Fascination!

Carrie Adriatico paced back and forth, looking over at the high, dew-drenched grass. It nearly reached up to the bottom of the freshly-painted Bed & Breakfast sign.

"Ugh, where is he?!" she exclaimed, still pacing. "He couldn't make it last week...now, he's late..."

The stunning - and meticulous - 38-year-old brunette retreated back inside, and her timing couldn't have been any more perfect.

The phone rang.

She turned the volume down on the radio, which played "Abracadabra" by The Steve Miller Band, and headed over to the phone.

"Good Morning, Adriatico's Bed & Breakfast," she answered warmly. "Hey...oh, no...oh, God...is he okay???...Oh, for goodness sake...okay...no, no, don't worry about it, just...(sigh)...just come next week then...okay...tell him to take it easy...okay, bye."

Carrie hung up the phone and took a moment to think.

"Oh, brother," she sighed, upon receiving that bit of news.

She shrugged and realized her best option at the moment.

She picked the phone back up and dialed.

It rang and rang and rang.

"Ugh, I hate to leave a message," she muttered, wanting results right now.

"Hi, Dick, it's Carrie," she said in a calm and pleasant demeanor, hiding the stress she felt from the previous call. "We have a little dilemma here. I don't know if you heard the news, but I just got a call from Stew, my landscaper.

"He's not gonna be able to make it today because he was at the hospital until five this morning. He bartends at The Cactus, and Barney Bussett apparently was fooling around up on the bar, fell down, and broke his collarbone. Yeah. Our good ole Barney. So...Dick, give me a call when you get a chance, okay? If you felt like cutting my grass, I could pay you twice what I pay Stew since it's such short notice. I would do it myself but I have two sets of guests coming in this morning. If not, do NOT worry about it. Either way, have a wonderful day, hon, and talk to you soon."

No sooner had Carrie hung up the phone than a red Trans-Am pulled up into the driveway.

"Oh, God, is that Phyll?" she wondered aloud, getting her answer when she saw the author jogging up the driveway.

"Oh, Phyll, not today," Carrie whined as she headed to the door.

Carrie loved Phyllis, but this day was already jam-packed with drama and unforeseen circumstances.

"Hey!" she exclaimed upon opening the door, faking her enthusiasm as best she could. "Howdy, stranger!"

They embraced, and Carrie immediately noticed that Phyllis - not surprisingly - was holding a small stack of books.

"Just something to put out for your guests," she offered, resting them down on the coffee table.

It was a collection of historical books on the area.

She did hand one directly to Carrie, and it was a book on the U.S. swimmer, Tracy Caulkins.

As busy as she was, Carrie was grateful for this surprise visit.

"Oh, thank you, I wanna read this," Carrie insisted.

"No problem. So they're not here yet?" Phyllis asked with wide eyes.

"Uh, who?" Carrie asked.

"Janet and Dick. I'm supposed to do a quick interview with Dick," Phyllis answered, already prepping herself on the sofa, with a notepad and pen.

"For what?" Carrie laughed.

"He saw it," Phyllis said matter-of-factly.

"Saw what?" Carrie answered.

"The Lakeshore Ghost," Phyllis answered without hesitation.

Carrie jumped back a bit.

"Dick said he saw a ghost?" she inquired, concerned.

"At Open Woods. The clothing-optional beach down near Belton Lake? He and Deb frequent there once a week, and he said it spoke to him," Phyll went on.

"It...spoke...to him?" Carrie inquired, sitting down next to Phyllis.

"Well they didn't have a long conversation about the Rangers' pitching rotation or the Dallas season finale, but it did say...SOMEthing. Something along the lines of 'couldn't catch a thing today,'" Phyllis went on. "And, this is totally consistent with other people's encounters. And it's often around a body of water."

Carrie just shook her head.

"So, wait, they're meeting you here? I don't remember - " Carrie began.

"Janet said she left you a message. She and a few of the cheerleaders and Cowboys players were doing an appearance at The Rib Ranch," Phyllis went on.

Carrie glanced over at her answering machine and realized she had made a mental slip.

"Oh, shoot. That's right, I didn't listen to the messages last night," she recalled. "Okay, well...darn it...but this actually works out, because if they're coming here, that means Dick could hopefully cut the grass."

"It'll all work out," Phyllis said calmly, pouring herself a glass of Chardonnay.

*************

Around 10 a.m., Janet and Dick arrived back at the B & B, along with Crystal Mathers, another of the Cowboy cheerleaders.

"You should have seen him," Janet said with a loving smile. "He was like a little kid."

Dick showed off the autographs he had gotten that afternoon, having shaken hands with his star-wearing heroes.

