Rediscovering Rebecca

We arrived at a tentative shared understanding that we could be amorous but always standing, never horizontal, preferably in the broad daylight where we could go only so far without risking jail. So afternoon walks on a deserted strand of beach along Ocean View, where Norfolk abuts the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, or a secluded pathway near the Jamestown Settlement near Williamsburg would involve some fairly assertive mutual groping, albeit fully clothed and with one eye open for those approaching us. Once, as we ambled back to my beachfront house along Ocean View Avenue from a standing make-out session during a late afternoon stroll on the shoreline, the bulging erection tenting my swim trunks would have been evident to anyone approaching within 20 feet. Becky laughed hysterically about it all the way home. It was only after we got back inside that I spotted the conspicuous wet spot in the gusset of her bathing suit bottoms. I never mentioned it and I have kicked myself many times for not peeling the garment off her right then and making mad love to her. Stupidly, I settled for one more kiss and allowed her to drive off, back to Ghent.

▼▼▼

"So tell me about you," Becky said as she nibbled on a lemon poppyseed muffin, still her favorite.

"Not much to tell," I said, tracing my finger around the lip of my paper cup. "I had met Denise when I was in Washington in 2013 taking depositions in an antitrust lawsuit against a huge global shipping company. She was a paralegal in the D.C. office of a large national firm that served as our co-counsel. After we wrapped up for that day, the legal team all went out to dinner at this ritzy bistro on DuPont Circle and then to a bar nearby. Things progressed pretty fast from there."

Becky nodded. She looked down at the table.

"I ignored my own rule about not getting wrapped up to that extent in something new. She was nine years younger, was renting a house in Fredericksburg and commuted to D.C. and back every day."

"In 2015, we decided she'd move in here with me and give that a try. I arranged for her to go to work for another firm in Norfolk because there were rules at my firm against hiring people you're involved with."

I suspect the regret in my voice over the time I wasted with Denise was discernible to Becky. I pressed on.

"Things were fine up to that point. That's when the zip, the novelty plateaued. The physical part was OK, but we no longer approached it with the vigor and anticipation we had earlier. As that got stale, it was more and more evident that we had very little in common. She liked going out on the town, but didn't enjoy being around my friends, didn't care for hiking, had no interest in going to ballgames. She didn't like Norfolk. She liked the big city. So when the pandemic hit and suddenly we were quarantining, working from home and around each other twenty-four/seven, well...," I said. "At no point during the process did we ever become friends, so there wasn't a foundation."

I wasn't about to say it, but my relationship with Denise was the inverse of what my relationship with Becky had been. But I don't think I had to say it. Becky is a very perceptive woman.

"Was it nasty? The breakup?" Becky said, looking intently at me.

"Nah. It was remarkably passionless, very matter of fact. Almost businesslike. We were both a little disappointed, but I don't think either of us were ever sad about it. More like we were relieved. Neither of us wanted it to linger. She moved back to Fredericksburg. I get a text from her every now and then telling me she found something of mine in the stuff she packed up. I just tell her to keep it or toss it," I said.

"And now?" she said.

I shrugged. "I pretty much live a monastic existence. Haven't had any desire to get... out there. Seems like too much work. The pandemic taught me how to be a homebody, I guess."

"And that 'monastic existence' is why you wound up in the Snooty Fox this afternoon?" she said, an impish grin creasing her face.

I filled her in on what Dr. Sujit had told me about the need to engage my reproductive equipment from time to time to keep my prostate active and healthy. She shook her head and reprised the Elaine Benes line from "Seinfeld" (season five, episode 21): "I don't know how you guys walk around with those things."

I shifted the topic, asking her about her grandkids, a prospect that brightened her. She showed me dozens of photos of them on her iPhone, giving me a rundown on each (three girls and a boy). Both of her daughters were still in the region and they still came over one Saturday every month, just as I remembered.

I showed her photos of my one grandchild, Cooper, the son of my son, Temple. I also showed her photos of the wedding the previous May of my daughter, Sarah and her husband, Mike.

"Hoping that Sarah and Mike will get busy and give me a granddaughter," I said. "Or another grandson. Either is good. I'd be grateful for either."

