Lemonade and White Melons

Chris Jenkins was at the counter of his Lawrence, Kansas convenience store around 12:30AM. He was pulling a double shift to make up for the time he took off during his mother's recent illness. It was a day to remember, spent in all consuming ecstacy with Anjie Pearson, who he'd just met three days before. The figures on the page before him struggled to hold his attention, and the bustling of his co-worker, a young man from the University, was on the edge of his perception.

His radio was playing "Take It Easy" by the Eagles, and Chris could relate. Much to his shame, he had fallen hard for his old German teacher, Anna Pearson, gone much farther with her than he was comfortable with, and now he was involved with her granddaughter. In a couple weeks, Anna would be back, and Chris was not sure if he could handle the situation.

Jessica Smith strode into the store, followed by a couple of squirrely looking guys with bags of equipment. She was wearing a pink tube top and cutoffs above her sandals; her body was a gift from God; her face supposedly a gift from her father's bulldog; her attitude a gift from the depths of the Pit. She came to the counter and rested on her elbows, smiling sweetly. "Hey, faggot boy, how's it hanging?"

"Hi, Jessica. Miss you horribly–not!"

"Got a deal for you."

"Not interested."

"Shut up and listen. My boys want to do a photo series here, where I became famous."

"Excuse me?"

"You know, where we foiled the robbery a few weeks ago?"

Chris shook his head. "I don't understand. You mean that security tape where you paraded naked in front of that drunk would-be robber and freaked him out so much he got arrested?"

"Yeah."

"What do you mean 'photo series'?"

She put her hands on her hips and snorted. "I started a new website: 'Jessica Justice', and I go around doing scenes where I fight crime."

"Oh. It's a pay site?"

"Yeah, but it's got really great stuff in it."

"What?"

"Me, naked. A couple of guys sent me a lot of money to do a site where I could fight crime and show off my excellent body."

'I got a great idea for your shoot here."

"Really?"

"Yeah, put a bag over your head."

Jessica stuck out her tongue at him. "Anyway, the boys here will give you $50 if you'll let us take a few shots here."

"No deal."

"All right, $200."

"Done. But what about my co-worker?"

"Who?"

"The guy who does your old job."

"$50?"

"The same as me."

"The same as you? You packing his fudge?"

"No."

"All right. But he's the lookout; we don't want anybody seeing my bod without paying for it."

"Done."

He called his co-worker, Frank, over and told him what the deal was. He accepted the assignment without hesitation, and went outside to divert traffic from the store. Jessica went over by the hot dog rotisserie to plan her poses while Chris went back to his inventory.

Chris looked up from time to time during the hour to see what they were doing. Jessica was showing strategic parts of her anatomy in various places of the store, while one guy held the light and the other shot a flash drive full of pictures. They wanted pictures of Chris playing the robber while a naked Jessica disarmed him: for another $150 he agreed to put a bag over his face and hold an extremely fake gun pointed in her direction.

They were taking pictures back toward the cooler, when he noticed Jessica was naked inside, pressed almost full body against the glass and she left an imprint as she pulled away. "Hey, be sure and clean that up before you go," he ordered.

He got home around dawn, and was awakened at 8:00AM. Going upstairs, he found his brothers Virgil and Fred, demolishing the old plaster from the living room walls. Seeing them at work, he waved and went downstairs, showering and dressing in sweats before going to Anna's house.

Anjie met him at the door with a warm, muzzy smile wearing a white silk blouse, jeans and fuzzy house slippers. She gave him a long kiss and asked: "What brings you over here at this time of day, punkin?"

"Hey, babe," Chris started. "My brothers are tearing up the house. Could I grab a nap here before I have to go to work later?"

"Sure, sweetheart," she replied. "You can take the master bedroom. I've got a teleconference in five minutes."

"Sweet." Chris found the bed unmade, and crawled in to her residual warmth, falling asleep almost immediately. His dreams were the same as when he discovered his lust for Frau Pearson: he was writing German declensions in chalk on a blackboard while Anna sat topless, saying "

Was has du jetzt gelernt

" over and over again.

