Paddlin' Madelyne Home

Her big company party was being held downtown at one of the fanciest hotels in the city, and even as I was getting out of my cab. I had told her that I never drove after drinking and that we would meet there. Nearly at once I recognized several prominent members of the cream of Houston 'money' society.

Madelyne didn't seem to be there yet, naturally she was going to be 'fashionably late', and I had nearly two hours all by myself to slowly nurse drinks that I very badly wanted to gulp down instead.

Since I was on-time and in fact nearly the first one there right at the dot of 7 p.m., I somehow managed to find myself constantly in the middle of conversation as new arrivals trickled in to join us. I met a lot of interesting industry contacts and even passed out a few of my cards. Who knows, maybe they'd have some piddly little project that wasn't worth their time and effort that they could now instead pass to my small company.

After I'd been there for about an hour, I somehow found myself deeply engaged in a fascinating conversation with a delightful old coot who seemed to be a bit underdressed for the party, but he also seemed to know everyone present by their first name. One of the senior partners, I guessed, and he seemed to be showing an unusual interest in me.

His name was Nathan, and he was 'old school' rural Texas himself, and soon we were happily discussing a vast smorgasbord of topics from ranching in Central Texas, to local sports, and even the proper design of bridges, when at last Madelyne deemed herself ready to make her overdue appearance at long last.

I was about to introduce her to Nathan, when she instead introduced me to her Dad, the one and the same Nathan Edwards.

Now I had indeed quite stepped deeply into it. But 'Dad' just gave me a wink, and went off to greet his other guests.

Madelyne was dressed to kill, wearing a very flirty 'dancers gown' that showed a lot of very interesting cleavage, with a deep slit up one side that revealed one of her pale hipbones and exposed the maximum amount of bare back allowable by law. Clearly there wasn't much place under her luscious outfit to hide any undergarments, no matter how tiny. I approved. During the last few minutes of cocktail hour and during the dinner she wore a wrap that kept her charms mostly concealed, but the thought of her in that dress made my heart race.

Right at the dot of 10 o'clock, after everyone had eaten well, the dance contest began. Five judges were selected and everyone was invited onto the dance floor as a series of big band era Foxtrots were played. One by one over the next half-hour most of the couples were eliminated, until just nine other couples and Madelyne and myself were left. Now the judging began in earnest.

Next it was time for a waltz, and again we survived elimination to reach the Finals with two other couples, but just barely I think. For the last dance, it was a long medley composite song starting with a Rumba, then turning to a Samba and finally ending as a long Tango. We started fairly poorly as she hadn't quite had quite enough experience for those first two complicated dances, and as she made small mistakes her confidence started to fail and all of the fun seemed to evaporate from her face and attitude.

When the Tango started I whispered to her, "Forget all about the contest and pretend no one else is here and it's just the two of us. Dance this one just for me!"

Did she ever! Our Tango became torrid and she soon indeed forgot all about the judges and the audience of nearly a thousand watcher. We looked only into each other's eyes and for a few wonderful moments we were just 'Harry and Maddie', instead of the ever battling Harold and Madelyne.

When the dance ended, and without knowing why I did it, I bent over and kissed Maddie's mouth, and to my surprise she returned it.

It was unanimous that we had done the best Tango, but our poor performance in the earlier two dances had doomed us to Third Place, but this still pleased Maddie immensely. Our prize was an all-expenses paid trip to San Antonio, and we joked that before we could use that we would need to have had at least one 'proper date' first. Privately she had figured she wouldn't even make it past the first round of elimination, and had just wanted to be out there dancing to prove to everyone, especially her father, that she could occasionally let down her hair and have some fun.

**********

The party ended quite late and relieved that the stress was finally all over with, we both had a good deal to drink. I had expected her to soon wander off and socialize with some of her work friends, but instead she spent much of the rest of the night pretty well glued to my elbow with her arm mostly wrapped around mine.

