Homeward Bound

She swam several strokes underwater. Her hair fluttered about her head like a jellyfish's tentacles. She twisted and stood. "Yuck! Cold slimy muck!" She splashed back out and ran dripping to him. He could see her bra clearly through her blouse. "Come on, we gotta get moving. Those moms'll all have cell phones. One's sure to call 911."

She pulled her slacks over her wet legs, the fabric turning dark and translucent where it touched her skin. "Come on, oh and get the trash and throw it in that barrel. Don't forget my shoes."

She ran down the path to the parking lot. He caught up to her at the car, panting, unused to running. "You drive," she said handing him the keys. He started the car as she huddled down on the floor. "Just be calm and slow. That's the ticket." As they turned onto the residential street a police car with flashing blue lights flew up from the opposite direction. It passed them without pause and turned into the park.

When he turned onto the main drag that would take them back to the supermarket he expected her to sit up. He felt her hand on his thigh. "Keep both hands on the wheel and concentrate on what you're doing," she warned, "Don't be afraid to bounce me about if you need to slam the brakes."

He felt her fingers on his fly, felt his zipper opened, felt her fingers slip through the fly of his jockey shorts. He couldn't remember how presentable the pair was, his wife had stopped caring when the elastic gave out and the cotton got discolored. He felt her lips on his cock. He didn't like this, he'd never let a woman go down on him, he'd always imagined it to be wet and slimy and unpleasant. When his wife'd tried, early in their relationship he'd put a stop to it quick.

He glanced down at her. She was leaning across the passenger seat, the stick shift under her right armpit. Her face was inches from his cock. "Stop," he croaked.

"If there's a light or a stop sign, don't tell ME about it,"she said, "You're in the driver's seat."

Then he felt her tongue run up from his balls to his tip and he gasped. He no longer wanted her to stop. Her fingers gripped him, she pulled him up into an easier angle and took him into her mouth.

His leg working the clutch shifted her head, moving the gear shift pushed against her chest or arm, he felt her teeth on his cock, then her tongue. She lifted her head. "Never asked if you knew how to drive a stick," she grinned, "Still don't know if you know how to drive this baby down here." Then she dropped back down on him. It took all his concentration to turn the car into the supermarket parking lot. He shifted her again as he braked and clutched and turned the car off.

He put his hand on her head, feeling her wet hair, feeling her head bob and turn. It felt so incredible. "My pants, my clothes," he gasped thinking of stains, looking around for a Kleenex.

"Not to worry," she slurred. He pushed his groin up against her face, pushing her head down with his hands. He felt the car growing hot in the parking lot sun. He felt his balls tightening. He felt his feet between the pedals pushing against the car. The pleasure spasmed in his cock. He felt her tongue pushing up against him as she swallowed, her cheeks drawn inward.

He collapsed back into the bucket seat, feeling sweaty and rumpled. His cock felt slick and unpleasant. She squirmed and sat up. She pulled the passenger's side visor down and took a tissue from the little dispenser. She wiped her lips and then stretched over and kissed him again. It did not feel that welcome.

Outside there was a clatter as a worker pushed a long line of carts toward the store. He glanced in without much curiosity.

"I have to be getting back," he said, then looking at his watch he realized that the whole thing had only taken 30 minutes from start to finish.

"So do I".

He looked at her. She was still sopping wet. Her hair was plastered to the side of her head, making it look thin and somehow starved looking. Through her blouse he could see her shoulders and her bra. Her slacks were wet from her legs and dirty from kneeling on the floor.

"You can't go back like that!"

"Don't worry. I've clothes in the trunk, I'm not completely crazy," then she began to laugh. "Your lap. It's like completely wet. From my hair. It looks like you've had an accident!"

When he got back to his office, after walking twice across the back of the building parking lot to dry his pants, he sat for a long time staring at the wall, unable to respond to his email or return his calls. Everything about his surroundings seemed unreal and unimportant. The picture of his wife, the picture of his older girl in her white prom dress standing by her boyfriend in front of a limo, the picture of his second girl on her horse, all felt so confining, like ropes lashing him to his chair. It was the memory of the girl running into the pond, splashed greenish water rising about her, that was real, that consumed him with the promise of excitement and freedom.

