Our Private Eden: Family

After "Hair" on our final night, we were sitting at the Plaza's lobby bar playing tourist, sipping cranberry juice out of tall smoked glasses to look as though we were drinking something exotic and trying to spot celebrities. That's when a voice caught my consciousness from somewhere off to my left.

"Vaught? Corey Vaught?"

I squinted into the dim light of the lobby and while the voice was familiar, it took a couple of beats to match it with the face framed by an unruly mop of wiry hair.

"Wild Bill Cooksey," I said, recognizing my former Alpha Tau Omega fraternity brother from KU. We were in the same pledge class, though he left the university a year earlier than I - to the best of my knowledge nowhere near earning a degree.

"What brings you to the city, Mule Dick?" Wild Bill blurted. I cringed. The upscale bar of the Plaza Hotel was the preferred hangout of brahmins from Fortune 500 companies and New York's political elite, not the place to be tossing around barnyard college-boy appellations under any conditions. That was especially true in the presence of my new wife.

"Bill, meet my bride, Holly. We're here on sort of a short-turnaround honeymoon. Holly, this is my old Kansas frat brother, Bill Cooksey."

Holly shook Bill's hand politely, somewhat put off by the crazy glint in his eye that, odds are, did not come from a substance acquired lawfully. Bill was deeply into the rock scene throughout college and, often, the drugs that were pervasive in it. It wasn't at all uncommon for Bill to launch a weekend road trip from Lawrence, Kansas, to places like Denver or Dallas or Chicago to see the Rolling Stones or the Byrds or Jefferson Airplane or the Beatles or Bob Dylan. He got to know members of major bands' crews and even scored backstage passes once for some ATO members when The Supremes played at KU's legendary basketball arena, the Phog Allen Fieldhouse. Now, he made what was reportedly a very lucrative living working out concert tours and publicity for rock bands.

"Mule, you married way over your head. Congratulations," Cooksey said. "I'm here to meet a couple of prospective clients who are interested in doing a concert tour sometime in the future and wanted to see what's involved," he added.

"Anybody I've heard of?" I asked.

"Probably, but not as musicians," he said. "There they are walking in now. John, Danny, come meet my old frat brother, 'Mule Dick' Vaught."

I cringed again, turning on my barstool to assess Holly's level of embarrassment over the behavior of my long lost and pharmacologically impaired college acquaintance. But what I saw on her face registered none of that. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open.

Just off to my left, a voice said, "Hi. I'm John."

My head whipped around, and I was staring directly into the chubby, unshaven face of John Belushi. Coming up behind him was the lanky, boyish-looking Dan Aykroyd. I wasn't a regular viewer of the live comedy sketch show each weekend on NBC, but you didn't have to be a "Saturday Night Live" devotee to recognize two of its most famous stars.

"Um... yes, yes you are," I stammered. "Pleased to meet you, John and you, Dan. Love your work on Saturday nights. I'm Corey Vaught, and allow me to introduce you to my wife, Holly."

Belushi, wearing sunglasses at night in the darkened bar, wasn't waiting on a handshake. He hugged Holly. Aykroyd, reserved, polite and even a little shy, shook her hand and then mine.

"So what misfortune connected you two with my old reprobate Jayhawk pal Wild Bill," I asked the two of them.

"John and I have been working up a bit about a couple of blues singers since our Second City days in Chicago, a couple of down-on-their-luck guys from Joliet. We want to develop it for SNL and then hopefully jump off with some concerts and, if it goes well, maybe a movie after that," Aykroyd said.

"You mean like the 'King Bee' thing?" said Holly, a regular weekly "Saturday Night Live" viewer. "I was laughing, but the music was good - not what you expect from guys in bee costumes. But old blues is my thing. My record collection is full of it."

"Yeah, exactly. We're like... old-school blues artists from or 1950s and 60s," Belushi said. "Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues, the Blues Brothers. I'm Jake, Danny's Elwood."

"The guy who books musical guests at SNL gave us Cooksey's number and said he could tell us whether this Blues Brothers idea is something we might take on the road someday or whether, you know, we're full of shit," Aykroyd said.

