This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.
This is written for the 2024 Summer Lovin' Contest
It Ain't Gonna Mow Itself
By Royce F. Houton
The numbers were daunting.
The temperature alone would reach 97 degrees this afternoon in low-lying South Hampton Roads. But the heat index — what the air would feel like to humans and other creatures because of the humidity in this swampy, water-dominated area where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic — would reach a suffocating 105.
"Told you you should have done it yesterday," Becky said as she scanned morning headlines on her iPad.
"You did but I got spooked by the threat of rain," I replied, squinting as I looked through the blinds out the primary bedroom's second-floor picture window into the hazy, incandescent mid-August sky. "And it rained enough wet the damn grass and make it even steamier today."
"I think you should wait, Rick," she said. "It's supposed to be down in the low 90s by Tuesday."
I shook my head.
"By then, it'll be too high and too thick," I said. "It'll leave large clumps of dead grass everywhere and look like hell after you've put so much time, effort and money into making that Zoysia grass look like the fairways at Augusta National."
"That's better'n you dropping dead of a heat stroke. I know stuff like this, remember? I'm a nurse."
That she is. Or was. Before she took a lucrative senior management job with a company that is a broker to sizeable businesses or corporations for insurance plans they get for their employees' benefit packages, Rebecca Parsons had for decades been a supervisor of nurses at the largest hospital in Norfolk, Virginia.
"I'll be fine. I'm a tough old bastard and only the good die young," I said. "Maybe I'll take my shirt off and mow in just my gym shorts to give your BFF Gloria an eyeful."
I expected that to get a rise from Becky and it did. She lowered her iPad, peered over the rims of her reading glasses and gave me a halfhearted scowl.
"I've warned you about that slut but you think I'm joking," Becky said, shaking her head in mock dismay as she finished her admonition.
She was talking about her next-door neighbor, Gloria Denham, a recently widowed freak of cosmetic surgery six years Becky's senior who, in a drunken stupor during a neighborhood cocktail party in Becky's own backyard, once loudly bragged that there wasn't a man alive she couldn't seduce away from Becky. Cruelly, this came not long after Morey Parsons' careless infidelity destroyed Becky's marriage to him.
Perhaps Gloria Denham reasoned that her multiple facelifts, tummy- and tush-tucks, boob jobs, Botox treatments, chemical peels, lip-plumping collagen injections, reductions to her multiple chins and even a labiaplasty to trim saggy vulva lips that one former lover had reportedly likened to a worn-out catcher's mit would allow her to pass for a swimsuit model instead of the Frankensteinish creature she now resembled at the age of 63.
I chuckled at the thought of poor Gloria — whom I had met only once — trying to vamp any man, particularly me. I was very much taken, in love with a woman I considered stunning and precious, even though Becky and I mutually decided to wait indefinitely to see whether either of us wished to risk a second marriage.
Back in the early spring, Becky and I had rekindled a romance that first flickered and almost roared to flame 11 years earlier, only to be interrupted by a horrific accident one night when a school bus had overturned on two-lane highway in a rural west of Richmond. We were the first to happen upon the crash and Becky's ER experience took over. She sprang into action, singlehandedly saving two critically injured boys, both track athletes returning from a high school meet in Charlottesville. She was recognized for her lifesaving heroism by no less than Virginia's governor, but incident deeply scarred her emotionally and psychologically. She withdrew from everyone, including me, for years.
I thought about her every day but thought we might never again see each other. Then, in March, I literally bumped into her in an adult novelties boutique in Norfolk's Ocean View neighborhood where I lived. I was single, chaste and shopping for a sex toy — a masturbatory aid tht my doctor recommended I try to keep my aging prostate active and prevent it from swelling to the size of a softball as befalls many men with monastic lifestyles. Becky had bought a naughty French maid costume for one of her daughters ahead of the daughter's wedding anniversary trip with her husband to a romantic resort in hopes it would lead to some more of the grandchildren she adores.
It didn't take much for the embers that smoldered for more than a decade to burn hot and bright again after our chance reunion. With her demons from that night finally exorcised, we realized our unrequited love for one another swiftly and this time, we seized it and held on tight. Becky's dark hair from the earlier years was now an even more enchanting silvery color. She is naturally lean and athletic and blessed with a figure that I doubt Gloria Denham could have matched even in her long-gone prime.
Now mostly retired from the practice of law, I kept my house in Ocean View with a sandy beach on the mouth of Chesapeake Bay in its back yard. It's mostly a retreat for Becky and me, for her grown children and mine, and when none of us are using it, as a source for extra money as a Vrbo vacation rental. Since May, Becky and I count the house she had renovated in Ghent, one of Norfolk's toniest neighborhoods, as our shared primary residence.
"Becks, I'm the luckiest guy in the world and you got nothing to worry about from Gloria or any woman," I said, shedding my flimsy cotton sleep shorts, standing momentarily naked before her before bending to quickly kiss her. "Now, I'm going to get dressed and head out to conquer the grass. It ain't gonna mow itself, you know."
