It's a Place of Beauty - Theresa

The flight into Bangor got me in around 1PM and as I came over the old Brewer bridge to get on Rt. 9 for a three hour ride to the Lake I realized it had been almost 14 years since I last made this trip. When Kelsey was little we used to stop at Campbell's Bakery just off from the old bridge on Center Street and pick up a bag of molasses donuts and half a dozen whoopee pie pastries. I can't get either one in the low country and I had a craving but the bakery was no longer there. I ended up asking some fellow at a music store just down the street and he directed me to their new location up on State Street.

The sugar stop over, I pointed myself east on the 'airline' as the highway is called. It used to be a winding, hilly 2 lane road years ago but it has since been leveled and straightened and has become a rather boring ride. But on a sunny Maine afternoon in late August I didn't mind.

When I pulled into the cottage and parked, I could see Darrell out on the lake in his canoe. He had on green flannel with a brown fedora. Standing on the beach gravel in front of the cottage, I was reminded of the déjà vu having stood there before on a brisk October morning several years earlier with an angry and confused Kelsey sleeping in the car. I was hopeless then but reborn now.

Darrell paddled toward shore and seeing me he waved and I responded in kind. When he stepped onto the gravel, we hugged each other and settled onto the porch and a couple of rockers. This was a new addition, one we had talked about years ago before my treachery. A lot of things were new or different. I could see Sally's influence in the décor and several of her glass art works were in the windows.

"That was Sally's first success." He said pointing to a glass menagerie of loons and ducks set in a reedy display.

"At least what she thinks was her first success. I liked all her work."

He looked wistfully.

"She was beautiful, Darrell." That's all I could say without choking up at Darrell's pensive melancholy.

"Yes" was his simple reply.

We sat there quietly for a while before rising and entering the cottage. It was built in what we would call a Craftsman style in the south with a lot of natural wood and open spaces. The woodstove was expansive and covered in ornate polished nickel. There was a copper tea kettle sitting on top of it that I remembered from the very first time I had come here. The memories began to flood my unprepared senses.

"Darrell, would you care to take me out to eat this evening? I haven't had anything since right after my flight. Oh! Wait, you'll never guess what I picked up in Brewer!"

I ran back out to the car and brought in the donuts and whoopee pies. He looked at them and burst out into a boisterous laugh.

"So Campbell's was irresistible, eh?" He smiled broadly.

"Of course!!"

"Let's save them for breakfast in the morning." He replied. "You want to go out to Early's or into Calais? Early expanded his diner into a nice full service café a few years ago after he married Sue and she went and hired a damned good cook from St. John; best eating for a 100 miles, I swear; even moose steaks if you ask nicely and keep quiet about it."

Early's was fine with me and after washing up and changing into fresh clothes, that's where we headed. Everything looked new and different from when I last saw it. The General Store had been remodeled and expanded and now had a restaurant addition on one side instead of the old diner counter inside the store.

Before we could get seated, we ran into another couple of women who were leaving and one of them came right up to Early giving him a hug. She was probably just a few years younger than us and as she was telling him how nice it was to see him again, she kept casting a furtive glance in my direction as if I was some wayward stray hussy moving onto her turf. Women can be like that and a lot of men never notice but the way she was touching his arm and her body language broadcast her intentions.

"Early, I'm going to be out your way later this week and I've got a few extra quarts of blueberries I put up earlier that I can't possibly use. If you don't mind I'll swing by one evening and drop them off?" She asked while casting a look my way as if to make her declarations insurmountable.

"Carol, I'm going to be pretty tied up all week. Why don't you drop them off with Early here and I can picked them up on my way back in." He replied.

'That's my Darrell', I thought but the little damn cunt didn't give up that easily.

"That's OK, I can wait until you're not so busy. Besides I love getting out to the lake when the evenings have cooled off."

She gave him another hug and trotted off with her dining companion without ever being introduced other than as the nefarious 'Carol'. I retracted my talons and smiled as the waitress led us to our table.

"Lady friend, Darrell?" I asked with slight amusement.

