She was sitting patiently in her kitchen with a cup of coffee waiting for her husband of 15 years. David had been moving about the house in frenzy for the past 2 hours getting ready for his semi-annual fishing trip to Canada. Then she would be free of him for the next 10 days and have the entire house to herself. Their love life was nonexistent and had been for the past five years. David could no longer get an erection and refused to see a doctor or go to the marriage counselor with her. As a matter of fact he put all the blame on her and sometimes she wondered if he were gay. Then there was her best friend Marge's assessment
"David is an imbecile with a good paying job and to call him and imbecile is an upgrade that he doesn't deserve. Just divorce the lump and then move on. All that he is interested in is fishing with his buddies or hunting or skeet and trap shooting with his buddies and snowmobiling with his buddies. My brother Phil is a divorce attorney, let me talk to him for you."
When they were first married David was climbing the career ladder and she was an asset to him. She received hugs and kisses from him then and they went out frequently together particularly with married couples from his company. Now they only attended family functions such marriages or funerals and other things like that. After David's career had peaked they as a couple pretty much ceased to be. Sex with him was never fabulous by any means but it was at least adequate while it lasted or so she thought.
Her perception of adequate was limited by not ever having anything to compare it with because David was her one and only.
The thing that she missed the most wasn't the sex; it was the intimacy and touching; something as simple as holding hands or a hug in public or even someone to talk too about her interests and passions. She tried learning about hunting and fishing and even took and passed the hunter's safety course. She took private lessons from a Certified NRA Range Instructor to learn advanced shooting skills with the shotgun so that she could surprise him and shoot trap and skeet with him. But all she did was make him angry when she out shot him. He told her that it was a guy thing and he needed his space to be with the guys. Well at least she could shoot and handle all firearms safely now, her well oiled 12 gauge over-and-under shotgun figuratively gathering dust in the gun safe.
When David was home he was invariably watching television on the 24 hour sports channel taking his meals there while sitting in his recliner. That was followed by a six pack or more of cheap swill beer within easy reach and not caring if it got warm. He would guzzle can after can until he fell asleep in front of the boob tube and most nights he slept there. On most weekends he was out with his buddies and on Sunday's she attended church without him.
Television and cheap beer were David's preferred mistresses while she felt like a non- person. Correction, make that a servant to a neat lump when at work but when at home an always in need of a shave self-absorbed lump. Then add being fifty pounds overweight exasperated by bad teeth resulting in bad breath that was barely masked by peppermint mouthwash imbecile. Considering that they had the Cadillac of health insurance and dental plans that covered everything including his self imposed impotence what other conclusion can there be?
When he finally sat down to breakfast in front of the TV to get the scores of last night's hockey games she was entertained by the impatient horn honking of his fishing buddies and she dutifully turned her cheek and held her breath to get a peck on the cheek as he rushed out the door and she was thinking "How slim and well groomed he once was and now?"
After he left she did the breakfast dishes and straightened up the kitchen before going upstairs to get dressed. She planned on meeting her girlfriend for brunch and then to attend the Art Show at the new architecturally soulless library. Going to the bathroom she pulled her long hair back temporarily into simple low ponytail and viewed herself in the mirror through gem quality sapphire blue eyes. Her almost blemish free complexion was marred by a small but noticeable one inch scar where she was bitten on the chin by a dog as a child and she touched it and winced.
She saw a youthful face for which she was invariably asked for her ID as proof of age when she ordered an adult beverage in restaurant. Bars and Taverns were establishments that she seldom frequented. Mindy viewed herself as an average looking woman at best although at 35 years of age she was 5 foot-five inches tall at 135 pounds. Knowledgeable and discriminating men would see and appreciate her voluptuous buxom figure and she was anything but average in any category.