He stood up and fiddled with the thermostat to try and get some air moving. Guys in the cubes outside his office were going to be complaining about being frozen shortly. There was no happy balance.

Still unable to get going, he stood and went out to the men's room. This was a mistake because he saw her sitting at the front desk, composedly typing away at her computer. He felt a yawning gap of desire that nearly had him weeping. On his way back she was chatting cheerfully with a UPS delivery guy who had a two wheeler stacked with boxes leaned against her desk. She looked happy and carefree. She didn't even glance at him.

Somehow he'd pulled himself together and'd worked the rest of the afternoon.

"Come on," the girl says rising from the table, the sea breeze in her hair. She collects their paper plates, both showing the dregs of pancakes and bacon, and throws them in a barrel. "Let's walk down the beach."

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His phone echos through the house. He no longer dreams so he wakes instantly and moves unhurriedly down the hall to the kitchen.

"Hello you," he says.

He looks at the refrigerator. On it is an old yellowing clipping. It reads:

"Deborah Andrews

"Saturday, Sept 14, 1985

"Greenwood -- The funeral of Deborah Andrews, late of Oakland, California was held at Edwards Memorial Funeral Home in Greenwood, Friday, Sept 13, 1985. Followed by cremation and burial in the School St Cemetery as was her wish.

"The organist was Virginia Wagner.

"Ms. Andrews, 55, is survived by a daughter, Susan Montani, of Boulder, Colorado and a son, David Andrews, of Atlanta, Georgia. Neither were able to attend.

"Her mother, Mrs. Stephan Andrews, lived for fifty years at 25 Oak St before being stricken in her home, Friday, September 6, 1985."

She sits naked on the sand. The man is stretched on his back beside her, an arm thrown over his face against the sun. He is asleep, dead to the world. The wind blows in her face, causing her hair to weave about her head. Back in the dunes away from the beach, it's quite hot.

"You just made love again," he says.

"Yes," she admits, then "Why didn't you marry me back when you had the chance?"

"I asked, if you remember," he says, "And you said no."

"You never pressed."

"You said no pretty firmly. You said you didn't want to spend your days in a hick town."

"You could've argued, gotten upset. You just said 'Oh'."

"You said no. I didn't want to make it any worse than it was. Would it have made any difference?"

"I don't know," she says, "I was always so restless. And your family was so crushing. Remember when we went to the cookout at your Uncle Doug's? My God, there were so many of your relations there! And you were so proud. You led me around and around, holding my arm. You introduced me to aunts and uncles and cousins and you had five brothers and sisters and a mother and father as well. And three grandparents. There was a great great Aunt if I remember right with skin like white parchment. Afterwards whenever I'd walk uptown, I'd be sure to be greeted by some complete stranger coming out of like Jones' Market who'd press me to come over with you for dinner. They'd turn out to be some damned second cousin twice removed on your mother's side."

"We never went though. We always roamed by ourselves."

"I still felt like I was being crushed flat."

"We didn't have to stay in Greenwood. I'd've gone with you. I'd've gone anywhere with you."

"Yeah right. You never left that town once your whole life."

"That is not true. We drove all over. We went over to Cedar Point, up to Cleveland. We saw the Indians twice."

"And after I left?"

"Well, not so much."

"You just mowed lawns and did yard work and when your Dad retired you took over the business. You never went more that 5 miles from Greenwood center. You never dated another woman."

He looks silently at the refrigerator door.

"I remember I asked you what you did for amusement, you remember, at like our 20th class reunion. You said you'd joined the local chorus, had been singing with them for 10 years."

"It was fun," he says, "I liked to sing. So did you. You sat across from me in the altos all through high school."

"I'd often notice you were staring at me and not singing."

"You had such a fine clear voice."

"That's what you were interested in, not."

"It was, I can still hear it."

She laughs suddenly, "That group still in existence? We could join up."

He sighs sadly, "You're not around enough, you'd miss most of the rehearsals and probably the performance, and when you're not here, I just can't get up the energy to leave the house."

The man next to her says something indistinct. "Bye," she says and closes the cell. She gets on her hands and knees, straddles him and looks down into his face. She moves his arm so she can see his eyes. "Hi," she says, "You'll like get sunburned so I've got to be like your canopy." She pushes at her hair so it falls on either side of him. She bends and kisses him hungrily.

