The Rocket

Hal and I had stopped off at The Pocket-Picker after work for a beer, which is not unusual at all. In fact we stop there probably five days a week on average. It's nice to drop in, have a beer, complain about the latest chapter of the office soap opera, bullshit with the regulars, and get home. It's uncomplicated for me, I go home to a small, Spartan apartment. Hal lives a little further up the road in a nice house with a yard, trees, a wife, so he usually gets a little antsy after a beer or two -- this sets an easy limit on our drinking, so "a couple of beers" is almost always "a couple of beers."

This one Wednesday though Hal ran into an old friend, a friend of his brother-in-law. They didn't know each other very well but started giving each other shit and became best friends over a few shots of Jack, while I was talking to somebody else and "a few shots of Jack" might have been "quite a few."

Next thing you know Hal's on the phone, saying, "Sorry, I've had more than I should've here and it wouldn't be smart. No, I'm fine, I'm fine really, I ran into your brother's buddy, uh, Frank or something, and he bought me a few." I tuned out and he hung up and went back to his conversation with his new best friend.

A couple minutes later my phone rang in my pocket. It was Hal's wife. "Hey, Francie, what's up?"

"Hi," Francie said. "Well we've got an issue here. My sister's car broke down and she called Hal but he sounds like he's not in good shape to be driving around. So I was going to ask you for a big, big favor."

"You want me to go pick up your sister?"

"Yes, if you can."

"Which one?"

"Sorry, it's the frosty one."

"The banker huh?"

"Yeah. Beverly."

"Sure," I said, "I can do that."

"And what shape are you in?"

"I'm fine, still working on my first beer," I said.

Francie had a story about her sister's check-engine light and told me where she worked, a well-known office building in the next suburb. Unfortunately the sister lived in a neighboring county, this would be a bit of a drive. Francie gave me the sister's number and promised to make it up to me. I was thinking, sure, call me sometime when the "fun sister" needs a ride; that would more than make it up. I said I would drop Hal off at home first and then go get her, and she thanked me.

"Come on, old buddy," I said. "We gotta get you home, I got drafted to go get Bev."

Hal and his new best friend finished their stories while I finished my one beer and we headed out. I dropped him in his driveway and watched him stagger to the door. He turned and waved once he got the door open, and when there was a break in traffic I backed out of the driveway for the second part of my assignment.

Beverly worked in the Oak Tree Mortgage Building, a massive edifice and local landmark that you could see for a mile. It is surrounded by acres of parking lots, so when I got there I pulled over and texted the number Francie had given me: "Ride's here. Where are you?"

"Lobby," she replied. I had met Beverly many times over the years at Hal's place. She was always busy, looking at her phone, or she'd bring her laptop and literally work through a nice family barbecue. The opposite of me. I just want to work enough to get enough money to buy a winning lottery ticket. I could easily spend a couple of decades sitting on a boat waiting for a bite.

I pulled up to the front door as she came out. She really looked the part, gray skirt-and-jacket suit, heels, carrying a purse that certainly had some famous person's name on the label. Her hair was tidy and stiff, her walk tall and confident, her makeup impeccable. Not my type at all, in other words. And she had made it clear over the years that I was not her type. I don't think she actually considered me to be a bad influence on her sister's husband, but I was definitely not a *good* influence. Still, my influence, even if it made Hal a little less perfect, had obviously not been seriously destructive to their marriage.

I pushed open the car door from inside and she leaned in, "Thanks." She gripped the roof of my little car and moaned and groaned trying to squeeze herself into the front seat. "God," she said, "Why did you get such a low car?"

"I got it because it's cool," I said. "Chicks love it."

"Huh, well this chick doesn't," she said, straightening her skirt and pulling her seat belt over her shoulder. "Get a normal car next time, okay?" She smiled as if she were trying to indicate that she was joking, but she wasn't.

Between you and me, this was about as close to flirting with me as she had ever gotten. I know, I know, it doesn't seem like much. But she had never had the time of day for me.

"You seem to be in a cheerful mood today," I commented.

She shot me a look. "Are you kidding?"

"Uh, yeah, sort of," I said.

"I have been having what you would call a fucked-up day," she said, "Pardon my fuckin' French. I hate that place."

