Our tryst was more confusing than it was loving or erotic. Valentine's Day was not ending the way I thought it would. Amy and I had had the catered in intimate dinner the night before to avoid having to wait forever because of the Valentine's Day rush and then eat a cold dinner. Sheltering from covid made things different. Some things were lost like dinners at restaurants, but something was gained to like intimate evenings with only the two of us.
This evening I had made salmon with dill sauce and almond rice pilaf for dinner at Amy's apartment, and had ordered in a bottle of Asti chilling in the fridge. Following a brownie topped with vanilla ice cream and a maraschino cherry, Amy's favorite, we had cuddled together and watched a Rom-Com on the television. It wasn't the most thrilling night, but it was nice and sweet for a woman who was nice and sweet. The evening turned bizarre when I swept her off her feet and carried her into the bed room.
"It feels so good when you're in me. I love the way you fill me, puppy."
It wasn't exactly dirty talk, but it got me going. Her body was wrong. Rita had a lush body with ample bosom and nice grab-able hips. Only Rita called me, Puppy.
Amy's body was long and lean with toned muscles and a modest bust. An excellent body worthy of my erotic attention, even though I worried if her frame could support my size and weight.
She responded like Rita but it looked like Amy. She bit her lip like Rita when her mounting arousal approached orgasm, and she kicked me in the ass like Rita when she wanted me to go faster, but her smell was wrong: Wrong perfume, wrong shampoo, and wrong aroma of love.
When the loving was done, she kissed me tenderly on the lips. It was Rita's kiss, but it lacked her fuller, pillowy lips.
"Hold me one last time, puppy," she whispered in my ear.
I spooned in behind her, slid my arm around her waist and cradled Amy's smaller, firmer breast that was equally as fascinating as Rita's.
"I will always love you," I whispered into her ear.
She replied by pushing her butt back into my groin giving it a little wiggle, a very Rita thing to do.
She drifted into a satisfied sleep while I contemplated my Rita free world.
I'm not one to plumb my emotions. Rita said when it came to feelings I played at the shallow end of the pool, but the mixed ball of happiness and sadness welling in my chest threatened to tear me in half. Every tick of the clock pulled me further away from one lover and pushed into the arms of another at the same time. I lay in Amy's arms with Rita's approval.
**********
Right after I was born, I developed a severe kidney infection that put me in the hospital hovering between life and death for a week. I don't remember any of it, of course, but that week in the twilight changed my life. I recovered and by all outward signs resumed a normal life.
When I was four, my playmate named Isabeau lived in a house under our sidewalk in the front yard. She dressed a little funny in a long white flowing gown and most of the time I couldn't understand a thing she said, but she was a playmate any time I wanted one and I was happy. We spent hours in the family room playing side by side, I with my trucks and she with her doll that looked like it was made of corn husks.
One night at dinner with Isabeau sitting beside me, I pointed at the milk and said.
"Ma mere, donne-moi plus de lait, si'l vous plait."
At the age of four, I was too young to show off, I spoke French because Isabeau was with me.
My father turned to me instead of watching the news on TV.
"What the hell was that?" he asked my mother.
I was about to tell him of my friend Isabeau when mom saved me.
"He watches French language programming on channel nine out of Windsor," my mother offered pouring more milk into my glass.
She liked that I was learning French since she had studied it in college.
"Don't you think he ought to learn English first?"
Dad returned to watching the news.
Dad's strange reaction was the first of many lessons in hiding my friends. After that I only spoke French to Isabeau when no one was around.
One day, out of the blue when I was five, my mother dressed me up and took me to school. I wanted Isabeau to come, but she wouldn't. I came home to Isabeau waiting for me. She kissed me.
"Merci, mon ami, mais il est temps pour moi de partir."
she said followed by a sweet smile and then she walked through a doorway filled with golden light.
I never saw her after that. I missed her, but I understood on a level I could not yet access in my young mind that things were the way they should be. She was the first of many goodbyes.
***********
When my hand cupping her breast relaxed, Amy grabbed it and pulled it back into position leaving her hand atop mine. I renewed my gentle fondling. She responded with a contented sigh. She wasn't shy about what she wanted, and I wasn't shy about doing what she asked.
************
In grade school, the kids my age seemed rough and mean. I was content to spend my time with the quiet invisible ones who gathered around me. By then, I had learned that I must never tell others about them. If I did, the school social worker would end up asking me uncomfortable questions like when I told Miss Sharpe about the invisible girl weeping in the corner of the room.
I preferred my special friends like Frederick who was a roguish kid about my age who lived under the monkey bars in the school's playground. He wore a rough fabric shirt that seemed too big for him, and pants that stopped just below his knee. There were others. Some seemed attracted to me while others avoided me.
Every school day recess started the same with Frederick.
"Do you see Becky Sibley?"
I would shake my head.
"I don't understand we were buried in the same graveyard on the same day."
"What happened?" I asked.
"I like her a lot, and I have to see her one more time before I move along. I lived with my grandparents in Detroit over the summer and returned home in the fall. Folks said I brought the small pox back with me. A week after I came down with it and died, seven more kids in my school got sick, and two died. Becky was one of them, and I gotta tell her I'm sorry."
"What's she look like?"
"She's about as tall as me. She has blond hair that she wears in a thick braid that reaches almost to her waist. She has a favorite blue dress that she loves to wear. It matches her eyes."
"I've seen her. She spends her time in Mrs. Owen's class.
"Could you talk..."
George Ziegler, a chubby, stupid, no neck thug of a kid who thought punching fellow classmates was better than making friends ran up. As he clenched his fists, I braced myself to receive a painful punch. We were on the playground for lunch recess. In my school you were either a bully, or a victim. I fell squarely in the victim group.
"Hey, weirdo. Why are you talking to yourself? Pretending you got friends?"
Frederick walked inside George's body. George's eyes rolled up in his head and he shook.
"I...," he swallowed hard, "I don't feel so good."
He turned and dashed toward the playground monitor with his hand over his mouth and vomited a partially chewed bologna sandwich at her feet.
"Does he even chew what he eats?" I said looking at the mess.
"What did you do?" I asked Frederick as he alighted beside me.
"I inhabited his body against his will for a second. It made him ill as his body fought to reject me."
That's how I discovered that the dead do have a limited effect on the living. Those unexplained chills we get from time to time are souls passing through our bodies.
I was now obligated to Frederick, so I didn't run home right away after school. I took my time letting the school clear out, then I marched down the tile and block hallway to Mrs. Owen's room holding a piece of paper in my hand. If you looked like you were on a errand for a teacher, no one questioned you. I found Becky sitting at the teacher's desk.
"Hi," I said not sure how to address a ghost who had not initiated contact first.
She was so pretty that she made me all fluttery inside. It was the first time I had ever experienced that. It wouldn't be my last.
She looked at me and her eyes got big.
"It's you. I knew you could see me."
"Why do you spend all of your time in school?"
She smiled. She was very pretty in a 'Little House on the Prairie' way.
"I wanted to be a teacher before I got sick and died."
She ran her hands along the top of the desk caressing the desk calendar.
"I've tried moving along like I'm supposed to, but something keeps holding me back."
"Frederick needs to talk to you."
She brightened. Her form began to glow.
"He's here?"
"I can call him if you like."