At 1:00, he was awakened by a soft hand stroking his stomach and a warm body pressed against him. A tongue nuzzled his ear. He rolled over to be suffocated by a hungry mouth, and reached out to find her soft puppy fat eager for his touch. The sweats disappeared; two bodies began a dialogue in the soft glow of the early afternoon on an old fashioned four poster bed surrounded by antique furniture and lace curtains.

They turned, and as he savored the salty sweetness of her dark flecked valley, soft lips and a velvet tongue sought for his solid passion. His fingers clenched her bottom hard and her nails dug into his hips. Before they reached the summit of their longing, he withdrew, arranged her on her back, and mounted her, starting thrusting slowly, while she wrapped her legs around his midsection. The grandfather clock downstairs maintained its sentinel measure of time, but it was unheard as two lovers lost themselves in one another.

Streaked with sweat, they lay in each other's arms, resting after their dialogue, exhausted by their journey through clouds and rain. "Chris, what's your work schedule like the next couple of days?"

"I've got to do another double shift tonight, then single shifts the next three days."

She frowned . "I've got to go back to New York tonight. Need to spend a couple days in the office." Her finger started tracing his arm and she looked down. "Was hoping you could come with me."

He kissed her. "I'd like to, but I can't. Gotta work for a living, babe. Need to do some yard work from your Grandmother. Keep an eye on Virgil and Freddie, make sure they don't kill themselves tearing apart the house."

Her eyes bore on his. "You're a writer now, Chris. You need to think about life beyond the convenience store and yardwork. You need to think of a new place to live, space to write your stories, space to write books. Space for people who care about you."

He started to speak, but she put a single finger on his lips. "You say your house is being torn up by your brothers. It'll take them a while to finish what they're doing, won't it? It'll be noisy and dirty and nasty, won't it?" He nodded. "Bring your clothes and your laptop over here for a few days. Take the stories you put on the Internet and rewrite them, fill them out a bit and make the characters people we'd like to know. Or elves or dwarves or whatever. I'll draw up another contract in New York and you'll be able to quit the store and wind down your lawn business." He frowned and thought; she kissed his forehead. "Chris, I'm not asking you to make the great leap now. Just try out a new lifestyle for a few days and see how you like it. You can take the back guest room: it's away from the street and it's the quietest room in the house."

"What–what–what will your grandmother say?"

"Mutti won't mind; I asked her about it this morning." Chris' jaw dropped. "So it's settled. Get your stuff together and move in–for a few days."

She traced the line of his jaw with her index finger while he thought about it, and eventually he nodded in agreement. "Good," she said, sitting up quickly enough to make her breasts wobble. Reaching her hand over, she stroked him and smiled. Her fuzzy black hair was tousled and a few strands escaped the pony tail she wore that day. "We have time to celebrate before we have to go." As his manhood reasserted itself, she bent down to kiss it again, her soft tongue questing every curve until it was fully restored, then she sat on it, welcoming into her velvet vise and rocking gently on him.

During a slow part of his shift, he put his laptop on the counter and checked his e-mail for the first time that day. He'd barely had time to shower, gather a few things, and make it on time for work. His co-worker Frieda gave his a quizzical look and a smile, shaking her head, but said nothing. There was a message from Germany:

Chris,

We've had such a good time in the Schwartzwald! It's been a long time, but I think I'm

finally back in shape; Magda has been wearing me out. Yesterday we took a lovely boat trip on the Rhine. Tomorrow we're making a long trip to spend a week with my father's relatives near Dresden, and visit some old villages just over the border in Poland where our ancestors lived.

I'm glad you're having such a good time with Angela. It takes a great burden off my

mind. Please stay at my house while your brothers remodel; you need some quiet space. Have as much fun as possible, and I'll treat you both to something nice when I get back.

Love, Anna

There were pictures attached, and a second e-mail with more. Most of them were forest shots of stately trees and a few of a boat trip on the Rhine. The last ones were of Anna naked: several where she was sitting in the middle of a small waterfall, and in the last one she was peeking from behind a small tree, her breasts resting on a pair of strategic branches, a silly smile on her face. Chris shook his head as he closed the window; he was seeing a side of her he'd never seen before. I didn't fit with the storm trooper of the old days.