A strange dynamic was developing. Cooksey and Belushi were loud and clearly high. Aykroyd, Holly and I were sober and aware that things might easily go off the rails, veering into some very weird and improbable directions. Cooksey was just sort of staring into space. Belushi had one arm around the waist of his new best friend - and my bride - Holly, though it was impossible to tell how dilated John's eyes were or where they were staring through those black Ray-Bans.

"Hey, you guys should come with us," Belushi said. "We're clubbing after this dinner meeting. I've got reservations at Studio 54, and I'm friends with the owner. No problem to add two more." Belushi said, primarily addressing Holly who was flattered by the celebrity attention but clearly ready to get out of here.

"Well, this is our honeymoon, we've got a 7:30 flight in the morning out of LaGuardia, and I think we'll be heading upstairs," I said, "but maybe next trip to New York or when the Blues Brothers tour comes to St. Louis or Kansas City?"

Belushi wasn't easily dissuaded, particularly not a high Belushi, and he appealed to us to reconsider - he'd arrange for our own limo, all our drinks or other intoxicants of our choice. I restated our regrets, left a $20 bill on the bar to settle our tab, took Holly's hand and rose from my barstool to escort her out. About that time, two men in bespoke business suits approached Cooksey and his celebrity dinner guests and they shook hands. These looked like Madison Avenue types and had no interest in making Holly's or my acquaintance, which was our way to make a graceful exit. One introduced himself to Wild Bill as a vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank. Publicity and money guys were there to discuss a possible Blues Brothers deal with Cooksey, Belushi and Aykroyd, with only Aykroyd clearheaded enough to fully comprehend what the money men were telling them.

"Fucking shame," Belushi brayed loudly enough to be heard throughout the room. "I cudda told people I partied all night with the Mule Dick."

So the funny men, the money man, the ad man and the rock tour guru were ushered urgently by the maître d' out of the bar to a private booth off the Plaza's main dining room. Holly and I made our way to the elevators.

"You realize that nobody in Van Buren will ever believe this story, right?" Holly said as the elevator doors shut, sealing us inside alone.

"It's our little secret," I said as I kissed her lewdly and grabbed two handfuls of her delicious ass.

●●●

Holly's motor had been idling since she watched the naked young bodies cavort about the stage in "Hair." Now, her engine was revving, and she was ready to put it in gear. She had already unzipped my fly and teased my cock almost to full hardness before the elevator doors opened on the 18th floor. Mercifully we walked down an empty hallway and unlocked and entered our room before clothing began hitting the floor.

"Let's do it by the window. Give Central Park a show," Holly said.

A sofa sat directly beneath the window, its back topping out at essentially the level of the windowsill. So I spread towels on the sofa back to catch our love lava and we sat on it, my back to the window and Holly on my lap, her legs splayed so I could tease her twat with my fingers while I tongued her swollen nipples. Then she sat on the towel atop the sofa back as I knelt on the seat cushions, pressed my face and fingers into her pussy and feasted on it until she climaxed. Then I stood on the sofa seats as she slowly licked my twitching boner as if it were a melting Sno Cone. At that point, we traded places again and I sat on the sofa back facing her and she straddled my hips and rode my dick to her second orgasm.

"You're still loaded?" Holly asked me with my hardness still twitching deep within her.

"I am, but that could change if you even hiccup right now," I said. She giggled.

"Tell you what. Let's give Manhattan a real curtain call, something to remember, worth a standing O," Holly said.

"Sure. Whaddya got in mind?"

It was all I could do not to cum as she decoupled from me. She stood on the sofa seat facing the window and had me do the same. She rested her knees against the sofa back and placed her hands on the brass window frame to brace herself, then thrust her wet womanhood back toward me, beckoning my straining erection, while her tits grazed the window glass, on display through to anyone on in the park of living on Fifth Avenue with a pair of binoculars.

"Now fill Mrs. Vaught's pussy with that mule dick," she growled.

I gingerly balanced myself on the soft and uneven cushions, nuzzled my cock's livid head against her opening and slid it past her swollen and sopping labia deep inside of her. I grasped her waist and began thrusting, first at a measured pace that quickly took on an animal urgency as I raced toward my climax.

As my balls began to contract and summon the massive load of semen that would soon gush into Holly, I dropped my right hand to her clit to add to her excitement. While I was at it, I borrowed some of her copious wetness to twirl around her yearning nipples. That tripped all her breakers.

