Heaven or Heathen for Vicki

Thinking she must be in the wrong subdivision, or just using this street as a short cut, I felt the homes were much larger and more expensive than Vicki's personality, clothing, or car would seem to fit. I slowed down, looking for an intersection so I could turn off the street. Instead, she turned into a driveway and continued down the drive easing up as an overhead door opened and her car pulled into the garage.

She sat in her car for a minute, the dome light on, probably writing a note or perhaps looking for her house key. I figured she knew someone was following her because I had stopped at the foot of her driveway and I wanted to reassure her I didn't have a criminal intent. I got out of my car and walked up her driveway.

Looking down, I was expecting one of the roof mounted lights to come on when I passed a certain spot where a motion detector would trigger them. I didn't want my vision blinded by sudden bright lights. Well past the middle of that wall of the house, a light finally came on, shining too far away from the house, leaving my feet in shadow. I looked up at the light wondering why the installer, or someone, didn't do a better job of directing the light where it would do some good.

I stopped in the middle of Vicki's driveway, waiting for her to get out of her car or look in her rearview mirror and see me. The list of things I was going to go over with her when she got out of the car was getting longer the more time she spent in her car. Finally, I walked into her garage and saw she was sitting with her hands on the steering wheel, leaning forward with her forehead between her hands. When I tapped on the window, her head jerked up and she looked at me.

"Haven?" The enclosure of the car muffled her voice, but the side window did not disguise the vacant look on her face. She wasn't afraid, she just looked like she didn't know where she was.

Although I tried, her door would not open from the outside because of the automatic lock. I raised my voice, "Open the door, Vicki."

As if she was waking from a dream, Vicki looked at the door handle beside her left elbow and then back up and me. The dazed look on her face told me she either wasn't listening, or did not understand. I repeated my request, "Open the door, Vicki."

She shook her head, as a person might do when they are trying to rid themselves of a bad thought or convince their brain to operate on a different level. Finally, she reached for the door handle. As soon as I heard the door latch open, I pulled the door open and took her arm to help her out of the car.

"Are you okay Baby?" I do not know where that came from. In my entire life, that I could recall, I had never used the word baby when speaking to a woman.

"Yeah, unh huh, I'm fine." She might have said the words, but I knew different. Something was wrong, but I wasn't going to challenge her at that moment. There was no life in her voice. At the pub and while we danced, she had been so lively and personable, I was surprised at the change in her. Even in the parking lot she was vibrating with life, this emotionless defeated look on her face was frightening.

For the next few minutes, it seemed like everything I said to Vicki, I had to repeat. Simple things like get your bag, lock the car, close the garage, give me your keys, which one opens the door, every one of them was like I was working with a robot with faulty programming or a computer with barely enough memory to perform one task at a time. When I saw the security system display showingDISABLED I added another item to the list of things to discuss with Vicki. Then, four or five steps into the house, she took one long slow look around and reacted as if a switch turned on inside her head, and she was back to the Vicki I knew from the pub. She had reached her safety zone and could be herself again.

"Haven, are you following me?" Vicki teased me as she walked into the kitchen to wash her hands. As she dried her hands, she looked up at me and winked, "Did you hear Alice tell me you were a nice guy?" She giggled at my open mouthed expression as she searched through the freezer and started pulling out foil wrapped packages, placing them on the counter beside the stove.

"I wasn't really following," I answered and then explained about the traffic flow and stop lights as I watched her moving around her kitchen. I finally asked her, "What are you doing?"

"Well," she responded and turned to grin at me. "Since I didn't agree to have dinner with you, I figured you're still hungry. I thought I'd fix us some supper. Do you like lasagna?"

"My, my," I exclaimed, "Not only is she pretty, she can cook."

"We'll see about that. Open all those packages. There's salad stuff in the refrigerator." Like a drill sergeant, or a woman who knows what a man can do in the kitchen, she issued her orders and left, talking over her shoulder. "I'll be right back."

