Finding out that he had a temporary office in the Humanities building she walked the five minutes to it. By the time she got there she was sweating and her hair, which she’d had up, was escaping in straggles. Her face was shiny and she knew there was sweat stains under her armpits and she had a moment of panic.
But, hell, she wasn’t officially in the man-hunting race yet. She didn’t have to worry about looking good.
She knocked on the door that read, Professor Clinton Abbott.
“Come in.”
She opened the door and as he looked up his face froze.
“Should I duck?”
“I’m sorry. I just came to apologize. I was completely out of line. I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk to me, but my only defense is that you were in the wrong place at the right time. I wasn’t angry at you – just at men in general.”
He relaxed. He stared at her breasts for a minute, but she’d have wondered if he was gay if he didn’t. Then he gave her the once over that always followed the breast inspection and his eyes returned to her face.
“Why do I have a hard time thinking that any guy would ever give you problems?”
“Appearances can be deceiving. You don’t look like an author.”
He gave her a small smile.
“What do authors look like?”
“Kind of pasty, usually with thick glasses...wimpy looking.”
He shook his head.
“Such stereotypes. You know what they say about attractive blondes. Stereotypes are stereotypes.”
“Stereotypes are true, if you listen to the rumors around here. Blondes are dumb and sex crazed.”
“Somehow I find that hard to believe, in your case. Since I’ve been here I’ve picked up enough to know that you’re a – what – Associate Professor in the Business Department of a four-year state university and to be here you have to have been published. Not exactly what you’d expect of an airhead.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“It’s been a really, really bad day and those are the first kind words I’ve heard today. By the way, I’m Debbie Mait- Debbie Bascomb.”
“You’re welcome. Could I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Could I take you out for a cup of coffee? My last class is over and I guess yours is too. There is a Starbucks close to here that I’ve discovered. They’re all carbon copies, but this one has some personality.”
“It wouldn’t do your reputation any good to be seen hanging around me. I’m divorcing and I have – had – a boyfriend and most people think I’m just a cheating slut who’ll go after anything with a Y chromosome. Or a penis, either way.”
He grinned.
“Husband and boyfriend and a slut at the same time. How could I resist?”
“Bastard.”
He stood up and she saw that he was a little taller than her. Six foot. Slender and not an athlete. He looked like a sloucher. He wasn’t muscular like Doug. Older. There was a faint frosting of gray at his temples she hadn’t noticed before.
She forced herself to keep her eyes off his groin. Not this time. This was just a nice guy and she had way more man problems than she could handle right now.
“Seriously. I’m in no shape to do anything – even harmless flirting. If you’re interested in more....”
He stepped around his desk and grabbed a briefcase.
“I’m a writer, Professor Bascomb. A human sponge. People are my business. You sound like an interesting person. Who knows, I might put you into my next book. Make you immortal.”
He grinned at her as he gestured for her to precede him out the door.
“I’m not blind, by the way, or dead. You have to know how you affect men so I hope you don’t mind if I ogle you a little bit. But this is purely a little social outing. A coffee. Nothing more.”
She hated it, but she found herself tingling a little bit where she didn’t want to tingle. Having a vagina was such a bitch at times.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 – 4 P.M.
She lay in a puddle of my semen. I probably wouldn’t be able to come up with a teaspoonful over the next month, but it had been worth it. She rubbed her asshole and winced.
“Damn, that was worth it, but I will be walking funny for a week. I did tell you that my ass was my best feature. You obviously agree.”
I kissed the aforementioned ass and bit it gently. She giggled, an incredibly sexy sound from such a sophisticated looking female.
“I would say the proof is all over you, pretty lady.”
She rolled to me and kissed me again. I was getting addicted to those kisses.
“I love this, but I have to get back for a few hours. We can have a private dinner tonight, if you’d like.”
“I’d like.”
She showered and dressed while I lay sprawled on the big red bed.
She had almost made it to the door when I asked her, “How do you do this, Aline?”
She didn’t even look back at me.
“What?”
“When you see Philippe again. How does the woman you are now become his loving wife again? I know people do it all the time, but I’ve never been able to figure out how? I never did this, but if I had, I know she would have taken one look at me and known.”
She walked back and sat on the bed beside me.
“Because Philippe knows. He’s always known. Just as I know without his saying a word to me what he’s done. You can live with it if you know it going in. I know you don’t understand, but it works for us.”
She grabbed my shoulder and pulled me toward her.
“Remember what I said. Don’t think about it. There is no Philippe. There is no Debbie. Our lives back there don’t exist. We are Aline and Bill, and we live in this moment. The moment will end, but everything ends. I want nothing in the world at this moment but to be with you. Can’t you accept that?”
“I guess I have to, Aline. I know this is way too fucking serious, but I wish I had met you first. I still love her and I love my kids, but right now, in this moment, I wish I had met you somehow 20 years ago.”