Around 1 a.m. my internal 'enough drinking' switch got flicked, and I decided it was time to call it a night and go home. I asked Maddie if she'd like me to get her a cab, and she accepted. When asked for the address I was about to give the cabbie hers, but she instead told the cabbie mine.

"It's your home I want to see this morning, not mine!" She whispered into my ear with a bit of a slur and then gave it a little kiss that turned into a little nibble that hinted at even further delights soon to follow.

The ten minute cab trip seemed to take hours and I swear we caught every single red light on the entire trip. I had a small but comfy patio home with a small fenced yard in both front and in back. Not a mansion showplace, but it beat living in most bachelor apartments considerably.

Maddie hadn't made it three feet inside my front door before her gown was now suddenly now around her ankles and our mouths were locked tightly together.

My earlier appraisal had been quite correct; she had not been wearing any undergarments that evening and the fully naked presentation was more than deliciously desirable. Any lingering remaining thoughts I might have had against accepting Maddie as my lover were now quite forgotten. In moments, most of my tuxedo was scattered in a trail that lead to the bedroom and soon she was kissing me passionately on my bed and starting to explore what secrets my boxer shorts might be hiding. If she had just kept kissing me, or directed her mouth elsewhere, the rest of the evening would have been glorious. However, as usual at the worst possible time, 'old' Madelyne had to put in an appearance.

"Awww, it's still all little and tiny and doesn't seem to like me at all, is it shy… or is that all you've got?"

OUCH! That is certainly not the kind of 'foreplay' men usually like to hear. True, I didn't have an erection quite yet, but I had been starting one when she had made her caustic comment. I had never had any past complaints about my 'equipment', once properly and fully stimulated, from any of my prior girlfriends, and had even been told on occasion that I was even a bit larger than average.

"A sleeping kitten often swiftly grows into the largest and fiercest of jungle cats", I gently chided her, and moved to kiss her to shut her mouth and start to 'regain the mood'.

Madelyne, triggered by whatever the internal self-destructive mechanisms were that drove her, continued into another long laughing bit of caustic sarcasm that within seconds had fully sobered me and destroyed the romantic mood entirely. I left the bed and put on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, and hinted loudly that she should dress and I would call a taxi for her.

That started another row from Madelyne that broke my last straw of patience with her. Seconds later, I had picked her up still nude, kicking and screaming and dumped her unceremoniously on my front doorstep. A moment later I tossed her gown and her purse to her and told her to call her own cab and then I slammed the door shut on her.

Enough was enough and I was washing my hands of her.

************

I felt good, and I sat in the dark of my living room for some time listening to her bang on my door, begging and pleading. Still apparently quite nude, she hadn't bothered to dress and in fact, according to a peephole look I took later) had flung her gown off to the far corner of my front patio garden.

Apparently this was the first time in her entirely life that she had been 'rejected', and her ego didn't at all know how to handle that. Sometimes the voice remained angry and 'Madelyne-like', but as time went on her sobbing took on more of a 'Maddie' tone and she would plead for forgiveness. I steeled my heart (which did tend to be extremely soft).

There is a saying that has great deal of truth behind it, "For every beautiful woman, there is at least one man somewhere who was sick and tired of putting up with her shit." I was certainly done with putting up with hers.

Houston in late December can be fairly mild, shorts and T's at Christmas are not unusual, but this night was a bit chilly to start with and a 'northerner' was starting to pass through. By 4 o'clock it was starting to rain and from the feel of it was going to be a very cold and icy rain. Madelyne was now huddled, still nude in a little ball on my doorstep and her shivers became more audable now than her begging or sobbing. I expected that this would force her to get dressed and leave and soon, but it didn't. She just laid there on my doorstep and became even more wet and bitterly chilled to the bone and even through the door I could clearly hear her teeth chatter.

But still she refused to either dress or leave. I didn't know now what to do!

At 6 a.m. the wind and rain seemed to pick up even more and I could now hear hail falling. Madelyne was no longer obviously shivering and her teeth didn't seem to be chattering now either, in fact she was huddled into a still ball on my doorstep and she didn't appear to be moving much at all. This was bad, she was starting hypothermia and stubbornness or not, she had to be gotten warm right away.