"I thought you loved it," I said. "I mean, you bring your work home with you and everything."

"It's lucky they pay me so well," she said."God I hate those people. I came this close today." She held up a thumb and index finger. "This close." A seething pause. "And then Hal, what the fuck is up with him? What is he, drunk?"

I ignored the question. "Huh, well I see, I was wrong, you are clearly not in a cheerful mood."

"Yeah, sorry. I mean, I just needed to get out of that fucking place, and then my car, and then Hal was fucking useless... Oh well, I guess he deserves to have a little fun now and then."

"Sure," I said. "And so do you."

"No kidding," Beverly said, gazing out the window. "I know you've never heard me talk like this before, sorry. I put everything into that fucking job, I give them everything, and sometimes, I don't know, fuck it."

"I've never seen you like this before," I said.

"I've got responsibilities," she said. "Unlike some people." Ouch. "But I'll tell you what, it gets fucking old sometimes. Now and then Beverly needs something for Beverly."

"How about I buy you a drink," I said.

"I don't think so," she said. It was the least surprising thing in the world.

We were going slow in rush-hour traffic, maybe there was a wreck up ahead and maybe it's just like this -- it was not where I'd normally be driving at this time of day.

"You know what?" she said suddenly. "Yeah, let's do that. But let's not go to that dump you guys always go to."

We were in a part of town that was unfamiliar to me. I had never seen Beverly's house but assumed it was, you know, fancy. We were definitely not in a fancy part of the county; my GPS said we had three more miles to go. "Slow down here," she said, watching the signs along the road. "Yeah, that place there, the Royal Blush, pull in. I've heard that's a nice place." I wheeled my little red two-seater into the parking lot, which was a partly-paved field of potholes. The Royal Blush was a one-story brick building, probably built in the 1950s, with a neon martini glass in the window. A handwritten "no one under 21" sign was tacked to the front door. It didn't look like her kind of place from the outside -- for me, sure, but I could not picture Little Miss Frosty in a dive like this.

Moaning and complaining she extracted herself from my cool little car and said, "It's probably just as good that Hal was out of it." She glanced at me and said, "I am going to need some attention." For some reason my dick got stiff in a tenth of a second. I ignored it. It does tend to be overly optimistic at times.

"Let's go in and have a glass of wine and you can tell me all about it," I said.

"Good plan," she replied.

The Royal Blush was just as bad as I had pictured, except with hookers. There was a row of losers sitting at the bar, some watching the game on TV, some of them bullshitting with the bartender, who was a big fat man with half his shirttail hanging out. The hookers did not pay any attention to us, three of them sat at the end of the bar chatting among themselves. How did I know they were hookers? It is possible they were actually some choirgirls who had just left church and all three of them accidentally happened to look like that. The more generous assumption is that they were actually low-budget whores. Otherwise there were no women in the place. There was a big painting behind the bar of a queen from a deck of cards, with cleavage displayed down to a bright-red sliver of aureole peeking over her bra, all cleverly shaded to give her tits an exaggerated 3-D effect, and big pink circles on her cheeks -- get it? Royal Blush haha. The joint was nuttin but class.

The bar was set up with a long straight section in the middle where most of the customers sat, with a few barstools around a sharp corner at the end where the hookers were hanging out, and another corner at the other end that was unoccupied. Beverly headed for that corner and I followed.

"Man," she said. "What a day. Oh well, thanks for thinking of this, I appreciate it." It was strange, she actually sounded like a human being. We sat and ordered. I don't usually drink wine but I ordered some for both of us, figuring Chardonnay to be a safe bet. There was some kind of hook-thing under the bar where Bev hung her purse, after fumbling around down there while I dealt with the bartender; there happened to be a coat rack right beside our seats. She stood and shrugged off her woolen jacket and hung it up.

She turned around and stopped. "What are you looking at?" she asked, in a blaming tone.

I looked up at her eyes, helpless. "What do you want me to say?"

She softened a little. "I guess you could say something nice."

I considered my words. "Well, sorry, you kind of got me there."

"What?"

I waved my hand toward her. "This is a good look for you," I said. Thinking, hmm, this is my buddy's wife's sister, hmm.

