Nightshift

September, 1987

Nick finds a radio of all things, in the unexpectedly ample retrochoir, and rigs it so it can barely get a somewhat distant FM station playing the Commodore’s “Night Shift”.

“Here’s our theme, gentlemen”

“Sure it is Nick.”

“Hey this is a Motown classic”

“A Motown classic? That would be the Temptations or early Aretha Franklin, this is just leftovers from a 70s group.”

“Yeah but it’s a tribute to Marvin Gaye and the other dude.”

“Marvin Gaye - didn’t he sing about sexual healing?”

“Yeah before he was killed.”

“What kind of healing did he mean?”

“We used to talk about that in college, it’s about the sexual urge that his woman can satisfy.”

“You talked about that in class?”

“No, just in the dorms, us guys.”

“That would have been awkward with the chickies around.”

“Oh ya think now?”

“Only when they pay me”

“No wonder you’re so thin”

“Thanks. I try.”

****

It was a calm late-summer evening, they all had been lately, it seems, fuchsia-hued sunsets give way to a dewey chill, Nick had told his folks he was helping Kevin with something and would just crash at his place, which, was the original plan. Vance tagged along and there was Kevin’s friend Russ, the low-key drama major, who drove in with the van. As Saturday Night was either getting started for some or settling down for others, they went to work.

Thankfully most of it was in wheeled cases, higher-end equipment than Nick had ever worked with personally but the college grads didn’t seem fazed, things can only hook into certain other things and they had all night. It was quickly obvious that it made more sense to just bring it all in then stash the van somewhere, seeing as Kevin had the service and could control access to the backroom.

The technical aspects came together quickly, such a zeitgeist, sacred brotherhood, Nick’s mind quickened, board has two outputs, there are two amps, each can drive four speakers and the ohms match up, all solid state so nothing should blow, plenty of juice from the breaker box, and its all on compact disk so no hiss even. Mmmmmm, doggies.

At about half past midnight it’s all pretty much set, the box truck way out of view and no cars to speak of, just four church mice getting sleepier by the minute, stoned solely on the moment but getting the munchies nonetheless, Russ volunteers to sneak over to the carryout.

*****

"OK so you slobs grew up going to Sunday School?"

"More or less."

"Yeah him more and me a lot less."

"Who were Noah's sons?"

"Wait I know this one, used to have a memory trick....slam...ham, and wipeth..."

"Oh Swanson we need to pray for you."

“I think we need to pray for that Polanski.”

“Yeah, hmmm, dunno about that one.”

“Is he always as right as he thinks he is?”

“If you ask him, then yes, he is always right.”

“Yeah seems like it. Kinda glad when he stopped teaching. Pretty sure that one time he kicked us out of class so he could blame us darn kids for us not learning anything.”

“Umm, that’s probably more true than I really should admit.”

*****

“Couple years ago I had a dream that the rapture happened”

“Do tell now.”

“It was when Mom was in the hospital for about a week, for her lady parts -”

“Did we need that detail?

“...one night I had this dream that we were just looking at the moon on a clear night, and then this dude in a three-corner hat and old sailor’s garb, you know, like Chris Columbus, or English soldiers we fought in the revolution, walks in front of the moon carrying a rope, like he’s getting something set up -“

“I think we need to set YOU up in a hospital.”

“Oh bite it. But after I saw the guy pass across the moon, it all came together, then the sky got bright and i felt such a peace, everything was...well…just gonna be OK”

“Tell ya what Nicky, if this doesn’t wake people up we’ll try it with Pilgrim outfits next time.”

*****

"So Swanson, what was that you pulled a while back, something about a tape."

"Oh that..."

"Do tell."

"You seriously don't know?"

"Before I got here - "

"Yeah, but, don't you office types talk?"

"It's never come up in the office, just heard bits and pieces hither 'n yon, but not your side."

"Wayell, it's getting late, and -"

Kevin holds up a mic stand, "Spill it!"

"In a nutshell, I had obtained an office phone recording system, hooked it up at home, and we happened to be hosting that Rock Knocker they brought in, out of concern for us yoots..."

"Thornberry? Oohh I'm listening."

"Yeah, he made some collect calls to certain businesses that appeared to be supporting his ministry."

