I woke after a deep, dreamless, refreshing sleep. As happens when you wake sometimes, I had a moment of disorientation before memory flooded back.
I rolled over, being careful to move slowly, about half afraid it had all been a dream.
But there she was.
In sleep, completely relaxed, she shed years. Oh, she wouldn't be asked for an ID card in a liquor store but no one would question her if she gave her age as 50 either. Part of it was her hair, long, luxuriant, and a mess right then, giving her kind of an innocent look. Part was the way those tiny lines around her eyes smoothed. Part was the little smile on her lips making me wonder if I was part of her dream.
I lay there, just watching her sleep, fantasizing about spending the rest of my life with her.
Nature, the cruel bitch, took over and my need to pee forced me into action. I rolled out of bed, again careful not to wake her, and padded naked to the bathroom. I closed the door and sat to pee wanting to be as quiet as possible. Finished, I looked in the vanity and found, praise the lord, a bottle of Listerine. I swished and rinsed, looked at myself in the mirror, thought "not bad," and headed back to bed.
"I had a bad moment," she said, as I walked in, "when I woke up and you weren't there. But then I heard you moving around and realized it hadn't all been a dream."
I smiled, crawled into bed with her, kissed her, and said, "do you happen to have any dynamite?"
Suddenly there were those little lines between her eyes again as she considered my question.
"Umm, no," she said.
"Then you don't need to worry, because that's what it will take to get rid of me," I said.
Her smile made that weird word "beatific" come to mind.
"Come here," she said, holding her arms out wide in invitation.
Okay, my own smile was probably pretty over the top too as I crawled into bed and into her embrace.
She felt just as good in my arms in the morning as she had last night.
And the kiss was as good.
"Mmmmmmmmm," she said, "let me go baby before I wet the bed."
I enjoyed watching her leave. Yes, she was leaning, hard, on three-quarters of a century. But she still moved with a dancer's grace. And she still looked good, a smallish heart-shaped ass moved nicely as she left the room.
I laid back, enjoying the feeling of warmth on her side of the bed, realizing how much I had missed that.
When she came back to bed I caught the faint scent of Listerine and smiled.
Our morning kisses were gentle. Not tentative at all, our tongues touched lightly. But gentle, as we lay close, fingertips, and lips exploring. I found a small spot of softness right at the top of her thigh, almost out of place in the general firmness of her body. When I squeezed it gently she giggled and said, "you like my saddlebag."
I laughed at that and said, "more like a small clutch purse, but yes, I like it."
We kissed and nuzzled and played like we hadn't done when we were teenagers. For those few minutes, I was 18 again.
My fingertips wandered to her back and I began tracing the ridges there. As I did she tensed at first, then relaxed and hummed a soft little "mmmmmm" against my chest.
I pushed us apart enough to focus on her eyes and liked her smile in response.
"Tell me of your first time," I said, and traced another of those welts with my fingertip, "how you entered The Life," and I hoped my intonation made the capitalization obvious.
"Oh, God," she breathed, "that's ancient history."
I smiled and kissed her.
"I WAS a history major," I said.
I watched her face, wondering how this would go. I had spent my time in The Life and I wanted, hell, I needed to hear her story.
Finally, she drew a deep breath and I could see she was ready to start talking.
I brushed a few stray hairs away from her face.
And I waited.
She took a deep breath and started.
Bonnie's Story - -
It was my husband, of course. He was the guitar player in our band and we had regular arguments, you know, what they euphemistically call creative differences in the magazines.
We were having one of those. Heck, I don't even know what it was about anymore. Something to do with the show, the arrangement, something.
And yes, we were drinking. We had done pot and coke too so we were pretty fucked up.
Anyway, he said something like, "stop acting like a baby or I'll turn you over my knee," and I said something like "promises, promises."
You know how things like that go. We started grabassing. Hell, I got the giggles. I was laughing so hard I couldn't really resist when he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me across his lap.