by Pamela Morsi
Quint dragged Letty away to his room for some fantasy fencing. Erica put together a salad. The house was small enough that she could hear every thrust of the sword as her son vocalized, “Take that, you scoundrel!”
To which her sister responded with a pirate’s “Argh!” The noise of battle went on uninterrupted and was finally joined by the sound of Tom’s pickup in the driveway. He came in through the garage door into the kitchen and kissed his wife on the top of her head.
“Do I have time for a shower?”
“If you make it quick,” Erica told him.
He winked at her by way of agreement and then called out a hello to Letty as he went down the hallway.
Alone in the kitchen with the warmth of the meat loaf just out of the oven, Erica smiled to herself.
Life is good, she thought. She had a healthy, happy child and a great marriage. They weren’t rich, but they weren’t living in dread of their mortgage payment. She had a job she liked, the closeness of a dear sister, and even her mom was better than no mom at all. Life was very good, and she wanted to hang on to these ordinary moments that made up so much of that.
“Ta-da!”
Erica looked up to see Letty blocking the dining room doorway. “For your enlightenment and edification, may I present, the one, the only, Quintasma the Magnificent!”
She stepped aside to reveal Erica’s adorable son, clad in a sparkly shawl from the back of her closet and a weird headdress made from plastic dinosaurs chained together with pipe cleaners.
“I am Quintasma,” he announced. “And I can read your mind.”
“Really? What am I thinking?”
Quint placed index fingers on each of his temples and closed his eyes to take a deep, dramatic breath.
“You are thinking that we need to wash our hands before we sit down to dinner,” he announced.
“OMG! Alert the media,” Erica responded. “My son is psychic. And also very cute.” She tweaked his cheek.
“Please, ma’am, I’m thinking so hard that my brain might explode. And that would be very bad and a big mess.”
“Yes, it would. Brains everywhere.”
“Brains everywhere?” Tom said as he walked up, looking clean and neat in jeans and a sports shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. “That sounds like my wife’s side of the family.”
“Your son can now read minds,” Erica told him.
Tom raised an eyebrow and then bent forward, pressing his forehead against his son’s. “What am I thinking?” he asked.
“That you’re hungry,” Quint answered.
“You can read my mind!”
His declaration of incredulity was so well faked, Quint was compelled to confess the truth.
“Not really, Dad. It’s just that you’re always hungry when you get home from work.”
“You’re very smart to figure that out,” Tom said. “And, really, it’s better to be smart than to read people’s minds.”
“You think so?”
His father nodded. “What people are thinking is sometimes so confused, they don’t even understand it themselves.”
The women at the table laughed in agreement. Quint joined in with a giggle as well.
Erica spooned out generous servings of meat loaf and salad. The conversation was lively. They listened to Letty’s stories of life at school. Quint had a couple of those as well. His mostly involved who jumped the highest, ran the fastest or threw the farthest. He had to be encouraged not to get up and demonstrate.
When they were finished, Letty began gathering the plates.
“I can do that,” Erica said.
“No you can’t. Quint and I are on cleanup. Go get ready for your romantic rendezvous with your husband.”
Erica shook her head, but as she passed Tom’s chair he grasped her arm. With a glance toward the kitchen, making sure Quint and Letty were out of hearing distance, he whispered, “Why don’t you put in your diaphragm?”
Tom whistled appreciably as Erica walked into the living room. He watched her smooth down the sides of her short, black dress, which looked even shorter in impossibly high heels.
“It’s a little tight,” she said apologetically.
“Tight is good,” Tom told her.
“You look beautiful, Mom,” Quint agreed. He and Letty were seated cross-legged on the floor playing slapjack and crazy eights.
“It fits fine,” Letty assured her sister. “Not your usual, but a dash of hotness never hurts.”
Erica laughed as if the suggestion was incredulous. For Tom it went without saying. His wife was hot. Not in the slutty outward way of some, but in that simmering-beneath-the-surface kind of way that made a guy just desperate to get his mitts on her.
There were kisses and hugs for Quint and promises not to be too late. Tom wrapped his arm around her waist as they headed out.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise.”
She grinned at him. “I love surprises.”
He escorted her to the passenger side of his truck. Tom was feeling very lucky. His wife looked great. She smelled great. She was irresistible. As he opened the door with his right hand, he casually allowed his left to slide down to the generous curve of her backside.
“Have I told you how crazy I am about this butt?” he asked her.
She laughed. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned it lately,” she answered. “But you have shown some fondness for it in the past.”
He patted it affectionately. “It’s better now than when I married you.”
Erica shook her head in denial. “It’s certainly bigger now, but I think better may be up for debate.”
“Just easier for me to get my hands on.”
He gave her an exaggerated leering expression, complete with tongue hanging out.
She giggled at him.
Tom closed her door and rounded the truck to get in behind the steering wheel. Carefully he pulled out of the driveway and headed up the street. He reached out to clasp her wrist.