She kissed me hard. She was crying.
“Please don’t do this. For me.”
When she pulled back I said, “Alright. For right now there is no Philippe. And no Debbie. No life for either of us to go back to.”
But when she left I knew I was lying.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 – 4:30 P.M.
“That’s a...sad story. But marriages end. All the time in this country. It used to be that people stayed together for a lifetime and put up with whatever crap they had to put up with. Today, we expect to get more from marriage and if we’re not getting it, we look for a better marriage.”
She sipped her cappuccino, so dry there was only a hint of coffee, just the way she liked it.
“It wasn’t the ending. It was the way it ended. I hurt his pride. I know it killed him to see me with Doug that way, even though we weren’t having an affair. God, I wish he hadn’t caught us there and – got the idea we were intimate.”
Clint sipped his cappuccino and licked the white foam off his lips.
“That hurt, but that wasn’t what hurt him to the soul, Debbie. Men can accept, can live with physical infidelity. A lot of times they can take back a woman that’s been with another man. Especially if they don’t actually see the sex.
“When you see it, it’s a lot harder to get by. But, when a woman you love tells you that she doesn’t love you any more...that’s the kiss of death.”
She shook her head and looked down at the table.
“I can’t believe I just told you all of this about my life. You’re a virtual stranger. How do you do that?”
“I told you, I’m a writer. I’m good at getting people’s stories.”
She sipped at her drink, taking in more steamed milk than coffee.
“So, Mr. Story Teller, what is your story?”
“Not fair to turn the tables on your host.
”
“I showed you mine....now show me yours.”
He stirred his drink with a straw, sipped and stared out the parking lot at busy Beach Boulevard. Rush hour traffic was beginning either back to Jacksonville or to the Jacksonville Beaches at the other end of the highway.
“I was a reporter about 20 years ago, working for a small newspaper in Palatka, about fifty miles south of here. I was writing the first novel that would let me break away from newspapers and spend my full-time writing. And I was married to a Most Beautiful Lady.
“That’s why I understand and sympathize with your story. Elise was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. She’d grown up beautiful and every man who saw her wanted her.
“I wound up marrying her, oddly enough, because I was good with words. A literate, educated man can woo a woman. Words can work magic. And I wasn’t too hard on the eyes back then. But...”
“Isn’t there always a ‘but’?”
“Yes. A man can’t hold a woman that beautiful. There were always too many guys after her. I suspected her of affairs, even caught her in a few, but I kept forgiving her and taking her back.
“One of the last lovers was a professional football player, ex-pro actually because he couldn’t resist betting on his own games and snorting stuff up his nose that he shouldn’t have. But he still had money from his pro career and he wangled a job at Palatka High School as a coach.
“The last night I ever saw her I purposefully came home early from work and caught her getting ready to go out with him. I tried to stop her and he beat me unconscious.
“The last words I ever heard from her were that I was a disappointment...not big enough, in height or penis size, not rich and not able to match her boyfriend in bed. She told me she was going to file for divorce the next week.”
He continued stirring his coffee.
“That’s rough. I wasn’t that bad. How long have you been divorced?”
“Widowed. They were crossing the St. Johns River to East Palatka when the car he was driving veered into the path of an oil tanker trucker. He was drinking or high or maybe just messing with her. Both vehicles went up. The explosion could be heard for miles around.”
“There wasn’t enough left to identify the bodies, but the accident occurred only twenty minutes after they left me and they found a wallet with her ID a half mile away on the river bank where the force of the explosion had sent it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I hated her guts afterward, of course. She’d torn my heart out. But, over time, that hatred dissipated. I realized that it was her beauty, and the reaction men had to it, that had crippled her emotionally. I think she got to the point that the only affection she could accept was for her physical beauty. I loved her for who she was and I think that simply made her contemptuous of me.”
He finished his drink and sat silently for a minute.
“That’s probably the reason why I was intrigued by you. You’re another very beautiful woman, but has it brought you happiness?”
“Can’t you see how happy I am, how well my life is going?”
He reached out and grabbed her hand in his.
“I know it seems pretty bad right now, but you’re tough. I can read that in you. And you’re gorgeous, which while it might cause problems, is a double-edged sword. I think you can use it.
“People do pick themselves up and go on. When I came to and they told me what had happened to my wife, I was shattered. But I put my head down, wrote my first novel, got out of Palatka and never looked back.”
He picked up the briefcase and unsnapped it. He pulled a paperback out and took a pen out of his shirt pocket. He wrote in the inside front page and pushed it over to her.
The cover showed a cowboy sitting astride a horse facing a river. A dark-haired woman stood on the other side of the river.
“It was my first novel and my first success. ‘Horseman, Ride On By.’ They made a decent little movie out of it that got me independent. It’s a western, but you might like it. It might take your mind off things. Read it and let me know sometime what you think of it. Here, here’s my cell phone number.”
