He pulled the zippers on my boots and gently slid the footwear from my feet. He cradled my bare feet in his big hands. Oh. Felt good. The next zipper to be pulled down was on my cutoffs. He tossed the shorts into the corner and the pants made a loud clanking sound when they landed. I had to laugh.
“What was that?”
“Rhett’s present for Audie.”
My tee shirt went next, then my bra. I felt happy that I had put on some of my still almost new looking underwear. I have plenty that looks worn, faded and pinned together. Thank Heavens it was the good panties and the good bra, although I doubt Joe would have noticed what I was wearing. He seemed intent on what was under all that stuff. He tore off his own tee and jeans and I wanted the man. His body told me he felt the same.
We spent the night making up for any lost time we might have imagined. I was mad for the man and he for me. Sweet, tantalizing, alluring. Every movement brought us even closer together.
By morning we were both sound asleep and limp with love. There was only one bad thing about the whole wonderful scene. He had marriage on his mind and he mentioned it several times.
I told him I’d think about it. And, in the meantime, we could keep working together and playing together and doing other really great things together. Maybe I’d marry him, maybe not. It was just that I wasn’t yet ready to slip back into the bonds of matrimony. He said he understood and he accepted my decision… for the time being.
I have to say that now life looks good to me. Lots of new choices to make. Many new roads to follow. Life is opening up for me. Who knows where my new independence will lead? Joe even agreed that I should do as I pleased, that he’ll go along with my wishes, that so far as he is concerned I need never marry again nor put on another pair of pantyhose, either. Now that’s true freedom, folks.
FLIRTING AT FIFTY
by Jackie King
Jackie King is a full time writer who lives alone in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She survived a divorce much like the one described in FLIRTING AT FIFTY and like her fictional character is supported by a strong network of friends and family. She studied journalism at the University of Oklahoma and has published a number of short stories about women and women’s problems. She has also sold articles. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Oklahoma Writers Federation, Oklahoma Mystery Writers, and Tulsa Night Writers. Visit her web site: www.jacqking.com
Chapter 1
“I went on two first dates with my ex-husband.” I glanced at my best friends and sister-royalty seated at our Roundtable gathering, keeping my face faux-serious.
“Come now, Queen Kate. Explain how that’s possible.” Pamela Walters, HRM Queen of the Kingdom of Sexuality, popped a potato chip into her mouth and crunched.
I grinned at her rapturous expression. There’s nothing like the forbidden pleasure of salt and fat to put a smile on your face. Unless you can figure some way to add refined sugar. But that’s the advantage of being royalty, even once a week. A charter rule requires that all food brought to meetings be unhealthy, fattening, and soul-satisfying. After all, if you can’t pig out, what’s the use of being Queen of Something-Or-Other?
My friends focused on me without pausing a beat in their gluttony. At the Roundtable of the most Royal Women, AKA 3332 East 4th Street, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we ate, we laughed, we gossiped, and most important, we told each other the truth. One night a week we were totally honest and took turns telling men-related war stories. Since I was the newest divorcee and probably the most scarred, I sometimes held court until the wee hours of the morning.
But this was the first time I’d told them about going on my husband’s first date with his girlfriend. It could only happen to me.
“A few months before Garry Ray moved out that first time, he took Bambi to Mayfest. I’m pretty sure it was their first date, and I did indeed tag along.” I took a deep breath. “His first date with me was a Coke at the corner drugstore when I was a senior in high school.” I paused a minute, concentrating hard not to grind my teeth. The memory infuriated me, but I was determined to keep a smile on my face as I told the absurd tale.
“Garry Ray spent a good deal more money on the second first date, of course.” I smiled a grim sort of smile, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t madder than a stepped-on cat. The Royalty, of course, knew my true feelings.
“Your husband invited you along?”
