Chapter 12: The preacher’s daughter
In a land largely populated by pale-skinned Scandinavian stock she was a deeply tanned sun worshiper. So deep and natural were her mahogany good looks, set off by dark hair and lustrous deep-brown eyes, I first took her for Mediterranean or Mexican.
She was wearing jeans and cowboy boots the first time I spoke to her in an office-building elevator, going up to work. The boots argued Southwest. But when I said “nice boots” her reply dripped magnolias and mint juleps. She was Georgia-born and bred. The first of many surprises.
But beyond that single encounter, for a long time I had no real awareness of her. She worked in a restricted area, no public contact. On the other hand, public contact was my entire job. There matters might have rested but for softball. The co-ed softball team our agency fielded was a great equalizer. Division chiefs and junior clerks and everyone in between were on the team, where skill with a bat or glove or both was the common denominator.
Other employees came to watch the summer games. One game I performed rather well, if I do say so. Our scorekeeper came over to congratulate me. She introduced me to her friend: the dark lovely from the elevator, wearing slacks and tennis shoes instead of her boots. Her accent stirred almost atavistic memories of my Georgian roots. She said mine had been diluted by too much time away.
When the game was over her accent almost defeated me. She paused near me and I swear said “Bice beer?” I am sure I looked befuddled. The score-keeper interpreted: “Buy us a beer?” Named a nearby tavern. Oh. Zorba famously said God’s heart is not large enough to encompass a man called to a woman’s bed who does not go. I instantly expanded the idea to tavern invitations.
We drank a couple beers. The scorekeeper flirted mildly and so did the Georgian. Pleasant way to cool down after the ballgame. They left first — but the Georgian leaned in and said don’t go anywhere, I’ll be back. I thought that’s what she said.
The coach of our team, my thirty-something hunting buddy with a heavy drinking and womanizing habit, took her chair at the bar. Talk turned immediately to sex. A few seats down, a truly gorgeous woman tried to eavesdrop while pretending to read newspaper classifieds in the dim light. When my buddy went to the bathroom I leaned over and told her it would be dark soon. Nice smile. “What? What do you mean?”
“Well,” I said, “if you can read the small print in this light you must be a vampire waiting for nightfall. I thought I’d mention it.”
“How helpful of you!” She laughed and put the newspaper down. “Pretty original for a pickup line. But I thought the sunbed queen said she’d be back.” Eavesdropping for sure. My horn-dog buddy returned in time to hear.
“More the merrier,” he said grinning. “After all I’m here now.”
“So you are,” she said. “Let’s hear your line, now your friend’s broken the ice.” Quick on the uptake as well as gorgeous. He sat between us and commenced to flirt. She batted it right back, including me in the banter.
Well hell. The last thing he needed was help. He was smooth. And she seemed appreciative, but clever enough to keep me in the loop, which held him back somewhat. I stayed for a bit to enjoy the dynamic. But it really was getting on for dark and my commute wasn’t getting any shorter. I thought maybe the looker and I both misheard the tanned brunette, and got ready to go. “I probably should too,” my buddy said. She pouted prettily. He walked me to the door.
“Damn,” he said. “You had her. You really gonna pass? I’m supposed to be home already but damn. You gonna pass, I’m sticking around, see what happens.”
Bad call. When I visited his office next day he told me they had their heads together and she had her hand on his knee when his wife walked in.
About the only advantage of my long commute was insulation from that sort of thing. He hadn’t counted on that. Or his wife’s classic imitation of a fishwife, screaming and raging. And nothing happened! He was all wounded innocence. Stayed at his dad’s overnight to let her cool down. Good thing too because she called repeatedly, demanding to hear his voice. I said guess that takes care of the cute babe. “Nah,” he said. “She thought it was a riot. Seeing her later this week.”
A curious footnote was his wife’s sudden interest in softball. She attended every game and practice thereafter, sitting in her car — and knitting! I warned him about the knitting, envisioning tumbrels and Madame Defarge. He laughed it off until she changed locks on the garage, imprisoning his salmon-fishing boat and all tackle. Called 911 when he tried to break in to get his boat. They ended up divorced. All tracing back to my remark about vampires.
Those troubles were still in the future when I went back upstairs. The Georgia brunette,wearing her jeans and boots, was talking to my secretary, waiting to see me. Telling her about going to the game and that I played well. My secretary, dryly: “Yeah, thinks he’s hot stuff on a ball field.”
The Georgian followed me into my office. My visitor chairs were ancient oak with brass-studded leather seats shaped almost like a tractor seat. Or a saddle. She said saddle, and mounted one. I asked if she was a rider. She said all her girlhood.
She eased her cute butt back and forth, rubbing her Mons over the pommel-like swelling. “Almost like a saddle horn,” she drawled. “A gal needs to be careful not to pleasure herself by accident.”
Maybe my jaw dropped. She gave me a nice smile. Then apologized for not coming back to the tavern like she promised. She’d been riding with the scorekeeper and when she got home her husband had their car. “But,” she added, “I got the car today.” She offered to buy me a drink, because she had been awfully bored lately and I seemed like fun.
I spent most of my life missing signals from women interested in me. Always afraid to infer too much only to hear, in the immortal words of J. Alfred Prufrock, “That is not…what I meant at all.” But I figured an invitation for a drink was safe enough. After work we met in a quiet dim bar in an adjacent town.
We exchanged parts of our Southern life stories. She was a preacher’s daughter, raised strictly. Married; older than me. One almost-grown son, quite a baseball player himself. Had I played in high school? I had not, which required explanation. Led to a history of my ball-playing. Her Georgia town was maybe a hundred miles from the town of my birth. Felt like neighbors on the other side of the continent. She noticed the longer we talked the more my Southern accent came out of hiding. She liked that.
She was drinking bourbon of course, just rocks, same as me. She also slowly and meditatively masticated a wad of chewing gum. Bourbon and bubble gum. Only a Georgian I thought. As if she caught my thought out of the air she sat up straight, folded the gum in a cocktail napkin and put it in the ash tray. “Can’t be sittin’ chewin’ my cud if we’re havin’ an affair,” she drawled.
Almost choked on my bourbon. “Is that what we’re having?”
“Could be,” she said thoughtfully. “But not tonight. I have to get home. You do too.”
Wise woman. I don’t recall if that night I got around to telling her I never had a Southern girlfriend. Given dire warnings against them by the matriarch of my family, and bitterly painful experience when I reached puberty, I almost swore off females entirely. Eventually women from other nations, and other parts of this one, modified my view — but left intact my fear and loathing of Southern belles.
