Urban Renewal

This is my submission for the Earth Day 2014 Contest. Thank you for reading and voting.

*

I should have seen it coming. But with hindsight, I realize that love and lust are blind.

It was February 15th, the morning after Valentine's Day, that great marketing machine brought upon us by the florists and confectioners and restaurants of the world. I rolled over on my side and looked at Brad, my boyfriend, as he slept. His black hair was matted against his head and his dark beard needed of a shave. I leaned into him and kissed his lips. He moaned a shallow guttural sound. I kissed him again.

"I can't. It's late."

I rubbed his ass and grabbed it hard, and I enjoyed the feeling of the firm muscle in my hand.

"Don't leave any marks that she's going to see."

That wasn't his response the night before when we had come home after a night of romantic celebration and excess. It had started with Brad meeting me at my office and taking me to an Afghani restaurant near the theater district. We ate pumpkin soup and braised spinach with garlic and cumin and a thick spicy vegetarian chili. We drank wine, and a lot of it, as we touched each other under the table. We finished with a sweet yogurt based desert before making our way home.

I had just closed the door when Brad pinned me against the door, his hand on my hips and his hungry mouth on mine as our tongues pushed hard against each others. He kissed my lips and neck as his hands slid up under my short skirt and over my garter and grabbed my ass as I felt his hard cock push against me as he thrust himself against me.

Brad lifted me up and carried me into the bedroom and dropped me onto the bed.

"Take off your blouse," he said. His voice was thick and slow from the wine.

I started to unbutton the white blouse as he took off his shirt and pulled down his pants. His cock was hard, the head full and pulsing as he reached down and stroked himself as he watched me slip off the blouse. I started to remove my new white lace bra, but he stopped me and reached down and lifted it up and exposed my breasts to him. He grabbed me by the thighs and pulled me toward him, a hunger showed in his eyes, and he slid up my skirt. Brad reached down and pushed aside my thong and put his cock at the opening of my pussy. He grabbed his cock, sliding it against me, getting it slick with my juices and then he leaned in, sliding the head into me.

There was urgency to his actions, as if he couldn't wait, or didn't want to wait. He grabbed my hips and started to fuck me, it wasn't making love, it was primal and urgent, and he loomed over me, sliding his thick cock into my wet, waiting cunt, pushing into me, as his hips slammed into mine. I arched my back, pushing up into him, feeling dirty and taken, my bra pushed up, my skirt scrunched up at my waist, my thong pushed aside as Brad's cock slid in and out of me. He reached down and grabbed at my breasts, pinching my nipples, rubbing them between his fingers. The whole act, the urgency, him pushing into me, the delicious tension in my nipples were too much and a wave washed over me, starting at my nipples and flooding over me, down my chest, over my tummy, and landing in my cunt, like an arc of lightening, that wracked my body, as I pushed my pelvis up against him, trying to extend the feeling as a guttural moan escaped my lips and got buried into the pillow near my head.

"You like that, don't you," he said.

He was breathing hard and there was sheen of sweat on his body as he slid in and out of my stretched cunt. He pulled out of me and I reached out for him, trying to grab at his cock, trying to put it back into me. He grabbed my hips and rolled me over and pulled me up onto my hands and knees. He flipped up my skirt and spread my legs. He spit into his hand and smeared it onto the head before putting it back into me. The sensation was exquisite as he stroked in and out of my wet cunt.

"Fuck me," I managed to say between grunts.

His fingers dug into my flesh as he pulled me hard against him as I felt his cock fill me with his cum.

He leaned down, hissed me at the base on my neck and collapsed onto the bed. He fell asleep.

I got out of bed and went into the bathroom to pee. During the night I had taken off my clothes and wore nothing. I put on one of Brad's robes, the silk gray black check, and tied the sash. It smelled of sweat and aftershave and testosterone and I got a shiver on my skin. I went into the living room and found his phone. There was a red asterisk on the screen, an urgent message. I stared at the screen when it asked for a password. He had told it to me once, we were driving and he wanted me to send a text, and I closed my eyes and tried to see the keys. I entered four digits, got a wrong code message and repeated it twice more. I pushed the buttons again, slowly and the phone opened.