“Come over here, closer to me,” he said.
Erica scooted across the Ford’s bench seat to sit beside him. The move edged the hem of her skirt higher and he couldn’t resist slipping a hand between her thighs.
“That’s much better,” he said.
At the stoplight at Zarzamora, he kissed her. It wasn’t his typical husbandly peck, but rather a full-throttle, pedal-to-the-metal, I-can’t-get-enough-of-you, kiss.
When their lips parted,she sighed into his neck and it pulsed through him pleasurably.
A honk from the vehicle behind them prompted Tom to get his eyes back on the road and his foot back on the accelerator.
Erica leaned her head against his shoulder.
“You make me feel like a teenager,” she told him.
Tom grinned at her as he moved his hand higher on her thigh. “Can I feel you up like a teenager?”
She laughed. “Not in traffic.”
When he turned onto West Avenue, Erica questioned him.
“Are we stopping by the shop?”
“I want to show you the Buick,” he said. “You won’t believe how great it looks.”
Her token agreement was a bit lackluster, but Tom was certain that was because she just hadn’t seen the car. Still, he tried in words to do it justice.
“Even the finish is good on it,” he said. “And 1956 was before they’d invented clear coat. They were just covering lead enamel with lacquer.”
She nodded absently.
“The convertible top is in excellent shape,” Tom continued. “Not a lot of sun damage or cracks. I’ll be able to just clean it up and apply some protectant.”
“Uh-huh,” Erica responded.
“And I think I’ll be able to get the original engine in top shape,” he said. “It’s going to be a collector’s dream.”
“Great,” she said as she managed to pull out a smile for his enthusiasm.
Tom drove in through the gate, making sure that
it was securely locked behind them and getting the lights on before he ushered her inside.
“I just knew you had to see this,” he told her.
Tom led her back through the shop to the fourth bay where the two-tone blue Buick sat with its hood up. He switched on the hanging utility light, which exposed the well-aged V-8. He leaned over it and sighed with pleasure before glancing back at his wife.
“Come have a look,” he told her.
Erica took one step forward, but maintained her distance.
“I don’t want to get grease on my dress,” she said.
Tom nodded. “Oh yeah, right. Of course not,” he said. “Come have a look at the interior.”
He walked around and opened the driver’s door for her. Erica peered in and then glanced up with a smile.
“It’s very nice, Tom. How did the owner keep it in such good shape?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know if it was all good luck or all good care, but she sure did great.”
Erica was bent forward from the waist and Tom allowed his gaze to drift from the Buick’s well-preserved upholstery to the curve of his wife’s backside and the length of her bare legs.
“Let’s try out the backseat,” he said.
He flipped the seat forward before taking her hand. Stepping inside, he urged her to follow. Erica slid in beside him, running her hand along the decorative V of upholstery.
“Nice,” she said. “I wonder why vinyl doesn’t feel like this anymore?”
“Maybe it ages like good wine.” Tom deliberately softened his voice, making it velvety and, he hoped, seductive.
“It’s really roomy in here,” she said.
With a sigh of pleasure he pulled her into his arms. “It’s a 127-inch wheelbase,” he whispered.
She made a noise, but whatever she intended to say was lost when his lips came down on hers. Still, the slight sweet sound deep in her throat was easy for Tom to interpret.
His wife was a great kisser. Tom was never sure exactly what made that so. It wasn’t as if she had some unique process or unusual lips. It was something else entirely. It was as if she brought her entire being, all her emotions—sexual, intellectual, nurturing—to this one place and lavished them upon him.
“Oh, baby,” he moaned against her neck.
Her answer was a sweet, breathy sigh.
He pulled her into his lap and sat her nice round butt right atop the ache in the front of his trousers.
She wiggled a little bit, giggling, and then she kissed him again.
His fingers found their way to the zipper at the back of her dress, and he quickly drew it down past her waist.
“Tom!”
Her near breathless call of alarm as their lips parted only encouraged him.
He pulled the little black dress down on her arms, exposing a tiny bit of a bra that had clear plastic straps and the thinnest layer of sheer black fabric, through which her nipples were visible. He covered one with his mouth.
She was wiggling again, but this time it seemed not so much to entice him as to move away.
“Tom! What are you doing?”
He gave her nipple a naughty nip before pulling away to answer.
“Honey, I need to test the suspension on this old Buick,” he teased. “And I warn you, we’re going to need to do some serious up and down before I can come...to any serious conclusion.”
“Tom!”
“So what do you think? Let’s work on those shocks and struts. I want to check the bushing for random vibration.”
He slid the tight skirt up around her waist and was pulling down her panties when the panic in Erica’s voice penetrated.
“Stop!”
He did so immediately. “What?” he asked.
“We can’t have sex in somebody else’s car,” she said.
“Sure we can. The shop door is locked. It’s as private here as in our own bedroom.”
“But this is not our own bedroom,” she pointed out firmly. “This is the backseat of some stranger’s car.”
