He was one hell of a salesman
"Hello, stranger." She said as I turned after feeling the tap on my shoulder.
Her name was Krystal Lawler and the last time I saw her, she was fucking some guy in my back seat.
Krystal and I had grown up as neighbors. My family moved next door to her family when I was seven and she was nine. She and I were never best friends, and never dated, or had sex, but we enjoyed each other's company.
We were together at a party the evening I caught her in my back seat because her boyfriend, David, was sick and my date was, well, I didn't have a date. Krystal knew it and needed a ride so she asked me to take her. The guy she was fucking was an old boyfriend and they were reliving old times... or so she said. "Just don't tell David."
I chuckled at the memory of that night. "Hello, Krystal."
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
By "here" she meant the party we were both attending. It was a fund raiser organized by the city. Mother Nature had shown us in the previous 14 months that she hated us. We had been hit by two major hurricanes, a tropical storm, severe flooding and a tornado. The whole city was exhausted and many residents were fighting with their insurance companies for repair of damages incurred by one, or more, of Mother Nature's poxes directed at us. There was lots of discussion and negotiations between home owners and insurance companies as to whether damage to buildings was caused by falling water, in which case the insurance company paid, or rising water, in which Federal flood insurance paid; and some insurance companies were loathe to pay for any damage regardless of how it happened.
There were still families living in camper trailers and tents because their houses hadn't been repaired from the first hurricane 14 months earlier, and the federal government had moved on to bigger and better crises, ignoring our little city. So the city fathers (and mothers) and select citizens organized a fundraiser to help those who were having problems.
Gumbo was the meal of preference at these gatherings, seconded by beans and rice. I was sitting with three of my friends. We had all taken the evening off from helping clean up wherever we were needed and were enjoying the fund raiser. The party was at the city's largest park and was by a lake. We were sitting at a picnic table enjoying our gumbo, when I felt Krystal's tap on my shoulder.
I introduced her to my friends, one of whom invited her to join us. She did, and the next hour was taken up by my friends individually and collectively trying to get a date with her.
She sat and laughed with us until she finished her beer, then moved on. No one said a word as we watched her ass...er....ah...her....make her way through the crowd. When it...she....was no longer in sight, my friends all talked at once about how perfect her ass was, and how jeans never looked so good, and the fact that she had on an almost see through blouse with a bright red bra wasn't missed by any of us.
I chose not to say anything; not that anyone would have heard me given the chatter coming from the other three.
Like most conversations about women by men, that one only lasted until the next perfect ass sauntered by.
Our city was full of perfect asses. We, in the south, are proud of our women's perfect asses. Not that there aren't perfect asses elsewhere in the world, but they couldn't compare to ours; and don't get me started on tits. No tits in the world compare to southern women's tits. They are far and away nicer than tits anywhere in the world. Full stop. Of course there is that one woman in Boston whose ass and tits would put any of our southern girls to shame.
So Krystal and her perfect ass moved off and we resumed eating our gumbo and drinking our beer.
We had just finished when the Mayor started speaking and congratulating us on the progress we had made, but implored us to do more. He was a good speech giver and by the time he was finished, my friends and I had another beer in our hands and were hell bent on going back to work, but stopped when we heard the Zydeco music start.
For those of you who live north of Interstate 10, and who we consider Yankees, Zydeco is music that evolved in our part of the country by French Creole speakers and it blends blues, rhythm and blues and music indigenous to the Louisiana Creoles and the native people of Louisiana. There is not a lot of difference between zydeco and Cajun music and neither is easy to dance to, but a combination of a one-step dance and swaying generally suffices.
It didn't take long for the four of us to find dancing partners and we joined the dozens of other couples dancing on the grass. I use the term "dancing" loosely because in addition to the dancing being difficult in the first place, trying it on grass made it even worse. As a result, swaying to the music became the order of the day accompanied by the occasional rubbing of bodies against each other.
My dancing partner was the daughter of one of our most successful attorneys. I had seen him on TV advertising his practice. His ads always ended with "Win with Wilson". I had seen her around, but had never spoken to her until asking her to dance at that picnic. We ended up spending the rest of the day and evening together. Any thought of going back to work went away when she turned her back to me while dancing, and I watched her swaying.
Her name was Lauren and she and I were the same age, and we both graduated from our local university the same year, but we never knew each other.
She worked as the receptionist in her father's office and I taught history and math to some of the smartest high school students in America, with a sprinkling of some of the least likely to learn even if you hammered it into them.
The party lasted late into the night with Lauren and I among the last to leave. We had come in separate cars and that's the way we left, but with a date scheduled for the following Friday.
It is amazing how things turn out. I had rarely seen, or noticed Lauren, prior to the party, but the following week, I saw her three times. The party had been on Saturday. The first time I saw her was the next day at the mall walking with a guy. That was fine. He could have been brother, cousin, or just a friend. No big deal. The second time was in a pickup truck. She was sitting close to the driver and he looked like the guy at the mall. Mark and I had been helping load and haul rubble from the streets when they drove by.
Then there was the third time. It was Thursday and the day before she and I were scheduled to go out.
We have in our city a Country Club. We also have a private dining restaurant. If you are a member of one, you were most likely a member of both. My family was the exception. We belonged to the private restaurant, but not the country club. Not because it was too expensive, but because none of us played golf or tennis.
We did enjoy fine dining however, and both clubs had reciprocity for dining. So it was that I found myself with my parents, sister, and some close friends and other relatives, celebrating my mother's birthday at the country club. Our private dining room adjoined the dance floor and we were halfway through dinner when I had to excuse myself to go to the restroom and I saw Lauren dancing with a man. That would have been fine had it not been for the fact that I had invited her to have dinner with us that evening and she told me she couldn't because she was having dinner with two of her girlfriends.
I watched them dancing and the intimacy, to include the long kisses and roaming hands they displayed, indicated it was not their first date.
I knew the man. He was the coach of my school's football team. He was not a teacher, but was the owner of the city's biggest pizza place. He and I weren't close, but we knew each other.
I couldn't help but glance at them occasionally. As far as I could determine, they never saw me, and if they did, they gave no indication of it.
We finished our party and left. I found myself in my apartment second guessing whether I wanted to go on a date with someone who was so obviously close to someone else and who had lied to me. By the same token, if she were close to one man, why would she accept a date with another? Twas a puzzlement.
I made it a point the next day at school of looking up the coach. I saw him in the lounge.
"Hey, Tom. I saw you at the club last night. Wasn't that Lauren Richard you were with?" (In Cajun country, Richard is pronounced Ree-shard.)
"Yes. Do you know her?"
"Barely. Are the two of you serious?"
"We seem to be. We've been dating for seven months."
"Good for you. See you later." And I left. Our date was scheduled for that night, but there was no way I was going to date her knowing she was regularly dating someone else. The seriousness may have been only on Tom's part, but, even so, I wasn't comfortable. So I called her.
"Hello, Jackson," she said. That's my name Jackson Hebert (Pronounced A-bear in Cajun country) "I was just thinking about you."
"I was thinking about you as well," I countered. "I think we should cancel tonight."
"Why? Are you okay?"
I decided the Mall sighting was not worth mentioning, so I cut right to the chase. "You may recall that I asked you to have dinner with my family and me last night."
"That's right, but I couldn't."
"That's correct. Then I saw you dancing."
"Oh. That was Tom. That's nothing. We've known each other forever."
"That's good. Having old friends is a good thing. It's like having old girl friends."
"What do your old girlfriends have to do with anything?"