Our cups were now empty, our pastries long since eaten. A lull set in on the conversation.

"I still think about that night, you know. I still wonder how that changed the trajectory of both our lives. How things might have been different had I taken the freeway," I said.

Becky nodded silently, a wistful, almost pensive look passing over her. Her hand clasped and squeezed mine.

▼▼▼

Nothing's as boring as a CLE conference.

That stands for "continuing legal education," and it is required on regular intervals for lawyers to keep their bar admission in good standing. This one was being held Friday through Saturday in a Hilton Hotel on the far western suburbs of Richmond, a neighborhood known by the unlikely name of Short Pump. It has a large mall, lots of shops and, conveniently for us, a drive-in movie theater several miles to the west in neighboring Goochland County.

Becky had been in her job as an executive-level risk consultant to a major health care services chain on nursing and rehabilitative care management issues for about a year, and most of that time on an introductory-probationary status. Leaving active nursing at Norfolk's largest hospital was not an easy decision for her, but the administrative, executive-level position not only meant nearly doubling her pay, it also -- eventually -- gave her guaranteed weekends off. But during the probationary period, she was subject to all sorts of disruptive assignments, including attendance and sometimes presentations at seminars, traveling the East Coast to meet with top hospital administrators and writing reports. Loads and loads of reports. It was like being an associate at a major national law firm. But after she passed the nine-month probationary period with flying colors, Becky's schedule and pace settled down into a Monday-through-Friday routine with rare exceptions.

My CLE seminar happened to fall on the first totally free weekend she'd had after probation, precluding a more celebratory getaway. So I offered: "Hey, come with me to this CLE conference I have in Richmond. It ain't a night on Broadway, but there is a drive-in movie nearby and we've both talked about how much we enjoyed going to the drive-in as kids and how we would love to do it again sometime."

She nodded thoughtfully as she mulled it over.

"You know, I will. I know you'll be buried in those classes all day, but all I really want to do is sleep, sit by a pool, read a book and just vege," she said.

I picked her up at 9 o'clock Friday morning, giving us time to get lunch in downtown Richmond, check in at the hotel and for me to be in my seat for the first CLE class by 1 o'clock. Still at least preserving the pretense of not crossing the threshold into total physical intimacy, I booked a two-bedroom suite.

Becky did exactly as she said she would. On Friday afternoon, she lounged by the pool devouring "Wish You Well," a David Baldacci suspense novel that had languished on her must-read pile for a year. Friday night, as I slogged through Sequence Two of the four-part seminar, she uncorked the bottle of pinot grigio we had brought with us, ordered a room-service dinner and drowsily watched a pay-per-view movie. She was sound asleep and the flick was still playing when I returned to the room at 9:30. I turned the TV off, pulled the covers over her, turned off the bedside lamp and retired to my room to study the material I was given in the afternoon and evening classes.

On Saturday morning, I was already in class downstairs before Becky woke and went for a brisk walk around the massive mall half a mile from the hotel. Her pedometer said she covered four miles in 36 minutes, a torrid pace for a walk. That afternoon, as I finished the fourth and final sequence of the seminar that included an exam at its conclusion, she alternated between dips in the pool and wrapping up the Baldacci book.

I returned to the room around 4, and she was in the shower. I tapped on the bathroom door, cracked it open and said, "I'm home. Just so you don't come bounding out of there buck naked."

"Oh, you wish...," she said. And I did.

After she dressed and I changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, we decided to head to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant a friend highly recommended before heading to the Goochland Drive-In. There were two screens, and we were so interested in the experience that we hadn't even bothered to check out what was playing before deciding to go. Our choices were pretty much polar opposites. On Screen 1, the feature was "Rio," an animated children's film. On Screen 2 was a movie whose title seemed too close for comfort: "Friends with Benefits" starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake. We looked at each other apprehensively.

"I'm not sitting through a cartoon," Becky said. So Screen 2 it was.

The movie wasn't porn, but there was plenty of non-explicit adult situations between the protagonists, each fresh off of breakups, who -- as the title implies -- arranged to become outlets for their mutual carnal needs. But, as the classic rom-com formula dictates, what started out as a strictly transactional arrangement wound up being much deeper.