"Oh, thanks," she sat down to her wine.

She was wearing a kind of diaphanous beige blouse, sleeveless, with a white lace bra clearly on display underneath the wavy fabric. The bra was cut low and her breasts were framed in a luscious way and I had been unprepared for all that. My interpretation was that the jacket was like a suit of armor that she could wear at work to offer a sterile, professional presentation to her colleagues, disguising the fact that there was an actual woman underneath that professional layer. Her charcoal gray wool pencil skirt, which matched the jacket, was hemmed at a modest mid-thigh length, standing, but on a barstool it rode up nicely.

"Let me try again," I said. "You are a beautiful woman."

Her brown eyes looked up at me in surprise. "Oh," she said. "Well, thank you." Now she looked somewhat puzzled. "Do you mean just now, or generally?"

"This is not the first time I have thought so, but you are usually, you know, working. You just got me by surprise this time." My eyes ran over her fine frame.

We sipped our wine and she said, "Can you do me a favor, at least while we're here? Let's pretend we're normal people on a date, okay?"

"How do we do that?" I asked.

"What do you do when you're on a date?" she asked.

"Shit, Bev, I don't know, I don't really go on date-dates."

"If you went to have a drink with a girl you were interested in, what would you do?"

I contemplated this.

"Would you scoot your barstool over a little closer to hers?"

"Yeah, I guess I would." I moved my stool until it almost touched hers.

"Would you put your arm around her?"

"I guess I would, if we knew each other well enough."

"Yeah, well, you and I have known each other for at least as long as Francie and Hal have been together," she laughed. "Does that count?"

I put my arm around her and she cuddled up with her head on my chest. "That is very much better," she said. It seemed much better to me, too.

"So, tell me about your day," I said. It seemed like a date-thing to say, don't you think?

She did not pull away but turned her face toward me and began telling me about her day. It had been a tough one, and she relaxed as she spoke, and as she sipped her wine. I won't bore you with her details but I listened, sympathized, gave her supportive squeezes when she got to the worst parts. When she got to the part where she called her sister's husband for a ride and he was a fucked-up mess, she looked up at me and I kissed her. I hadn't planned on it, but I wasn't sure what this "date game" was supposed to be. In retrospect I have no regrets, and I review that moment every day in my imagination.

Not surprisingly, she kissed like a middle-schooler. Her stiff lips pressed against mine, so after a few seconds I took the initiative and worked my tongue between her teeth. After some more seconds she got the hint, and her tongue poked tentatively into my mouth. In the end, it was pretty fucking nice.

Recovering from that kiss she sat up straight and ran her fingers through her hair. What had been essentially a shellacked helmet softened, some loose ends broke free, and her dark hair functioned as a kind of halo that framed her face in a vibrant way. She saw my expression and said, "You like that, huh?" Then she took both hands and ran them playfully all through her hair, tousling it up like a punk rocker and then letting it settle in a wild but still-stylish mop. "How's that?" she asked.

"You look like a movie star," I said.

She gave me a wink and reached to the collar of her blouse and opened the top button, a fancy square-shaped piece of expensive-looking piece of craftsmanship wrapped in satin. She fluffed her neckline a little and unbuttoned the next one, fluffed, relaxed. "I don't think we need to be quite so stuffy at the Royal Blush, do you?"

"Are you kidding me?" I tried not to stare. Well, I was staring, I tried not to drool on myself. She reached up casually and popped open another button, now clearly displaying a fine view of jiggling cleavage. She looked up at me with an expression I would describe as a "smirk." "Bev," I said, "I don't really know what the rules are in this dating game we're playing. But you are, I uh, I never thought of you like this before."

She was looking into my eyes with an expression that was not teasing now but was somehow very vulnerable. "Like what?" she asked me.

"I don't know what to say. Irresistible, maybe?"

That brought a smile to her face. "Good." She turned back to the bar and we sat and conversed like a normal couple having a drink at a neighborhood bar. After a minute or two she held out her hand and said, "Hey, put this in your pocket or somewhere safe, would you?" She handed me a wad of fabric.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Oh, watch out," she replied, giggling. "You almost made wine splash out my nose."