This was from Carmen O’Fallan, our youngest member and Her Royal Highness of New Beginnings. So named because she had been married and divorced four times. I don’t think I’ve even dated that many guys, since I had married my high school sweetheart. All eyes turned toward her with a pity-smile. Everyone else guessed what was coming.
I paused a minute to peruse a Godiva chocolate. My brain told me the calories would catch up with my hips by next week. But tonight was magic. I was Queen of some yet unnamed kingdom. I picked a dark chocolate truffle before continuing. Just gazing at the delicacy made me happier.
“I didn’t exactly get invited. I just sort of refused not to be included, which when I think about it, is very like me.” I bit into the chocolate, closed my eyes and let the flavor melt. Heavenly.
“That means the jerk was still married to you at the time.” Pamela flipped her hair away from her face with a fluid movement, and silky blond hair fanned the air before settling back into a perfect coiffure. When I try that, my hair just falls into my face.
I haven’t decided on my royal name yet. I keep thinking of different realms, then rejecting them. The other Queens have been on my case about this. But I don’t want to be queen of just any kingdom. I want it to be something special. All of this nonsense flitted through my brain as I answered Pamela’s question about Garry Ray.
“You’re right. We were still married. I’m not sure how I get myself into these situations. Garry Ray came home from school and told me a group of teachers was going to Mayfest. Without taking a breath he said he knew that I wouldn’t care to join them because I didn’t like that sort of thing.” Garry Ray was principal at a local high school and socializing with his staff was something new for my formerly stick-in-the-mud husband.
“Then you told him that you loved Mayfest and there was nothing you’d like better than going along.” The seductively plump Magda Fleming, Her Royal Highness of Artistic Fulfillment, hovered over a bowl of onion dip with a fistful of Doritos.
“You know me too well.” I faked a smile. Then like a drowning woman I saw the whole pitiful mess flash through my mind and I told my friends the story as if I were rehashing a movie:
* * *
“Mayfest sounds fun,” I had said to Garry Ray on that bright spring afternoon. “You’re the one who hates festivals. You don’t like crowds.”
He mumbled something I didn’t quite catch. I have a hearing loss in my left ear.
“Pardon me?”
Once upon a time I would have simply said “Huh?” but those days were about five years past. You get really polite with your spouse when a marriage is in trouble. Even if you’re in major denial about the seriousness of the problems, as I was. Your subconscious kicks in and you put on company manners.
“There will be a lot of walking.” Garry Ray avoided making eye contact. In the past year he had developed a fascination for the Purina Cat Chow calendar on the kitchen wall.
“Great. I love to walk.” I found my gaze slewing to the same calendar and studied the gray-striped tabby, looking wise and tidy with her feet tucked under her and the whole cat-package encircled by her tail. Exactly like my own Purrl who at that moment was resting at my feet. This wall-fascination would be great fodder for the shrinks. Calendar based conversation.
I didn’t need calendar-wisdom to know that Garry Ray didn’t want me to go to Mayfest, but I truly misunderstood the reason. I thought it was because of the weight I’d gained during the stress of my mother’s illness and our son Zack’s experimentation with drugs. I knew Garry Ray was ashamed of his
then tubby wife. I was a bit ashamed of myself, but couldn’t seem to get my nervous nibbling under control. That was a time when, looking back, I couldn’t remember eating anything. It seemed like a period of famine. In my head I lost about thirty pounds, in reality I gained them. But now, with Garry Ray out of my life (even though still not quite out of my head) and Zack once again on the straight-and-narrow, the pounds were fast disappearing. Even with a once a week cheat night.
Overweight and all, I did my best to look fetching for Mayfest. Decked out in my bright yellow T-shirt, Wal-Mart jeans and cotton blazer; with hair curled, poofed and sprayed, and makeup carefully applied, I decided I didn’t look half bad. There’s no reason big women can’t be as sexy as the skinny ones, I decided. Sexier, maybe, because we tried harder.