The old house was silent as he returned, lugging his bags through the front door, and he spent several moments looking around the living room after he put his things away upstairs. Anna was all around him: in the furniture still in the same place they shared lemonade and she offered him her white melons not that long ago, in the pictures of her family all around, in the books of indeterminate age resting on worn shelves, in the degrees hanging on the walls he hadn't noticed before.

Before he went to bed, he opened his laptop and looked at her pictures still attached to the e-mails: taking a flash drive, he downloaded them for later scrutiny. A storm blew in from the Plains in the wee hours, and his thoughts flickered back and forth between the women in his life.

The next three days were a blur: wakening in the early light, a quick breakfast at his home where he checked in with his brothers, a morning at his laptop immersed in old stories, a late afternoon and evening behind the counter. Angela sent him updates of her meetings in New York and asked him when he was quitting the convenience store. Anna sent him more pictures of her travels in Germany, which always included a picture of her naked or preparing to enthusiastically devour huge sausage swathed in mustard.

He dared not quit his jobs. The tension in his relationships with the two women was making him nervous, a tension only banished when he was lost in a story. His fear was he would lose both of them, and life would be back to its normal solitude. Chris firmly believed in the old Wing Walker's Maxim: don't let go of something until you have hold of something else.

Saturday morning found him awakening later than usual with a stranger at his computer. Angela was sitting at his laptop reading one of his text files. She sat with her knees drawn up toward her chest; which gave him an excellent side view of her breast as her white halter top hung loosely. For a moment, his mind spun, thinking she would be reading his e-mail, but it became clear she was reviewing a story.

"Good morning, sunshine," she said calmly, not looking up from the screen. "Busy the past few days?"

"Yeah. Got a lot of things written. You?"

"It was insane. Had to let go of a couple of vice presidents and a couple of editors. I never like this part of the job, but they were leaking data to the competition. Gotta go back at the end of next week to hire replacements."

"When didya get in?"

"Fifteen minutes ago. You were dead to the world, so I thought I'd see what you were up to. This is good stuff: I knew you were a quality writer."

"Thanks." He sat up heavily and rubbed his eyes. "Fancy some breakfast?"

"Great idea. I gotta run by Watson Library to check up a couple things. Mind tagging along?" He shook his head, and she looked at her watch. "Sounds like a plan. Let's go."

They rode their bicycles downtown and had croissants and coffee at a little place on Massachusetts street, taking their time and people watching as they nibbled their food and read the newspaper. By the time they reached campus, it was just past noon and Watson had barely opened its doors. Anjie led them up to the Eastern European reference area and checked some catalogs in Polish before heading into the stacks.

Arriving at their goal at the end of a long stack, she reached down to pull an old book off the shelf, flipping the pages. Chris looked around at the incomprehensible titles before looking over her shoulder. "How many languages do you speak?" he murmured in her ear.

"Eight," she whispered back. "Spanish, French, German, Italian, Greek, Czech, and Polish."

"That's seven."

"Oh, and English," she giggled. "You?"

"I survived your grandmother's German class, and that's about it. Unless you count Redneck as another language."

She wiggled her backside against his groin. "There's another language I think you do quite well."

He responded by circling her waist, hugging back to him. The response below his belt was immediate, and probed her bottom urgently. It wiggled against him more and he lifted his hands to cup her halter. A sigh and a gasp; his tongue emerged to trace her earlobe. She put the book down on top of the others, open, and put her hands on the stack to steady herself. All was quiet around them; they were alone in the entire wing of the library.

She reached around to undo his fly, and he undid hers to slip her shorts and panties down. Bending over at the waist, she reached between her legs to find him and guide him to the moist canyon that longed for his touch. His hands moved fabric aside, and his fingers stroked her bare nipples as they moved together. She turned her head and his tongue returned to the delicately scalloped lobe. It wasn't long before she gasped and shuddered, and together they reached their goal of jubilation.

"God, I've missed you," she murmured when she could talk again.

The spent the rest of the daylight at Clinton Lake, walking hand in hand on the shore, sheltering in the shade of the trees, drinking in one of the last days of summer. There were more beautiful people there, University students in prime shape displaying their tanned and toned physiques, and some anglers testing their prowess. They didn't care, the world was theirs. They dined simply at a small restaurant downtown, and went home to share a bed.