"Ron Springs, Tony Hill, Tom Rafferty," he went on.

"That's great, hon," Carrie smiled.

"Oh, and Crystal's autograph too. Thighs as big as all outdoors," he raved.

"Thank you, hon," the blonde beauty yawped, with a smile.

"I've seen them on T.V. many a Sunday," he grinned.

"She does have great legs," Janet complimented her, and that coming from a gal with quite a set of her own.

"Are you ready, kiddo?" Phyllis asked the 21-year-old eagerly.

"Yeah," Dick said easily.

"I can't believe you're gonna be in Phyllis' book," Janet mused.

"Let them do their thing," Carrie suggested, trying to lead Janet and Crystal into the kitchen. "But just one thing. Dick, could you cut my grass?"

"Sure," he answered.

"Oh, Dick, here I am not even mentioning - did you hear about Barney?" she belted out.

"Uh, no," he replied.

"He broke his collarbone," Carrie reported.

"Doing what?!" Janet shrieked.

"Fooling around, at The Cactus," Carrie explained as best she could. "And Stew was bartending, had to drive him over to the E.R. at three in the morning. So he called me, let me know he couldn't make it over."

"Oh, that's nice," Janet said sarcastically.

"Well, accidents happen. But with Barney, there seems to be a lot of them," Carrie rationalized.

With that, the three exited, leaving Phyllis and Dick to their interview.

"First off, what was the ghost wearing?" Phyllis asked, biting on her pen with great interest.

It was a hectic but productive day at Adriatico's B & B.

*************

With Deb and Dolores scheduled to stop by the next morning with candles, Janet, Crystal and Dick decided to spend the night.

It was to be a big, splendid breakfast the next morning, and a reunion of sorts.

The night before, Janet, having dressed into her cotton pajamas, about to turn in for the evening, walked briskly down the hall, towards Dick's room.

She could hear Pac-Man blasting on the T.V., figuring he was busy playing Atari.

Without hesitation, she opened the door and entered.

"Dick, have you - "

She stopped dead in her tracks.

"Huh," she gasped, searching for words, almost unable to get a breath.

Shock turned to admiration, and awe.

"Ho-ho oh, my God," she laughed. "That is...awesome!"

Dick, totally surprised by her presence, rolled off the bed.

"Don't hurt yourself!" she told him, unable to keep from chuckling.

"Did I surprise you?" she continued, knowing the answer to that one.

Dick didn't know what to say. He was a bit embarrassed, having been caught...doing what he was doing.

"Do it again," Janet urged.

"Janet," Dick whined, a bit unsure how to feel at the moment.

"Crystal!" Janet shouted. "Get in here! You have GOT to see this."

Crystal arrived in a hurry, shutting the door behind her.

Dick surrendered to the moment.

*************

There were a whopping 11 people at breakfast the next morning: Carrie, Janet, Crystal, Deb, Dolores, Dick, and two couples that stayed at the B & B for the night. Madison, Deb's lovely daughter, had made a surprise visit, in town for just a few days.

With Phyllis' interview with Dick fresh on everybody's mind, ghost stories seemed to be the talk.

"I saw one at Belton Lake too - when I was out on a canoe," Monica, a 34-year-old mother of two, shared with everyone.

"No!" Dolores exclaimed as she buttered her toast. "What is it with Belton Lake?!"

"That's where a lot of the reports have come from over the years!" Monica pointed out, taking a bite of her Belgian Waffle, cooked to perfection by Carrie. "It was me, my friend Augustine, and my other friend, Carol, and we're rowing (laugh).

"I look on the shore, and there's this...guy. Just...standing there..."

"In fisherman's gear, right?" Dick asked, eager to get anyone to back up his account of what he saw.

"No, no...just regular pants and a tee shirt," Monica went on. "But just...standing there, looking out at us. A second later, like a split second later, I say to Augustine, 'is that guy looking at us?' We both turn, and he was gone. GONE. Like there's no way, he vanished that quick."

Before anyone could even comment to an extent on Monica's account, Stan, a 38-year-old teacher from Austin, there with his wife, Gwen, jumped in.

"I was camping out with the Eagle Scouts, Troop 45, going into my freshman year at SMU," he started, pushing his plate away as he had finished his blueberry pancakes. "We were coming down the trail and encountered a HUGE black bear..."

"Oh my goodness," Deb jumped back.

"No, it was okay," Stan replied. "We were starting to retreat, and this...it looked like a cloud of smoke...whirled past us, knocks the bear on his back - like a big gust of wind - "

"No!," Krendy said.

