So Respectable

By 1980 Ian Abercrombie had parlayed chance, talent, hard work into a perch from which he soared. He yoked himself to the school newspaper just long enough to synthesize the three major reporting manual styles. (Chicago. Times. AP.) Quickly frustrated with school editors whose "lazy white man" allegiances outweighed merit, he eventually bluffed his way into column inches on T-town's morning paper, The Territorial.

While locals who'd made their journo bones ably staffed the periodical, its masthead ran top-heavy with diminished hacks who'd migrated to the cheap and easy less demanding West. Dubious bona fides aside, experience in any Top Five market clouded publishers' judgment and carpeted many an undeserved path in rose petals.

Deficient as he knew his college clips were, Abercrombie's brashness exceeded his proof. Maybe those doing the vetting hazily recognized in him who they'd been yesterday. Or had believed themselves to have been yesterday. Regardless he made the initial sale.

Once the fresh stringer figured the paper's lay, Abercrombie connived off the usual newsprint stations of the cross. Collecting/distributing copy, tacking on inspired additions directly slurred from last calls, faking being regaled by that big story from '61, he left to narrowbacks or mousy chicks speeding towards social dysfunction. He used every chance possible to hit the bricks.

Perhaps owing to his decided outsider status, Abercrombie noticed how vast segments of the community suffered neglected reportage. If it weren't for sports, entertainment or crime, few would've known blacks, Indians and Mexicans resided in T-town. And forget pop culture.

Despite his large ego -- a necessity -- Abercrombie did not see himself as a savior. Just an opportunist. Far less hidebound than any Eastern newsroom, the Territorial staff looked upon his impetuousness amused. Their consensus was "who cared about marginal people?" And fast fading fads? Pffft! Nonetheless it was the West. Risk while evading recklessness had tamed the region. Those it didn't kill, thrived. Or were sent packing.

Abercrombie received one generous coil of rope.

Night of the reception for Professor Downs' bestseller buddy, Abercrombie hadn't gone as a reporter but as an invitee. However, should the guest of honor drop an epigram or two, preferably pithy and vermouth dry, dispense some brilliance, well, pad out and pen scribbling.

Downs himself had extended the invitation. Several of Abercrombie's fellow low-rung strivers attended along with those few less self-absorbed graduates doggedly pursuing MFAs.

Unlike Abercrombie, the venue, the crowd therein, discomforted them. He imagined they preferred confinement in student hovels seen as scribes' dens. Something about suffering for "craft." Right. There where dirty plates and laundry piled, these someday serious writers opened metaphoric veins. Anemic writing aptly demonstrated their thin understanding of the world.

At times, Abercrombie wished for an older adult's humility. But then he reasoned false modesty worse than arrogance.

English department professors and their spouses, or, a-hem, that semester's sweet young assistant, larded the guest list. Distinguished department supporters augmented them. Given the evening's magnitude, Abercrombie broke out blazer and slacks, a button-down shirt and a badly-knotted tie. Standing easily in freshly-polished Oxfords, he felt overdressed though extremely presentable.

Guests made do on shrimp, an open bar and futile attempts at clever conversation. The generous circulation of older women, which at his age, 21, relative, struck him oddly. Those piquing him weren't crones or haggard. Women throughout their 30s and 40s fluttered around Duff Scharlach's gallery. Working on some antsy schedule, these women frequently landed, nervously burbled, then flew. He assumed most were faculty wives. Their flightiness seized his eye.

Not regal but many encroaching upon that attribute, one whiffed former easy attraction yielding to future labored allure. Most he could imagine younger. His age. Still very callow, Abercrombie somehow intuited beyond their self-enforced postures, pert appearances, they struggled against a kind of diminishment. Something behind their piercing eyes betrayed an awareness of insidious irrelevance. Of a shift. From getting by on raw sexual magnetism towards honing wiles.

That night he saw and grasped but never fully comprehended until his own 30s. Later among his age-set females lingering and loss clarified themselves in his male outlook.

The man of the hour demeaned the process feting him. Abercrombie wondered how many of his temporary admirers heard honesty and courage in the author's contrariness, and whether the rest suspected drunkenness lubricated his erstwhile confessions.

'Lear or Mailer?' Abercrombie thought.

Downs gestured for him. He made introductions. Abercrombie recognized the stately female figure beside Downs. Across the last three years he'd seen her waiting on lines at the Valley National Bank campus branch. Usually she dressed down, as if during some heavy-duty masonry repairs she suddenly decided a deposit or withdrawal was urgent.