It was a wonderful balmy spring evening and I was thrilled to be going anywhere. We were supposed to meet the others by the fountains on the downtown mall at seven. No one appeared until about seven-fifteen when Bambi showed up wearing designer jeans and a skimpy red tank top. Bambi stood about five feet two with eyes of blue, blond hair, and vermilion colored acrylic nails. She possessed a hard sort of glamour. The kind, I thought, that you find in bars. In other words, she looked snazzier than I did and it ticked me off.
Her shoes were exactly like some I had tried on and almost bought. I remember being glad I hadn’t. Usually I could care less if every woman in town wore exactly the same outfit as me, but that night the shoes caused an uneasy stirring somewhere in my gut. As I said, my subconscious works well; it’s my conscious mind that slips into denial.
“How nice to see you.” I smiled and extended my hand. Reluctantly Bambi offered me a limp palm, seeming uncomfortable with the hand shaking bit. I gave her a bright little smile in an attempt to put her at ease. “We were beginning to wonder if we had gotten the time wrong.”
The “we” was from habit. I was the one who was wondering. Garry Ray was standing as far away from me as he could. Hoping no doubt, that no one would suspect we were acquainted, much less married.
Bambi seemed flustered. I wondered about her nervousness, but some people get antsy over forgetting to put out their trash. I remembered a friend who had quit breast feeding her baby because of what she called a personal crisis.
“What crisis?” I had asked because the word crisis always stirred sympathy in my heart.
“We had to visit my parents out of town,” she answered, her eyes large with the strain of the event.
“Oh,” I said. A crisis for me was the police at the door with my teenaged son, or my mother in the emergency room with an uncontrollable angina attack.
So I dismissed Bambi’s malaise and listened to her ramble on about driving her MG sports car downtown, parking it on the street to save money (this with a woeful glance at Garry Ray) and walking five blocks to find us.
I made phony sympathetic noises. Garry Ray perked up and started small talk about the festival. We all admired the fountains for a short spell while “waiting for the others to join us.”
“Well, my goodness,” Bambi finally said with a strained little laugh. “I guess no one else is going to be able to make it.”
“You know how it is, everyone’s so busy. Guess they all had something else come up,” Garry Ray chorused in agreement, his own laugh equally phony.
Now today I would have caught on to this scenario when he insisted that I didn’t want to come along, but in those days I was sweet and naïve. Well, naive anyway. So I believed others had been expected, which was pretty dumb, even for me. And, believe it or not, I had a good time on their date. But then I’ve always been easy to entertain.
We wandered through various exhibits, one of them filled with lovely hand-made pottery. I didn’t have any money to spend, but I picked up a piece to admire, delighting in its touch and bright colors.
“I’ve always hated pottery,” Bambi said, making it sound like a virtue. “I’ve never understood people’s fascination with pieces of dried dirt.”
“I don’t like pottery either,” Garry Ray said. That was news to me. “Are you going to buy the painting you liked, Bambi?”
“What painting?” I asked. We hadn’t looked at any paintings. I set a small, hand-thrown pot back on the shelf. I adore pottery and longed for this particular piece. But the price wasn’t in my budget.
“I picked one out last night,” Bambi said. “I come to Mayfest every night when it’s on. I thrive on the artistic environment.”
Garry Ray’s expression told me that was what interesting women did with their free time.
Last night I had visited my mother in the assisted living complex where she lived. I’d also cooked supper, balanced our checkbook, washed a load of clothes, keyed ten pages into the computer for Sharon’s biology term paper, and hemmed a skirt for Jeannie’s drill team costume. Garry Ray had said he was working late.
We wandered toward food vendors set up on the lawns beside the Performing Arts Center and I lusted after the strawberry shortcake I saw people eating. Whipped cream frothed five inches above ripe, luscious looking strawberries on a slice of cake and the sight made my mouth water. I wanted a piece as soon as I spotted the decadent-looking confection.
“Anyone interested in strawberry shortcake?” I asked with a mixture of timidity and hopefulness.
