Discovery

by Douglas E Roff

  “So Gwennie and I were talking about my … dilemma, and she came up with a very interesting idea. Phone date. She says it’s like phone sex, but better. I had to ask her what phone sex was and she made fun of me really bad for being such a child, but who cares, she dialed me in. Phone sex; think of it. All the benefits, none of the pregnancies. Easy birth control, all at five cents a minute. What do you think?”

  “I think I should steal my Dad’s truck and find my way to Boston.”

  “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

  “So, you knew I wasn’t coming?”

  “Pretty sure. Wasn’t sure why but you had already said you didn’t think you could come. I knew then something was up and I would have to beat it out of you somehow.”

  “You can be very persuasive. That’s for sure.” Edward wasn’t kidding.

  “Not so much with you though. Never able to get the ‘bad boy’ out of you. Wanted to.”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret, Bethy Lou. I always wanted to do everything you wanted to do. Everything. But I was a chicken - and afraid.”

  “You afraid? Right. Like I believe that. I’ve seen you in action, remember?”

  “It’s true though. I’m sorry now that you live in Boston. I’m sure I’d have come around to your way of thinking. Never be seventeen again and able to make those mistakes.”

  “You mean adventures, not mistakes. It’s only a mistake if you regret it later. Everything else is an adventure or an experience. Anything we would have done together could never have been a mistake but always an intense and wonderful adventure.”

  “Bethy, I’m so sorry I messed this up. Forgive me for being such a dolt?”

  “Nothing to forgive. You’re my honey and I miss you, dammit.”

  “Huh?”

  “It would’ve been so much easier if we had a big fight, broken up and hated each other. This is just too sad.”

  “I miss you Bethy. I really, really miss you.”

  “I know. I miss you too. By the way, chum, are your parents at home?”

  “Not for a couple of hours. Why?”

  “You in your room?”

  “Yes.”

  “On your cordless?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drapes closed?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good, then listen up. We’re going scientific and trying a little experiment. We’ll have to repeat this a whole lot – law of large numbers and all that statistics jazz, so you ready?”

  “For what?”

  “Get naked!”

  “Bethy?”

  “Get naked and get on your bed this instant. And do everything I say when I say it. Promise?”

  “Promise. OK I’m on my bed. What next?”

  “We’re goin’ to go super slow and I expect you to tell me every little detail, every dirty thought in excruciatingly minute detail.”

  “How will I know if …”

  “Because I’ll tell you, that’s how. For once in your life, just shut up and do as I say. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I believe I can.”

  “Nerdy but good boy. Now sit back, relax and close your eyes.”

  “Done.”

  “Now we’re going to begin this adventure with me telling you everything you’re going to do for me and what I’m going to do for you in return. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I do. I think I do.”

  “You are a quick learner.”

  “My IQ is off the charts, I’m told.”

  “We’ll see about that. Now first thing I want you to do, and very slowly, is …”

  Chapter 45

  The phone rang in her office, interrupting her edit of a speech her boss, Stanford Wilson, was giving on the weekend. She had struggled with the right tone, the right words and the right message. Thank God, she thought, that I’m a policy wonk, not a speechwriter. I’d be unemployed and destitute within the year otherwise. She answered.

  “Yes, Millie. I thought I asked for no interruptions. This better be good young lady!”

  “Yes, ma’am. There’s a man on the phone, and he insists on talking to you this instant. Says it’s urgent.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Won’t say but says to tell you three words and you’d be able to guess.”

  “Go on.”

  “Says he’s in town and is available for the next few days.”

  “And the words?” She asked impatiently.

  “Prom, Bethy and Eddie. What should I do?”

  “Cancel all my appointments for the rest of the day. And for the rest of the week for that matter. Then tell Stanford he’ll have to finish his own damn speech. I’m busy. Now put the gentleman through, please and close my door. This could take a while.”

  “Is everything OK, Dr. Outlander?”

  “Not sure, but I’ll let you know tomorrow morning. And this time, Millie, no interruptions. Pain of death, right?”

  ***

  Bethy’s phone lit up, the line blinking. She answered, “So, what are you wearing, mister? And this better be you, Dr. Edward Adam St. James!”

  “It is, indeed, old Eddie from the neighborhood, finally getting my girl in the same city. I can’t believe you sound just the same as what, a couple of years ago?”

  “A couple, you old liar. It’s been thirty years since we last had faux sex. You wantin’ to make it up to me you wanton old pervert? God I’ve missed you so much. It’s so great to hear your voice. And Millie says you’re in town for a few days. True?”

  “Yes, it’s true and I came here just to see you. Are you free for dinner, say tonight?”

  “Hell no. But I am open right now and you, mister, are going to tell me which hotel you’re at and I’m comin’ over right this instant. Can’t wait to see you again. You were a doll when Phillip died, that … well, whatever he was. But you’ve been a very bad correspondent since then. Makes me sad. You never call, you never write …”

  “Nag. I’m here now and can’t wait to see you too. I’m at the Winchester Arms Regal, Room 2701.”