It didn't take me very long to unwrap our dinner and find what I needed, a couple of dinner plates, salad plates, and utensils, plus the makings for a salad. I had the small table in the kitchen set and the salad made by the time Vicki came back into the kitchen. She had changed out of the dress she was wearing into denim shorts and a sleeveless blouse, and she was barefooted.

I wasn't sure what all the foods were that I had unwrapped, but Vicki put the different frozen blocks of food in baking dishes and shoved everything in the oven. "It's a convection oven, so this won't take long," she explained, and then turned around. "Do you want wine or iced tea? I'm going to have tea. My head is still swimming from Alice's coffee."

"Tea is fine with me. Can you tell me what that was in the garage?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Go sit down, I'll bring the tea."

When she placed a large glass of iced tea on the table in front of me and sat down, she asked me if I understood what she meant by the phrase,trade last. I shook my head and she chuckled, explaining it was an old expression used when a person asked for information without appearing to be begging for a compliment. Sally would tell Mary something nice someone had said about Mary. In exchange, Mary was supposed to reciprocate by telling Sally something nice she had heard someone say about Sally. The trade last meant Sally wanted to hear her compliment before she would disclose what was said about Mary.

If I had been following her explanation, I suspected she meant I had to talk, too. "Okay, so you will unload your problems and I have to do the same."

"That's about it," Vicki agreed and looked at me. She was smiling, but it was a difficult smile for her to maintain. "You're asking me for a trade last. I sort of think of my life in chapters. All you get for this trade last is Chapter One."

I held out my hand for a handshake, she took it and then I leaned back to listen. It surprised me when Vicki reached over to the nearby counter and picked up a small kitchen timer. She set it for ten minutes and explained it was her mother's way of dealing with difficult subjects. They could talk about something that disturbed either one of them, but after ten minutes, it was time to talk about something good or fun. Vicki said if she couldn't tell it in ten minutes, she was being maudlin, or dwelling on the bad details, and it were best to forget them. I had a sudden vision of this beautiful woman, as a child, sitting with her mother doing exactly as she described and wished I had been there to hear some of their discussions.

Vicki's mother had a May/December marriage, but she said it was really more like January/December. Her mother was barely eighteen and her father was almost fifty when they married. It was his third marriage, with neither of his previous marriages producing a child. Less than a year later, just barely nine months after the wedding, Vicki was born. Their marriage was bland, full of silence, and many small differences of opinion because of the large difference in their ages. Before she was sixteen and her mother was not yet thirty-five, Vicki's father had passed away. He had provided a good home for his family. Anticipating he would leave a young widow with a young child, he had regularly paid on several large insurance policies, which, if invested well, would support his wife and child without the need for them to work for a living.

Advised by the attorney who handled the estate not to do anything drastic for the first year, Alice and her mother did as instructed. Her mother really wanted to sell the house, leave the old memories behind, and start her life again, by being a modern woman. Near the end of that first year, they started looking for a home that was completely different from what they had and her mother started going on dates with men.

Using the money from the sale of their old home, plus some money from insurance proceeds they bought the house where Vicki lived now. It was a huge bargain but then again not in very good shape, hence the huge bargain. Nonetheless, at least it was structurally sound. However, deferred maintenance meant they needed to do a lot of work, particularly to the small apartment at the back of the garage where Vicki planned to live when she was old enough to be on her own. By the time the work was nearing completion, Vicki was in love with the general contractor and shortly after her eighteenth birthday, they married. It was another May/December marriage. Although Rob had never been married, he was looking forward to starting a family as soon as Vicki finished her college education. Rob was thirty-seven, a few months older than Vicki's mother was. From the beginning of their marriage, he was a tender and gentle lover. He made sure she took her birth control pill every morning and spoke about how their lives would change when she graduated college and could begin their family.