"Yeah, and...we didn't know what to do. We were so much in shock, but we just turned around and booked it, just took off for the hills, got out of there. We didn't know what we saw," Stan went on.

"Sounds like the ghost helped you out in that case," Maddy commented, sipping on her orange juice.

"It did, but maybe he just didn't get to us yet. Maybe the bear was first," Stan laughed. "Quick side note - the bear was okay. We saw the same one again the next day, from a distance."

"Poor U Parker - the ghost didn't help him out," Dolores laughed.

"No (laugh). U said he would come into the Rusty Nail every morning and tables were turned over, there were broken beer bottles all over the floor," Deb went on.

"Maybe the ghost had a beef with U," Dolores contemplated.

"Well we have a fisherman, an apparition, a stalker on the shoreline (laugh)...this thing takes many forms," Maddy laughed, tugging on her Houston Oilers tee.

"Could be several ghosts," Janet reasoned.

"We might be looking at a full-fledged ghost infestation," jabbed Crystal.

"But why Temple? Are we that interesting? Why are ghosts so attracted to our little town?" Deb laughed.

"I think it's more along the lines of...they never left," Stan said, as Carrie filled up his coffee. "Ghosts tend to linger because of unfinished business."

"I bet the ghost was a real bad tipper at The Rusty Nail," Dolores kidded. "Probably didn't even leave a cent."

"When Barney drove the bus for the Temple Ghost Tour, there were like 20-some sights that he had to drive by and talk about," Carrie joined in. "Whether you believe these accounts or not, there are several."

The clang of breakfast plates was soon the overriding sound.

Morning was giving way to the early afternoon, the table was cleared, the final sips of coffee were taken, and the four guests of Adriatico's B & B got their bags and headed out, raving about their stay and promising they'd stay again.

"And Dick, we didn't at all mean to poke fun at your account that day at the store - I have had customers share their ghost stories too," Deb explained.

"We did! It's...pretty common," agreed Dolores, who put her glasses back on, having wiped away a slight smudge on the right frame.

"Well, I am just glad I have no ghosts - guests. Jeez, ghosts on the brain," Carrie laughed. "I am just so glad I have no guests today and I can relax."

"We can ALL relax," Deb remarked. "Doris is on her own today at the store - should be a quiet day."

Dick spoke of a model he was finishing, a cylon raider from the T.V. show, "Battlestar Galactica," and spoke of how he'd like to get to it sometime in the afternoon.

"Dick's a real do-it-yourself kinda guy," Janet stated with mock sincerity.

"Sounds like it," Maddy chimed in, apparently in on the joke.

Surprisingly, Carrie, too, had some inclination what Janet was referring to, as she sent a warm, beaming, understanding smile in Dick's direction.

"Aw, did you tell them?" Dick objected.

"How could we NOT tell them?" Janet laughed, with Crystal following suit.

"Girls, what is going on? I don't like being left out of a joke," Deb protested.

"Don't drink, don't smoke, what do ya do? Don't drink, don't smoke, what do ya do?" Janet sang, doing her best version of Adam Ant's hit single. "We discovered Dick's guilty pleasure last night. And trust me, it ain't buildin' models."

Deb looked over at Dick with a blank stare. Maddy broke up laughing.

Janet and Crystal were shrieking, going back and forth with each other.

Carrie felt it was time to step in.

"Janet and Crystal happened to walk in on Richard while he was indulging in autofellatio," she reported, with as much dignity and class as you could ever imagine, given the racey context of her statement.

"Ha-ha! I knew it!" Dolores laughed. "I KNEW you were holding out on us!"

Dolores' comment only provided more laughter. Even Carrie had an innocent chuckle.

Dick was able to find humor in the situation, and maybe even a bit of pride, but Krendy was still very much in the dark.

"I am so lost...auto...fellatio?" she asked.

"Yeah!" Janet belted out happily.

"How did a car enter into this equation?" Krendy asked.

The other women, even her daughter, could only laugh at her adorable cluelessness. But in her defense, it wasn't usually a topic that came up at the breakfast table.

"Mom, look at me. Auto? Meaning...doing it yourself? Like...autobiography? Like...Deborah Krendall wrote an autobiography," Maddie laid out.

"Oh-kay," Krendy said, following her so far.

"And then...fellatio," Maddy finished.

"I know what fellatio is, Madison," Krendy snipped.

"Well? Put it together," Maddy laughed.

It took a moment. Krendy was an awfully bright woman, but this took some time. She had never heard or imagined such a thing.

But when she did put all the pieces together, her reaction was priceless.

"Pff, oh my God," she declared, clenching her mouth, with a giggle. "Sweetie?! Did the girls catch you...blowing your own horn?"

