Sunset at the Pink Water Cafe Ch. 02

"A-yup. With Hollandaise and capers, some field greens."

"Geez. Sign me up. What kind of tea today?"

"Bing cherry."

"Geez, yeah, better bring me one of those, too."

"Wanted to ask. You play the piano?"

"Badly, but yes."

She nodded, walked off -- stopped off by the office. "He plays," she said, and Bruce nodded while Darren smiled, then she took him his tea and seated several new groups that had just walked in. 'Sailors,' she sighed. 'Always starving, always in need of a shower...'

He lingered after he finished lunch, and he waited, paid her at the table. She brought him his change then planted a kiss on him -- a lingering kiss that garnered catcalls from the other patrons inside -- then he and Jimmie walked from the café, his gait a bit unsteady, and they disappeared up the hill.

But he had left his sack from the pharmacy on the table, and she opened it up, peeked inside, saw another bottle of 'personal lubricant' inside, along with a card. He'd written 'sorry for being such an asshole,' inside, and she took the sack and put it under the counter and finished up the lunch shift, then a couple of the carpenters working out back came in, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

Paul Dooley. Her boyfriend, all through high school. That she had not seen once since.

He walked in, saw her and stopped -- dead in his tracks.

"Tracy?" he said, and he smiled, came up to her and took her by the arms. "I heard you were working here..."

"Paul? So nice to...well, this is a surprise...it's good to see you. Again. Here, let me get you guys a table..."

"You guys got burgers?" one of Paul's buddies asked.

"Sure do. Fries and beer, too."

"That'll do."

Before they left to go back to work, Paul stopped by the counter...looked like he wanted to talk.

"So, you livin' at your pop's place?" he asked.

She nodded her head. "Sometimes, yes. Heard you married Sally Needham."

"Yeah, we got a divorce a while ago, after the last kid moved out."

"Oh? Too bad, I always liked Sally."

"You seein' someone?"

"Yeah. For a while now."

"Oh? Well, good for you."

"So, how long will you be working here?"

"A month or so. We're out of Eastport, not much work around here these days."

She smiled, nodded. "Yup. Well, maybe we'll have a chance to talk every now and then," she added, holding out her hand. "Sure nice to see you again."

He looked at her hand, didn't quite know what to do so he took it. "Yeah. You too," he said slowly, then he walked out back -- and Darren walked over, looked at the man as he left.

"Is that Trouble," he asked, after the door closed.

She shrugged, sighed. "Could be. He's the type that wants it, bad, and won't take no for an answer."

"Not sure I liked the look in his eyes just then. Looks kind of...unhinged."

"He's a big part of the reason why I left after high school. Heard he used to beat up his wife a lot. Glad she got out in one piece."

"You let me know if he causes you any trouble," Bruce said, standing in his office door, but he wondered: 'Did you get out in one piece?'

She turned to him and smiled. "You guys are like my very own kid brothers, ya know."

Bruce looked at her, went back in his office, but Darren came over and hugged her. "If I'd ever wanted a girlfriend, it would be you, so pardon us if we're overprotective."

She kissed him on the cheek, nodded her head and wiped away a tear. "Okay," she whispered, then she got back to work.

When her break came she walked up to Jim's house, walked right in, found him on the living room floor, under the piano hooking up speakers to a black box -- and she looked at him, then it, not quite knowing what to think.

"Isn't that kind of, well, I don't know. I didn't think pianos needed speakers."

"Not really a piano. It's a Yamaha Clavinova. Digital, more of a teaching tool, but hang on, let me finish up and I'll show you." He hooked up the second speaker, then a sub-woofer -- and left them on the floor -- then turned on the piano. She walked over and watched him hook up his iPhone to the piano, pull up a file and press 'begin' -- and a full orchestra began playing -- through the piano.

"A Rachmaninoff piano concerto," he said, then he pressed pause. I can play along with the orchestra, or I can just let the piano play the part for me. Great for parties, dinners, things like that, or I can just turn all that nonsense off and play by myself. It's also a great teaching tool."

"Teaching? What? Like piano lessons?"

"Sure. Do you play?"

"No."

"Want to learn?"

"I don't know -- maybe?"

"Here, have a seat," he said while he opened up the file 'Pachelbel Canon.' "Now, when the piano prompts with a light," he said, pointing to lights ahead of the keys, "you just press the key. Watch...like this..." He pressed begin and a light lit on the piano, and he hit it, then the next note, and the next. He paused the lesson, went back to the beginning and added accompaniment, and he pressed 'Begin' again. "Now, you do it."

The light lit up and she hit the key, and a symphony orchestra began playing with her. Her smile was infectious and he smiled with her as she hit key after key, but after a few minutes of this she grew bored and turned away. "It's not really playing music, or learning, really," she said, "but it's kind of fun."