"Businesses...."

"Yeap. Care to guess?"

"Any relation to the music industry?"

"Yer red hot doc."

"Vehhhhhdy eenta-destingh."

"But not everyone saw a problem with this, and some saw more of a problem of invading the privacy of a ministry professional, and so on."

"Of course."

*****

"Ever wonder if this, where we are right now is actually the future and some guy in Ohio is just writing it all down?"

"Ever wonder if you're gonna be judged poorly by the company you keep?"

"I try not to think about it around you guys. Hey is Russ OK?"

"Should be, I know he picked up some new allergy pills on the way out of town."

*****

"So what's the furthest you've ever seen someone take it?"

"You mean, like a prank at church?"

"Sure."

Kevin takes a breath. "Oh, one time they let dem yoots help out and type up the bulletin, and everything was in order, except all references to Jesus Christ had the middle initial, you know."

"Middle initial?"

"The H...ever listen to Bill Cosby?"

"OHHHH...that H."

"The very same. And you can imagine the reaction when no one bothered to proofread...well, perceived lack of adult supervision."

"Wow."

"Yeah. The kids were kinda clever about it, said they were out to separate the sheep from the goats, some would get a laugh and some would get outraged."

"Did that keep them outta trouble?"

"Three guesses, mi amigo."

*****

Russ discovers an electric organ under some stuff and figures it can't hurt to fire it up. Before anyone knows it he's getting a chord progression together and starts in, pretty decently,

What did you think I would do at this moment

When you're standing before me

With tears in your eyes

So they let him get as far as he can then Kevin brushes him aside, "Take five, sport, lemme show you how not to do something."

"How not to be seen hopefully?"

Kev takes the bench and does a hyperbolic limbering up routine that would make Art Carney proud, complete with neck stretches until he gets jeered, "Alright, alright...without further ado, a little camp...meeeting, that is."

Despite more jeers he confidently starts right into a chorus that Nick remembers fondly from his early years and starts in at the wrong time and off key with his misheard version, "EVERTYTHING ISN'T POSSIBLE..."

Kevin stops cold and throws him that studied look he does to buy time, and after a pregnant pause shakes his head, "Well Swanson at least this time you're just ambiguous and not blasphemous."

"BlasT-phemous according to one of my smarter SS teachers."

At the same instant, Vance spoke for the first time in about an hour, "yeah he's ambiguous alright," which deservedly steals the laugh.

*****

“Yeah what really drives me nuts is how they teach you guys, like…they don’t have the...umm, balls, to teach you how to think and so they fall back to telling you what to think. How are kids supposed to face the world that way, the real world? And so we have all these yoots growing up in the church that, well, they – that’s just it, they only know how to survive in the church world, not so much in the real world. And then they never venture out, they play it safe and stay where they’re familiar, in their little comfort zone.”

They were generally talking about characters like Polanski, but Nick’s mind instantly feeds on Danni’s parents and with a deepening sense of forebode. They’re such kind, earnest folks but this whole caper tonight would blow up their world. But then, this is stuff they couldn’t talk about in Sunday School, which closes the loop and seals the deal. And so he ponders, 

“So do you have freedom to think in college, the one you guys went to?”

Kevin looks over at Russ to get some consensus only to find Russ beginning to succumb to the clock and allergy meds.

So he thinks for a moment, “It depends on the prof, some are more open minded, sure, but for the most part we’re having a dorm conversation.”

Nick can’t imagine living in a dorm and so this opportunity feels like a magic window, leading to where, he can only guess.

Flapjacks with Horace

Irene stands facing the window, having felt inspired to grill pancakes this beautiful cool August morning, and gets a kiss from her elder boy Tim, who had just followed the smell out of the woodwork singing in, unbeknownst to her, a voice he and his buddies had just derived from Axl Rose off some live bootleg that’s making rounds. 

 “Owwww she musta been a beautiful bayy-bayy...”

 “Why thank you Timmy, it’s the pancakes, right?” 

 “Cuz now she’s got a great big ol’ boo-tayyy...” 

 “I knew it was too good to be true.”  

Tim turns to his brother, “now can we get a haye HAYE haye?” 