“None for me,” Bambi said. “I only eat one meal a day.”
“That’s all I eat, too” I quipped. “But the meal starts when I get up and lasts until I go to bed.” The words popped out of my mouth before I thought and went over like a banana split at a Weight Watcher’s meeting. Bambi’s gaze swept down my body and her expression screamed, “Pig!”
I hate it when I try for a joke and no one catches the humor, but instead thinks I’m serious.
“I’m off sweets.” Garry Ray said, telling a bold-faced lie.
“Made that resolution in the last hour, huh?” I asked. He’d had a Hershey bar and a Coke when he came home after school.
“I seldom eat sweets,” Garry Ray said, shooting daggers in my direction. That was another lie but I decided to let it pass. I hate fighting in public.
They each bought a beer, the first of many. I had lemonade, being pretty much of a non-drinker and the designated driver even if I’d had wine. I never liked taking the wheel with Garry Ray as a passenger. He critiqued my driving. I once asked, “Why do I have to drive when we’ve both had alcohol?”
“Because if you’re arrested for DUI it won’t matter. If I’m arrested it would be very embarrassing.”
“And I wouldn’t be embarrassed?” I countered. But he just ignored my argument. I thought about all of this while they drank their beer and then ordered another.
The strawberry shortcake seemed to be everywhere and was still calling my name, but I resisted, wondering why it was socially acceptable to swill seven thousand calories of beer but considered out of control to eat a six hundred calorie dessert.
We wandered through a maze of booths featuring various kinds of arts and crafts, some tacky, some quite fine.
Bambi remembered she had given the street vendor a twenty-dollar bill for her beer but had forgotten to ask for change. We headed back to the booth and Garry Ray argued with a bearded attendant wearing a dingy gray T-shirt, but to no avail. The money was gone. Later, when I remembered the evening, I rejoiced. Petty of me, but I take my victories wherever I can.
We sat on the green lawn and listened to blue grass music. I was well over forty and sitting on the grass wasn’t the lark it had once been. I envied the people who’d been wise enough to bring lawn chairs.
Garry Ray and Bambi had another beer and I finally got up the nerve to buy a strawberry shortcake, which wasn’t nearly as good as I anticipated, being too sweet and artificial tasting. There was also, of course, the shame of consuming the concupiscent pastry in the company of non-indulgers. Still, I bore the disgrace, the disappointment of the actual taste not equaling my imagined pleasure, and the consumption of what seemed a trill
ion calories, with what I hoped was a calm demeanor.
Garry Ray listened with rapt attention as the newly divorced Bambi rhapsodized about her two daughters, their superior intellect and wit, and the wonderful relationship the three of them shared. There was a false edge to the stories, and I wondered how the three of them fit in her two-seater car and what the real truth might be. Especially since the kids were nowhere in sight and this was a family event. I remember thinking she was the dullest woman I had ever met.
“I’d better be getting on home,” Bambi said about midnight.
“Walk with us to our car and we can drive you to yours,” I said.
“Oh, No. I’ll be fine.”
She avoided eye contact and I was surprised at the vehemence of her protest, although later I had to admit this is pretty much what I would have said if I were stalking the husband of a woman offering me kindness.
However, at my insistence we walked to our car parked under the Adam’s Mark Hotel and drove her to a jaunty MG sitting at the curb five blocks away.
* * *
Telling the story had taken its toll on my heart, but the royalty’s raucous laughter poured a healing balm over the pain that rushed back to torment me.
“That’s the most wonderful story I’ve ever heard,” Magda said. “Why haven’t you told us before?”
“I was saving it for dessert,” I said to make them laugh again.
“Have you decided on the name of your kingdom?” Pamela asked me. “You’ve got to be HRM of something.”
I shrugged. “Everything I think of either seems too hard or too banal. Give me another week to decide.”
Chik~Lit for Foxy Hens Page 13