Mindy was short for Melinda and she was named after her Great Grandmother. She hated being called Melinda and her husband insisted in calling her that as did her mother. A month after they were married David pestered, wheedled and cajoled Mindy about getting her beautiful long brown hair cut short because he saw a girl with an ultra-short and trendy layered blond crop while they were shopping for groceries. He was very persistent and in the end to please her husband Mindy relented and cut it short but refused to bleach it. He also bought Mindy her first Jeep Wrangler four-by-four with a manual transmission for cutting it short and she had been hooked on Jeep Wranglers ever since. Nonetheless Mindy hated the way that she looked with her hair short and her mother was beside herself. That hairstyle lasted about two years and then she gradually grew it out. Her hair was in her opinion now the perfect length falling in brown waves to the middle of her back. Mindy felt confident, feminine and maturely sophisticated with long hair and especially when she wore it up.
Mindy's hairstylist, Susan Banner was a mature lady in her early sixties who specialized in long hair and insured that Mindy's hair was precisely blunt cut to all one length. Susan didn't hold with the old adage that long hair was for young girls or that short hair necessarily signified confidence, independence or maturity. Quite the opposite, long, short or bald, those qualities came from within and a good relationship with God. However long was better for a true lady which was Susan's motto. Mindy's mother went to Susan too have her long hair trimmed as did most of the Pentecostal Ladies in her mom's church.
"How shall I wear it?" she thought "in a ponytail or a French braid. It would be nice and wavy after the braid or perhaps I should put it up in a bun?"
Having decided she when to her bedroom and removed two chopsticks from her jewelry box. As with her clothing Mindy had very few pieces of jewelry but what she had was quality. The chopsticks were made from ivory and were showing the buttery yellow-white patina of age and every month she rubbed them with a few drops of mineral oil to keep them from drying out and cracking.
Mindy bought them from an estate sale just after she decided to grow her hair out and they were a treasure. They were decorated with fine carvings of turtles and very small Japanese characters/letters that she always intended to have translated. Mindy twisted her hair up into a large bun and secured her bun in place with the chopsticks. Next she applied her makeup carefully and artfully. Her makeup and hair care products were something that she never skimped on but then why should she.
She was also a rather conservative dresser and chose her wardrobe carefully. She disdained the fleeting trendy fashions for the timeless classics and her wardrobe while modest was quality. First she put on red panties and then she ran her hands over her shapely butt feeling the silk next to her firm warm flesh and sighing before putting on the matching garter belt.
"David wouldn't know the difference between a fan belt and a garter belt"
Mindy thought while smiling to herself as she put on the dark tan stockings and fastened them in place.
Next, Mindy put on an expensive red lace silk bra and a matching camisole while thinking
"Why not, my husband can afford these sexy undergarments even if he chooses not to notice or enjoys seeing me wear them. What a shame nobody will see them other than me but I do look hot if I say so it myself."
Mindy chose a wool/cotton blend emerald green long sleeve blouse to go with knee length brown cashmere skirt and soft calfskin ankle boots and then took her Barbour Parka out of the closet for this overcast spring day. Just before she left the house she dabbed her exclusive and very expensive perfume to the insides of her wrists, her cleavage and the base of her throat....perfect.
Her Saturday brunch dates with her best friend Marge were always enjoyable. They checked out the men and then wrote down the scores one to ten, ten being the highest score on a napkin and then compared notes. Marge was wild in her younger days having had many boyfriends and numerous sexual relations although she was now happily settled down with a husband and 2 children while the only man that Mindy had ever known was David. At first Marge found that so quaint and now so sad but it was still divorce the lump and move on.
Afterward Marge went grocery shopping and Mindy went to the Mall to kill some time before the Art show started. She stopped at a small family run Coffee Kiosk across from the bookstore to get a small peppermint chocolate latte having eaten little and then she planned to relax in one of the many comfortable chairs on the concourse with most recent copy of the American Heritage Magazine. There was one unoccupied overstuffed chair available on the concourse and Mindy quickly walked towards it.
A gangling teenage girl with severe acne was also vying for this unoccupied chair and as their eyes met the race was on. In her haste Mindy stepped in a wet spot from a spilled drink dropping hers to catch herself and she would have fallen to the hard terrazzo floor were it not for the strong hands that grabbed her waist from behind and stopped her from falling. Those same strong hands picked her up effortlessly and swung her around to put her down on a dry section of the floor away from her own spilled latte.
"Are you alright?" He asked, not letting go of her waist right away.