He looks up at her. He is in her shade. Through her hair he can see the blinding white sand and the sharp brilliant green of salt grasses and beach roses and scrubby bayberry bushes. They have wandered back into the dunes, past the signs warning them to keep out so as not to disturb the piping plovers. If he looks down his chest, between her thighs he can see through a dip in the dune the blue of the ocean where it meets the horizon. Her breasts as they dangle before him are soft creamy white, their nipples dark.

He feels her fingers on his cock, "Sand," she murmurs, "That won't be so nice for you."

She drops down on him quickly. The light is suddenly blinding, the colors around him become supersaturated and pale. He feels her lips about him, her tongue licking him. He looks down and sees her lick her fingers, then she reaches for her bag, takes a condom and pulls it down over him. He is again in her shade. She shifts on him, he feels her fingers placing him, then he is in. She is so tight. She shifts her legs so they rest on his, thigh to thigh, knee fitting just over his knee, he feels her toes sharp against his ankle. Sand rubs abrasively between them as she squirms on him, her eyes, below his, are tight shut. She lays her forehead on his chin and twists her bottom about. He runs a sandy hand over her thighs and up, he feels her muscles working. He wishes he could reach around and touch and caress where they join, but his fingers are all sand. He lifts his hand to her lips and pushes his fingers into her mouth, he feels her tongue hot against them. "Yum, salt" she murmurs. He sends his now hopefully sandless fingers back down, hovering so as not to touch her skin. He feels his hard cock through its plastic, he feels where she is stretched about him, he rubs her clit. She gasps and drops her knees to either side of him and begins to bob up and down hard. When she cries out, it is like the sound of a bird, some bird of prey, quickly lost in the sun, the sand, the grass and the wind.

She collapses on him, gasping. He can't wait. He rolls her, oblivious of sand, and crouches over her. He begins pumping. She lies still, spread beneath him, unmoving. His feet clinch and his climax is sharp and again it hurts. As he lies panting on her, he trys to remember when he's come so many times in a 12 hour period. Probably never.

"Shall we walk back?" she asks, "I'm getting hungry again."

As they stroll back, the spent waves foaming about her ankles, occasionally as high as her knees, he cannot imagine any connection between her youth and beauty and himself.

The next day, the day after the park experience, he'd made sure to go to the supermarket with his friend from accounting. He hadn't seen her at all and'd eaten his lunch sitting with his fellows around the conference room table unable to listen to their chat, unable to think of anything but her. Going to the restroom after lunch, he'd seen her coming up the hall with several other young women, in high spirits, laughing at something or other. They'd all said hello and she'd smiled at him.

The day after that he'd seen Mark Raposa, the manager of the in-house sales team, and a handsome, aggressive thirty-something to boot, standing at the front desk, grinning and talking to her. Going to his car at lunch he'd seen the pair of them climbing into Mark's Cadillac Escallade.

He'd felt a sharp pain in his chest such as he'd not felt since right after college when he'd first met his wife, well the woman who would become his wife, and'd learned she was living with some guy, some guy who'd seemed in every way his superior. Like then, he felt that if he only had a gun, he'd start shooting.

As he watched the red SUV roll away past the building, its reflection gliding along the office windows, he'd felt a deep pang of nostalgia for that moment long ago. When he'd first seen his wife, at a party thrown by a co-worker, she'd been drinking a margarita and his eye'd met hers and the future'd seemed wide open.

He turned and went back into the building and sat hungry in his office.

An hour later, when he felt'd the need to get a breath of fresh air, he saw she was back at her desk.

At 4:30, as he passed the front desk on one of his several trips to the restroom, he saw the pair, Mark and Deb, pushing through the glass doors into the hall. Deb saw him staring and her eyes met his and she shrugged. He went to a window facing the parking lot and watched as they walked to the guy's SUV. They weren't holding hands, but they were close to each other and walking in step. Mark was leaning to her and talking animatedly.