Nick chimes in best he can between mouthfuls, having only heard the tape once, 

“Ah hay HAYYE haye yeahh!” 

 Poor Ned can only shake his head and and grins around some scrambled eggs, “You idiots.” 

 Tim sits down with a stack, 

“Now baybay go in there and make me a MAYE taye...” 

Irene fires back, “you BETTER not!”

- - - - -

Somewhere between an old Tensor lamp and some well-worn Masonite, Nick sits at his workbench that Dad built a few years ago after showing a serious interest in soldering. He’d started with one of thos beginner hobby kits with the spring-loaded connectors then worked his way up through the 150-in-one variety and recently started consulting the Engineer’s Notebook - all available at your friendly neighborhood Radio Shack! Then there’s a worn copy of Electronics Hobbyist from a few years back and had managed to breadboard some of the simpler projects but hadn’t put anything in a case yet, except for an ultra-simple AM transmitter for the sixth grade science fair. It impressed everyone and he even tricked the superintendent with a fake page to the office. It comes honest, this passion, hobby, whatever it is, and even his by-the-numbers old man sees himself in an a wandering tinkerer with shoeboxes full of quarter-watt resistors, zener diodes and 555 timer chips. At least the boy’s not out screwing up, somewhere.

Tonight it’s different. Usually this is just a diversion, something to chew on, see what happens, put on some music and get away from homework, or people, but there’s a twinge of something, there’s a voltage within him, lurking, warning. As a preteen he would take a capacitor to church since the carpet would produce more static than he’d ever seen during the cold months. One time the capacitor had a broken lead, against his finger, but he tapped the remaining lead against a metal switch plate and the ensuing ark found his elbow. That was enough for that day, but today’s another day. There are tone decoder circuits in the Notebook, not to mention an LED readout. Standard tone pairs for touchpad phones are lying around at the school library and it all checks out, and then, lo and behold a magazine at the drugstore has a recipe built around a $13 DTMF receiver chip.

Did they honestly think he was gonna sit this one out? 

- - - - -

On a pensive, wintery, Saturday afternoon with nothing on TV, Nick can’t decide on a tape to put in and just wishes he could make his own music.

Finding one’s sound is a big a journey as any we undertake. he had the inclination to play guitar but budget cuts kept him from doing lessons at school in 8th grade, and his brother’s old acoustic had 12 accessible frets and bowed pretty badly, dry bronze strings just aren’t inviting. For years he would wander into pawn shops and fumble for chords on various Mexican Fenders, always missing at least one string but surely having a million stories to tell to someone who could just love it enough. 

FM 106 in the next county broke out their own guitars every night, classics and newer stuff but with a lean toward power pop and arena bands. These days the airwaves have a lot for the rockers, even Duran Duran has their moments, and the old guard was still active with projects like The Firm and Honey Drippers.

Back then he would even tape some nights with Bob Shultz signed on at 7, and how something like Scandal’s Warrior sounded so badass, Bob just had the right attitude for the time and the music, even when they’d whip out something blatantly provocative like Kiss’ Heaven’s On Fire, or Billy Idol’s Flesh for Fantasy…and then that John Paar track…some of those made even Nick secretly echo his mom’s pondering, what’s the world coming to?

Still, when free lessons at school dropped off the radar, he started with an old Mel Bay book for chords then progressed to a surplus hymnal to painstakingly plink out out the melody line to The Old Rugged Cross, with dreams of playing it as an offertory on a shiny red Strat. But then any mention of an electric pretty much drew rain clouds around the house.

“I don’t want you in a rock band, with all the drugs and partying,” she’d murmur. 

Nick failed to see that had anything whatsoever to do with music. But alas, Irene is a piano type, but abhors anything with swing, or swagger, for that matter.

Then his dad was steeped in country gospel and expected him “play what he’s supposed to”, whatever that means.

But the biggest kick in the groin was when, just as the pop charts evolved away from rock, big brother (actually, his slightly shorter older brother…) had pretty much swayed with the breeze, embraced the Beastie Boys, then other rap, started hanging around room and not shying away from making an ass of himself over a female whenever he could.

Sometimes the sound just finds you, some dude cranking it out his car windows at a stoplight or down the block at the right moment, totally bitchin bad, gotta beeline inside and see if 106 is playing whatever, and call a buddy to see if they caught it too.

