Chester
1
Chester. Seventy-eight years old. Overweight. Curmudgeonly. Sat in his office in the more than modest older home in a nice but fading neighborhood, flipping idly though a notebook filled with page after page of old stamps. 5 years ago, he could have sold the notebook at any number of auctions for a quarter of a million dollars. Today, if you could even find a stamp auction, it would barely fetch a tenth of that.
Story of my life. Everything that I once thought was worth something is slowly turning to shit.
He was about to open the desk drawer and reach for half a bottle of single malt scotch when he heard the doorbell. He slowly and almost painfully got up from the chair and hobbled toward the door. He looked into the living room where his wife sat, her cellphone in her hand, apparently oblivious to what was going on around her.
Chester answered the door and saw four men standing there in work clothes and a two-wheel dolly. He opened the glass door.
"Who the hell are you?
The white guy in front, obviously in charge because he held the clipboard, looked down.
"Mr. Gouldsby?"
"Yeah, that's me. What do you want."
"Ugh. We are from the charity resale center. We got a call yesterday that you had some furniture for us to pick up."
Chester started to tell them all to get the fuck off his doorstep when a voice came from the other room.
"I called them. The stuff is in the garage."
Chester rolled his eyes and looked at the four men. He wasn't too keen on having them in his house. But they were here and his wife had obviously called them. He stepped back.
"Come on through. I'll show you to the garage."
He led off and the four men trooped in behind him. He took them through to the rear garage. There he found several old chairs, an armoire, and two old tables. He pointed to the furniture.
"I guess this is it."
The man with the clipboard began to write, making a list of the furniture. The two black guys and the young Hispanic guy started picking up the furniture and hauling it to the truck. The man with the clipboard, Bill, according to the name badge clipped to his jacket pocket, finished and looked at Chester.
"I need you to look at this, put some value on the merchandise and then sign it. I will give you a copy for your tax records."
"Come on. I don't have my glasses and I can't see shit without them."
Chester headed off toward his office, the clipboard guy close behind. The three other men were coming back for a second load with the two-wheel dolly as Chester slowly trudged into his office and sat down. He fumbled around until he found his glasses under some loose paper, stuck them on his nose and put his hand out for the clipboard.
While Chester was reading the document and scribbling some figures next to each of the items, Bill was looking at the array of photographs on the wall.
"This is quite a collection. You were a firefighter?"
"Yeah. One time. Long ago."
"Man, you look pretty buff."
"In my day I was high speed and low drag. Time has caught up with me."
"It happens. But man. From the looks of this you have seen and done some things."
"I did. But that is all long gone and nearly forgotten."
"Well, some of us appreciate what you did. Man. Look at this. Is that Bill Clinton? He was President, right?"
"Yeah."
"And you are shaking his hand. Man. That's something."
"Ten minutes after that picture was taken, I don't think he could have called my name. It was a glad-handing event just before his second election. He needed the union vote, and I was at the convention."
"Still, that's exciting. And is that your missus with you."
"Yeah. That's her."
"Wow. She is a babe."
"She is 22 years younger than I am. That was her you heard yelling from the living room because she is too fuckong lazy to get her ass up out of that chair and come to the door."
"Things not as rosy as they used to be?"
Chester looked up from signing the form and looked over his glasses at the guy.
"You might say that. I am 78 years old. I had my first heart attack when I was 53. They cut me open and put in two new pieces of artery to feed my heart. In the process they cut a nerve in my leg, and I haven't had a hard on since then. Her interest went away as fast as my hardon. She stayed because we got a prenup and she doesn't get a single dime until I kick it."
"That's tough."
Somewhere in the conversation, the other three men had come back in and were also looking around. The two black guys were ogling old photos of his wife in her heyday. She had been a real looker and she knew it. She dressed to show it off as well. One of the black guys nudged the other and pointed to a photograph of Chester and his wife at some kind of event. Obviously, it was a party of some kind. Chester had bent her over backwards and was smiling up at the camera. His wife was holding a flute of champagne, smiling and had one leg kicked up. Her dress had shifted up and a long leg with a stocking and garters were plainly visible.
"Look at that man. She a fine piece."
Chester handed the clipboard back to the man and then looked at the two black guys. He judged them to be in their late twenties.
"That pic was taken before you were even a gleam in your old man's eye."
"She a grandma now huh?"
"Well. That age. We never had any kids."
The man with the clipboard tore off the receipt and handed it to Chester who tossed it on the desk with the other loose papers.