He was tense at dinner, snapping when his wife'd suggested that he might want to mow some of the lawn before it got dark. Then in the fifth inning of the Red Sox/Indians game, a boring rout, the camera'd panned the crowd. There she sat, a beer in one hand, a baseball cap on her full hair, Mark sitting right next to her, his arm around her shoulder. If she was paying attention to the game, he wasn't. The camera lingered, as if glad to have found such an attractive couple. In fact, it returned to them in the middle of the sixth. Neither was watching the game, they were talking cheerfully. One of the announcer'd had said, 'They've got something better to talk about than this dog of a game'. He'd felt torn up inside.

That next Monday, driving to work, he'd told himself he'd been a reckless idiot to let himself get as wound up by her as he had. That she was young and wild and could have no real interest in him and that any interest he had in her could be nothing more than masturbation, pleasurable, but solitary. That he had a wife and a family with whom he was going through the motions. That his life would run its course to an essentially satisfactory end. That all his hopes and expectations were now centered on his daughters, on their test scores, on their choices of colleges, on their successes and not his own. That he was a fool to feel lonely, trapped, and lost.

At 11 that morning he got an email from her, all subject, no body, "Lettuce at 12 o'clock?"

He'd stared at it. He imagined ignoring it, simply deleting it. It would remain in the company's email archives, possibly glanced at by auditors or lawyers who might wonder if it was code for some kind of insider trading, until they checked out the people involved and realized how outside the loop they were. He would go about his business, perform his family obligations, would remain outwardly blameless.

He'd emailed back "Sure." He'd felt a surge of excitement, his cock'd stirred, he'd felt liberated and scared.

When his friend'd stuck his head in the door and said he was thinking of going to D'Angelos for a sub, he'd replied, "No, I think I'll just go to the caf. here in the building. I've got work to do."

"You drive," she said as they came out of the supermarket. She wore a striped sundress, thin red and green stripes on light white summer material. It had thin straps over her shoulders. The skin of her shoulders and arms shown in the sun. She wore sandals, just slightly higher in the heel than the toe. From the way her breasts moved he wondered if she was wearing a bra.

He looked stupidly around the parking lot, unable to remember where his car was.

"It's over there." she pointed at one of the little neglected kiosks for shopping carts. "I saw you park as I drove up." She took his arm and all but pushed him, like one of the workers rounding up scattered carts.

"The park?" he'd asked as he started the car, glancing over at her as she'd leaned back.

"Those mom's'd show no mercy and I think someplace more comfortable is in order. I'll give directions."

Her hand reached over, rested on his thigh, then slid to his zipper.

"Listen," he said, almost croaking. He was going to tell her to stop, but then felt her fingers about his cock and couldn't get the words out. With his peripheral vision he could see the motion of her white hand. She got him out straight, the darkened head of his cock just touching the steering wheel, it slid against it as he turned the car onto the exit drive, heading toward the light on the highway.

"Right at the light," she said and she tipped his cock hard over so it lay against his right thigh. When he had the car on the road, she straightened him up, her fingers fiddling idly.

"Right again at this little street," she said tipping his cock so it pointed toward herself, she stretched over and kissed it and gave it a little lick, removing the pearl of fluid that had gathered on its tip.

"Where are we going?" he managed, barely able to recognize his voice.

"Oh, we'll know when we arrive," she said. After passing a slow children sign she bent him away from her, aiming him at his door. "Hey! Left turn here!"

He'd braked hard and turned onto a winding subdivision street.

"Pay attention!" she'd ordered, "Sheesh!"

When she'd next tipped his cock towards herself, he'd obediently turned the car onto another little street. His breathing came hard, he felt amazed that he could keep the car on the asphalt, only vaguely aware of the large houses and grassy yards they were passing.

She tipped him to the left then to the right. He felt lost, aware solely of her fingers caressing him.

"Hey," he exclaimed, "We passed here a minute ago!" He only knew this because of a large dumpster planted beside the house. Men were on the house's roof, the noise of nail-guns was muted by the car's closed windows.

"Yup, I'm just having so much fun. But OK."

She pressed his cock hard against his belly. "Are you a slow learner or what! That means slow down! This means speed up!" and she pulled him forward till the angle hurt. She laughed when he lurched the car forward, tromping on the accelerator. She pressed his cock back again against his shirt and belt and he let the car slow to a crawl.