Lowering her tablet again as she reclined against a pillow and the headboard, she eyed me up and down with a good-natured smirk forming on her face.
"Yeah, well ... you make sure my boy there," she said, pointing lazily at my flaccid penis, "stays holstered if Gloria pounces on you, mister."
I tugged on a pair of gym shorts I had already gotten sweaty in our home gym the day before, pulled on an Old Dominion Monarchs T-shirt, some beat-up docksiders and a wide-brimmed straw fedora before blowing my beloved a kiss and clambering downstairs to contend with the morbidly muggy heat that would only worsen as the sun climbed higher overhead.
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It wasn't a huge yard, just under half an acre, but most of it was consumed by gardens, a large, elevated deck, custom brick walkways and, in the more spacious backyard, a gardening shed and a pergola with a pair of porch swings capable of seating three people bracketing a long, rectangular, natural gas fire pit. But tending the professionally designed lawn wasn't always fast or easy.
Becky had tended the Zoysia for years and religiously followed directions from the lawn care company that had initially seeded, treated and fertilized it after she had completed renovations inside her mid-century Craftsman-style home. She had it fertilized on strict intervals, watered every third day and was to be cut at varying heights depending on the time of the year and the stage of its growth cycle: generally higher in dog days like these and shorter in the spring through mid-May and from September through October through the end of growing season. She had purchased an electric mower powered by a large battery and kept its blade sharp to maximize efficiency and minimize the stress grass suffers from a dull blade. She liked the idea of environmental stewardship without a mower belching greenhouse gasses but the idea of much faster blade speeds that lent the turf a professionally-cut patina appealed to her even more as a striking contrast to the unruly crabgrass patch of the Denham lawn nextdoor.
I had sweat through my T-shirt even before I got the mower out of the shed in the property's far-back corner opposite the pergola along the six-foot privacy fence.
I started on the showpiece front because it was the immaculate carpet she wanted the neighborhood — especially Gloria — to see. I took my time, mowing in precise diagonal lines to give it a subtle, neatly striped appearance not unlike the grass patterns you see in the outfields of Major League baseball stadiums.
By the time I moved to the rear, I could see Becky had raised the blinds to the French doors that opened from our bedroom onto the upper loge over the deck. That means she was keeping a wary eye on me, mindful of the danger of my overheating. Or the predations of Gloria Denham.
No one will confuse me for Channing Tatum. But since Becky and I had become exclusive, I had taken more pride in my physical conditioning. I had moderated my dad bod into something a little more presentable that isn't half bad for a dude approaching Medicare eligibility.
At the moment, I was concentrating on the grass. One benefit electric mowers have over loud gas-powered ones is you can hear things while you're mowing. Like the sharp, unmistakable wolf whistle that pierced the relative Saturday morning quiet.
Would Gloria Denham actually be so brazen? I paused for a moment, squinting behind my sunglasses at a second-story window of the Denham house that was the only one with even a marginal line of sight into Becky's backyard. I saw nothing. The windows appeared shut and the curtains pulled together behind them. Having never been in the Denham home, I had no clue whether a bedroom, bathroom, office or attic lay beyond that window.
Then a follow-up whistle.
It was coming from my own deck, from my own Beck! There she stood on the balcony of our bedroom, still in her short, thin cotton nightie and holding a mug of coffee. It was difficult to discern at this distance but I knew from frequent and close prior inspection that it was easy to see her tight pink nipples beneath that garment. It always revved my motor.
"What are you doing?" I asked, as I killed the humming mower motor.
"My neighbors aren't the only ones who get to ogle my sexy, sweaty yard man."
I shook my head.
"Girl ... don't distract me," I said. "I've got to finish this and then get the string trimmer out and edge around the flower beds, deck, walkways and whatnot, then I'll be done. Go back inside. It's hotter'n a bitch out here."
She gave me a thumbs-up, turned and walked back inside the French doors, closing them behind her. I pushed the button on the mower handle and the mower blade whirred back to life.
It took less than 10 more minutes to finish the mowing, but the trimming was tougher. At least when you're mowing, you've walking and air is passing by. Edging is slower and far more tedious, standing longer in the same place as a thick strand of nylon spins at RPMs so high it's invisible to the naked eye, severing blades of grass and spraying them all over me and anything nearby.
By the time I was done and had stored all the gear back in the shed, I was soaked head to toe with sweat. My shoes squished with each footfall. It appeared that I had jumped, fully clothed, into a swimming pool as I trudged toward the back door, anticipating a cold Gatorade and a long, cooling shower afterward.
That's when I saw Becky standing there barefoot, Gatorade in hand, still in her nightie.
"Thanks, babe," I said as I took the cold plastic bottle she offered, twisted off its cap and took a gulp as I trudged up the first few steps of the deck that would lead to the kitchen door.
"No sir, no you don't! Not after I just had that house deep-cleaned," she said.
I froze momentarily, so near my cooling respite only to be denied.