"More like a pestilence." He replied with a straight face until it ruptured into a grin. "Carol started coming around a couple months after Sally passed away. I would have put a halt to it but she makes the best shepherd's pie you've ever tasted and chocolate cake? Jesus H. Christ! I'd almost give my left nut for another piece."

"Well, I'm guessing she's looking for the pair and more." I thought I said under my breath.

Darrell just laughed and I ended up joining him. During the dinner and after we talked about the kids, how Samantha was getting along now and about his Dad too. Donnie Carson passed away 10 years ago but he didn't have a funeral. He just wanted his ashes tossed on the lake. I always liked him a lot but I'm guessing he hated my guts for what I did to his son, my husband. I joined him in that assessment and have hated myself for the same reasons.

We capped the night off with hot chocolate for me and a bowl of weed for Darrell. He offered the same to me but I hadn't smoke pot for 35 years and I've never had the urge to smoke it again. We just listened to the night sounds on the lake and waited for the moon to rise. When I was too tired to stay up any longer I gave him a quick hug and tossed his hair with my fingers as I said good night.

I lay awake a good while that first night thinking about the man sitting on the porch rocker with the brown fedora on his head. I could see the deep rooted changes in him, the changed persona that had evolved over the course of this different era of his life. Knowing he sat out there like this alone so often instilled a sense of sadness in me and I wondered if he could see the same in me. I've constructed an elaborate façade over the years and only the closest of friends can see through it; they number two. Eventually I drifted off to sleep wondering how I was going to take the next step, if there was one to take.

I didn't have to take that step. Over the next few days Darrell and I developed a comfortableness that didn't need words or explanations. We could talk openly about Sally and Samantha's pain in dealing with her loss. I could joke about Carol's desires and designs for Darrell. I even ended up smoking pot with him while out in the canoe on the lake. He ended up paddling back to shore as I lay sprawled out in the front of it laughing my ass off.

On Saturday night we had dinner again at Early's with him and his wife Sue. When we returned to the cottage and while getting high on the porch he told me.

"Theresa, I don't want you sleeping up in the loft. I've been lying there night after night, hell, for months and I can hardly stand not hearing her, you, breathing, moving and knowing there is another human being with me. I'm not talking about sex. I just need to hold somebody, someone who knows me. Are you OK with that?" He asked me while looking into my stoned eyes.

I nodded my approval and just reached out, touching his shoulder and closing the distance between us with the rockers.

That first night together wasn't sexual. We didn't fuck although I have to be honest with myself and admit I thought about it several times but I was afraid of it. Instead we drifted off to sleep with me being held in Darrell's arms. The next morning he was up before me and already had breakfast going before I got cleaned up and brushed. I looked at him intimately and I saw a different man. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a 59 year old woman who had lived two lives and was ready for a 3rd.

"Thank you." He said to me. Nothing else needed to be said.

The next few days Darrell immersed himself in his writing. When he first moved back here he struggled to build up enough of a circulation and publishing outlet to live rather comfortably. Now he was a successful published author and syndicated columnist with speaking engagements and even teaching an occasional class at UM Machias or over in UM Orono as a guest lecturer. I had never seen this side of him and when I sensed he needed some space I'd go for a hike or go into town for a while.

Eventually, I needed to make my return flight and a couple nights before I had to go I climbed into bed with him and when the covers were warm, I slipped out of my pajamas and lay with him naked. I was scared, not just because it was Darrell or because it had been many years since I was naked with a man. I was scared because of my body. I was 59, menopausal and I didn't have the natural breasts that Darrell knew those many years ago. No man other than my doctor had ever touched my reconstruction.

I could feel Darrell's hardness, his erection. He was never a braggart about his endowment, instead kind of shy about it but he is rather large as men go.

"I'm scared of this, Darrell. It's been so long for me. Please be gentle."

He just brushed the hair out of my face, kissed my lips and told me to relax. He then went down under the covers and when he pressed his lips to my sex I shuddered from the surprised sensation of something so familiar. He explored, tasted, nibbled and caressed everything until I couldn't hold back any longer. I franticly grabbed the back of his head and burst into an intense long denied orgasm. I was never a quiet woman in these moments and this experience was no exception.