"Come on. We got four more stops to make."
"You guys come around here regularly?"
"Yeah, we are usually in the neighborhood a couple of times a week."
"Stop by next week. I have a whole attic full of shit to get rid of."
The man nodded.
"We can do that."
Chester walked them to the door and watched the truck pull out of the driveway. It was nice to have someone to talk to who appreciated what used to be. The main reason he had told them to come back was to be able to talk to them again.
Chester shut the door and walked back by the living room. He stopped and looked in. Maggie, her real name was Margaret, but everyone had always called her Maggie, or Mags, sat on the chair, her nose buried in the phone. She wore her usual yoga pants and a stretch knit top. She was barefoot and idly kicked the one-foot visible sticking out. She was still attractive. Everyone said she looked 10 years younger than her actual age. Chester agreed, not that it would do him any good. She hadn't looked at him with any kind of interest since the surgeon had emasculated him for all intents and purposes.
She finally looked up at him with her usual bored and indifferent look.
"What? Who were those mongrels that you let trail through the house? They looked like hoodlums. They will probably be back to rob us later."
She looked back at the phone, and it appeared that he no longer existed. Chester turned and headed back to his office, the bottle of scotch, and his memories."
&&&&&
A week later, Chester was back in his office. The bottle of scotch was nearly empty by now and he was leaning back in the chair, his eyes playing along the photographs and memorabilia adorning the walls. The doorbell rang and he slowly got up and went to the entryway. He opened the door to find the same buy, Bill, from the resale center. He had forgotten he had asked them to come by.
"Come on in. I'll take you up to the attic and we will see what we can find."
They trudged up the stairs to the third-floor attic. Chester opened the door at the top of the stairs and found the pull chain for the single light bulb. In the dim light the attic was full of dusty furniture, trunks, boxes and the assorted remains of a long life. The other four men came in. Chester started talking to Ted about what would be best for the resale center. They were wandering around looking at the treasure of junk.
The two young black men, Sylvester and Peg, were looking around. They came upon a whole box of photos. They began to pull them out and hand them among one another. The three were chattering excitedly when Chester and Bill came back. The three men hastily put the photos back in the box.
Chester looked at the box and picked up a few of the photos. He chuckled.
"You boys like those? That's my wife just after we got married. I convinced her to have some boudoir photos taken. Back then, those were pretty racy. I had to pay the photographer extra to get him to take them."
Chester laid out a half dozen of the photos on the dusty tabletop. They were all of a very shapely woman in her late twenties or early thirties. She was scantily dressed in some very sexy lingerie and obviously playing to the camera. In one she was leaning over toward the camera and the bra she was wearing didn't quite cover her nipples. In another she was laying on her back looking back at the camera with her head hanging off the edge of the chaise lounge. One leg was held straight up and she seemed to be adjusting her stocking. Sylvester picked up another photo from the box and his eyes were quite wide. Chester took it and grinned.
"We had a bottle of champagne at the photoshoot. I kept filling her glass. This was one of the last photos the guy took."
The photo showed Maggie holding an obviously empty champagne bottle between her legs with the neck of the bottle only inches away from her crotch. Her expression showed surprise in her eyes and her mouth in a big O as if she was about to do something that was naughty.
Chester looked at the photo.
"An hour after we took that photo, she recreated it for me in our bedroom upstairs and then she finished the scene. I watched while she put that top half of the bottle in her pussy."
The other three men stood with open mouths. It was Bill who broke the silence.
"Man, it must be tough, having a woman who looks like that and acts like that to suddenly find out she doesn't have any interest at all."
Chester gathered the photos and put them back in the box.
"Oh. She has an interest; she just doesn't have any towards me."
Peg looked at Chester.
"MAN. You a bona fide hero and all that shit and she treat you like that just cause your dick wont' get hard. She been cucking you on the side?"
"Oh no. She is faithful, only because if she ever strays outside the marriage, the prenup clicks in and she doesn't get a dime, even after I die."
Sylvester shook his head.
"Dude, that is a cold-blooded bitch. You sure she ain't steppin' out on you?
"Positive. I hear her sometimes. She always was a noisy one and even now sometimes she gets carried away watching porn on that phone and playing with herself. I hear her wail and scream. It's annoying actually."
Sylvester shook his head. Bill picked up the conversation.
"Mr. Gouldsby, we can take care of this today and come back tomorrow for the rest."
