John woke from a deep sleep upon hearing the door slam shut. Without glancing at the clock, he knew it was 7:30 AM and that Margie was gone for the day. Rolling over he tried to go to back to sleep, but after few minutes of tossing, he hefted his 260-pound frame out of the twin bed in his sons' room and headed for the kitchen. He had things to do today and wanted to get them done before he played a round at the public golf course.
As always the newspaper was on the table, coffee was ready and Margie had laid out fresh fruit and a cereal bowl for him. He poured a cup of coffee and then selected a box of cereal from the three choices Margie had out on the counter. Thoughts of Margie spending the day with rowdy bunch of fourth graders made him smile; she had always loved kids.
"Shit," he muttered. The rift between them seemed to be widening with each passing week. He lamented the obvious, that after 22 years of marriage their sex life was in atrophy.
He knew he took her for granted, just as she seemed to take him for granted. He only fucked her on the weekends and even then it was pretty much a perfunctory one-way affair lasting all of maybe five minutes. Margie just wasn't interested anymore. She pretty much just lay there until he was finished. In the process, John had given up on trying very hard to be a good lover.
The telephone rang. John saw on the Caller ID that it was Margie's brother, Mike. Knowing what Mike wanted, he let the answering machine take the call.
"Lazy shit!" he cursed as he ate his cereal. John had never much cared for Mike and he wasn't about to be pressured by Margie or anyone else to lend him any more money. For their entire 22 years of marriage Mike had been thrown in his face was someone who going to be somebody. Mike did this and Mike did that, Mike has such a great job, Mike is so smart. ‘Why don't you do something with your life?' was a familiar refrain He snorted, he had done something and now he was enjoying the payoff. As for Mike, ‘that dumb bastard doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.'
After he knocked Margie up in high school he did the honorable thing and married her. No one, not his parents nor her parents offered a helping hand. They both had to work to afford a dumpy trailer. They dropped out of school and he had to settle for a GED. Upon graduation, he joined the Air Force, learning to be an aircraft mechanic.
Mike who was a little older than Margie went to State U with his parents footing the entire bill. They then footed the bill for his Master's degree in business. By the time Mike actually went out and got a job, John had been in the Air Force for five years, 25% of the way to a military pension. He was a Tech Sergeant and they had two boys Brad and Jeremy.
Over the next fifteen years, John and Margie were stationed all around the world, England, Germany, Japan, Korea as well as numerous duty stations in the states and several TDY stints in various hellholes in the Middle East. Along the way, Margie picked up a teaching degree. At thirty-eight, he retired with a full pension as a Chief Master Sergeant, and immediately found a job as an AP mechanic for a major airline.
Mike on the other hand, had two failed marriages with three children he hardly ever saw and he had jumped companies several times on his ‘climb to the top'. The only time he ever got out of the country was once to Cancun during his second honeymoon. Then the last company he was with went belly up, taking his job and all his 401-K money with it. He couldn't afford all the child support, nor maintain the payments on his big house and fancy cars, and Mike was now in bankruptcy, begging John for rent money on an apartment he couldn't afford.
"Get a job!" snorted John as Mike finished his baleful plea to the mechanical device.
His thoughts turned back to Margie. He realized that they really hadn't done anything together since they settled in Rockford. They hardly saw each other during the week and during the weekends they seemed to go their own way.
Titan Air was very flexible and he had opted to work four, ten-hour shifts a week, giving him three days off. Once a month he had to pull a weekend shift, but generally he was off Friday, Saturday and Sunday. His hours were generally 2 PM to midnight, giving him the mornings free.
His schedule clashed rather badly with Margie's. He would come home around one or two in the morning after a few beers at a titty bar and would invariably wake Margie up. Then she would have trouble getting back to sleep and she had to get up around 6 AM to get ready for school. Then she would wake him up, and he'd have trouble getting back to sleep.
They decided that since the boys were gone and were now both in the military, that there were other beds available in the house. He should simply sleep somewhere else when he got home. At first John wasn't too keen on the idea, but worked out great, at least sleep wise despite the size of the bed.
He scanned the entertainment section of the paper and finding something interesting, resolved to make reservations at a comedy club for that evening. He would wine and dine her, entertain her, then bring her home and fuck the hell out of her. Grinning, he felt it was good plan. Margie deserved it.
John put his dishes in the sink and then sauntered off to their bedroom. Slipping on an old pair of gym shorts, he headed outside. The morning dew had already burned off, and that pleased him, as the grass wouldn't clump together as he cut it. After putting on his ‘grass shoes', John pulled the mulching mower from the shed.
Owning his own house, he loved gardening. Nearly every morning he would putter around doing something, mowing grass, clipping bushes, weeding flowerbeds, tending to his prize roses, planting something or propagating new plants. It was a labor of love and his yard showed it; it was immaculate. As always, he started in the back and worked his way to the front.
He finished mowing and started edging the curb and sidewalks. He knew his house would look great for the weekend, but as he looked next door, he frowned. The couple that had lived there when he had bought his house had moved to another state. The house remained empty and unsold for six months and it had looked like hell. John had taken it upon himself to keep the front yard cut, but once someone moved in, he let it be.
They were a young couple with two boys and had moved in about a month ago, but the grass hadn't been cut since they moved in. Now the grass was very high and the weeds were even higher. Grass grew over the sidewalks and the curb. The shrubbery was overgrown. The only flowers were a pathetic half-dead clump in a clay pot near the front door.
He had exchanged pleasantries with them, but really didn't know anything about them. They had two boys about six or seven. She was pretty, in her early twenties. Zeke was a weasel-looking guy, gaunt, and scrubby. John wondered what she saw in him.
As he fumed about the unkempt state of the yard next door and what a lazy ass Zeke was, he realized that perhaps they didn't have a mower and that it wouldn't take him but forty-five minutes or so to get it presentable. He set about the task of cutting the high grass and uncovering the sidewalk and curbs from the relentless runners of St. Augustine grass. It took several passes, each time lowering the wheels of the struggling lawn mower a little at a time to get the grass cut. After edging, he got out a rake and his garden cart and hauled the piles of debris to his compost pile. He was almost finished when the young woman came outside.
*****
"Oh, thank you very much, but you really shouldn't have done that," she said brushing her long auburn hair from her face.
"No problem. I guess you folks don't have a mower," he said with a touch of sarcasm.
"No, I don't. Zeke..."
He cut her off, "My pleasure, Ma'am." He looked her over. She had on a green, jungle print bikini with a matching see-through sarong wrapped around her waist. ‘Nice tits,' he immediately observed. She was nearly a foot shorter than he and seemed very petite, especially when compared to Margie who was definitely not petite.
"It looks so much better! You've worked so hard, the least I can do is offer you a glass of iced tea."
John was thirsty and truly appreciated the offer. "Yes, that would be good," he simply stated.
"Would you like to come in?"
John looked down. His hairy bare chest, legs and arms were covered with sweat, dirt and grass clippings. "Uh, I'm a bit of a mess, and I don't want to track in a bunch of dirt into your home."
Her big green eyes seemed to laugh. She thought a moment before suggesting with a wink, "How about coming around back to the patio. At least you'll be able to get out of the sun."