Or for those nights when the mind and eyes need a respite, especially if MTV is not an option (the Swansons were YEARS from getting cable), a theatrical production needs a score, only the ears can lead the way, and the images wake up, familiar faces, friend and foe alike, the possibilities, making music in the stadium, we all rock out, all are one, into the night.

Sometimes the sound is the only one that seems to understand.

Back in 7th grade Nick had been glued to the radio since mid-year and had access to what we call Top 40 as well as album rock, at least after 7pm from a station in the next county that was pretty mundane during the day. The pop charts had gotten dramatic by the end of 1984, with Bryan Adams’ Run To You and the Survivor hit I Can’t Hold Back, was the world just one big urgent phone call to a woman you can’t live one more moment without? Or banging on her door in the middle of the night?

Then there’s Don Henley’s Boys Of Summer, all the layers and Don’s cryptic lyrics, the…tone…is what says more than the lyrics ever could. 

Especially what the guitar does.

One snowy night Nick heard Shultz remark that the roads out there suck, and then not long after that there was a new host for the evening shift. He was actually tempted to think that remark may have done him in, but no, all good things must end, and Shultz was a bit too good for that little station.

- - - - -

Just after 8th grade ends Nick finds himself at Youth Congress, held at a large church a couple counties over. It’s actually an old tabernacle that used to have wooden benches but thanks to a fund drive they have padded chairs that interlock. He got talked into being a delegate, because you have to have those in order to go. So he’s sitting here with three other youths, two of which belong to families that are usually part of a different church. It seemed like no big deal at first, Mom was glad he’s going naturally, but once he got into the van something didn’t seem right, Saturday mornings should be a bike ride and trying to find something on the air waves.

For some reason he’d found it necessary to jump on the hawaiian shirt bandwagon. Guys at school had been wearing them so he asked for one the last time they went to Pennys, red as a brothel lamp, this morning paired with white pants. Don Johnson eat your heart out.

Thankfully, any group of teenagers at 9am on a Saturday is going to be pretty subdued, but still, he couldn’t help feeling like a light bulb, and not just a high wattage kind, but a high wattage kind on the verge of blowout with a spot in the filament worn thin.

After some introductions the Congress leader gets up and addresses the crowd, he’s new around here but comes across as very stern, we must hold our ground in these challenging times, become faithful servants, tomorrow’s leaders today. Then they pass out ballots, and as he’s thinking how strange it is to vote for names of folks he’d never meet, they explain how sometimes we have to rely on the Lord for guidance. He randomly checks a few spots and tries to act confident, sweating a bit, unconsciously struggling to keep his head still and not shake it in exasperation.

Afterward the group retreats to the van and await their leader, talking about this and that. At one point Nick refers to someone with “he’s such a dick” and then looks at come-lately Kandy Kemper in embarrassment, only to have her chuckle and let him off the hook, “Oh you’re fine,” just before she decides to hang out with some folks from her other church in a nearby van.

- - - - -

Maps are usually printed with cities as yellow, if there’s any meaningful geography-forming meat around the dot or circle, and unincorporated areas in white, then green for major forestry and so forth.

Lines as roads connect cities and towns. Small towns have small dots and a little yellow, whereas major cities have a big circle encompassing several city blocks, town hall, parking garages and convenient open spaces for picketers.

A fourth-grade Nick has been spending a lot of time recently staring at maps and going rounds with his mother about what makes a “big” city. She’d insist that a “large” city meant a large population, but to Nick it meant how much yellow is spread out on the map. Chicago and St. Louis had a lot of yellow but some of that was all the surrounding towns. On a map there’s just a bit more yellow to Chicago but he was told over and over again how it’s really about ten times “bigger” than St. Louis.

“They have a lot of high-rise buildings there, the people are stacked up like shelves,” she’d say.

“Even the trains are elevated.”

So big cities always have that black steel ring in the middle, the downtown area, and state capitols have a star inside the circle, like Springfield on his main map. Before a family trip one year they got an atlas and he nearly wore it out, it was a lot to take in. Some states have secondary roads that are not advisable, dirt or gravel and you’re supposed to ask someone at a gas station if it’s a good idea. Oh, and Washington DC, when viewed next to a neighboring state has TWO circles around the star. The atlas has several of those if you look really close, like Nassau, Ottawa, Mexico City. They even show bits of forbidden places like Cuba and USSR, wow.