Her yoni contracted around my hardness as her body went rigid and she moaned her release into the glass and the Fifth Avenue skyline beyond it. My hips plunged forward hard, releasing my seed. My loins strained and jerked against the perfect orbs of her ass until the last of my sperm had filled her, then I rocked her back, away from the window and into my arms. Together, we tumbled harmlessly onto the sofa cushions below, panting and giggling in sheer satisfaction from our Big Apple exhibitionist moment.

"You also realize... that nobody back in Van Buren... is going to believe this story... either," she said.

●●●

"So what have you decided, Corey," C. Warden Norton, the regional vice president of Wallington Construction, the nation's largest earth-moving contractor and road construction company, asked me from across his desk.

It was 11 a.m. on October 14th, a Friday, six days after my wedding to Holly, and time to let my employers know which of the four options I would pursue in my continued employment: one that would send me to Mississippi, one that would send me to Oklahoma, one that would send me to Ohio or the one that would land me right here in Kansas City at the company's Great Plains regional headquarters.

Holly and I had discussed it for weeks, ever since I explained the options to her. The discovery that we would have a child together helped focus the issue. On merits alone, I had felt that it was time to move into the Kansas City office. Now, married to Holly and with a baby on the way, a move to a distant state was even less appealing. I made it clear to her from the start that the determining factor in this decision is what's in the best interest of us as a couple.

"Right here, Mr. Norton. Kansas City. Much as I've loved working in the field with the men, it's time I challenged myself more and maybe acted a little more like a grown-up," I said. "Plus, what I would do here is what I do best and most want to do right now."

Warden and dad had known each other for ages, so he knew of my connections to northwestern Missouri. Now, I filled him in on my brand new marriage to Holly, her roots in the Missouri Ozarks and how we agreed that this was a good place to bring a baby into the world. He smiled at the news. I wasn't just a proven hand joining the executive corps here. I had ancestral ties to a company founder, local roots and a growing family. What employer doesn't love that?

We shook hands and he showed me around the building - a nondescript box-like four-story structure in Pleasant Valley, Missouri, a suburb on the northeast side of the metroplex strategically near Interstates 35 and 70 - roughly a day's drive or less to almost anywhere between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Its property sprawled across almost a square mile where massive pieces of roadbuilding gear were stored, maintained and repaired. It included three cavernous maintenance garages, each of which would easily cover a football field. He took me to what would be my office and introduced me to my new secretary, Roxy, a widowed, chain-smoking, plain-spoken Kansan; a highly efficient hexagenerian who made it clear to me right away that she intended to die at her desk someday. Retirement, in her view, "is for pussies."

My first day in the office would be on Halloween, a Monday just over two weeks away.

Holly and mom were out with a real estate agent scouting the suburbs for what would become our first real home, and I got home in the early afternoon well ahead of them. Dad was on the porch cleaning his 20-gauge shotgun when I arrived.

"You expecting trouble or are you about to go bird shooting?" I said.

"I was waiting on you to see what you wanted to do. Earl Mason invited me to go run the dogs and shoot some quail at his farm this afternoon. You're invited, too. Your old boots and hunting gear are upstairs and that Remington 16-gauge pump that Grand Pop gave you is cleaned and ready if you're interested," dad said, referring to his father, my paternal grandfather.

"Give me 10 minutes. I'll meet you at the truck," I said.

Dad and I drove southeast on I-70 to the Mason farm, about a 45-minute away. Earl grew feed corn for autumn harvest. On some of his land, he double-cropped winter wheat and followed it up after the spring harvest by planting soybeans that are cut in the fall on the same ground. The woods and hedgerows abutting his fields of soybean and corn stubble were full of fat bobwhite quail.

It had been years since I had gone bird hunting, and even longer since I had done so with my father. He used to take me regularly, and I struggled as a boy to keep up with him and the bird dogs. Today, with all the years gone by, it was dad and Earl who labored at times to keep up with me. But this wasn't a race. I kept my pace even with dad, not caring whether I saw a quail or fired a shot. Strolling these quiet fields with my father in the warm autumn sun was as good as it gets.

"Bird!" dad yelled as a covey of quail burst skyward about 40 feet in front of us. A volley of shots rang out - two from my pump-action shotgun and all three rounds from dad's automatic - and five quail fell to the ground.