I stared at the screen and thought about what I was about to do. I believe in privacy. I don't want anyone -- my employer or Google or the NSA - reading my emails. But, I do want to know if my boyfriend is cheating on me. The late night meetings, the excuses for us not doing things on the weekends, the hint of cheap perfume on his clothes had started to accumulate during the past month. The night before had been great, but we hadn't fucked like that in over a month. My friends had told me that all couples hit a lull, but at 35 I wasn't ready for it. I hot the message icon and started to scroll through them.

I found it quickly, and unknown number, and opened it. The message was short. "Think about this tonight!" and there was a picture. I tapped the screen and was looking at a woman's pussy, the lips pink and full, a manicured hand pulled the lips apart.

I felt my heart beat hard in my chest and I felt nauseous. I paused for a moment and then texted.

"Can't wait to get some of that!"

I felt like a fool the moment that I had sent the text. It was bad enough that I had read the text; it was another that I had sent one.

The response was immediate.

"I'm ready for u whenever u want me!"

I replied.

"Tell me what you want."

Another picture arrived, this time of lips. Then another picture of her pussy in the next text. A moment later there was a shot of her ass.

"I want it everywhere!"

"I'll be there soon."

I dropped the phone on the couch. I felt dirty, physically and emotionally, and I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I went to the closet and grabbed the few clothes that I had left at the apartment. There was a sports bra and a sweatshirt, a pair of jeans and a pair of high top Keds. I put them on, and I covered my head with a pink cap, a gimmee from a charity run. I grabbed my clothes from last night and put them in a pillow case. I looked in my wallet to see how much cash I had; there were three crumpled singles in the wallet. I went in the kitchen, reached into the cookie jar and took out a twenty. I took the apartment key off my ring and set it on the phone. I closed the door behind me, got a cab home, and spent the next hour in the shower.

The calls from Brad started an hour later. In between the fourth and fifth call I figured out how to send him directly to voicemail so I didn't have to hear the ring. Then the texts began. I finally sent one back.

"Call your friend. She's waiting for you."

I wasn't sure what the next steps would be. I don't like confrontations, but Brad is a lawyer and loves a debate. He also had a key to my apartment. I should have thought to take it from his key ring, but I was in a hurry to get out. I looked online, found a locksmith near me and called. Within an hour they handed me a new set of keys from my lock. It was the best $100 I had spent in a while. I deleted all of Brad's texts without reading them, put on my coat, locked my door and headed out of the apartment.

Six weeks later I was still in a funk. The break-up took a harder toll on me than I had thought it would. I think it was because it had come out of the blue, but again with hindsight the late nights and missed weekends started to make sense. Brad had blamed work, he was trying to make partner, and there were always billable hours to work to show his value to the firm.

On April 1st, my friend Carla came knocking at my door.

"Enough is enough of this self pity," she said as she walked into my apartment. "Open the damn blinds Emily, he's gone, it's over, and time to get on with your life."

Carla is my friend and mentor. Nearly 60, she looks 40 and acts like she's 30 but with wisdom of the years. Married three times, she still believes in love and relationships, just not restrictions like marriage. She's my vision of a strong woman.

"Time to kick your ass into gear, sister. Get dressed."

She had already gone into my closet and started throwing clothes onto the bed for me to put on. It was nearly one and I was wearing my comfy flannel PJs with bunnies on them.

"I don't feel like going ..."

"Save that shit for some other time. Victimhood is way over rated. You're not the first woman that dated some asshole that cheated on her. You dumped his sorry ass, so get over it. If you keep doing this shit, he wins. Is that what you want?"

I had fallen into the pitiful role too easily. I've been dating since I was fifteen, some great guys, some losers. But I had never before had tied my worth into what had happened in the relationship.

Carla looked at her watch and started making hurry up gesture with her hands as I stripped off the PJs and got dressed. She had an agenda for the afternoon. A volunteer group in Nashville was having a meet and greet with agencies looking for new people to work with them. Within an hour of storming into my apartment, we were walking around in the Grand Ole Opry Hotel with a notebook and bottle waters going from booth to booth finding out about the opportunities.