The department chairman introduced him to Clare Chetwynd. Abercrombie placed Mrs. Chetwynd in her late 50s, early 60s. Tonight despite wearing what passed as Western couture and understated jewelry that clearly indicated one robust financial background, Mrs. Chetwynd didn't have a society woman's handshake. The matron's firm grip increased her substance.

The blue-eyed ramrod gauging him retained shape around a bosom he doubted plunged much when unfettered. Her face hadn't broken much, while rinse thwarted gray throughout her auburn sweep. Abercrombie needn't dial back far to see a younger Mrs. Chetwynd as mantrap attractive -- without taking the last step where vanity stumbled into ridicule.

"Ian is the fellow I told you about, Clare," Downs said. Proud nearly parental inflection rode his voice. Abercrombie swallowed a grin.

She replied with an easy seductive purr. "Good. This country can't have too many competent talented men."

Her compliment impelled an already straightened Abercrombie to stand taller. Peripherally he noticed Downs further square his own shoulders. Mrs. Chetwynd pointed her comments at the younger man.

"Bobby, oh, Professor Downs, gave us a sheaf of your writing. Your newspaper work is engrossing. It almost embarrasses me to realize how ignorant I am about our city. And I've lived here nearly 40 years!"

"A lot of my stuff comes from the margins," Abercrombie said. "That is if people can be so safely described. Usually awareness of them is sufficient. Is it enough to know then ignore what's underfoot? What I've tried doing, and what The Territorial generally allows, is basing articles on one premise: these are also your neighbors. A lot of subscribers find that disturbing, I hear."

Probably hearing untimely precocity, Downs redirected focus. "But Ian's fiction is much more artful. The, er, immaturity is giving way to twisty ambiguity." He turned to Abercrombie. "Ian, there are times when we amuse ourselves with your purported fiction pieces. Sometimes none of us can determine whether you've presented disguised facts or facts lacquered under fictionalization."

Mrs. Chetwynd and Downs chuckled. Abercrombie kept mum. He knew silence heightened mystery, which would increase attraction, and therefore interest.

A female fourth voice opined. "Sounds like the entire modern literature canon since 1950. Should anyone be commending any practitioner of such facile skills?"

Naturally the newcomer drew their attention.

That voice belonged to a woman Abercrombie guessed in her late 20s. She'd teased the chestnut mane framing her heart-shaped face into a luxuriant hive. A poison green wrap dress bound on pleasant chest and faithfully adhered along her fine womanly curves. Clogs shod her feet, shoes Abercrombie bet she wore for convenience rather than comfort.

Had she been a contemporary, he would've dismissed her "wise ass" nature. Since she wasn't, he settled on superior.

Obviously some relation to Mrs. Chetwynd, the woman had quite a distance to go before reaching distinguished. Intuitively he knew she'd eventually claim that status. Though not without resistance.

Instead, for now, she'd wend through velvet contrariness.

Blue eyes leapt from her tanned features. Upon her lips she'd applied a deep berry tint rather than some unnatural red. Only Mrs. Chetwynd introducing them kept her from pulling one unalterable moue.

"This is my daughter Margot."

The benefactress beamed at her issue. Margot extended a fine hand. Between rings glinting off every finger and bracelets clanking around both wrists, Abercrombie wondered whether the Chetwynd daughter could be any more encumbered. Her powerful grip, its duration, how her eyes challenged, favorably stacked Abercrombie's estimation.

His little grin became hers. Mrs. Chetwynd recognized what transpired. Where motherly reproach might've been expected, she confounded Abercrombie through a slight approving nod. Downs looked on fascinated, his comprehension incomplete.

Margot broke the trance and time resumed. She mixed accusation with suggestiveness.

"So you're the man who's going to make everything all right."

Roberta Flack's "Poetry Man" resounded through her statement. Downs' clarification was unwelcome cold water.

"Indeed. We saw Ian as a perfect fit for what the project required. And everything dovetails so nicely, too."

The department chairman reveled in how randomness created one small ordered circle. "Everything" consisted of Abercrombie getting summer part-timer status at The Territorial; sharing adequate in-town housing until August; then spending the eighth month domiciled in a dedicated university residence as recognition for his writing skills.

