the way I had addressed it, with no last names they probably didn't know where to deliver it, or maybe I got the street number transposed or something. So it was that in mind that I hopped on a bus in mid-January and went back down to NYC. I went down on the first bus in the morning so I could spend as much time as I could with them.

It was a bitterly cold day and the winds were howling as I walked to their apartment. I retraced my route from the last time, even recognizing the restaurant Joni worked at. I looked in the window but it wasn't open yet, so I went on to their place.

I was a little surprised when I recognized the place so quickly. I flew up the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door. The big black guy that answered the door was defintely not Doreen or Joni. He didn't know who they were, the place was vacant when he moved in, and was not pleased about being bothered.

I walked back down the stairs and passed an elderly woman just coming in. I asked her if she knew a couple of girls that lived here, giving her a brief description. The woman said she thought she knew who I meant, cracking me up when she said in broken english "oh and the blonde with the boom boom" holding her hands cupped way out in front of her.

"Yes! Yes! That's them!" I said excitedly.

She remembered them, but she had not seen them around since before Christmas. I thanked the woman for her help and hustled back down to the restaurant. It was just opening for lunch and I asked a waitress if a blonde named Joni still worked here. She said she had just started here but would ask the manager.

A moment later the manager came out, a short bald guy with a thick moustache. I introduced myself, gave him a brief outline of who I was, why I was there and asked him if Joni still worked here.

"Joni, no she left around Thanksgiving, I think it was. She didn't really leave, she just didn't show up one day and I never saw her again. Happens to me a lot, it's the nature of this business, but she never picked up her check and that's unusual. I tried to mail it to here but it got returned, I think. I've still got it here so if you catch up with her, tell her to stop by and pick it up. Good luck in finding her, kid. Boy she was a real character, Joni was. Good worker too. he said while shaking his head"

I went back out on the street, lost and confused. I wandered over to the college area and roamed around the area, looking at faces, searching hopelessly. How do find two people in New York City when you don't even know their last names?

It was a long and miserable bus ride home and I stared blankly out the window for the entire ride. I was crushed.

What had happened to them? Where did they go? Why didn't they call me?

Maybe my phone number got thrown away. Doreen might have woke up and threw that piece of the bag with my number on it away, thinking it just trash. That was what I finally settled on as the answer, if only to ease my mind.

Why would Joni not go back to work though, especially to pick up her check? That was more disturbing and I didn't have any good explanation for that. I had some possible scenarios in my mind, but none of them were pleasant to consider.

I realize now, and I think I really knew it in my heart back then, that it was a little irrational for me to be that attached to a couple of people that I only knew for such a short time. I certainly understand why I felt that way. I had gone through so much in that brief time with them and had so many major moments in my life packed into that short period that they became bigger than life in my mind.

Perhaps it was for the best that we never met again. Everything that could have gone right for me went right that night. The entire day all happened by chance; from the rain falling when I'd first arrived, to noticing that concert poster on the wall, my seeing Doreen selling the ticket before someone else did.

It was all sheer luck or fate or whatever you want to call it. The stars were aligned a certain way or something like that. How can I possibly repeat it? How would, hell how could that night ever be topped? Everything would always have been anticlimactic after that. I still wished I could have seen them again though, if only just to tell them how much that night meant to me.

What I meant to them, who knows? Maybe I was completely forgotten about by the next day. I know I was not nearly as important to their lives as they were to mine. Maybe I was just one in a endless series of faceless guys. That's not a happy way to think about it, but it's possible. Maybe I cross their minds every once in a great while, and they smile. That would be enough for me.

I prefer to think about it in that way, rather than to explore the other possiblities. New York City is an exciting place but it's also a cold and impersonal place. A lot of things can happen to you down there, and I imagine that most of them aren't good.

So when I think of them, and I still do from time to time, I think of happier things. I often relive in my mind the time I spent with them. Thirty four years later and I rememember it all. These days I go to the store for three things and invariably forget two of them, but that day I remember as vividly as ever. I've also tried to imagine what became of them.

In my mind Doreen became a teacher, a good one too. She's spreading joy and laughter to her students along with knowledge and makes everyone happier by just walking into the room. She's married to a good and caring man and they have cute and smart kids with the same devilish glint in their eyes as their mom.

In my mind Joni found her dream guy and she is as happy as can be. He always treats her with love and respect and he gets it all back in return, and then some. She's still tossing out wisecracks and laughing that incredibly infectious laugh of hers.

That's the way I try to think of them now.

I know there are other ways that life may have turned out for them, far less pleasant ways. I try not to think about that too much.

That's about all I've got to say, except while I was writing this story something crossed my mind. Wouldn't it be a riot if one of them reads this? What if someone is reading this and they realize they know them? They were both very unique people. Maybe subconsciously that was why I didn't change their names.

What's the chances of that happening, a billion to one? Anything is possible I guess.

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Thank you for reading Fall 1970, and my deepest gratitude to the folks at Literotica for making this outlet available.