When she was just barely twenty-one, Vicki arrived home to an empty house after a full day of college. She answered the front doorbell to learn from a police officer that both her husband, Rob, and her mother were dead. As Vicki spoke, she frequently looked at the timer as she tried to rush through what she was telling me, despite the number of times her voice trembled or tears filled her eyes.

Vicki's fingers began to twist together, as she explained, "I was so frightened I didn't even understand everything the cop was telling me. I think he came inside the house with me, but I don't remember a lot about that afternoon."

I was still trying to understand why Vicki was talking so fast. "Slow down, Baby. Just talk to me like I'm your best friend."

"It was that old cheap motel on the other side of town. Not one of the good ones, it was a nasty place, on that street where they're always arresting hookers. Some maid went into a room she thought needed cleaning and a linen change. The policeman told me the maid found Mamma and Rob in bed together. They were naked."

I knew exactly the place Vicki was talking about, but I wasn't going to interrupt her. She was still trying to talk fast, just to get the words out. More than anything though, I was aware she did not know me very well, and may have been reluctant to say too much.

"The cop said...he said they had a Crime Scene Unit out there and...and it didn't look like anyone else had been in the room. Mamma and Rob were drinking some wine with poison in it."

I was trying to be careful here, I didn't want to add to her anguish. "Did the officer tell you about the wine that day, or was it later?"

"Right then, he said...I mean, the cop said, the poison was so bitter they had to know the wine had something in it and he wanted to know where I'd been all day and all kinds of questions, you know, where was I, what did I do all day." Vicki was showing some agitation, repeating herself, but I could tell she really just wanted to talk. I was expecting her to break down into tears at any moment.

Vicki was shaking her head, I was afraid she was going to slump down in her chair or curl up into a ball of anguish, but she kept talking. It was as if she was forcing herself to say the words, just to get rid of them, pull them out of herself, as if doing so could rid her of ever having to think about them again. "I don't remember if it was two or three days later, some policemen in suits came by and said the whole thing was joint suicide or murder/suicide and if I remembered anything that I could add to their investigation, I should call them." She shrugged her shoulders as if that was the end of the story and she didn't need to think about it any more.

As Vicki was finishing her story, I did not know what to say to this young woman, but I offered her my hand, which she held tightly as she said, "Mother was four months pregnant."

"Shit!" The comment burst from me and Vicki nodded. I started to stand and was pulling her up, intending to hold her for a moment, while she struggled with her emotions, but she shook her head and settled back into her chair.

"You know," Vicki paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and then continued, "I just wish they had said something. I think they could have had a very good life if they had realized I was already regretting my marriage."

Whoa, that really surprised me. Then Vicki's face looked mean and angry when she said, "Not only did their affair deprive me of my husband and my mother, I lost my brother." Those last four words were so vehement I knew that detail was the one that hurt her the most.

Before I could say anything, not even sure words were expected from me, Vicki was on her feet opening the oven door to check on our supper. When she sat down, she picked up the timer and told me she still had a few minutes, but it was my turn.

"Are you really that tough?" I asked. I couldn't believe she had told the story without a single tear falling or much demonstration of emotion, other than an occasional difficulty choosing the word she wanted to use or difficulty choosing whether to say "my mother" or "Mamma" and a similar difficulty saying "my husband," or "Rob." Most of those instances related to the death of her mother, although she seemed to have the most difficulty speaking about her mother's unborn child.

Vicki chuckled, but it wasn't a happy laugh, "Oh no, I'm not tough. I can cry, pretty easily sometimes. It took me a long time to realize I didn't cause the problem and even longer to accept that they did what they wanted to do without regard to anyone else. Yes, I can cry, but tears are not going to get me what I want." She held up her hand to forestall me asking another question and repeated herself, "Your turn, Chapter One, please."

It took me a moment to divest myself of the emotion I felt about the story Vicki had told. I finally swallowed hard and said, "I think I'll tell Chapter Two, because you already know part of it. Her name is Sheri. The man she walked into the bar with, is married, and for a lot of years he's been my best friend."