The cottage, if one could imagine a flat-roofed adobe dwelling as such, usually hosted three graduate students for individual one-month stays from June to August. Stipends further sweetened the award. Peace and quiet, 30 days respite from monetary worry, ought have provided conditions perfect for creation. Stories. Novel chapters. Poems. Essays. Didn't matter. Just conjure from desert air, beseech Erato, write. Or some such purple claptrap.

"I sure could use another drink," Margot drawled.

"Me too," Abercrombie said. "When you go, get me one."

Surprise flickered across Margot's face. Color rose in her cheeks, her eyes heated. She extinguished both quickly, a higher sense of regard their residue. Abercrombie saw fleeting approval from Mrs. Chetwynd. Maybe Downs understood their exchange to have been about cocktails.

Abercrombie's summer circumstances would demand more than deadlines and summer daydreaming. Added to his seasonal labor, any frolics derived, he'd also been enlisted for the "Chetwynd bequeath."

Before money, Dexter and Clare Chetwynd had worked. Post-war into the 60s they'd operated a photography business which glorified all aspects Arizona. Good chunks of their effort achieved iconic status. These became the visual staples which lured Eastern masses into western voids.

The couple also had foresight. Great desert tracts purchased for pennies during the early 50s were coveted by developers a decade later. That dirt became expensive.

Wealth amassed, prestige bought and secured, Dexter Chetwynd sought a legacy more meaningful than subdivisions suffixed by Estates, Gardens or Meadows. Merely endowing a chair at the university failed his grandiosity. However, the family did possess tens of thousands of negatives and prints chronicling Arizona before blacktop and urbanization. That was the long-ago country Dexter and Clare entered. It deserved remembrance.

Already sizable university contributors, donation of the Chetwynd photography collection in the late 70s encountered zero opposition. Naturally a companion volume would supplement the exhibition. And Chetwynd was specific about the writer or writers assigned: no natives, no one raised in the Southwest. He wanted an Easterner or Easterners who'd migrated West much like he (Philadelphia) and his wife (Cleveland). The task required fresh perspectives.

Despite lucrative potential, this job neither excited nor attracted any experienced department hands fitting the contributor's criteria. Among themselves that summer were pros who saw scant upside in what many regarded as a vanity project. Furthermore, previous and guaranteed future piles of money to the university aside, much of the English and Journalism faculties considered Dexter Chetwynd a right-winger in the Barry Goldwater mold. Given his politics, they detested him.

Certainly the text would clearly center on the pictures and their times. Yet there was widespread sneaking suspicion conversations might likely drift into the country's post-war amble. Chetwynd was renown for decrying, if not despairing, America's gradual social fragmentation since the absolute unity of its bravest hours.

Moreover, what sane person wanted to stay in T-town over summer break, rummaging through dusty cartons while Chetwynd gassed about scrap drives and Victory Gardens!? No. Leave that task to someone young, hungry, and without a houseboat on Lake Havasu or beachfront rental somewhere along the Baja coast.

"I hear you're an exceptional athlete," Margot said. Her insinuation robbed the statement of all innocence. She and Abercrombie smirked. Downs replied.

"Why, yes, Ian's on our track team. Shot put and discus, isn't it?"

"And javelin," Abercrombie added.

Margot cooed. "Oooh, you're soooo classic."

"Antique expressions form our here and now, Margot. They must be revived and revered, yes?"

Mrs. Chetwynd cocked an eyebrow skeptically. Downs remained below their rarefied air. He got dragged further when his buddy the bestselling author crashed their clutch. The guest of honor had been making one loud declamatory circuit throughout the gallery. He was drunk, all right, but not on anything brewed or distilled. He was intoxicated by the strongest ambrosia of all -- indiscriminate reception of others' fawning adulation.

Downs bathed in the spillover and basked in his friend's glare. Suddenly the attendants trailing the author interested themselves in Downs, a man they'd shown indifference shortly after this evening's initial greetings.

Both Chetwynds spun away from the new mass. Margot momentarily occupied Abercrombie's mind. He compared her confident sauciness to the blatant unformed charms of females his age. Margot's allure bore a maturity none of those contemporaries yet managed. Though she toyed with him, her intent hadn't been to injure. More of a flirty sounding out.

That she'd determined him worthy of such bestowal buffed Abercrombie's already immense self-esteem.

Nonetheless rather than snuffle after Margot, Abercrombie remained among the newly-formed cluster. Behavior alone pegged Downs' buddy as an ass. Abercrombie only continued to observe the man because should talent or dumb luck ever strike, he wanted to avoid his boorishness.