"Damn good shootin,' you two!" Earl Mason said. He wasn't hunting. He just enjoyed the camaraderie while he focused on running his dogs, his real passion as an elite hunting dog owner and breeder. "Five shots, five birds. Just one shy of your limit in one shoot."

We gathered the limp, rotund birds from among the shorn cornstalks and dad put them into his old, leather game pouch. He offered them to Earl for inviting us to hunt his land, but Earl declined. "Hell, I got more quail and pheasant in my freezer than we can eat in a year."

By the time we got back, Holly and mom were in the kitchen planning dinner. Holly filled us in on the house search.

"We saw a couple I thought would work, but the neighborhoods looked cold and sterile, and all the houses were just alike - cheap, wood-frame and cookie cutter. We asked the agent to take us to some older, more established neighborhoods tomorrow," she said.

Dad had persuaded mom to put the pork chops she was thawing back in the fridge. "How about I dress and clean these birds and we can have fresh quail tonight?"

So it was - a bird for each of us with one left over. I suggested Holly take it. "You're eating for two, honey." She did.

The chill driven by a northwesterly wind was too much for us after dinner and drove us from our rocking chairs on the porch after about 15 minutes and inside into the den where dad weeks earlier had built a pyre of seasoned oak and apple wood in the fireplace. Within minutes, it was blazing and crackling, and we lounged lazily before it - mom and dad on the sofa, Holly and I on a pallet of quilts and pillows atop the Persian rug, just as Nell and I would share as children.

There was little conversation. There was no need, and everyone was tired.

Holly and I had rented a car at the airport in St. Louis and driven straight to my parents' house upon our return from New York on the previous morning. We barely slept before my meeting this morning at the office. Mom and Holly had bounced around all day with a hopelessly chatty realtor with an aversion to silence, and dad and I had walked two or three miles hunting on Earl Mason's farm. A pleasant languor set in on this Friday evening in the radiant heat of the fireplace as the burning hardwoods softly crackled and popped. So it caught everyone off-guard when Holly yelped.

"Whoa, what's that?" she said. A few seconds later: "There! It happened again!"

She was holding the now conspicuous baby bump on her lower torso. I sat upright.

"Are you in pain? Do I need to call an ambulance?" I blurted; my eyes wide.

"No, honey, it doesn't hurt. It's like something shoved me," she said.

I raised her sweatshirt to see her bare lower belly.

"Corey? What are you doing?" she said, embarrassed, trying to pull her shirt back down.

Mom chuckled.

"It's OK, Holly. Your baby's showing off. He's kicking inside you. Or she. All very normal and nothing to be ashamed of, dear," mom said in a soothing voice. "It means you've got a healthy child on the way. And he or she is serving notice that you better get used to it."

Holly and I looked at each other in amazement. This time, she pulled her sweatshirt up, to roughly the bottom of her ribcage. I leaned in for a closer look, and seconds later, I saw a faint movement beneath her skin, and she put my hand over it.

Holly's face was more radiant than the fire.

"Good night you two," dad said as he rose from the sofa, offered mom his hand and helped her to her feet. "It's past our bedtime."

The downstairs bedroom door closed behind mom and dad. Holly and I lay there marveling at the first outwardly observable activity of our child. We lay there and held each other until the fire reduced to embers.

●●●

It took Van Buren by surprise, the news of Holly Raymer's wedding. It didn't really register until just before we returned to Raymer Lodge from our honeymoon. The phone was ringing several times an hour with her old high school chums and townsfolk who had watched her grow up who called to wish her the best. Some of them wanted to put together a belated wedding shower for her but, cognizant of our tight timeline for moving to Kansas City, Holly recommended maybe a get-together the following summer.

Ninety-five percent of the feedback she got ranged from congratulatory to celebratory. The exceptions could be traced to one malignant personality.

Holly had notified Darnell back in late August that her waitressing days at Conway's were coming to an end, and he took the news grudgingly, even though she offered him two weeks' notice. He got downright cold when he learned she was engaged, but he began sowing aspersions about her once word got out that she was married.

Aware of Darnell's secret longing to someday insinuate himself into Holly's bed if not her fortune, I knew his motivation. So I drove down to Conway's without telling Holly one afternoon before the evening crowd settled in and paid Darnell a visit.