“Mom what’s a county seat?”

“That’s where the courthouse is, like uptown here, Jameson is our county seat.”

“Is it always the biggest city?”

“Not always hon.”

“Is there a county seat in Springfield, for Sang...sanga?”

“SANG-ga-mun, just like the river - I’m sure there is.”

“Is it the same thing as the state capitol?”

“No Nick they’re separate, different buildings and people to run things. We should take you through there sometime, the state capitol is an old building with a tall dome, it’s very pretty.”

“Oh OK.”

City-level details never cease to spur the imagination, the memorial parks and schools, named for someone who may or may not still evoke memories in the community, museums, golf courses, shopping malls, there is certainly more to this world than a boy can ever see in a hundred lifetimes. 

On a map, it’s all worth checking out.

- - - - -

Sometime in Nick’s sixth grade year, Paps sent a special treat home with him, a solid-state multi-band portable receiver, branded Westminster, the only time he’d come across that brand. But someone was cleaning out their closet and gave it to Paps, and here we are.

Shortwave is something else, most nights, guess it comes with a mood, or what’s drifting in. There’s plenty of it, news read in a sidewalk American accent from Cuba, BBC’s hit parade, this day in history, translated tales from Taipei, Aggies football on WRNO, even the Christian Science Monitor is around but it doesn’t feel right to listen for some reason.

Once he fell asleep listening to Australia but they either fade away from propagation shift or else change frequencies, at least most of them do after an hour or two and they seem to read them off faster than he can follow. He’s gradually getting used to the meter bands, such as 31, 49, etc. but has to relearn them after leaving it alone for a spell.

And then, there’s the ones that seem to originate from towns in rural area that no one’s ever heard of till they receive the signal, the voice in the wilderness following what sounds like a 1950’s era spiritual sung by a medieval chorus, hailing the Second Coming, my beloved, which is surely closer today than it’s ever been.

Years later, even as Paps seems to be fading from this life, Nick still hooks it up to the wire through his window and gives it a whirl, day or night. Seems the BBC is really intense with the Tiananmen Square standoff at one point.

To balance things out that day he got the radio, Paps slipped Tim a few bills with a wink to get something for his girlfriend, as if he had one.

- - - - - 

When Nick needed someplace to sit at lunch he usually gravitated toward Steve Settlemyer, a reliable muse since elementary playground, sharp dressed and articulate, somewhat musical, didn’t date much but ended up marrying well after college.

“Oh I’ve always called it the Horace. Never cared for the word toilet because it sounded like a place where there should be all kinds of toys, but instead it was, you know, and so I named it after the sound it makes when you flush...HORACCCCCE!!”

The group all chimed in one way or another, one of the free-thinking girls mentioned she calls it the Jane for basic feminist reasons, something which would have made her a lot more attractive to Nick if either one of them cared about anything besides the laughs in these moments.

“My whole family calls it that at home now, it’s hysterical.”

By senior year Nick had begun hanging with a mix of the new and old guard, upper and lower plus the new dude who would soon graduate early and join the Guard. Kyle, the preacher’s kid whose dad just took the pulpit at the Missionary church, wasn’t a big fan of cutting in lunch line, a privilege assumed by seniors and universally ignored by faculty monitors, but they would sing “Are You Lonesome Tonight” as recently made popular by Sam Kinison and somehow found themselves swarming with cotton candy-haired freshman coeds who would flirt shamelessly, some just wanting some spare change, but that was mostly Nick’s bit. 

Kyle is dating an amateur model back in Decatur (a verifiable fact, she met him at the lockers to pick him up from school a couple times) and was just running out the clock before his stint.

Male-aise

Junior High Years

There’s a new girl at church. We’ll call her...maybe, Heather.

Meeting another girl could not be more scripted. If his mom met her first then she’s “cute”, but, well, if Nick meets her first then she’s subject to FBI background check, which is just not worth it. If there’s an initial conversation then it seems hopeful, for something, God knows what, and then that’s generally about the extent of it. Sometimes it seems there needs to be more, God knows what, and in this case he finds himself looking for it under every rock till his spyglass starts down another trail. 