I started the tea kettle, and turned on the hot water in both the shower and the bathtub, and I opened the door and picking up her nude half-frozen body and then brought her inside and put her into the hot shower. That revived her enough that her eyes opened a little bit and she gave me a faint smile.

When she could stand alright on her own I left to prepare a hot cup of tea for her, which I then forced her to drink a little at a time. When she had finished that cup, the bathtub was filled (I've got a big bathtub, room enough for two or three 'friendly' people at one time) and I helped her into it and let her bask with a second cup of tea for a good long time.

Once she had revived pretty much nearly back to a normal body temperature, I offered to leave and give her some privacy. The sight of her rather nice breasts bobbing in the water was getting distracting for me, but she begged that I stay with her and 'keep the water warm'. We ended up having the longest and certainly most sincere conversation we had ever had to that date. Maddie, at least for now, was back with me, and once again I found myself liking her despite myself.

*********

To condense four hours of conversation into just a sound-bite or two, her major malfunction with life consisted of two equal but separate problems. First, ALL of the women in her family tended to be a bit 'batshit crazy', her words not mine, and second, she blamed herself for her older brother's death twenty years ago and something inside her drove her to 'punish herself' any time she had thoughts of being happy.

How was that possible? Tyler was her older brother by four years, and seemingly the absolute perfect boy and undoubtedly the heir to the family's fortunes. He was smart and learned everything easily, never got into the slightest bit of trouble and doted on his little sister. One Sunday evening, when she was ten years old she remembered avidly watching Disney's "Wonderful World of Color" and watching a show called "Toby Tyler", about a young lad who joined the circus and could do tricks while on top a horse. Naturally, since her brother was named Tyler, and they certainly had plenty of horses (and Tyler was a very good rider) she demanded the very next day that her brother try out the tricks on horseback that she had seen done on TV.

Well her brother was good enough on horseback to be able to stand up in the saddle for a minute or two, but after that it was hard going. Naturally it takes years of stunt training to learn to do all of those tricks, and she had demanded that he perform them for her now on the spot. After falling a few times trying an especially hard trick, he had asked her if they could quit and she had remembered crying. Bothered by her tears, he got up on top of the horse once more and tried it again one last time - this time with tragic results. He had fallen and stuck his head hard against the corral fence. His skull was fractured on impact and he died later that night from internal bleeding in the brain.

It was an 'accident', but she felt completely and entirely responsible. Although her parents didn't make her feel guilty, she had loaded all of the guilt up upon herself as high as she could stack it. She threw away all of her dolls and toy horses and became 'far too serious', never laughing and never seemed to enjoy a single minute of her remaining childhood. Her only companion became her school books and her focus became fixed on 'becoming an adequate replacement for Tyler' in her family's eyes. At High School in Houston she was the 'book nerd' who never dated and the only time she ever went out was to go to the Library. She finished four years of Civil Engineering School in just three, never taking off a summer or going on a spring break vacation. She certainly never, ever let down her hair and joined her classmate's parties.

After graduation she had seemingly fulfilled her life's great ambition. She had now dedicated the last ten full years of her life to becoming the best possible Engineer so she could follow in what would have been Tyler's footsteps, and now she found that the work gave her absolutely no satisfaction or personal happiness. She had fulfilled 'her dream', and found that it was a very hollow one indeed.

Desperate for satisfaction somewhere in her life, she started to attempt romance and found she was even worse at that than she was an Engineer. In the event that she could ever start relating with another person on any kind of emotional basis, invariably her 'guilt at having happiness' would kick in and she would seemingly deliberately begin to sabotage the relationship. The longest relationship she had ever managed was one of only three weeks duration. Finding fault with every one of her suitors, invariably she would be the one who was the 'dumper' who terminated the relationship, tonight for the first time she was the 'dumpee' on the receiving end, and this was indeed a new and different experience.