Tom shook off her concern. “The owner will never know. I doubt seriously if she’d care, and she probably has nice memories of this backseat herself.”
“That is not the point,” Erica said as she moved off his lap and began straightening her clothes. “We are not crazy teenagers at some lover’s lane. We are...we are responsible parents. We don’t go around having sex in other people’s cars.”
“Just because we’re grown-ups doesn’t mean we have to be boring.”
“Are you saying there is something boring about having sex with me at home?”
Tom recognized a slippery slope when he saw one. “There is nothing boring about having sex with you anywhere,” he assured her. “I just...I just like this car a lot and thought it might be fun to...try it out a little on this well-aged upholstery.”
Erica shook her head. “I don’t mind making out a little, but I am not having sex in some stranger’s car. It’s just gross, Tom.”
His disappointment was bigger than sexual, but he didn’t want to whine.
“Okay,” he said. “You want to go catch a movie or something?”
“We don’t have to,” she replied quickly. “I mean, if you want to hang out back here, have a few kisses, I think that’s okay.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine. We had a few kisses. Come on, I’ll take you to a movie.”
With some reluctance, she agreed.
However, they’d missed all the seven-o’clock showings, and if they hung around till the nine-o’clocks, they’d really get in too late. So Tom took her to a dimly lit bar where the place was filled with mostly singles on the lookout for each other. After consuming a beer, they ventured out onto the tiny dance floor. The DJ played a slow, romantic tune and Erica snuggled up close to him, wrapped her arms around his neck. He knew she felt bad about turning him down. It was a rare occasion when that happened. When she said she had a headache, he knew she must really have one. It was fine and she was right. If she didn’t feel comfortable about having sex in a client’s car, then the sex wouldn’t have been that good anyway. Still, rejection felt like rejection. He didn’t like it.
The thing about loving her, however, was that even things he didn’t like, the things she did that drove him crazy, paled in comparison to what he saw as his great luck in finding Erica and getting her to marry him.
In the dim blue and green lights of the dance floor, she pressed herself next to him and laid her cheek against his chest.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“Me, too,” Tom answered.
Their romantic history had included only a minimum number of noisy bars and crowded dance floors. Before meeting Erica, he’d been very involved in the San Antonio nightclubbing scene for a couple of years. His “dating” life, if you could call it that, involved having a few drinks and hooking up with a woman who’d had a few of her own.
It was a crazy time, working all day and partying all night. He and Cliff were both running up the score, buying condoms by the gross and screwing everything that moved. After a while, all the girls at the bars looked familiar. Their names ran together in his head. A woman would wave him over, and he’d couldn’t remember if she was the giver of a great blow job or the one he’d bent over the bumper of her BMW.
Tom deliberately kept Erica away from that. He didn’t want anyone to see her as his latest conquest. In truth, he didn’t want anyone to see her at all. He wanted Erica all to himself. He wasn’t sure exactly how to do that. But he went for quiet restaurants, moonlit parks and darkened movie theaters. They’d held hands and he’d talked softly and he’d kept his desire for her in check. Desperately he had wanted to make love to her. But even more desperately, he’d wanted her to be in love...with him.
It wasn’t until he’d met her, until he’d seen himself in the reflection of her eyes, that he saw his party life for what it had been. His own version of the rudderless existence that he’d grown up in. That was not what h
e wanted. He wanted this. Solid. Stable. Substantive. For Tom, that was what was truly seductive.
“Future view,” Erica said, interrupting his memories to get his predictions. “One year from tonight.”
He grinned down at her. “One year from tonight, huh.” “Yep.”
“Well, with Quint, our budget and our schedules, it might very well be the next time I take you out dancing.”
She laughed and then shook her head with resignation. “You might be right.”
“Maybe next year, we’ll get out early enough to make the movie,” she said.
He nodded. “Or perhaps this time next year I’ll be smart enough to stay at home with you.”
“Oh?”
“The floor will be a lot less crowded and we’ll have the option of dancing naked.”
“When you look at me that way,” Erica whispered, “I feel naked.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 4
THE NEXT MORNING, a couple of inches of gray, soapy water covered the laundry room floor, and it was beginning to flow into the kitchen.
“Mom said a bad word,” Quint announced gravely to Letty as she stumbled into the kitchen, her hair still tousled from sleep.
“Oh, yeah? I didn’t think your mom knew any bad words,” Letty told him.
Erica shot her sister a look for the snide comment. “Sorry, sweetie,” she said to her son. “I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”
“It’s okay,” Quint assured his mom. “Cody Raza says a lot worse.”
That was not exactly good news.
“Could you go play quietly in your room for a few minutes?” Erica suggested. “And I’ll clean up this mess.”
The little boy sighed and then complained to his aunt.
“She said the bad word, but I’m the one who has to go to my room.”
“Just go, Quint, before you hear me say something else.” Letty ruffled his hair as he passed, then grinned at her sister.