"All right, it looks like it breaks down into kids, animals, arts, and environment. What's it going to be?"

I love Carla, but there are times when she is a little to pragmatic. There were a hundred small groups in the convention center space all peddling themselves like the ugly girl at the school dance. Choose one, and the rest stay holding up the wall.

"Jeez, I don't know ..."

"Kids or arts?"

I paused and looked at her.

"Kids or arts, pick one."

"Arts."

"Arts or animals?"

"Animals."

"Animals or environment?"

I paused.

"Environment."

She got out her folder and started circling choices on it. She started going through the choices again, reducing them to binary options, reducing it to two.

"Park conservancy or inner city community garden?"

I paused for a moment, mostly to make her wait.

"Community garden," I said.

Carla smiled and grabbed me by the hand and dragged me up an aisle, across another, and between vendor booths. We stood in front of a pair of tables with a balloon arch and a couple of sickly looking plants on the table. A man, tall, thin with short gray hair and soft blue eyes was talking to a woman and I assumed her teenage son. He gave them a brightly colored packet of paper and they walked away.

"Ahh, two more volunteers," he said. His voice was deep and I detected an accent, perhaps from New England.

"The last time these hands held dirt I was ten," Carla said.

"Well, after twenty five years, I think its time to get them dirty again," he said.

She laughed. "It'll take more than flattery to get me digging in dirt." She turned toward me. "Emily wants to volunteer."

He extended his hand and I took it. He showed me pictures of the garden space and a timeline for the projects. "We've got a get started event this Saturday morning."

I started to back away, to withdraw my support.

"Lovely. She'll be there, won't you sweetie," Carla said. She wrapped her arm around my waist and we walked away.

That weekend I arrived at the garden and there were about six people there. The man from the sign up session, Tim was there checking volunteers in and making assignments. Unfortunately, the rest of the volunteers were group of giggling teens. They grabbed some tools and headed off like a pack of animals looking for something to root.

"Don't tell me," the man said. "Emily, right?" He extended his hand.

"That's pretty good."

"It helps that I looked at your sheet when I saw you walking up. An old parlor trick that I learned when I was in the business world, people are impressed if you remember their name."

"Magicians aren't supposed to tell how their tricks are done."

"I don't reveal them all."

He held his hands out in front of me, palms up and then brought them about six inches in front of my face. He brought them together; his fingers just touched, and then pulled them apart to reveal a pen. He flipped it in the air, caught it and held it out for me.

I stood for a moment, replaying the scene, I'm certain that I held my breath.

"I'll have you sign in and we'll get to work."

His name was Tim and the garden was his retirement plan. After years in the business world of sales, he had decided that he had enough of the pressure. He had found some property in the city that had fallen onto the abandoned tax rolls, bought it and then flipped it into a not for profit and had started the urban garden. The neighborhood grew their gardens there, and he had set aside some of it for a nearby middle school to teach the kids about food, nature, and farming. This would be his second year.

I got a hoe and started breaking up the earth, pulling up the early spring weeds, and removed stray pieces of trash like glass and pieces of brick and mortar. After a couple of hours the five gallon paint bucket was full and I had worked up a sweat.

"Youth is over rated," Tim said. He startled me and I jumped. "Sorry."

I scowled at him. I guessed he was about 60 and not sure where he was going with the comment.

"You've done more that those five have," he said. He pointed to the teenagers at the far end of the garden. "They're more concerned with hours than the service part and they've been farting around since they got here."

I shrugged my shoulders and laughed and went back to work and started to fill my next bucket. As I finished filling it for the second time, Tim cam around with bottled water and told me it was time for lunch. I drank the water without stopping and followed him to the small building on the corner of the lot. The kids were gone. He saw me looking over the gardens.

"They got their four hours and hit the road. For them, it's like a bingo card, filling in as many of the blocks as you can." He held up two wrapped sandwiches. "Your pick. Veggie or veggie, and gluten, nut, and dairy free." I took the veggie sandwich and water. "Great, I get the healthy one." He laughed.

