When I got home from the Air Force I needed a place to stay. I used my Air Force-trained wiles, I had been a cryptanalyst for four years, and found Aunt Ann's phone number. I called but there was no answer so I took a chance and drove over to my old friend's house. It had been four years since I was in my hometown, never mind where, and I wasn't surprised when his mom answered the door.
Loretta Dunham had been my first crush although God knows I never told Greg about it. I had always found her to be the sexiest woman in my life, including his sister who was, obviously, much more age-appropriate for me.
I stood still as she looked at me and then I saw recognition dawn.
"Dave?" she said, well, she asked.
"Hello Mrs. Dunham," I said, flashing my best boyish grin.
I noticed she didn't open the screen door.
"Greg's not here," she said, "he moved to Florida a couple of years ago."
I tried a conversational gambit. "So what's been going on for the past four years."
She didn't even smile, she just said, "It's good to know you're alive, Dave," and then shut the door.
"Well," I said aloud, "that went well."
I went back to the street, got in my four-year-old Mustang, purchased for cash from savings when I got out of the Air Force and back to the U.S., and tried again on my new cellphone to raise Aunt Ann.
And there it was, a voice I recognized, kind of deep for a woman, a little coarse, almost raspy, making you think of whisky and cigarettes and late nights at a roadhouse somewhere.
"Hello?" she said, the question mark clear from her intonation, the number on her phone unfamiliar to her.
"Ann Richards," I said, trying to disguise my voice. I was speaking from deep in my belly, keeping my voice as radio-disk-jockey-like as I could, "this is a blast from your past speaking," trying for the sound I had heard regularly on the radio advertising drag races at the local drag strip - SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! BE THERE!
"Okay," she said, that gravelly voice still familiar, "I'll play."
"We shared a bathroom," I intoned.
She laughed at that and said, "honey, that doesn't narrow it down much."
That made it my turn to laugh.
"Okay," I said, struggling to hold my voice control, "we shared a bathroom for a year."
There was a pause then.
I waited her out.
"Davey?" she asked, her voice very soft.
"Yes, Aunt Ann," I said, but for the last two words, I was talking into dead air. She hung up.
"Well fuck," I said aloud, "that went well too."
I sat in the car, starting to Google "cheap lodgings near me," when my phone rang, surprising me. It was the first time It had rung since I bought it and at first I didn't recognize the weird little chimes as a phone ringing at all.
I figured out how to accept the call, and finally touched the little green phone icon.
"Hello?" I said.
"Is this really you?" she asked.
I laughed.
"Give me an address and I'll demonstrate," I said.
"David, I...." she said and stopped.
I waited her out and she finally rattled off an address.
"Put on your dancin' shoes," I said, and hung up.
I entered her address in the Google Maps app on the phone, something I actually had figured out how to use, and started following the blue line. It took almost 45 minutes, fighting cross-town traffic, but Dr. Google didn't let me down and I found her place, a small house in one of those subdivisions where none of the streets ran straight.
I pulled into the driveway, got out of the car, took a deep breath, and marched up to her door. Yeah, marched. I might have tracked every day I spent in uniform (three years, nine months, eleven days, seven hours, and twenty-six minutes if it matters), but some habits die hard.
I knocked and stepped back politely.
And she hadn't changed. She literally hadn't changed. Her brown hair, a nice dark tan color, was still worn in a short cap framing her face. Her face was still sort of long and narrow, not quite "horse-faced" but close. Her eyes were close-set and hazel, and the sclera (the whites of her eyes, a word I learned while taking
Human Anatomy and Physiology
online while I was in the Air Force) had little blood veins showing. Her nose was straight and thin, pointing to her mouth, generous but with thin lips.
She smiled and I was glad to see she hadn't succumbed to the current trend of tooth bleaching that made about half of the women I had seen since I got back to the "world" after my stint in northern Japan look like someone had selected
Appliance White
before painting their teeth. Hers were natural ivory and those slightly protruding canines, what she called her "vampire teeth" kept her limited to being "attractive" rather than "pretty" or "beautiful."