When he was finished, he rolled over and I enjoyed my turn with him. Pulling the covers back and being positioned between his legs I observed the specimen before me. It was fully erect, thick and if I remembered right from our youth about 8 inches long. Darrell is uncircumcised and I remember loving the feeling of his cock and skin in my hand.

I played with him for a few brief moments before lowering my mouth onto the fat head of his cock. At this point, there was no pretense, no more fear. Instead I devoted myself to his pleasure and gave him as good a blowjob as I could muster. I didn't want him to cum. I wanted him inside me first so I reached for the tube of KY I had on the side table and stroked an ample coating of jelly up and down his turgid erection.

Raising myself up his body and after rubbing his cock up and down my waiting pussy, I lowered myself onto him slowly having to stop a couple of times to accommodate his size. Once he was in, I fucked him, deliciously and insatiably until he rolled me over onto my back, squeezed another dollop of jelly and smeared it into my pussy. Darrell then pressed the full length of his cock inside me and fucked it. His muscular body rose up and with his buttocks clenching with every thrust, he took me completely bringing me to my first vaginal orgasm in many years.

Shortly after, he emptied himself in me with his own intense orgasm.

I know there are people who will talk about fucking each other 3 and 4 times a night. We were like that; 30 years ago. That night we just lay there in our own post-coital bliss fully content with the complete experience the one time and drifted off to sleep.

It happened one more time before I had to leave and fly back to Charleston. We didn't have a teary and long goodbye with storybook promises to each other. There was instead a mixture of comfort and a sense of discomfort or anxiety perhaps, a lingering angst from 15 years earlier. Nonetheless, we promised to call each other often.

My flight got into Charleston early that evening and instead of driving straight home, I stopped off at a café for a bite to eat. I took a corner table and while nursing a glass of wine, tried to make sense of what I was doing and where did I think I wanted to go. Where did Darrell want to go? Kelsey was right. We are both two very different people from who we were many years ago.

I tried to get my life back to what I used to think was normal but I just couldn't stay focused. I kept thinking of Darrell and how I set off this gigantic evolutionary explosion in our lives so long ago. It was almost like I imagined going insane to be like without the drugs and intervention. The ladies at work noticed it too.

"Listen, Theresa, you've been dragging your little hiney around like somebody pushed 20 lbs. of cotton up your ass. What are you going to do about whatever it is that's bothering you so much?" Jackie asked me while peering over her half lens.

I hated those damn glasses even though I laughed at her stern mother hen appearance every time she did it.

"Jackie, hold on, you don't know what I'm going through." I replied.

"Oh yes I do. You went out and got laid, got laid big time, girl and now you are just moping around wondering how you're going to get it again. You see, it all comes down to the loving. Do you think you'd be love struck like this if you came home all chaste and crap? Of course not; so, you either need to get back on that plane and get back to that loving or you need to find something around here to take care of that for you."

Jackie is a 45 year old divorced black woman with four adult children from her first marriage. Her second lasted almost 18 months and her third never happened because her fiancé ran off with a little white stripper from Moncks Corner. She knows how to sell real estate but she doesn't know shit about anything else. I love her to death in any event.

"Jackie, have you ever fucked either of your ex-husbands since your divorces?" I looked at her with a crooked smile.

"Well, no, of course not." She replied.

I knew the answer to that question before I asked. She hates those two men with the fury of a church lady in a whore house, as she used to put it.

"Well, then, you DON'T know what I'm going through." I said with emphasis.

She just looked at me and her dark chubby face broke out into a huge grin with her strong white teeth as she pointed her thumb at me while looking at one of our dining friends and broke out into a laugh.

"She's fucking her ex-husband ... Hahahahahaahaha ... hahahaha ." She laughed uncontrollably.

The three of us at the table joined her with tears of laughter eventually staining our faces. Somehow we pulled ourselves together and I told them the story. They already knew about the divorce but didn't need to know all the salacious details that led to it. By the time we finished lunch, they knew as much as I about my dilemma and were just as clueless as to how to proceed.

