There she was.
I last saw her at her daughter Alice's 18th birthday party. I guess I was a prospective son-in-law back then.
Kathy's birthday fell in late August, just as we were all preparing to leave our cosy little town for Universities and Colleges all across the country. There was an end of season feel in the air, happy and sad. Our lives stretched out before us, but we were losing something also. I looked around our little crowd. Some friendships would deepen over the years, some change and fizzle out, some you would never see again.
Kathy and I had decided to end our relationship rather than watch it fizzle. She was doing biochemistry at one end of the country, and I was to study law a thousand miles in the other direction. There would be enough pressure without the strains of keeping a long distance relationship going.
The evening was coming to a close and the dances got slow. I stopped dancing with Kathy, it was too much. I was rescued from a lonely vigil at the side of the dance floor by her mother, Barbara.
Barbara Decker counted as stellar in our little town. Her daughter was very pretty, but Barbara was something else. I guess she was 40 back then, some ten years younger than her husband, Harry Decker, but she just oozed sensuality. She was about 5' 8", taller in her ever present heels, and statuesque in figure. She had long legs which always seemed tanned and lean and (I would guess) a 40D bust which just made everything she wore seem sexy.
She had a glossy black bob, scarlet lips and mysterious green eyes. Quite a package. It wasn't just her looks though, she dressed better than everything else, she smelled better and, most of all for me, she moved like an entirely different species.
When she walked toward me across the dance floor it was like being stalked by a black panther.
"I guess this is our last dance, Alice told me about you guys' decision. Very adult of you."
This was typical of Barbara. Every time she spoke, she seemed slightly amused by the world around her. Close up, as she led me around the dance floor, she was even more striking. She seemed just too exotic, too improbable for our little town. And, in some cases quite literally as she towered over most of her dance partners, just too big. She stood out like that black panther would, prowling in your local park.
Luckily I had some immunity. I had been friends with Kathy since childhood, living just across the street, and her boyfriend for the past few years. For the last year, after getting my driving licence, I had been earning some money driving for Mr Decker's limo company at the weekends. One way and another, I had spent plenty of time around Mrs Decker.
"I hope not." I responded, enjoying being so close to this woman, my arms around her waist, hers dangled across my shoulder. All the time we danced, those eyes never left mine. She had a way of making you feel that you were the only thing in the world, which was more intoxicating than the beer I had drunk.
I couldn't deny it. There was a very deep attraction there on my part, a longing almost. She held me in her arms and in her gaze, looking deep inside me and seeing, I thought, everything. There was that faint amusement, and maybe something else: desire?
I thought I could stand my ground with Barbara. I was young, taller than her at 6' 2" and my body was hard from years of athletics and tanned from the summer. My longish hair was sun-bleached blond. We made, in my mind's eye anyway, quite a couple there on the dance floor in our evening finery.
Then it was over. Fireworks went off in the garden, and everyone rushed outside to see. She held both my hands, looked right through me with those green eyes and kissed me, briefly, but full on the lips. She was gone, into the crowd, leading the whooping and hollering and enjoying the show, Kathy's mother again.
I stood alone on the dance floor, feeling her kiss zip to my nerve endings, so that I felt it in my fingers and toes as well as on my lips and in my heart. I feel it still.
Seven years had passed.
Cathy and I had been right to bring things to a close. My course was demanding and I rarely returned home for weekends. Vacations were spent on work experience internships at various city firms. A couple of years later my parents retired to the coast and I had little reason at all to return to my home town. Until now.
All my hard work and internships had paid off and I got the job I was angling for at a prestigious city firm. Pay was already good, and the hours long. I didn't get to do a lot of the sort of law I was passionate about, going after big firms who thoughtlessly poisoned the environment of those living around their plants, but I was working for the best. There'd be time for all that good cause stuff after I'd got myself established.
One day I as sitting in my office when an email popped into my inbox. From CathyDecker. She had traced through a chain of friends. She was getting married and wanted me to come to the wedding.
It was a very strange mix of emotions. I was pleased for her, but sad too. I knew that could be me marrying her, buying the big house in our little town and settling down to a comfortable life. I dated enough girls, but my job took me all across the country, gathering evidence and testimony at short notice. I would cancel dates and gradually things would just drift to a close with my girlfriends. I didn't even have a date for the wedding.
So here I was, late as usual, looking across that same dance floor, and there on the other side was the woman who haunted my dreams: not Kathy, Barbara.
Dancing in a black halter neck gown, she was still something else. I filled my nostrils with the fuggy country club air and I'm sure I could smell her. As I did so she turned, saw me. The scarlet lips parted into a huge grin and she dumped her dance partner and strode across the floor to me. Her hug was everything. It was home.
We danced and drank like long lost buddies, which I suppose we were. Kathy was too busy with her new husband and I guess didn't want to spend too much time with an old boyfriend. Harry Decker was propping up the bar, buying drinks and being the great host he always was.
Barbara hadn't changed, physically, she was still the most stunning woman in the room. But there was something else, a sadness, she seemed somehow diminished.
Soon, Kathy was departing for her honeymoon. It was no surprise who was doing the limos.
Later, those guests not staying at the club began departing fro home, or hotels around town, in a fleet of limos laid on by Mr Decker. Suddenly Harry was at my shoulder. There was a problem, one of the drivers, Tom, had been drinking, Harry couldn't let him drive. He would be affronted to call out a rival firm, would I fill in, for old time's sake?
I said I would be delighted. Harry knew I didn't drink. Teenage years of athletics and a part time driving job had spared me that. I grabbed the chauffeurs hat from old Tom and headed outside to find the car. I was sure I could get back in time for another dance with Barbara.
As it turned out, I had 4 couples all going to different hotels. I resigned myself to a long ride. Then the rear door opened and Barbara slid in. Harry had arranged a poker game in their club suite and, frankly, she was going home.
I plotted our route around town and it was no accident that our final drop was the hotel furthest from the Decker's house. It would leave us a long trip alone across town. Nobody was taking the least bit of notice.
We had a fairly jolly time on the drive, everyone knew each other, or my parents, and as reminisces continued, champagne was popped in the back.
Soon though, we had dropped our last couple. I gave them all the full treatment, cap on, jumping out to open doors and so on, to everyone's amusement. Then it was just Barbara in the back, sitting in the middle of the rear seat, legs crossed and meeting my gaze in the rear view mirror.
"Home James." she joked.
"Yes ma'am." I doffed my cap.
The trip across town would take maybe 20 minutes, longer on the route I was taking. We chatted about my job, life in the city and her life here at home.
Finally she sighed: "I'm bored James." (This really was my name).
She poured it all out: life was very comfortable and Mr Decker wouldn't hear of her working. Her days were filled by visits to the gym, beautician, charity committees and lunches with similarly unchallenged women. Her kids had grown up and left home and empty nest syndrome was hitting her hard. She had studied fashion at college, lived in Milan and Paris and now she was a middle class wife and mother out here in the sticks.
I looked at her in the rear-view, beautiful and sad in the glitz of the limo. She was a fabulous and proud exotic creature, now trapped in a gilded cage that was all too small.
"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." I said it before I thought it and it caught us both off guard.
After what seemed a long pause she said: "Thank you."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean............"
"Don't be."