"Yes, it's more a child's game, like dangling a carrot to stimulate curiosity, but you're right. Like so many things these days, we need carrots to stimulate the imagination, to stimulate learning, yet little seems to take root."

"Well, I've never wanted to play."

"Tell that to a piano salesman. A hundred years ago they couldn't build them fast enough, and most every home had a piano of some sort, yet now that's a rarity. An even greater rarity, that you'll find anyone in such homes who knows how to play. The world changed, didn't it, Tracy?"

"I suppose so. Do you play? I mean, really play?"

He moved over, turned off the computer and took up playing the concerto for a few minutes, then stopped, turned off the instrument and walked to the kitchen, leaned over the sink and looked out the window.

She could feel his despair as he walked away and she went to him. "Tell me what you're thinking, right now," she said softly, putting her arms around him, the side of her face on his back.

"Alone," he said.

"You're not, you know."

"No, I suppose not," he said, turning inside her arms, putting his around her. "We used to play together, sometimes for one another. I thought of a moment when I went inside the music again."

"Has it been a while...since you played?"

He nodded his head, sighed. "Too long, I think."

"What about me, Jim...if I was suddenly gone tomorrow, what would remember about me?"

He smiled, deeply: "I would think about you walking in here and pulling me by my belt-loops. I would think about the first time I breathed in your hair, and of how lost I became in that moment."

"Lost?"

"How suddenly everything else felt so far away, so inconsequential. How overpowering lust grew, my lust for you. Nothing else has mattered since, you know? I feel like a blathering teenager again, when you're here with me, only when I was young I never knew anyone quite like you."

"You feel lust? For me?"

"I do."

"Is that a little like love?"

"It is...a little."

"A little?"

He nodded his head. "I can't imagine life without you now, yet I..."

She place a single outstretched finger over his lips, made a 'sh-h-h' noise and then kissed him, once, gently. "No explanations necessary," she whispered. "And I love you too." She let go, went back and got the little paper sack then came for him, grabbed him by the belt loops and pulled him free, led him on...

"What do we need that for?" he asked, pointing at the sack.

"You'll see," she said, grinning madly.

Dooley watched her walking back from her break. Never took his eyes off her, as a matter of fact.

+++++

In his mind's eye he saw her then as he remembered her most fondly: spread out on the hay in the barn behind his father's house, her legs spread, waiting for the final assault. He had hit her, hard, and she was barely conscious when he pulled her legs up and put them over his shoulders, when he put his cock on her anus and pushed in as savagely as he could. She had moaned a little, started to cry and he hit her again, told her to shut up.

She had told him at school earlier that day how she wanted to head south after graduation, to get out into the world and see it, to learn more about people and places and things she'd never even heard of. Then he'd reminded her of their plans. Get married, settle down and have kids. Make a life together. And then she had gone kind of silent, a faraway look in her eyes -- and he had nodded to the reality he saw in that moment. When school let out that afternoon he and three of his best friends picked her up as she walked home and they drove out to his father's place, took her into the barn. They talked about silly things like football and the school play, then Dooley grew serious, took off his jeans and gathered his fists. They took turns, every time up the ass until she was bleeding down there; they picked her up when they were finished with her and carried out to the truck, then down the beach road -- and they pushed her out on the side of the road, left her there with blood and semen streaming out her ass, pooling on the asphalt.

Someone found her, carried her to the hospital and in time the county sheriff came and talked to her, but he didn't fill out a report. He went over to the Dooley farm and talked to the boys, and they told him pretty much what he thought they would. They said they'd been alone here in the house all afternoon, and that Paul and Tracy had broken up a few days before. He talked to the girl's father and he agreed, there was no reason to put all those families through an investigation and a trial. It would just be better if it all went away.

She was better, her face had healed by the time graduation rolled around, and she walked on that stage and looked at all those good people looking at her, judging her, and she got her diploma, then walked home, alone, after that. Her grandfather had given her five hundred dollars and she took that money, packed her suitcase and walked out the door. She didn't say goodbye to anyone, and she never once looked back when that bus headed south down the old county road.

But Paul Dooley watched that bus. He watched it leave and he frowned, and after it was gone, after the swirling dust and diesel fumes had settled all around him, he turned and walked back to the barn -- smiling, as the memory came back to him.

And as he watched her walk into the café he smiled. He smiled at the memory, and he wondered how it would feel to put on a little repeat performance. When he got off work he called his old friends and told them what he had in mind. Two begged off, but one, Sheldon Vance, said he would be more than up for a little reenactment. They got the old truck out of the barn and he drove it into town while Shel followed in his car, and they parked the old truck right in front of her house, left their calling card for her to see.

They watched her walk up the hill after work, but she turned and went into another house and they wondered what was up with that.

"Maybe we should pay them a little visit," Vance said.

"Yeah. Maybe."

*

© 2017 Adrian Leverkühn | abw | more coming soon...