Many many times though it’s just that haunting, after being in the same room with her a few times, even if no eye contact, an undefined yet wistful knowing, sometimes nagging...awareness? But, what to do? 

Once in a while there’s some sort of visual, like, well, not so much tight jeans, but those looser fabrics, if they drape just right on her backside as she walks and there’s a jiggle, oohh, maybe on her hips, or the lobe of her buttocks that it catches just right. But that usually only applies to the confident, mainstream babes who soar like eagles in a different realm and speak an entirely different language. Moving on.

What are the words, what does this situation want him to do about it? The most unlikely ones seem to share that secret shame, the burny kind, just makes you wanna rub it all out in the shower once and for all but it keeps coming back, dammit. But then, it seems the ones that trigger the burny stuff tend to be the kind that are a little too confident with guys and smell like a hint of cigarette smoke, and maybe the rumors that they have experience to share.

The vibe is often the worst part, that uneasy, yeah, awareness, the overachieving daemon of empathy with its overloaded, half-baked sense of anticipation, expectation and excitement for something that never seems to materialize, at least into anything worthwhile. Some girls you can be friends with and there’s not much intrigue, but who needs the intrigue? When there’s intrigue she’ll talk to you for a while then move on, get quiet, is she listening or just fickle? They always let it linger, waiting for you to make a move. 

For some it’s not knowing what to say, but what if you just don’t feel like it?

That’s just it; she expects you to speak a language – do you have to be born with it, like some NVRAM chip programmed at the factory? Tim sure as hell doesn’t have that, given his luck.

Other than that, blossoming intrigue can be good for novelty, but it gives way to a lot of waiting and little to engineer, except, ultimately, disappointment. 

And so Heather mingles some with the other girls, sits with her parents, and may or may not throw a vibe of sorts that hints she’s interested, or curious, whatever. This goes on for a few weeks until she’s just not around anymore for whatever reason, along with her family if that’s the case.

Then sooner or later, at one level or another, it begins. All over again.

- - - - -

One summer Wednesday night finds Nick at the back of the sanctuary during a prayer meeting, which makes him engaged by association despite drawing a schematic on the back of some paper from the announcement rack. 

There aren’t enough teens for a teen group so this is the default. The only others near his age are seated at the other end of the pew. There’s the compact, curly-haired and bespectacled Tanya along with her punk cohort Gin (don’t ever call her Ginger…) and their endless cacophony of giggling.

For Nick this situation is purely a familiarity fix. He’d pretty much grown up at this building at least twice a week since his mom had found victory around his forth birthday, as the story goes, with Ned finding, well, evidently some purpose more than anything else. The air was always crisp and cool, the water fountain equally so, and it all triggered a Pavlovian craving for Double Mint gum. Nick had given up on bugging Ned to switch to what Tim dubbed as Juicy Fart, since it wasn’t strong enough. Plus, by now Nick was getting the hint that Devil Mint had played a big part in Ned kicking the cigarettes a while back and so, yeah.

But tonight there was no gum, and no Tim (who as usual found an alternative source of spiritual enlightenment) but just the giggling They didn’t look his way, far as he knew, or cared. One time a rather ragged fellow came in toward the end of a service, presumably to see the pastor about some practical help in some form, and sat in the next to last pew. At the end all were to stand and Nick was a tad embarrassed at the way the duo burst into laughter – presumably at the fellow’s disproportionately large head, which would only be amusing in a different context. Didn’t they have any sense of dignity?

All this tended to negate anything interesting about either of them. That Gin seemed to constantly be at war with herself and half of everyone else, although she filled out her denim nicely, although Nick could never figure out what color her cropped and moussed hair was trying to be since the ends were often darker than the roots. Then Tanya...not Tonya, with the reliable O, of which there were many at school, actually has a nice pouty figure. She tends to wear those well matched outfits that make it tempting to sneak a feel, but thanks to his older brother’s indiscretions over the years Nick has an idea what kind of war that would start.

But her snotty attitude most of the time, especially around certain others – well, except his own mother who nudges him to be nicer to Tanya. 