Several weeks had passed and Darrell and I were talking every few days. Kelsey called every Sunday evening and the holidays were approaching. One Friday as I was closing up the office he struck again.

"Hello gorgeous! Buy you a drink at the Governors Stand?" Charlie had his contagious grin on full power as he draped his arm around my shoulder.

"Charlie, you already know Kitty is hungry and needs something to keep her satisfied through the night." I replied.

He loved the innuendo and I loved feeding it to him even though I knew that was all there would ever be, Grimaldi's being the close exception to reason.

"Oh, I know all about Kitty." He said with a smile. "She can wait a bit this evening. "

Just then, one of my girlfriends joined us, the one who had enjoyed Charlie's particular talents previously.

"Darla's coming along too so come on, you need to wind down." Charlie urged.

"Yes, Theresa, a drink after work won't hurt. Hell, look at you. It's been a long week. Let's go." Darla added.

Against my better judgment I joined the two of them at the 'Stand. Now, the 'Stand is not where the kids hang out. It's a place where a lot of power players like to unwind and where deals are made and even small fortunes have been known to have been carved out of profitable conversations. It's a $7 beer and $14 drink kind of place; no PBR to be found. Darla couldn't afford to dine and drink in here but Charlie could and did regularly. He had his own table.

The lawyer and business crowd was in heavy attendance that evening along with a healthy proportion of female admin assistants, junior female staffers and other women, married and not, who played the game with Mr. Power. It was a game I knew intimately and I could watch from the sidelines and see all the moves. If you knew the rules of the game, which were really no rules at all, it could be entertaining to watch as long as you didn't think about the losers and their consequences.

Darla was a side attraction in the game. She didn't have a husband or a reputation to lose and she thought she was in it to find one. For Charlie and most of the movers there, Darla was pussy and not wife material. Most of the men in there already had wives at home. I even knew some of their names. Nonetheless it was an interesting ballet to watch at times.

A couple of Charlie's rat pack had joined us at the table which was actually a curved booth. I ended up sandwiched between Charlie and one of his friends and a bit too close at that. Darla was in the same position across from me. As I took a sip from my glass I felt the friend's hand on my thigh, way up on my thigh. I finished the glass and turned to him.

"Pardon me, I need to get up." I said in a forceful voice. He still had not removed his hand so I made my intentions clear.

"Get your fucking hand off my thigh and get the fuck out of my way."

He looked a bit shocked but did as I requested and I looked at Charlie.

"Charlie, you need to keep better company. I'll see you later."

Charlie was all apologetic as was the offending little bastard but I had enough. Even when I was a whore in my job, there was a measure of decorum. Hell, I'm 59 years old for Christ sake.

After walking back toward my office, I piled into my Honda and pointed myself toward home. I've never really enjoyed the Governors Stand much in the few times I've gone in. As I've said, it's a meat market for power brokers and the ambitious women willing to patronize them; an alien world as far as I'm concerned and that fucking Charlie knows it too. I can say that now but I'll still like Charlie for all his faults. I just know his game and that goes a long ways.

When I pulled into my drive, the lights were on in the house and an unfamiliar car parked under the big live oak. I saw him through the kitchen window. Darrell was making a sandwich and throwing scraps to Kitty.

"Darrell, what in the world are you doing here? When did you get in?" I asked him when he turned toward me. He broke out into a grin.

"Can I make you a sandwich too?" He asked.

"Well, yeah, I guess so. So, when did you get in? You could have called me." I replied.

He made me a smaller version of the Dagwood club he was having, poured two glasses of wine and told me he flew in earlier this afternoon.

"So who is watching after Samantha? She still has school right?"

"Early and Sue are letting her stay with them and Sue is running her to school until she breaks Tuesday afternoon for Thanksgiving. She's going to fly down here. She should probably go to school on Wednesday but I let her skip. Kelsey and the family are coming too but they booked rooms someplace downtown, nice place off King Street."