He Was One Hell of a Salesman

He was one hell of a salesman

"Hello, stranger." She said as I turned after feeling the tap on my shoulder.

Her name was Krystal Lawler and the last time I saw her, she was fucking some guy in my back seat.

Krystal and I had grown up as neighbors. My family moved next door to her family when I was seven and she was nine. She and I were never best friends, and never dated, or had sex, but we enjoyed each other's company.

We were together at a party the evening I caught her in my back seat because her boyfriend, David, was sick and my date was, well, I didn't have a date. Krystal knew it and needed a ride so she asked me to take her. The guy she was fucking was an old boyfriend and they were reliving old times... or so she said. "Just don't tell David."

I chuckled at the memory of that night. "Hello, Krystal."

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

By "here" she meant the party we were both attending. It was a fund raiser organized by the city. Mother Nature had shown us in the previous 14 months that she hated us. We had been hit by two major hurricanes, a tropical storm, severe flooding and a tornado. The whole city was exhausted and many residents were fighting with their insurance companies for repair of damages incurred by one, or more, of Mother Nature's poxes directed at us. There was lots of discussion and negotiations between home owners and insurance companies as to whether damage to buildings was caused by falling water, in which case the insurance company paid, or rising water, in which Federal flood insurance paid; and some insurance companies were loathe to pay for any damage regardless of how it happened.

There were still families living in camper trailers and tents because their houses hadn't been repaired from the first hurricane 14 months earlier, and the federal government had moved on to bigger and better crises, ignoring our little city. So the city fathers (and mothers) and select citizens organized a fundraiser to help those who were having problems.

Gumbo was the meal of preference at these gatherings, seconded by beans and rice. I was sitting with three of my friends. We had all taken the evening off from helping clean up wherever we were needed and were enjoying the fund raiser. The party was at the city's largest park and was by a lake. We were sitting at a picnic table enjoying our gumbo, when I felt Krystal's tap on my shoulder.

I introduced her to my friends, one of whom invited her to join us. She did, and the next hour was taken up by my friends individually and collectively trying to get a date with her.

She sat and laughed with us until she finished her beer, then moved on. No one said a word as we watched her ass...er....ah...her....make her way through the crowd. When it...she....was no longer in sight, my friends all talked at once about how perfect her ass was, and how jeans never looked so good, and the fact that she had on an almost see through blouse with a bright red bra wasn't missed by any of us.

I chose not to say anything; not that anyone would have heard me given the chatter coming from the other three.

Like most conversations about women by men, that one only lasted until the next perfect ass sauntered by.

Our city was full of perfect asses. We, in the south, are proud of our women's perfect asses. Not that there aren't perfect asses elsewhere in the world, but they couldn't compare to ours; and don't get me started on tits. No tits in the world compare to southern women's tits. They are far and away nicer than tits anywhere in the world. Full stop. Of course there is that one woman in Boston whose ass and tits would put any of our southern girls to shame.

So Krystal and her perfect ass moved off and we resumed eating our gumbo and drinking our beer.

We had just finished when the Mayor started speaking and congratulating us on the progress we had made, but implored us to do more. He was a good speech giver and by the time he was finished, my friends and I had another beer in our hands and were hell bent on going back to work, but stopped when we heard the Zydeco music start.

For those of you who live north of Interstate 10, and who we consider Yankees, Zydeco is music that evolved in our part of the country by French Creole speakers and it blends blues, rhythm and blues and music indigenous to the Louisiana Creoles and the native people of Louisiana. There is not a lot of difference between zydeco and Cajun music and neither is easy to dance to, but a combination of a one-step dance and swaying generally suffices.

It didn't take long for the four of us to find dancing partners and we joined the dozens of other couples dancing on the grass. I use the term "dancing" loosely because in addition to the dancing being difficult in the first place, trying it on grass made it even worse. As a result, swaying to the music became the order of the day accompanied by the occasional rubbing of bodies against each other.

My dancing partner was the daughter of one of our most successful attorneys. I had seen him on TV advertising his practice. His ads always ended with "Win with Wilson". I had seen her around, but had never spoken to her until asking her to dance at that picnic. We ended up spending the rest of the day and evening together. Any thought of going back to work went away when she turned her back to me while dancing, and I watched her swaying.