  “The penthouse suite? Is this business, or hot sex, you old devil? I looked you up, but your bio and work are classified – above my grade. That’s not easy. So, spill what’s this is all about?”

  “Well, I will say on this totally unsecure phone that it is a little bit personal, a little bit business and as for the hot sex, you haven’t seen me in a while. I may be a fat, lazy ogre by now. Maybe you should think twice about that.”

  “That’s my Eddie. Still dissembling and deflecting. You’re still 6’1’, 180 pounds, you still swim most days, lift weights and spar with one or both of your two deliciously handsome sons. Your daughters-in-law are both gorgeous, and sexy as hell, and I hear you don’t go to church anymore, but your eldest, Adam, goes to Mass every Sunday with his mum, Maria. Maria and her husband, Agustin, are your best friends along with a dicey gentleman named Carlos now residing in Blaine, Washington. You have a couple of confirmed kills and a lot of redacted history. You’re on the payroll of at least seven US government agencies including my employer, State. You know my boss, Stanford Wilson, but he won’t say how or why.

  “I have surveillance photos of you in the file but not who took them or why. Your home in … uh, Barrows Bay is modest, but your personal net worth is estimated at well over four hundred fifty million dollars, at last count. Seems like a lot of benjamins for an archeologist, even one with an international best seller. You live quite well within your modest salary, even if your liquid net worth was unavailable to you for any reason.

  “You speak Spanish fluently - hola – and claim a huge extended family residing in the Seattle/Tacoma area which is known to the Seattle PD and the Seattle FBI field office as the Eight Families. Background on them is a little murky and their immigration files now officially sealed, which I didn’t even think was possible.

  “Your wife, Anna, is deceased as are, accord
ing to the LAPD, the ones who perpetrated the killings. No charges were ever filed, against you anyway, nor is there any proof that you were involved in the disappearance of the gentleman who took the shots. However, you were present in LA at the time of the events in question and then asked by the cops, after he disappeared, to leave Dodge and never come back. Your sons and their wives have interesting FBI profiles, I’m sure. But because they aren’t available, having been classified super-duper top secret, they remain a mystery.

  “Your son Adam is a certified computer genius, having graduated a few years ahead of his classmates, and holds the interesting distinction of having graduated from college before he walked in graduation from High School with his classmates, most of whom knew nothing about his simultaneous Ph.D. dissertation at Cal Tech.

  “So, Edward Adam St. James, I don’t know why you’re in town or what this is all about, but I do know you are not fat, lazy or looking like an ogre.”

  “Wow. That was fantastic. Anything else you left out? Anything I should know?”

  “Yes, I’m wet as hell and have waited more than thirty years to jump your bones, so I’m getting naked and you’re leaving the door unlocked. I’ll be there in ten.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You were well trained, whoever had you first. Clear your schedule, Eddie. We’re about to have thirty years of makeup sex and we only have a few days!”

  Chapter 46

  “You’re still a handsome man, Edward St. James and I know all your secrets,” Bethy said. “I’m going to threaten you with a Facebook outing if you don’t give in to my sexual demands. Which will be prurient, exotic and filthy. I’ll give you five-minute breaks in between.”

  “I’d prefer it if you beat it out of me instead.” Edward had forgotten his Bethy and her direct manner in all things sexual. Bethy had always been comfortable with her physical needs and desires, while Edward had been just the opposite. Until Anna, when things all changed.

  “Who says I won’t? Which do you prefer, hands, lips or feet?”

  “I get a choice?”

  “Of course, you do. I’m not a monster. Unless you’d prefer …”

  “Actually, I would.”

  “In that case, I’m your best nightmare.”

  “Ah, the kind I like the most. Intellect and physical skills. Has it really been thirty years?”

  “Let’s see what you remember from our last lessons. Then we can talk about the past - and present. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  ***

  Some time in the wee hours of the morning, two fifty something old friends decided they had, had enough and needed to rest for a while and catch their collective breaths. Then they would surmount one more final engagement for the night. Each knew, as they lay side by side, holding each other in a warm, sensual and sweaty embrace that they would begin all over again the very next night. But for now, the urgency of each other’s touch was simply too much to forego, even for sleep and food.

  Thirty years had done nothing to allay the deep unresolved feelings for the other. Although their emotions had lain dormant in their hearts, while they each carried on with separate lives, they had discovered this night an awakening of such intensity that it was almost frightening to contemplate in their immediate present. It was exhilarating and yet, somehow, confusing.

  Both were exhausted and unable or unwilling to speak. Edward lay behind Bethy, spooning and completely enveloped in the warmth of her touch, astounded by the torrent of his lost feelings for the first woman he had ever loved in that way. At this very moment he was seventeen again, ready for Prom and flush with the expectation of a romantic dalliance, now fulfilled. Edward was Eddie again, and his girl, Mary Elizabeth “Bethy” McQueen, cheerleader and unattainable goddess was in his bed and wanting him one more time before daylight when decisions would have to be made.

  When he was seventeen, Edward could be paralyzed by self-doubt and uncertainty around pretty girls. He was now experiencing so many raw and intense emotions; doubt and uncertainty, however, were not among them.