“Maybe you could meet her at the diary stand, it would be fun.”

Bleh.

Harold & Maude

Autumn 1990

Rosetta Lambert sits on her bed, partially wrapped in a blanket and surrounded by the clothes she had been wearing, all laid out around her like presents at a birthday party, after Nick had gathered them up off the floor for her in a haze of disbelief.

They met at the community college where she works, in the snack bar, not long after Nick started classes that fall.

She had married later than most girls her age but wisdom doesn’t always keep us from bad luck and she raised her daughter alone.

Most recently she was seeing a guy who stayed nights until he went to jail, or at least she says, because he found her 15-year old daughter interesting in ways she couldn’t compete with.

But at 46 she’s nothing to laugh at, sweet smile, short, blue-eyed blond and cleans up very well for church, at least when she had stopped in a few times over the years. They didn’t hesitate to strike up many conversations once he started at the college, and she needed some help around the house, and they always had something to talk about.  At some point she managed to mention she’s unable to have any more kids.

One night they sat close on the couch and watched Harold and Maude. That was three nights ago.

Tonight he showed up unexpectedly and was met with a shy smile. He had no idea what he would say or whether he should bring flowers or a movie, so he just showed up and she invites him in without a word. She looked away as he touched her face, and they kiss as if they invented it.

They stood there for the longest time, he in control and she so eager to yield, and she began to gasp, they were taken off guard, over 25 years apart, her daughter was working late and she leads him to the bedroom and leaves the lights off.

Their clothes were off fairly quickly and they started connecting the dots, her bosoms are soft but hold their shape when untethered, he wants to taste them but she leads him to the bed and kneels in front him and promptly takes him into her mouth – how does her generation know about that? But she’s very patient, characteristically generous, then before long punctuates it with a kiss on the tip then reaches into her night stand and pulls out a tube.

She sits on the edge of the bed and applies a slightly cold gel to his member, then maybe a quick tap on her own area, and then she introduces his hand to the sour apple, asks if he was ready and he answers with a gentle slide home, taking pause to get his bearings, she reaches down and fondles the danglers, and it finally hits that this is the real thing. She gasps as they rock, they ride the waves, together, and somewhere along the way he realizes why those bawdy rock songs call it a motor.

Nick tries every trick in the book to make it last, baseball, farm smells, Buddy Hackett on Carson, but she’s just so...and then it was all he could take and dessert arrives somewhere among spasms and moans and gasps, they melt, glowing, cake on the stove right out of the oven.

They lie for an endless moment.

“Are you ok?” he finally asks.

“Oh Nicky...”’

“Yes?”

She turns around and kisses his nose, beaming widely, “you have no idea, baby doll.”

On the drive home he thinks of how he’s going to explain the evening to his folks, thankfully they’re asleep.

As he showers, one thing echoes over and over in his green mind, It’s gonna worth of river walks and conversations with Deke to sort all this out.

*****

They meet for lunch on Saturday, across town. He had called her the next night, she didn’t answer, he didn’t leave a message. Five minutes later he tried again and she answered. She spoke tacitly since her daughter was standing right there but she suggested the venue for their first talk since the world changed.

It still hadn’t hit him yet.

Rosie wore jeans and a pink top, she looked good, light makeup. He ordered them each a coffee and they sat in a vacant corner.

“Nicky...” she started down the path after a few sips.

“I don’t know what to say”

“Are you okay?”

“I guess so, I mean, I feel good, I just don’t know...”

“Darlin’ I don’t know either, here I am...the responsible party in all this...”

“I drove to your house, remember?”

She looks up into his eyes and smiles. “Oh Nicky I’ll never forget. I’m sorry I called you Baby Doll.”

“Why be sorry? I’m just surprised I had the bal- I mean, the guts to show up.” She starts giggling sheepishly, leans sideways and he almost reaches to catch her, then she winks and blows a kiss.

“Nicky...I hope we can keep our heads and have some sort of relationship, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to stay involved with...”

“I want us to have a relationship.”

She looks at him soberly. “Nick, let’s take it day by day.”

He smiles, “that’s what I mean. i’m not good with this kind of stuff.”

“You sure had me fooled...baby doll”

He grins, shakes his head, and finally takes a sip of coffee.