Her name was Lauren and she and I were the same age, and we both graduated from our local university the same year, but we never knew each other.

She worked as the receptionist in her father's office and I taught history and math to some of the smartest high school students in America, with a sprinkling of some of the least likely to learn even if you hammered it into them.

The party lasted late into the night with Lauren and I among the last to leave. We had come in separate cars and that's the way we left, but with a date scheduled for the following Friday.

It is amazing how things turn out. I had rarely seen, or noticed Lauren, prior to the party, but the following week, I saw her three times. The party had been on Saturday. The first time I saw her was the next day at the mall walking with a guy. That was fine. He could have been brother, cousin, or just a friend. No big deal. The second time was in a pickup truck. She was sitting close to the driver and he looked like the guy at the mall. Mark and I had been helping load and haul rubble from the streets when they drove by.

Then there was the third time. It was Thursday and the day before she and I were scheduled to go out.

We have in our city a Country Club. We also have a private dining restaurant. If you are a member of one, you were most likely a member of both. My family was the exception. We belonged to the private restaurant, but not the country club. Not because it was too expensive, but because none of us played golf or tennis.

We did enjoy fine dining however, and both clubs had reciprocity for dining. So it was that I found myself with my parents, sister, and some close friends and other relatives, celebrating my mother's birthday at the country club. Our private dining room adjoined the dance floor and we were halfway through dinner when I had to excuse myself to go to the restroom and I saw Lauren dancing with a man. That would have been fine had it not been for the fact that I had invited her to have dinner with us that evening and she told me she couldn't because she was having dinner with two of her girlfriends.

I watched them dancing and the intimacy, to include the long kisses and roaming hands they displayed, indicated it was not their first date.

I knew the man. He was the coach of my school's football team. He was not a teacher, but was the owner of the city's biggest pizza place. He and I weren't close, but we knew each other.

I couldn't help but glance at them occasionally. As far as I could determine, they never saw me, and if they did, they gave no indication of it.

We finished our party and left. I found myself in my apartment second guessing whether I wanted to go on a date with someone who was so obviously close to someone else and who had lied to me. By the same token, if she were close to one man, why would she accept a date with another? Twas a puzzlement.

I made it a point the next day at school of looking up the coach. I saw him in the lounge.

"Hey, Tom. I saw you at the club last night. Wasn't that Lauren Richard you were with?" (In Cajun country, Richard is pronounced Ree-shard.)

"Yes. Do you know her?"

"Barely. Are the two of you serious?"

"We seem to be. We've been dating for seven months."

"Good for you. See you later." And I left. Our date was scheduled for that night, but there was no way I was going to date her knowing she was regularly dating someone else. The seriousness may have been only on Tom's part, but, even so, I wasn't comfortable. So I called her.

"Hello, Jackson," she said. That's my name Jackson Hebert (Pronounced A-bear in Cajun country) "I was just thinking about you."

"I was thinking about you as well," I countered. "I think we should cancel tonight."

"Why? Are you okay?"

I decided the Mall sighting was not worth mentioning, so I cut right to the chase. "You may recall that I asked you to have dinner with my family and me last night."

"That's right, but I couldn't."

"That's correct. Then I saw you dancing."

"Oh. That was Tom. That's nothing. We've known each other forever."

"That's good. Having old friends is a good thing. It's like having old girl friends."

"What do your old girlfriends have to do with anything?"

"It isn't my old girlfriends I'm talking about. It's yours."

"What do you mean?"

"You said you couldn't go to dinner with us because you were going out with two girlfriends."

"Uh. We did. Then we ran into Tom."

I had seen them when they weren't dancing and they were at a table for two. "Where were your girlfriends sitting?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. You lied to me about last night and I don't date liars. Goodbye." That pretty much took care of that.

Over the next couple of weeks, Tom and I kept seeing each other. We would meet in the lounge and chat. Lauren never seemed to be a topic of conversation until one Friday afternoon when Tom seemed a bit down. "Anything wrong?" I asked.