The benefit of having a large SUV is that rather than park facing the screen, I can back into the slot with the rear of the vehicle facing the screen, let down the back seats, open the rear gate and recline on pillows to watch the movie. That's what we did.

One steamy scene early on got Becky's full attention. "Oh, now that's hot," she commented.

"You're not getting all hot-and-bothered on me, are you?" I said in a teasing voice.

"So what if I am?" she said, a mischievous grin on her face. "You telling me you aren't?"

"So what if I am?" I replied as I pulled her to me and our lips met.

She draped her right leg over my legs, her loose-fitting, midcalf-length dress riding up to her hips as she did. My hand ranged along her flank, from her chest to her narrow waist to the graceful flair of her bottom and back. After making the circuit several times, Becky grabbed my hand and placed it over her covered breast, and when I kneaded it, she moaned and pushed her pubic mound into my hipbone.

My hardness was becoming crimped in the unyielding denim of my jeans, so I took my free hand and adjusted Foghorn into a less painful alignment. Aware of what I was doing, Becky went even farther, stroking my erection, now pointing at my belly button, over the tight denim that covered it.

I sensed the urgency that had built quickly within her. She climbed astraddle me and was grinding her mound against my covered member. I aided her by grasping the hem of her dress with my free hand and pulling it up until her white panties were in full view. That heightened her hunger.

The damp crotch of her panties was positioned directly over my imprisoned erection, and she settled into a rhythm, pressing her covered slit into it purposefully.

"Ohhhhh yes," she said, her eyes becoming unfocused as her tempo built. "That's it. So... good."

Aware that there was no bra beneath her loose cotton sheath, I dropped the two shoulder straps over her arms and freed her breasts. Backlit against the illuminated screen about 70 yards in front of us, I could see the tight, pink buds of her nipples swaying from her firm, pear-shaped breasts. I took each in one hand and twirled them before taking one into my mouth.

At that point, Becky's movements became ragged and irregular. She moaned loudly and her movements momentarily froze, her torso clenched powerfully.

She held herself against my chest and I felt her hot breath against my ear and neck as her climax washed over her in waves, making her hips sporadically shudder. Finally, her body relaxed against mine and she kissed my neck, nibbled my ear lobe and giggled.

"Wow. I guess I was worked up," she said languidly, smiling down at me, her face mere inches from mine, framed by her dark brown hair as it spilled around her. I had no words, so I kissed her.

"That was beautiful, Becky," I said. "You are beautiful."

She kissed me again.

"I hate not to get our money's worth, but I don't think we need to hang around here 'til the credits roll. What do you say we take this back to more private quarters and turn in?" she said, leering at me. "And yes, I am worked up."

No argument from me.

I missed the turn onto the entry ramp for eastbound Interstate 64. Rather than turn around, I kept going. Having attended three years of law school at the University of Richmond, I knew the roads hereabouts. Because U.S. 250 generally parallels the Interstate and becomes Broad Street in Short Pump once it enters Henrico County, I knew we could reach the hotel about as fast using this two-lane route.

We had gone about two miles on the highway and topped a hill when I saw lights in the ravine off the right side of the road. A white school bus was overturned and resting against a tree halfway down the right of way embankment.

"Dear God," Becky shrieked. "Pull over. Dial pound 7-7 and 9-1-1."

I did as she said. She leapt out and sprinted to the overturned bus, instinctively running toward human suffering to alleviate it in keeping with her many years as a nurse. I parked the car and turned on its emergency flashers on the highway shoulder at the crest of the hill we had topped when we saw the wreck. Then I hit #77, also as Becky had directed, unsure of who would answer. It was the Virginia State Police and I provided the coordinates of the accident. I also said: "Send ambulances! Lots of them!"

I ran down to the overturned bus where Becky had climbed inside through the rear emergency door and was helping people out of it. She saw me from inside the wrecked vehicle. Her face was ashen.

"Rick, do you have a flashlight in your car?" she asked.

"I do," I said. It was in a bag of emergency supplies I kept under the passenger side seat.