The laughter was almost deafening.

Dick just sat there, red-faced but sort of proud. And turned on by the women's knowledge of his secret talent.

"Yes, mam," he answered.

"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!" Krendy whooped, falling back in her seat. "My word, I remember hearing a naughty limerick about you, hon, but it said you were from Nantucket!"

Everyone was having a good ole time with this one.

"He was (laugh)...on his back, laying on his bed, with his legs up over his head, and (laugh), and his penis was hanging all the way down into his mouth," Crystal described, amid many guffaws and snorts.

"You should have seen him when I walked in! He went rolling off the bed!," Janet hollered.

"Oh, Dick! Are you okay?" Deb laughed.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he answered.

"Good, Lord, Barney's in the hospital with a broken collarbone, hon. We don't want you going down too," she snorted.

Dolores looked at Dick with a straight face.

"Why...are you doing it that way? Can't you just...bend over?" she pondered, pulling herself out from the table a bit and imitating the move. "It's right there for ya!"

Again, a chorus of chuckles and laughs.

"Phyllis...gave me this book, 'Fais le toi-même,'" Dick explained.

"'Do it yourself,'" Carrie happily translated, with a smile.

"It's this French guy...doing auto...from all different positions," Dick went on.

"I see. So you were sampling, seeing which position you like best," Krendy reasoned.

Dick nodded.

"His dork wasn't even that long," Dick observed. "He was just ultra flexible."

There was a short silence, with everyone taking a breath. But not for long.

"I have to ask - how was he?" Dolores posed.

"Oh, he was an All-Star," Janet raved.

"He was having a splendid time," Crystal followed.

Krendy fell back in her seat again, this time clapping.

"Truth be told, I had hoped to get into the subject of autofellatio for the class," Carrie informed calmly.

Krendy looked over at Crystal, making sure she wasn't lost.

"Dick did a sexual education class at Temple Junior College where he posed nude," she told her.

"That is awesome," Crystal raved.

"Why didn't you? Get into the subject of autofellato?" Dolores asked.

"We were out of time! The class was already running long," Carrie belted out.

"No pun intended," Dolores quipped.

"Autofellatio is an interesting topic," Carrie shared with an oh-so-naughty grin. "In fact, there is a poem narrating how the sun god, Ra, had created the god, Shu, and goddess, Tefnut, by fellating himself - "

"No!" Dolores belted out.

"And then spitting out his own semen onto the ground," Carrie finished with glee.

"Wah-how, historical perspective," Maddy gushed.

"I read in an article somewhere that about 94 percent of men have dreamed about being able to do it," Carrie smiled. "And for good reason. Everything I have heard, it sounds like a pretty wild ride."

"Probably only a couple guys out of a thousand could actually do it," Dolores reasoned. "You'd have to either be really flexible like that French guy, or..."

"Well for lack of better phrasing, have a great, big one," Deb jumped in.

"Dick has both those things going for him," Janet raved. "He's really, really flexible..."

"Really," Dolores replied.

She squealed with delight.

"I love it," she said. "I absolutely love it."

"Dick? Was it strictly Phyllis' book that prompted this? Or did you ever think about this before?" Carrie posed.

Dick gave it some thought.

"Well, when you have a boner that almost touches your chin," Dolores kidded, cracking the others up with her playful exaggeration, but not by much.

"Yeah, I...thought about it. Didn't know if I'd like it," he reported.

"And?" Carrie asked, awaiting the verdict.

"Oh, I loved it," he had to admit.

"You should have seen how much he shot," Janet gushed.

"It was all over his face," Crystal followed up. "It was hysterical."

"Well, I can't speak for everybody else here, but, hon, I have to say, that is something I'd like to see," Krendy openly admitted.

Maddy also said she was harboring some curiosity, leaving everyone to look at Dolores next.

"I really wanna see him suck that thing," she could hardly get out, excitement popping in her voice.

"Well, it's unanimous then," Carrie laughed. "Dick? What do ya think, hon?"

It was all the encouragement he needed.

*************

Everyone moved into the living room, with Dick going into the foyer closet to fetch a fold-up chair.

"Carr, have you ever seen a guy do auto?" Krendy asked casually as she and Dolores sat side by side on the love seat.

"Me? No. But I have read about it," she clarified. "In fact, one of the forerunners of Temple Tea Time, was known to entertain the women with his autofellaciast capabilities."

Sexiness dripped from her voice.

"Who was this man?" Krendy smiled, pulling a tiny thread off her skirt.

"That would be one Roscoe 'Longhorn' Livingstone," Carrie informed.

"Oh, that frickin guy," Dick scoffed, as he re-entered the room.