Emotionally, I think she was still an eleven year old girl who had grown up way too fast and without any of the necessary teenaged social interactions that teach young adults properly (usually) how to relate to the wider world. She didn't understand at all the concept of 'give and take' and the only moment she lived in was 'the now'. She needed to grow up a bit (ok, actually a lot), but I wasn't sure at all that I had the patience to deal with her while she attempted it.

The whole business of 'I say terrible things to you because I like you' was also causing me some problems, and I addressed both of these issues with her, but she didn't have any simple solutions to that. All she could say was that she would 'try and not do anything to hurt me'. That was bound to be, to say the least, inadequate.

About Noon, she finally tired of soaking in the tub, and I found a long old T-shirt of mine (I didn't own a bathrobe) that at least covered her ass enough so that she could sit at the dining table for a little bit of lunch. Her dancing gown was still outside in the front yard and quite soaking wet, so that wouldn't work.

After lunch I let her have a couple of hours nap in my bed (alone) and at about 4 p.m. I threw one of my bigger and baggier sweatshirts over her and seeing it came down to about mid-thigh on her judged that it would do for getting her out of the house and into her own home safely. I then drove her home in silence and without any further drama.

Our future together was very uncertain. On one hand I sincerely wished to be done with her, and on the other I was somehow yearning to be with her again.

**********

The rest of Saturday evening was a washout for me mentally. I'd had no sleep the night before and soon gave up trying to think, because it didn't seem to be working. Poor addled and slow Harlequin needed at least a little sleep to be able to hold his one thought coherently.

Sunday wasn't a lot better. I seemed to be fixated upon this woman whose entire life purpose seemed to be to try and make mine miserable. I pulled out my small date book where I had kept track of all of my dancing appointments with Madelyne, and started to review all of my little notes about the 100+ minor and major inconveniences she had bestowed upon me over the last three months.

When that didn't seem quite definitive enough, I started a listing on one of the blank pages with every single slight, insult, gripe, bitch and moan she had inflicted upon me. October took three entire pages by itself, November was not quite so bad, but December was nearly October's length already with almost half the month still to go.

When that was done, I tried doing a contrasting list of 'good' things about her, but got stuck after the first two items; she was extremely decorative with lovely tits that floated divinely in my bathtub… and for some unfathomable reason I seemed to be in love with her.

This was insane. In fact it was nearly my clinical definition of insanity: doing sometime stupid, repeatedly the exact same way over and over again, but expecting somehow a different outcome this time.

I couldn't see any other possible outcome. If I let her get close to me again I was going to become more emotionally attached and then I would just get hurt, repeatedly and probably quite badly. I resolved to stop thinking about her and watch some of the Sunday football games on TV, but it certainly didn't seem to work very well. I got depressed seeing an old friend of mine out there on the field playing and I began to get maudlin, wishing it was me able to still play out there on that football field. I turned the TV off, fixed myself a sandwich and went to bed early for the night, even before the sun had quite set.

********

I didn't getting much done at work Monday, and Tuesday seemed even worse. I couldn't concentrate and had to redo every one of the construction drawings I attempted at least three times in order to fix stupid little mistakes. Nearly everyone was out on vacation that week before Christmas and this was normally my favorite time of year to get caught up on long overdue work, with no meetings, fewer phone call interruptions, etc, but I was about to give it up as a lost cause and go home early for the day when I had a rather odd phone call.

It was from Nathan Edwards, , probably the last person I had expected to be calling me.

"Hello, Harry? This is Nathan, Madelyne's father. You remember me from the party the other night?"

"Ahhh, Yes Sir, I do! That was a very nice party and I'm glad Maddie invited me to attend and that I got the chance to meet you."

"Good, because now I'm calling you for a favor. Maddie and I, and the rest of the family would take it as a favor if you would come and join our family for Christmas Eve at our ranch up near Brenham."

Silence followed, and lots of it.

"Well, how about it?" He asked with a hint that his 'requests were not usually disobeyed'.