We talked some more about the gardens and the upcoming year. He had helped start a consortium of the urban gardens to help all of them try to coordinate efforts and not compete for grants and city money. Some of the groups ran the gardens as a farm, selling produce at the area farmers' markets. Others were like his, giving city dwellers a chance to have a small plot of dirt to grow some vegetables.

After noon, it got warmer and I took off my sweatshirt and was working the ground in my tee shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Skin cancer be damned; I was going to get some sun. Tim came around every hour and a half or so, brought me water, and he took my bucket of trash and left me an empty. Around four o'clock he came up to me.

"Quitting time!"

I stood up and realized that I was exhausted. I looked at the area that I had cleared. It was 50 feet square. My shoulders ached and I was covered in sweat.

"If I had three more people like you, I'd be done this weekend!"

"Well, count me out for the encore."

We walked back to the shed and I put on my sweatshirt. My shirt clung to me and I realized that the air had chilled.

"We're here every weekend if you're ever crazy enough to want to come back."

"I might, when my muscles stop aching."

"Tell your boyfriend to take you out to a nice restaurant tonight; you've earned a night of rest."

"No boyfriend."

The moment I said it, I regretted the words. I keep my private life private, except with Carla. I didn't know this guy, and I didn't need to share personal stuff with a stranger. He sensed something.

"Well, neither do I. Girlfriend that is. Ex-wife, but that's another story and a bottle of Wild Turkey."

I laughed.

"Well, some night we'll get a bottle and compare ex's stories; winner or really the loser can pay for the bottle."

"Go home. Hot shower. Two Advil. You'll feel great."

I turned and started to walk to my car. I collapsed into the seat of the car and closed my eyes. He startled me when he rapped on the window of the car. I rolled down the window.

"This may sound weird, and if it is, I'm sorry, but the garden groups are getting together for dinner tonight to just talk about the first weekend of working and plans. Real informal, everybody pays their own way. If you want, join us."

I said something about being tired and not knowing anyone.

"That's the beauty of being young. You're flexible."

Tim showed his open hand and laid it on my palm. He pressed down and pulled it away. There was a business card resting on my palm.

"The address is on the back. That's my cell on the front. Hope you're able to come."

He walked back to the shed and I drove home trying to figure out what had just happened.

I got home and took two Advil and sat in a hot tub. I wanted to read, but I was too tired. The water felt nice and after a half an hour I felt better. I drank a quart of water and a small bowl of chips with homemade salsa. I called Carla and talked about the day.

"So, you're going out tonight, right?"

"No."

I told her that I had plans for Netflix and a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

"In forty years, you can curl up in your flannel nighty and your cat and watch movies. Tonight you're going out."

She is my friend and mentor. And sometimes she thinks she is a drill sergeant. I wanted to tell her to fuck off and leave me alone, but I knew all of the arguments that she'd make why she was right.

"Look, go out, meet some people, eat dinner, come home and watch your movie and get drunk then. It's time you pulled down the crepe and get back into the race."

I told her that we could disagree, and she started her litany of arguments on why she was right. Carla is always right, if you listen to her side of things.

"Do what you want. You're only young once."

An hour later I was in my car driving to dinner.

I drove by the place four times trying to find it. It was located on a side street and in the back of a bigger place. I had heard of it a couple times from co-workers. "Au Naturel" featured local food, and was a farm to table place. As I walked in the door I heard Tim yell my name and walked over to greet me. He introduced me to the eight others at the big table and I found a seat across from him. I ordered a locally brewed beer and listened to the conversation as I sipped the beer. I was still thirsty from the day in the gardens, but refrained from gulping it down.

Platters of braised root vegetables, potatoes and spindly carrots and small onions and beets were brought to the table and we passed them around family style. The woman next to me, Nina, kept making an effort to bring me into the conversation. We talked about gardens and sustainable farming, pesticides, and the need for organic food standards. Three pizzas, giant pies covered in sauce and vegetables appeared and they too were passed around. There were three different kinds and they were fabulous. The crust was perfect and the cheese a gooey mess and I licked my fingers. We ate and drank for nearly two hours and finished the meal with poached pears.