I started to unwad the offering but then had a second thought and held it down in my lap, below the bar. It was a very tiny pair of silk panties. I wadded it back up again and looked at her. "Were you wearing these?"

"Yes, of course," she said.

"And how did you --"

"I can be clever at times," she replied. "Just put them away." At that moment my penis sprang into a state which it would maintain for the rest of the evening. I tucked her panties into the front left pocket of my jeans.

The jukebox finished a well-known hit from a few decades ago before launching into the tremolo of a full string orchestra, the familiar intro to "Only This Once," by Samuel Winger, the soul singer from Over the Top. A harp arpeggio set up the famous crescendo that starts the piece, and Beverly said, "Will you dance with me?"

"I don't really know how to dance," I said, as the ballad got underway. The tempo was slower than slow, the mood was sexier than sexy. No one in the room was paying us any attention; it was as if we were alone.

She slid off her stool and took my hand. "I'll teach you," she said. This place did not have any actual designated "dancefloor," but there was a smallish, dimly lit area at our end of the bar. She led me to the edge of that space.

"What do I do?" I asked.

"Stand there," she said, and she wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me close, looking up into my eyes. The top of her head came up to my chin, the sweet smell of her hair filling my senses. I put my arms around her waist and she looked up at me and said, "See, you're a natural." I tightened my pull on her, and on its own, it seemed, my right hand dipped down toward her bottom. I did not grope her but felt a jolt pass through her as I touched the sensitive region where the skeletal frame of her back met the soft erogenous fullness of her ass.

We swayed a little bit, shifting our weight from one foot to another. "Look at that," she laughed. "You're a regular Fred Astaire." I had to laugh, too. This moment was bringing back the feelings of middle-school dances in the school cafeteria, innocent little me overwhelmed with emotion as I clung to some innocent little schoolgirl while a scratchy soul ballad crackled out of the school's PA system.

Bev pressed her hips forward against me; I don't know if she expected what she found there but she didn't seem to mind it. Her swaying resulted in a kind of friction between us that was putting me over the moon. I could feel the press of her lovely breasts against my chest, her beautiful hair tickled my chin, her breath warmed my chest above my own buttons. The song ended and another started, "Neon Moon" as I recall, but we continued to dance as if it were a sweet soul ballad. She looked up at me and I kissed her and this time she knew what to do, and she ground her pubic bone deliberately and thoroughly against my straining hard-on.

Sometimes when you go into a little place like this and it has regular customers, they will stop talking when you enter and then sit and stare at you. This place wasn't like that. Nobody really noticed us. The bartender was talking to a couple of customers and our order had been a kind of interruption to him, and then he went back to his conversation. I did not feel like they had a real in-crowd there, like some places enter pool tournaments and have wings on Wednesday or something -- this wasn't like that. It was just some people there for the alcohol, plus a little social interaction to make it seem less lonely. As such we were invisible, just another couple of people ducking out of reality for a few, in the darkened space out past the far end of the bar.

"This dating game is kind of fun," Beverly said after we finally sat down. "I feel like a teenager again."

"Me, too," I said. "It's like a movie, and at the end I'll have to give you your panties back."

She laughed. "You were planning to keep them?"

"Actually, looking at you, I don't think they'd probably fit me."

"Good point," she said.

"I'll frame them and hang them up in my bedroom."

"There you go," she was laughing. "That'll scare those other bitches away."

"Oh yeah, good idea. I have a real problem with women trying to jump into my bed all the time."

"I take it you're okay with us being on a date then?" she asked, trying to close the deal and move on.

"I am if you are," I said.

"Actually this is the best time I've had in a long, long time."

I leaned over and gave her a kiss. My right hand, which could not be seen by the other customers, came up and stroked the side of her breast through the thin fabric of her blouse, and I heard her moan into our kiss. "Well I'm sure I should get you home," I said.

I paid up and we left. She grumbled again about getting into my low car and I suggested she might not be cool enough to ride in something like this. "I am very cool," she said, placing her handbag on the floor. "This is a stupid car."

"Now you're going too far," I said.

"Okay, okay," she muttered. "The car is fine, it's just not made for human beings to ride in it. Is that better?"

"Yes, fine." We headed off into the continuing suburban rush hour traffic.