Driving home from one of the worst days of her life, she realized she felt better. She didn’t know why, but talking with Clint Abbott had raised her spirits. Even though she didn’t care for westerns, she knew she’d read it.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 – 7 P.M.
Aline and I sat at a table by ourselves. The restaurant was almost full, but we had a table for six to ourselves. I was going to have to do some serious working out after this cruise because the lack of appetite that had afflicted me for three and a half months had vanished on this trip. I didn’t know if it was the cruise, the sea air, French cuisine or Aline. Probably the latter.
Just sitting beside her at that table, crisp linen and the smell of white wine and French dishes mixing with her perfume made me feel young. I hadn’t felt this young in a long, long time.
I felt like I was on a date again and even though I had had this woman’s body in almost every way a man could have a woman, there was still a newness to it, and a suspense as to what would happen at the end of the date.
It had been a lifetime since I’d known that feeling. It was the difference between dating and being married. No matter how much in love you were, when you were married that suspense was not there.
The suspense – the not knowing – was what made meeting a new woman special. I had thought I never wanted to experience that feeling again.
She leaned over next to me and forked a thin slice of Charolais beef in a mustard sauce and held it out to me. I opened and let her feed me. A drop of mustard sauce escaped and she caught in on her finger and I licked it off.
I refused to remember the way Debbie had fed Doug at the UNF fete. But I couldn’t help it.
It took us about an hour to finish. I had worked out an hour earlier in the day and I would have tonight, but I doubted I’d have the time to visit the gym tonight.
“I have a few errands to run, mon cher, but I will try to be back in the room in an hour or two. I will miss you.”
She didn’t kiss me because even here people could see us, but she put a finger to my lips. It was a lover’s gesture.
When she left I sat at the table sipping at a cup of French coffee. I’d always known that French coffee is strong, not as bitter as Cuban but strong. In Paris, Philippe had a barmaid demonstrate how coffee is brewed in a cafetière or French press.
It took me a month back in the U.S. before American coffee stopped tasting like water with a coffee flavoring. French coffee is coffee with balls.
Captain Martel sat down beside me and said, “You are an admirer of French coffee. Most Americans take some time to develop a taste for it. Aline said you had visited Paris?”
“I am an admirer of many things French, Captain.”
He smiled, “Aline is a lovely woman.”
I just nodded.
“I am happy that you two are friends. Anyone can see that you are...a lonely man...and Aline....”
“I don’t think she could ever have been lonely, Captain. You have a lot of beautiful women on this ship, but she’s in a class by herself.”
“She is a beautiful woman, but life on this ship with all the people coming and going can be lonely. You know that she has smiled more in the last two days than I can remember.”
“It doesn’t bother you that she’s a married woman, and fairly open about ...us.”
The captain looked at me and smiled.
“That’s the reason we French and many others think of you Americans, despite your wealth and power, as being childlike, naïve. It’s the difference in our world views, I think, our religious views. You come from a Protestant world view – you are either saved or lost, evil or good.
“We come from the Catholic world view. The Catholic church believes we are all fallible, creatures of God but also creatures of flesh, constantly striving and constantly failing.”
He gr
abbed the bottle of white wine that still was a third full and poured two fingers into an empty snifter. He took a good sip.
“Men and women, Mr. Maitland, are going to find each other; are going to make love to each other. It’s as simple as hunger, as thirst. It’s an appetite. It can happen when couples are separated by distance, or it can happen when you’re living under the same roof. People do have affairs, fall in love with other people. It has always been thus.”
He set his glass on the table.
“I have been married for 38 years. I love my wife and our four children dearly, but I have lived at sea our entire married life. I was a sailor when I met her. We have spent far more time apart than we have together. I treasure our time together.
“But, I know she has not been faithful...in a physical sense. She has been discreet. I have had suspicions but I have never known who she has been with. Our children may suspect, but they don’t know and don’t ask. She has never embarrassed me. Our children look like me and they carry...certain traits which make me certain they are mine.
“But even if they weren’t, they are the children of my heart.”
He shrugged.
“For my part, I am a man and I have appetites. I have to be careful because of my position, but I haven’t been a monk, and I don’t expect any more of my crew than I expect of myself.”
He looked at me again.
“I don’t know if that horrifies or disgusts you, but it is the truth. I think of myself as a good man. In every important way I have been true to my wife. I have been careful never to endanger her health. I cherish her and when the time comes I hope to be buried beside her...but...”
I could only shake my head.
“I understand what you’re saying, but you’re right. We come from two different worlds.”
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 – 8 P.M.
She was finishing grading essays when she heard the front door open and a car pulling out of the driveway.
“BJ?”
“It’s me, Mom.”
“Have you eaten? I have a half a lasagna in the microwave.”
“Nah, I had a pizza at Bobby’s.”
The Long Fall Page 45