Sunday found them working separately: she hunched over the computer in her grandmother's study, and he tending the yard. When he went back to his room, he checked his e-mail: Anna was due to begin her trip home early Monday. There was a note from her:

Chris,

I've had such a wonderful time here, and yet I long to come back to the two people who

mean the most to me. You have no idea how much I wanted to share everything here

with you, to have you see everything I've seen the past three weeks. That day may come

yet.

Angela is very grateful for your company, and hopes you will stay with us for a while, as

do I. Your life is changing for the better, and though it's a scary proposition, please

believe me when I tell you everything will be all right. I love you and your happiness

means a great deal to me. I can't wait to hold you in my arms again.

See you soon. Love, Anna

He stayed in his room, surfing the Internet absent mindedly until it was time to go to work. When it was time to leave, Anjie was obviously in another conference online, so he left quietly.

It was a slow night at the convenience store, and Chris nodded off just before 11:00PM, while sitting upright on the stool behind the counter. The dream came back to him: he was at the blackboard writing German declensions, this time he wore a white shirt and the room was empty. A single rose sat on Frau Pearson's desk, and the clock on the wall read 4:37. Anna was wearing a simple black dress, but instead of talking she came forward silently and embraced him hard. He felt the hot sweat of her skin, the muscles of her arms, the smell of her perfume, and her breathing in his ear. Over her shoulder he read a line on the board in his own handwriting:

Bleiben sie mit Angela, bitte. Es ist, was ich will. Es ist Ihre Zukunft.

It seemed Anna wanted to say something, but couldn't, and she was reluctant to let goof him.

The phone rang, and he awoke with a start. Chris picked it up: it was Angela. "Come home now," she said, weeping.

"What? I'm off in another hour."

"Come home now. Please, Christopher. If you never do anything else for me, come home now."

"As soon as I can." Fortunately, his midnight relief was able to come in early and he was on his way in five minutes. He found Angela in the living room, lit only from the light coming through the kitchen door, sipping from a glass with the Schnapps bottle on the table before her. "Anjie? Anjie? What's up?"

"Mutti," she said and began to cry.

"Yes? Is everything all right?"

She shook her head no violently. "They were on the way to the airport, got caught in a crash on the autobahn. Magda was driving, something happened. Flipped a couple of times and hit a truck."

Chris stood waiting. Anjie took another sip and wept some more. "Those crashes on the autobahn are horrible. Mutti told me she was always afraid of the roads there. Almost never survivors, they drive so fast. They drive so fast." The last sentence came out in a whimper. Another sip, an intake of breath. "It was around 4:30 in the morning. Nobody on the road."

"Did her cousin have a heart attack? Stroke? Seizure?"

A nod and a shrug of the shoulders. "Probably. She's gone!" She started wailing and gestured him to come sit by her; when he sat she wrapped herself around him and sobbed heavily into his shoulder. Tears started welling in his eyes and fell on the back of her neck.

For a quarter hour, they held each other and wept. She poured a glass of Schnapps for him, and they drank in silence. The phone rang and she shook her head, so he answered it. After listening to the report, he thanked the other party and hung up. She looked at him quizzically, and he said: "They think cousin Magda had a stroke. Her daughter said Magda was complaining of headaches a month ago, but didn't get it checked out."

Anjie nodded. "You wanna be alone?" he asked.

She shook her head briskly. "Absolutely not,

Schatzi

. I need you."

"Okay." He sat down and she sat on his lap, her head on his shoulder, and they sat in silence long into the night.

They saw the dawn through the living room windows, the lace curtains turning from red to pink to yellow. Chris tried to puzzle through the writing in his dream without a dictionary and without asking Anjie.

Bitte

was please, and

Bleiben

was the verb 'to stay'. So the first sentence was about staying with Anjie.

Zukunft

stumped him: he couldn't remember for the life of him what it meant.

"Mutti was my mother more than my mother was," she started out of the blue. "I spent every summer with her since I could remember, my folks both worked, and they died in a highway accident when I was in grade school. I was here when I heard the news. Now I hardly remember what they looked like, or how their voices sounded. I understand their drive now, their passion to succeed, but life's about more than success. It's like the Ghost of Marley said: 'People were my business.' I just started to realize that, and now it's too late."