It was a good thing that I did not learn Melissa's last name until after I had talked to her for a while, and indeed after I had asked her for a date. I would have been too nervous.
As it was, she was just a young woman who worked in the same company I had just gotten a job at, and on the same floor and just down the hall. All I saw at first was long legs, long pretty brown hair, a slightly broad face, and then the intelligence that showed when she opened her mouth. I liked her looks and her attitude the first day that I saw her, and felt the same way every time I saw her for the next three weeks -- which was not every day, our paths did not always cross.
But after the three weeks I asked her, and she gave me her address to pick her up and a number if there were problems. Only on the way there did I reflect that she still had not given me her last name. But the house was rather impressive and more expensive than I would have expected, and nothing fell into place until her father came to the door. He owned the company.
(Family resemblance would not have helped, since Melissa took after her mother.)
As it happened, my not knowing who she was made her father look on me more favorably as somebody to go out with his daughter. His people had reported my talking to his little girl, and he had inquired about me and decided that I was of a good age for her (23 to her 21) and of good prospects. And only from this point on could I be suspected of being after her money.
Which I wasn't. Marrying the boss's daughter might have an appeal, but I was not at the moment interested in marriage and not even certain I planned to stay with the company. Finding out how Melissa was in bed was more in my mind, though on the first date that was not a serious thought either.
By the time she was ready to go out I had mentally and emotionally settled down again, and the evening spent with Melissa Humes was very pleasant for both of us. And we planned a second one.
That led to a third, a fourth... By the fourth month of once or twice a week meetings, including several evenings spent more in my apartment than elsewhere, I knew there were no real prospects of getting Melissa into bed anytime soon, maybe short of marriage. She was one of those "everything but" women. She frankly admitted to me one night that she was technically a virgin, though petting to orgasm or giving or receiving oral sex were fine with her, with the right man.
While she never said (and I would not bluntly ask) I suspected that there had not been many right men, and I might even have been the first. There HAD indeed been a couple of male gold-diggers in the past, and the children of the rich whom she had been introduced to were either too snobbish or too promiscuous for her taste. She praised me after the first few dates for not rushing her into physical activity and treating her as if she were special to me. That last part... well, I didn't. I treated her as I would any woman whom I would like to have like me; I suppose that was unusual in her experience.
But she was pretty, witty, a good conversationalist, enthusiastic about what sexual activity she would agree to... One could not ask for too much more. If I did not get her into bed in the metaphorical sense, she was there literally a number of times. If I did not get her entirely naked, I saw most of what she had and explored the rest. If I did not get into her, between her legs, I was in her mouth and throat over and over.
I had gradually fallen in love with her -- and she was so devoted to me that it almost scared me. It seemed almost as if every thought she had was about me after a few months. When we were alone her hands were always on me. She obviously wanted me so much that it was ironic that she never gave herself to me.
Our interests and tastes were compatible where they were not similar. We both, oddly enough, had a thing for the late-fifties rock singers. Melissa was fascinated in particular by a black singer named Marvin Baker. This was partly understandable; he had a beautiful voice, and mostly did things about first loves, very pure and sweet. This was ironic, and more ironic in Melissa's case, because the rumors (true, as it turned out) were that he had a string of groupies before the term was even thought of. He liked them as young as he could get them, often 13 or 14. Virgins whom he would rape anally while he took their maidenheads with a huge dildo. (Psychological compensation for his having a small penis, it was said.) He was killed at the height of his career by the father of a girl whom he had left bleeding the night before.
I assumed that Melissa liked him because of his songs, and he was certainly under-appreciated for that in recent years. But no, she knew all the stories and loved them.
After eight months I proposed to her. I wondered if this would make her willing to go the last full measure with me, and let me fill her in a place which no one had ever taken the measure of from the inside. But no, it didn't.
As I have said, it would not be reasonable to complain. That night and the one following Melissa took my erection into her throat as deep as she could and kept me there until I had coated the inside of it with semen, so draining me on the first night that I wondered if I would have anything left on the second one.
The wedding was set for four months later.
In another sphere, the engagement ring may well have been a factor in the decision to send me with an evaluation team to Norfolk, to bid on a big new contract. I had been doing the same sort of work in the home office, from paper records, but actually meeting with the other company was a promotion of sorts. I was going to be there for a week, including over a weekend.
And Melissa did not want to hear about that. She stopped short of actually objecting, perhaps since she also suspected her father's hand in it, but she did not like being away from me that long. The day before I was to leave, she came over without warning and almost did not want to leave. We had exhausted each other with our hands and lips, but I pointed out to her that it would look bad for her to actually spend the night with me (and sleeping beside her might revive both our appetites too much). Just before she left that Wednesday night, as we lay in bed together, she recalled that Marvin Baker was from Norfolk, and was buried there, and could I look around and see if there was anything out of the way connected to him that I could bring back?
I agreed, though I couldn't imagine what there would be like that.
The negotiations went quite well. I only spoke a few times, on technical questions I was familiar with, but I was sure that the report back said my input was valuable. We really finished on Friday afternoon, but the other two men wanted to stay over the weekend, so we arranged for a brief meeting on Monday morning before we flew back, to justify the expense of the hotel rooms.
One of the men wanted to sample the night life of Norfolk, or maybe just to be away from home. Probably the latter; I didn't see that there was much night life in Norfolk. No idea what the other one did. On Saturday afternoon, I went to the cemetery where Marvin Baker was buried. The family tomb was fairly impressive, easily the largest in the immediate area. I remembered reading that a lot of the royalties that the family got from his records went into building it.
As I was standing there reading the inscription, an old black man came up to me.
"You interested in Marvin?"
"Some," I said. "My girlfriend really likes his records."
"I used to be a neighbor. Knew him when he was a kid." And he did look about the age Marvin would be now, or even a little older. "They're all dead now but one sister, but I got some clothes they threw out that Marvin used to wear. I need money. You want to look at them?"
I thought for a second. This might be a set-up for a robbery, but more likely was a swindle. But I could look out for myself either way, odds were.
The house he took me to was only a few blocks away. He got out a shirt, definitely of the right age and matching one that Marvin Baker wore on a record album cover of his. The old man wanted $50 for it.
There was no way to authenticate the shirt, but the whole thing sounded to be on the edge of plausibility... I gave him the money. I stuffed the shirt in a leather bag I usually had crumpled in a pocket. The shirt itself would be crumpled for a while, but should straighten out on a hanger before Monday.
I walked back into downtown Norfolk. This would certainly be out of the way enough to give to Melissa, even if nothing about it could really be proved. The leather bag now had to be carried in my hand, but that should be no real problem.
That's what I thought. Hours later I wandered into a building with an indoor flea-market, really all sorts of strange things. I started at the back and worked my way forward, not finding much of interest. I set the leather bag down at a table near the front door, to look at an old 45rpm record. As I looked up to ask about the price, a hand took the bag and both were out the door and gone.
"Hope that wasn't your wallet," said the man behind the counter.
"No," I said, not sure just what to say. "No, it was just an old shirt."
Well. That was fifty bucks gone, but the man was out of sight (I looked) and the theft was not worth reporting to the police even if I were not leaving Monday. I did buy the 45, and as I turned to leave the building my eye fell on a spread of, among other things, human finger bones.
I had a sudden idea for a bizarre joke to play on Melissa. I had accused her of making Marvin Baker into a saint, so why not present her with a holy relic? An index finger, first joint, was only five dollars.
The rest of the weekend was quiet. We three got back on Monday afternoon, and either Melissa or I were too tied up to do more than talk a bit on the phone the next few days. On Friday we ate dinner at a restaurant, then went to my apartment.