"Not really. I had a date but she cancelled, now I don't have anything to do tonight."

"Too bad. Why did she cancel?"

"She's going out with her girlfriends for a girls night out."

"That's too bad. Are you still seeing Lauren?"

"I am. She's the one who broke the date."

"Well, I'm sure you'll find something to do." I went back to class.

That evening, my best friend, Mark and I went to one of our three casinos to play some blackjack. We didn't do it often, but when we did, it was fun.

I was up about $60. When I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and Krystal and Lauren stood there. "Hello stranger," Krystal said. "I always seem to be tapping you on the shoulder."

"So it seems."

"I understand you know my friend, Lauren."

"I do indeed. How are you, Lauren?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"I'm okay. Do you have a minute to chat?"

The cards had been cold for several hands so I said sure, took my chips, told Mark I'd see him later and started to leave."

"Oh, no you don't," he said. "You're not leaving me here while you walk away with two girls." He picked up his chips and we all four headed for the nearest bar. That particular casino had three bars. The one were went to was country and western themed. We found a table, piled our chips on it and sat. We had no sooner sat than a server asked what we wanted, and we ordered. Krystal asked Mark to dance and Lauren and I sat.

We had all ordered beer and they were on the table as Lauren and I sat. The service was very fast. We both took sips and looked at each other.

"I did lie to you." She said." And I'm sorry."

I looked at her. "It's water under the bridge."

"Do I get another chance?"

"I don't think so. Once trust is broken, what's left? If we were to start going out and if for whatever reason you couldn't make it, I wouldn't know if you were lying or not. I just wouldn't be able to trust you."

We just sat looking at our beers and not speaking when Krystal and Mark returned. "Everything okay?" asked Krystal.

Lauren stood and picked up her purse. "Let's go," she said.

Krystal looked at me as I took a sip of my beer. "You're an idiot." She said to me. "You're blowing a good thing."

I looked at her. "I didn't blow it. She did."

"What's going on?" Asked Mark as he sat and picked up one of the two full beers. I gave him the history while we drank. When I finished, he just looked at me. "Are you fucking crazy? She's hot! So she lied. Haven't you ever lied to a girl before? Christ, Jackson. Take her out and fuck her a few times and if you don't like her, give her to me, then I'll fuck her. She can lie to me all she wants."

We sat there and finished our beers while he harangued me about being a total idiot. When he was finished, we paid our tab, picked up our chips, cashed them in and went home. I didn't lose any sleep about Lauren, but I did go to sleep thinking about what it might have been like to fuck her.

My social life was almost non-existent for the next couple of weeks. Not that I had time for a social life. We were still cleaning up from the hurricane damage, but I did manage two meetings for drinks with women I'd been introduced to, but they went nowhere.

The end of the school year came and the faculty had a dinner at the country club. After dinner, I danced with one of the newer teachers, but, again, there was no emotional involvement. I was taking her back to her table when I saw Lauren sitting alone at the bar. I thought, what the hell. I was bored at my table, so I figured I'd at least say hello. I went to my table, got my drink and joined her. She jerked her head toward me as I sat.

"Do you mind?" I asked.

"It's a free country." She slurred. Then added. "I didn't know you were a member of the Country Club."

"I'm not. The President of the School Board is and she booked it for us."

"And who booked it the last time so you could come here?"

I looked at her, stood, and picked up my drink. "See you around."

"Wait. Where are you going? Sit down."

"No thank you. I know when someone is looking down their nose and I don't need it."

"Jackson, I didn't mean it that way. Come back."

I went back to my table. I had barely sat when she was there. "Jackson. I'm sorry. I'm half drunk and didn't mean it. Come back and let's talk."

"In vino veritas. Go away, Lauren. Go home or back to the bar, but go away."

"Jackson. Please......." I stood, said good night to the people at my table and as I walked away, I heard "Jackson.......please......"

Thirty minutes later I was home.

The summer went quickly. Mark and I went to the casino a few times. We went to prowl and pick up women, not to gamble. We were successful, and got laid every time we went, so my summer was successful.