  “Did I lose you just now?” Edward whispered into Bethy’s ear, as she lay catlike and naked on top of the sheets they had long ago discarded.

  “No, I’m just feeling dreamy. Dreamy if you can believe that. I’m tired and awake; horny and sated; sore in all the right places and I don’t care whether I ever go back to work again. I think my legs are rubber and I couldn’t move even if there was a fire. I don’t care what I’m supposed to do today, and I feel like I just betrayed the entire women’s movement for sex with a guy. Did I mention dreamy sex? I’m sure in some societies I’d be a goddess and in some I’d be burned alive. What say you, stranger?”

  “Goddess. For sure goddess. You were … unnatural last night.”

  “You mean supernatural, don’t you?”

  “That too, Goddess.”

  “By the way, as long as I’m selling out for sex, the answer is yes.”

  “To what?”

  “To whatever you’re really here to see me about.”

  “OK. Now what?”

  “More sex, please. We can talk about business any time. Right now, I want you to talk dirty to me and pray to your Goddess. On your knees, mortal. You have work to do, and your Goddess is unsatisfied.”

  “Pushy broad. Do I get time off for good behavior?”

  “Hardly. Good behavior will never get you time off, just time on. Me that is. You can have time off when I carelessly heave your sunken and exhausted husk of a body to the side of the bed, then ask housekeeping to discard your useless carcass.”

  “You really are a Goddess, aren’t you?”

  “Am if you say so. Now get to work. Too much talkin’, not enough action.”

  They laughed so hard they thought they would cry, giggling like teenagers alone in their room, parents nowhere in sight. But when they looked at each other they remembered just how much a touch could excite. Then they were thrown into the maelstrom of passion once again, until they lay exhausted and dishevelled: clothes, linens, towels and miscellaneous objects strewn everywhere.

  Afterwards they slept, peaceful and satisfied, not knowing what the next hour would bring, much less the days and weeks ahead. But they had some sleep and some catching up to do, not possible to fully accomplish in just one evening. And not right away. Then, instead, a benevolent darkness overtook their senses and guided them into the land of tranquil dreams. They fell asleep in each other’s arms as if they had never been apart.

  The world was right again. And Bethy and Eddie would never be apart again, for as long as they both lived. They just didn’t know it yet.

  ***

  Edward awoke, seeing that the time was now 11:00 am, and there was coffee and breakfast on the table in their well-appointed luxury suite. He could hear the shower running and the faint sounds of a woman’s voice humming some silly song from the seventies. He rose from the bed, instantly scanning the room now littered with remnants of the busy night before.

  He worked his way into the bathroom, announcing his presence and asking for permission to join Bethy in the shower.

  “Maybe,” she replied. Have you been good?”

  “No Goddess, I’ve been very, very bad I’m afraid. I had copious quantities of mad sex with my ex- girlfriend and kept the poor girl up all night. Not sure how she’s feeling this morning. You?”

  “Dreamy. I too had copious quantities of mad sex with my new lover last night and he kept me up all night. So, I guess it’s OK for you to join me. Just don’t tell your woman. It’ll be our little secret.”

  “My lips are sealed.” Edward said, “But I can unseal them whenever you wish.”

  “In that case. Oops, I dropped my shampoo. Can you get that for me? You may have to get down on your knees.”

  ***

  Bethy and Edward sat at the table sipping coffee and talking like old friends, which they were, and old lovers, which they weren’t. After ta
lking about kids and spouses and new families, Bethy was curious what had driven Edward back in the direction of her heart.

  Bethy said, “Cat got your tongue, Eddie. It didn’t a minute ago. Why so quiet?”

  “Do you ever wonder what might have been? If we had been a little different and not so young?”

  “Of course. Every day since I cried my eyes out in that stupid car my Dad bought for the trip back to Boston. And for every day since then, no matter where I was or who I was with. You were never far from my thoughts or my heart, even if it was just a teenage fantasy. I guess we’ll never know.”

  “Was it though? Was it a teenage fantasy or do these things survive over time so that we can have a second chance at finishing what we started? I don’t know. But I feel like we aren’t finished yet, like there’s still more to be written in our book.”

  “What happened to the religious but card carrying hard core scientific genius I once knew? You sound like a seventeen-year-old girl in the deep throes of puppy love. Who knew? Edward you’ve changed. You’ve gotten younger.” She chuckled at her own humor.

  She looked up from her copy of the Washington Post and noticed Edward wasn’t laughing.

  “Oh my God, Edward,” she said, “I had no idea you were actually serious. I didn’t mean to mock you.”

  “Of course you did, and I would have mocked me too a year ago, but not anymore. My life has changed so much Bethy and it will change even more very soon. I feel like my whole life; all my plans have just been put in a huge jar and shaken hard. They are about to be thrown out of that jar and I don’t know what my life will be like or even whether I can ever be happy again. But one of those plans or thoughts or things, however you want to describe it, is you. Somehow you have been tossed back in to my life, at a time when I think I will need you more than ever. And I have been given this one last chance to complete a story that never should’ve ended. I know something is going to happen and I know you were meant to be with me again. Is that possible?”