After thoroughly spreading verbal manure on that spot, the guest of honor spied another vista in Scharlach's gallery requiring aggrandizement. His. He moved and admirers trailed him. Abercrombie wondered if his retinue resembled less enlightened eras' royal caravans. He didn't ponder long. Margot materialized with the ebbing furor.

In the interim she'd imbibed more than one cocktail. By her appearance those hadn't been tippled in any lady-like manner. She verged on tipsiness. Her mouth had loosened and bleariness along with disappointment rimmed her blue eyes. Had she been a fellow student, Abercrombie would've feared an outbreak of slurred, loud invective. Rather, she nudged him. Margot kept her voice low but made her intent clear.

"I don't usually need to ask. Don't play dumb, goddamit! You know what I mean."

Undisguised satisfaction crossed his face. Smart enough to recognize the upper hand, Abercrombie was still unschooled in its effective subtle application. He chortled. Margot's funk deepened.

"Don't be smarmy, you prick."

Voice never rising above undertone, Abercrombie said, "Good thing I'm an English major or I wouldn't know what 'smarmy' meant. What do you need from me?"

Margot smiled despite herself. " 'Need'? Okay. I 'need' to understand how a boy barely into real manhood is putting me through paces."

"You'd be surprised and gratified at what they're teaching in schools today."

"Maybe not as surprised as you hope," Margot said. "Maybe not as grateful as you expect. I 'need' to get something outside. Come with me."

Little noticed, they left the gallery. Dim as these were, downtown streetlights obscured all but the brightest stars. Margot led them into night's uninhabited portions. Soon both walked past vacant storefronts.

Flanking Margot, he appraised her behind. The clingy dress certainly enhanced that ass. Determined strides kindly shuddered all that rear musculature. Spying it, rudely thinking about it, started stiffening his cock. So much so he adjusted the tool swelling in his pants.

Margot halted their march at an alleyway. They squinted into semi-darkness. Nothing except a wall-hugging car, several strewn dumpsters and view of the next street. Here served her purpose.

She turned, faced him. Wordlessly Margot backed into shadow. After quick glances up and down the sidewalk he followed.

Margot unfastened her dress. Her garment didn't billow as much as he expected. Her nipples and sex stained those sheer fabrics covering them. The car grill ended her retreat. There, she hopped atop the hood. Clogs slapped pavement. Her bare heels rested on the fender. Hands beckoned him forward.

Their convergence became instinctive synchronicity. Abercrombie's mouth swapped wet heat with hers. While one arm encircled her waist, the fingers of his other fondled either succulent hanging off her chest.

Margot scooted towards Abercrombie and wedged him between strong thighs. After unfastening his slacks, she unbuttoned his shirt, The top pip cinching his collar remained untouched -- his tie knot dissuaded her. She freed Abercrombie's shirt tails then clawed up his torso. When fingernails scraped his nipples, Margot pulled her mouth off his and rubbed moist lips against Abercrombie's broad hairy chest. One crown chosen, she licked the nib then nipped it. Her bite startled him.

Before he could express dismay or displeasure, Margot clasped pants and boxers and jammed them down his thick thighs. Gravity draped two kinds of fabric over his shoes. Abercrombie's cock was lively and heavy in her palm. She couldn't decide whether to hold it like a lever or a club. Margot's other hand traveled down his shaft. She found his balls already ribbed tightly.

Fingernails skating along those scrotal ridges were mildly excruciating. In a good way. He flinched. His sharp air intake accompanied that response. She chuckled with soft malice.

Using him as support, Margot dropped her panties. She didn't remove them but let that scrap dangle off an ankle. Bare now, she angled Abercrombie and shifted her hips.

Lust notwithstanding Margot was dry and tight. His first poke came through teeth-gritting effort. Margot gripped what she could of Abercrombie's dense back and ass. She seemingly willed him into her cranny.

He'd never screwed a woman as dry as Margot. Each thrust marbled thigh muscles, stressed hamstrings and tendons, then kept him lunging on the balls of his feet. These repetitions absurdly reminded Abercrombie of high school football drills, of firing off the line. Tonight's below waist jolts nearly equaled that ferocity.

Her poor wetness removed all grace and pleasure from their sex. He rammed rather than stroked. Abercrombie needed to gather himself, refocus really, before pumping again. Margot's head didn't merely recoil through his force. It jarred. She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut during penetration. On withdrawal Margot's lids fluttered and mouth flapped.