After that kind of a disclosure, I just sat silently for a moment, my head was kind of swirling trying to get away from the story she had told and into the details that I intended to share with her. I'd already decided I was going to be brutally honest with Vicki, but I had to be honest with myself to do that and it was going to be hard to do. Vicki wasn't going to give me any slack either. She hadn't given herself any and she expected the same level of honesty from me. She looked down at her hands in her lap, and spread the fingers of both hands flat on her thighs, as if she was trying to relax after holding them in fists for a long time.

I guess I was organizing my thoughts. However, I was also examining this young woman. When Vicki had walked into the bar, I was immediately attracted to her, but I thought she was a little younger than I was learning she really was. From a distance, she looked to be just barely legal drinking age, but up close, there were clues that she was probably in her late twenties. I probably smiled about the small sprinkling of freckles across her nose.

In the bar, I had thought her eyes were light brown, but in the light of the kitchen, I was sure they were hazel with small green flecks in them. Her mouth was wide with generous lips. I already knew her lips were full and soft, not the puffy ones so many models crave. I also recalled she was not wearing lipstick in the bar, and there was none on her lips now. I was having a hard time resisting the urge to kiss her again. In fact, I wanted to kiss her again, and again, and I wanted to do it for a long time.

Although the dress and blazer she wore into the bar hid some of her figure, the denim shorts and sleeveless shirt she was wearing showed her shoulders really were broad, but her bust was small, maybe a handful, but no more than that. She knew I was looking at her because her nipples started getting hard, pushing through the soft fabric of her bra.

When she had bent over to look into the oven, I had watched her cute ass and long slender legs. It's sort of a cliché to call a young woman's ass cute, but Vicki's really was cute. Her hips weren't broad, but her cheeks wiggled with each step she took. I imagined having my hands on her ass and dared not think about where her long legs were, when I was holding her.

Like many men, I'm a sucker for red nail polish. Part of that is probably imagining a woman's slender fingers tipped with red nails as she wraps her hand around his cock. With all the walk-in nail salons, it's easy for a woman to have nice looking nails, even if they are artificial. If you know what to look for, like being naturally thin or artificially thick, or even the way a woman uses her hands when she picks up something, it's easy to tell if nails are natural or artificial. She picked up a fork by sliding her thumbnail and the nail of her forefinger across the table instead of using the pads of her fingers. Vicki's were medium length, natural and very dark red, the same color was on every one of her toenails, including one big toe that had a daisy painted on top of the polish. When I looked up from examining her long slender feet and her toenails, she was grinning at me. Caught in the act, I reached down and picked up her feet, putting them on my lap so I could give her feet a massage.

"You're clock's ticking," she reminded me after almost a full minute of me staring at her, or into space.

I laughed and told her I thought she was pretty tough, or at least tougher than she might think she was. I finally told her about the friendship between Tony and me, starting a little over a year before grade school and continuing through high school and college. In our senior year, my father's employer transferred him almost a thousand miles away. I lived with Tony and his family so I could play sports my last year in school. I was hoping for some kind of football or baseball scholarship. It turned out we were both offered scholarships and we even stayed in the same dorm all through college. Although I was also still involved with a girl at home, we occasionally double dated, traded dates, and were much closer than brothers were.

When Tony married Gayle, I was his best man and Gayle's sister, Sheri, was maid of honor. I don't know when the affair between Tony and Sheri started, but by the time the wedding was over, I was involved in the beginning of a serious relationship with Sheri. She stayed in town for a couple of weeks after the wedding, but finally went home because she just could not take any more time off work. Sheri came to town at least once a month and I went to see her about as often, which meant we could spend about every other weekend together. On each of my trips to see her, I took a message from Tony's wife that Sheri should try to get a transfer back to her hometown and save the two of us from all the travel time.