"Take it out and stand at the top of that rise flagging down traffic until the police get here," she said. "With people coming over it and no time to stop, more people are going to get hurt."

For five minutes, I was waving a flashlight at approaching cars to stop them. By the time the first blue lights appeared over the horizon, there were 10 to 12 cars pulled over with their flashers on, many motorists offering assistance.

Becky had taken charge preliminarily, at least from a medical attention standpoint. She had begun triage, identifying and separating out the children who suffered only cuts and bruises and asked them to sit on the grass away from the blacktop but still illuminated by the headlights of my SUV. She asked the volunteers to help remove those with broken bones and more serious but not life-threatening injuries and carry them to safety in another area. That left the unconscious and more gravely injured still inside the bus where Becky was doing all she could with just her two hands.

On the other side of the highway, a disoriented man stumbled about, cursing about his Honda, its hood now accordioned against a tree. His nose was bloodied from the impact of the air bag that likely saved his life but he seemed fine otherwise. Whether he was drunk or not was a matter for the cops to sort out.

"Rick!" I could hear Becky shout from within the unsteady, upside-down bus.

"Yes, Becky, what is it?"

"In that bag of yours, do you have any rope?"

"I don't think so."

"Do you have anything that I can tie? Maybe jumper cables?" she yelled.

I had those and I sprinted to the SUV, found the cables and ran them back to Becky. When she reached her hand out the emergency door to take them for use as torniquets, I could see her hand dripping with blood and a look of fear in her face.

The first trooper on the scene put his car crossways in the middle of the highway, his blue strobes flashing, to form a traffic blockade. Another cruiser approaching from the east on U.S. 250 would do the same seconds later.

Both troopers ran to the bus looking for people to carry to safety, only to see that most of that work had already been organized by Becky and carried out by good Samaritans under her guidance. Inside, they found Becky tending to two critically injured boys. The driver -- lifeless and dangling upside-down, secured to his driver's seat by his seatbelt -- was still behind the steering wheel, or where the steering wheel should have been.

Now flashing lights converged fast from both directions. The wail of fire engines mingled with the electronic yelping of ambulances and police cruisers in a hellish symphony. Soon, the scene was lighted and people with badges were swarming. One officer was talking to the injured occupants, members of a Richmond private school's track team, who were stunned but mostly uninjured sitting near my Tahoe. The trooper was asking them what they recalled about the accident. Another was administering a field sobriety test to the Honda driver. Later, the man was handcuffed and seated in the back of a State Police cruiser.

In the second group of boys Becky had arrayed some distance away, emergency medical technicians examined and provided emergency aid for fractured limbs, deep cuts needing sutures and other visible serious injuries, carefully loading them onto gurneys and wheeling them to ambulances idling nearby and ready for the trip to emergency rooms already placed on standby.

EMTs equipped for the work joined Becky inside the bus. One leaned out the open emergency door and shouted at techs on the ground, "Get me two backboards and stabilizing gear fast!" Blood was sprayed on his white shirt.

It took nearly two hours to get the injured accounted for and either dispatched to hospitals or treated at the scene and released to parents who were called there.

As the last of the ambulances was departing, Becky sat on the ground beside my SUV. She was covered in blood, softly weeping and shivering. I draped a blanket I kept in my vehicle -- part of the emergency kit -- around her shoulders, helped her up and held her to me.

Lieutenant Ordoñez, the state trooper in charge of the accident response and investigative teams, came over to us and asked Becky how she was doing and whether she needed medical help.

"No, I'll be OK. I'm a nurse, so...," she stammered. "But when it's kids...," she said as she began weeping again and hid her blood-streaked face against my chest.

"Ma'am, let me tell you, I can't begin to say how grateful I am that you were here tonight. There's two boys we just sent to the hospital in critical condition that the medical people say would be dead right now if it wasn't for you," Lieutenant Ordoñez said. "You were their guardian angel tonight, ma'am. Please remember that and accept our thanks."

It was nearly midnight by the time we returned to the Hilton. The lobby was empty but for the desk clerk who was aghast to see Becky enter covered with blood. With one arm around her, I raised my other toward the clerk to calm him as he started to rush over toward us. "It's OK."