School started again in the fall and the first person I met was Tom. "Que pasa, Jackson? What's happening?" He asked jovially.

"Not much, Tom. How about you?"

"Pretty much the same shit, different day. Oh. There is one thing. Do you remember Lauren, the girl I was dating?"

"Yeah. You and she were pretty serious as I recall."

He chuckled. "Well I was anyway."

"Oh. Sorry about that."

"Why? You didn't have anything to do with it."

"What happened?"

"I'm not really sure. One day we were dating, and the next thing I knew, we weren't even talking."

"So who's she dating?"

"That's the funny part. Nobody as far as anyone can tell. Nick Thompson asked her out three times before she agreed to go out with him. Seems like she just wants to be talked into things.

There was a new music teacher in our school. She had been recruited from up north and was new to the south. I met her in the teacher's lounge the first day of school, which was a Monday. By Friday I had asked her for a date, which we had that Saturday. Two days later we were called into the principal's office and told we were violating regulations by dating. For some reason, two unmarried teachers working at the same school were not permitted to date, but if we worked at different schools in the same system, it would be okay.

We thought it was a stupid fucking rule, but tried to conform. That lasted three weeks before she and I had dinner together and an unexpected bout of sex afterward.

For the next couple of months we held our clandestine assignations and were perfectly happy; then we weren't.

Karen, that was her name, was visited by her college boyfriend. He came to visit, but decided to stay. That ended our relationship in pretty short order.

And then it was Thanksgiving and a weeklong break from school. Mark and I were having dinner one Friday evening at the private restaurant when Krystal and Lauren walked in. They approached our table and asked if they could join us. Mark jumped to his feet and moved to hold a chair for one of them before I had a chance to respond. Then a member of the wait staff grabbed the other chair. Our meals hadn't come yet, so we told our waiter to hold off until the girls ordered. The wait staff brought two additional place settings and menus.

Dinner turned out to be a pleasant evening. We shared a couple of bottles of wine. After dinner, Mark, who had spent most of dinner talking to Lauren, suggested we go to one of our local bars and dance. I was hesitant, but the girls thought it was a good idea... so we went. They went in their car and we went in mine.

Mark kept Lauren on the dance floor while Krystal and I danced a couple of times, but spent most of the time sitting at the table watching the dance floor.

Finally, Mark had use the restroom, so Lauren asked me to dance. I hesitated, but went.

It was a slow number and she pulled herself close to me. She felt good. Then she leaned her head back, looked at me and spoke. "We've never had a real date, have we?"

"No."

"And that's my fault, isn't it? Because I lied to you."

"That's right."

"Can we start over?"

I just looked at her and asked, "why?" Just as the music stopped. We stood looking at each other.

"Do you remember the only other time we danced?"

"Yes."

"That was the night you asked me out."

"Yes it was."

"I felt something that night. Something I'd never felt before. It was like a connection and I wanted more."

"Yet, the following week, I saw you with other guys. One of them the night before we were scheduled to go out."

"That's when I lied."

"Yes, it was."

"I can't explain it. I wanted to go out with you, but I lied. I think I was afraid."

"Of what?"

"I don't know."

We were still standing on the dance floor looking at each other while the rest of the room was looking at us. Then the music started again and we started dancing. And talking.

"Then you were very condescending that night at the Country Club."

"I was drunk. You can't hold that against me." She stopped dancing and looked at me. "I've lied before and I've acted like a snob before, but never felt badly about it until now. It's you. There's something about you that makes me feel like.....like....like I don't know what I feel like any more. One evening with you and things are different."

"Different how? Better? Worse?"

"I don't know. I feel guilty and sad, but I know it will get better because you'll make it better."

I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing. We finished the dance in silence and returned to our table. Mark and Krystal were sitting there talking. "Mark. I think it's time to go," I said.

He looked at Krystal. "Are you ready to go?" He had danced with Lauren most of the time we had been there. I figured he remembered what he said when I told him she lied; something about fucking her then sending her to him so he could fuck her. That wasn't quite it, but it was close enough, but in the short period of time Lauren and I were on the dance floor, Krystal seemed to have gotten his attention.