Incendiary Circumstances Ch. 01

Marie is a scrumptious, mature woman with whom I correspond. She is a delight and has even begun publishing deliciously wicked interracial stories of her own under the name MarieProvost. If you enjoy the older white woman younger black man genre you'll love her work.

This story takes a while to unfold. If you're searching for a quick beat off tale, you may want to look elsewhere.

Marie was fifty-two and wanted something that was logically out of her price range. A new car. A nice one, very nice. She didn't live in poverty or anything. She was a professional as was her husband. They'd raised two children, great kids, college educated at Mom and Dad's expense, successful in their own right now.

It was, she reasoned, her turn. She wasn't, and never had been, someone to recline on a lounge chair while others dropped grapes into her mouth. Marie was a doer, a worker, an achiever. When she wanted something she went out and earned it for herself, and that was how she found herself working on a summer project for the school district alongside a black nineteen-year-old college kid named Blaine.

She'd taught summer school years ago when her children were still at home and the family needed the income, but for the past dozen years she was used to summers off. July and August recharged her batteries and she was no longer interested in sharing those months with the students that occupied her time five-sixths of the year.

This year, the district had embarked on an effort to catalogue and enumerate all of the system's physical property from air conditioners and maintenance tools to textbooks and sports equipment. Records were kept, of course, but those got out of date quickly.

Property that no longer existed was still on the books, database descriptions didn't match physical inventory, items were mis-categorized, double counted, located elsewhere, weren't usable, were unwanted, or had a myriad of other identification problems that lead district leaders to make uninformed decisions.

The state issued a grant and Marie was one of the teachers kept on for the summer to complete the work. Dozens of college students were also engaged and each teacher was paired with one or more students to form teams. Marie was originally assigned three helpers, two of which never reported. The third was Blaine.

"You're Ms. Provost," Blaine said at the end of a two day orientation where roles and duties were explained and assignments handed out.

"Were you a student?" Marie asked, wracking her brain to come up with a name a decade or more dormant.

"Not in your class. In the school, though. I'm..."

"Don't tell me," Marie said quickly, assuming the role she'd played for thirty years. "...You're Blaine!"

The young black man beamed that Ms. Provost had remembered him. The truth was that he'd been very fond of the teacher everyone called Mrs. Brady behind her back because of a strong resemblance to Florence Henderson. She was so much smaller than Blaine remembered her. The discrepancy, of course, was due to an increase in him rather than a diminution of Marie.

He's that boy, Marie told herself, remembering something of a scandal a few years ago.

Early in high school, Blaine had impregnated a senior girl, beautiful blonde, captain of the cheerleaders, steady girlfriend of the football team's star wide receiver, homecoming queen, president of the student government, all-state chorus, class valedictorian, daughter of the town doctor, volunteer at the local hospital, early acceptee at Cornell. Everybody's Miss Everything when black freshmen running backs weren't knocking her up.

The scandal was kept tightly under seal. The only reason Marie had heard about it was because she was a best friend of the senior class guidance counselor. There was an abortion, counseling for both students, and a brief period of hostilities between the families before a truce was declared.

Not even the girl's boyfriend found out and not even Marie learned why the girl risked so much for someone so inappropriate. She assigned some nebulous, inexplicable cause like "incendiary circumstances" that burned so hot neither could avoid being consumed.

Marie and Blaine worked together every day except Sundays that summer, sometimes with other groups, sometimes more or less alone. At first, they had awkward conversations mostly because they were of different sexes, different races, and different generations.

But there was something else, a spark that neither knew how to ignite nor, on Marie's part, even wanted to. It wasn't that the fifty-something teacher didn't feel a strange attraction, something hot yet distant; it was simply that she'd moved beyond such times in her life.

Over the course of that first week, the maturing black man's and mature white wife's conversations began to thaw, became less formal, less stilted. By Friday, Marie had even convinced Blaine to stop referring to her as Ms. Provost.

"Any plans for the weekend Marie?" Blaine asked with perfect politeness.

"Not really, what about you?"

"Some of the guys at summer classes are having a party. I'll probably drive down there."

"See you Monday, Blaine."

"See you then."

The following week saw the teacher and the student continue to get more proficient at their new tasks and more comfortable in each other's company. They looked for common interests but found it difficult. Blaine was all about texting and Twitter and Facebook and iPhone games. He seemed to do everything on his phone.

Marie didn't know how to change her ringtone. Blaine showed her and they laughed about how she needed a teacher now. They kept silent as their hands, arms, and even their knees bumped in subtle, unintended caresses as they huddled close to the small device. Blaine took a deep breath.

"What's wrong?" Marie asked, "afraid you can't do it?"

"I can do it."

"Then why the big sigh?"

"It wasn't a sigh," Blaine said defensively.

"Then what was it?"

Blaine was caught off guard. The flow of the conversation left him with no place to go. He became silent, frozen.

"What was that big breath, big boy?" Marie asked again, continuing to needle her strapping young protégé.

"It's embarrassing."

"What?" asked Marie again, gentler, with genuine concern.

"You smell nice."

Now it was Marie's turn to be embarrassed. She felt her face flush involuntarily. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had said anything so sweet to her.

"You're blushing," Blaine said, sensing their relationship had shifted subtly.

The more Marie blushed the more embarrassed she became. The more embarrassed she was, the hotter her face burned.

"It's time for our break," she announced and walked away toward the ladies room.