Having reached the age of fifty-five and grown invisible to young women, I find myself reminiscing more and more about my former sex life. It was a good one. The list of women I had intercourse with numbers thirty-six, unless I've forgotten one or two. As I created the list, I realized that more than a third of those were "one-night stands." Seven of those relationships were just bad mistakes, "thinking with the wrong head," and quickly remedied. Seven others, however, were among the most spectacular of my life. This is the last of them.
Being in graduate school and professional theater guaranteed that I could not settle down until rather late in life. I was thirty-four when I married and had had sex before my engagement with exactly as many women as my age. By that time, I had dated perhaps sixty women and had met so many zanies that I was relieved to have found a smart, sane, and sexy soul mate. The phrase "I had to kiss a lot of frogs to find my prince" applies as well for princesses.
I was happily married for fifteen years, although we couldn't have kids. And then my wife died after her second bout with cancer. We lived and I still live in a suburban neighborhood that looks like Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives. As you can imagine, when my wife died the neighborhood rallied. I did not have to cook for weeks afterward. Among those who brought me food was Haley, the younger daughter of my neighbors across the street. Her name is altered, in the hopes of preserving her anonymity and keeping me from being murdered. On several occasions, Haley brought me brownies. According to her, they were about the only thing she knew how to bake. She seemed genuinely concerned about my bereavement.
Haley was almost nineteen at the time. She had stayed back in first grade. The extra time in school had given her certain sports advantages, and she was a hard-core female jock. In the fall she played soccer. Spring was baseball. She was a starter for both teams in her junior and senior years. Nevertheless, she is naturally pretty. I knew that Haley could have been even more attractive if she hadn't been such a tomboy. She has large brown eyes and high cheekbones. Her skin has always been clear. And despite her masculine dress, one cannot miss the shape of her hips or the prominences of her breasts. She always kept her long, chestnut-colored hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore jeans and tee shirts all the time and usually sported a baseball cap. I never saw her anything on her feet but sneakers or cleat shoes. Revlon and Maybelline would have gone bankrupt if all women were like Haley.
But Haley is far from butch. She actually has a slight wiggle to her walk. Her voice is very feminine. It was all in her attitude and outlook. She certainly had enough sexual allure to attract boys. Her father began complaining to me about it when Haley was fourteen. According to him, she had very hot pants. In her senior year, her steady boyfriend was a huge guard of the high school football team who looked like "Jaws" from the James Bond series. Her parents were not happy with the situation. He was known to be wild, having totaled a car and been arrested for drunk driving.
It was late spring and I was now fifty. Haley's parents had to drive to Ohio for the wedding of a brother's son. They left on Friday morning and planned to be home by about seven on Sunday night. Haley could not go because she was in playoffs for her baseball team that weekend. Her father and I pal around, go to sports events and so forth. Also, when I was married my wife dragged me to church at least once a month. When she became sick, I started to depend on that good community more and more, for spiritual and physical sustenance. Haley's dad considered me a "religious fanatic." Thus it was that, as the moral paragon of the block, I was assigned the task of keeping an eye on their younger daughter. She was not allowed to have anyone in their house. I was also to check on the house each night and that she was there and safe. I really didn't give it much thought.
I work from home. I was in my study, which faces our street, on Friday afternoon when Haley came back from school. She has her own car, a rather beat-up Japanese hand-me-down. I checked the clock as she emerged from the driver's seat. It was five minutes before five in the afternoon. She was dressed in her uniform and had apparently only changed her socks and shoes. She dashed into the house. I was careful to note that no one went with her.
Not more than five minutes later, Haley reappeared carrying a plate with plastic wrap over it. She crossed the street, heading onto my property. I went downstairs to meet her at the front door.
"Hey!" she said, also calling me "Mr." and by my last name. I was thirty-one-plus years her senior and was not the informal kind who encourage children of friends to call me by my first name. She held up the paper plate. "I brought you some of my special double-chocolate brownies. Can I come in?" Her words were run together in a hurry.
"Sure," I said, accepting the gift. I noted that the plate was cool, as if the brownies had been refrigerated. Haley had only been inside my house once for a holiday party, and that had been several years earlier. I stepped back and let her inside. Since our neighborhood only has four house designs, she knew the layout. She moved swiftly into the kitchen and plunked herself down at the kitchen table. She looked utterly beguiling in her baseball uniform. She had a smudge of dirt on her right cheek, and her hair was a bit mussed. She blew a strand away from her eye
"Just had a practice, eh?" I noted.
"Yeah. Our last one before the playoffs," she said. "If we win both games tomorrow, we go on to state regionals. Sudden death elimination, y'know."
I nodded, feeling my heart ache for her blossoming youth and mine long past. If she had been in my high school and had given me the slightest time of day, I knew that I would have pursued such a creature.
"To what do I owe the gift?" I asked, taking the seat next to her, so that I wouldn't be looking down from a superior position and so that I could better drink in her lovely face.
Haley shrugged. "I was just baking last night and thought of you."
I opened the plastic wrap and took one. "Thanks. They smell great. Want one?"
"No." Suddenly, she was blushing deeply. "There's something else I want in my mouth." She laid her hand boldly on my knee.
The brownie almost fell from my lips. My heart did a flip-flop.
"You don't see anyone steady since your wife died," Haley correctly observed. "You don't even date."
My wife had been died about eight months before. Because of her lengthy illness and my relatively young age, people could hardly wait to begin trying to set me up with widows and divorcees. This included Haley's parents. As early as Christmas, they had been offering names. I had not been in the mood. And, frankly, forty-five and fifty-year-old women were not what I hankered after. I am an unapologetic worshipper of youthful beauty and was holding out for someone around thirty-five.
I looked down at Haley's hand. "That's true."
"You must get really horny," she said. "I mean, especially after getting it on a regular basis for so many years." She squeezed my knee.
I took Haley's hand in mine. "I think I know where this is going, and I'm very flattered," I said, "but it's not right."
"What's the problem? I'm way beyond legal in this state," she replied. "Most girls my age are screwing their brains out at college." She rolled her eyes. "All I could get into for next fall is the local community college. I have to live home next year, too. I know I'm going to be climbing the walls."
As she rattled on about her frustrations, I began trembling at the salaciousness of what was being offered to me. I did not, however, release her hand. A little nervous laugh escaped me. "The irony, Haley, is that your parents asked me to keep an eye on you precisely so you wouldn't be fooling around."
"I know," she said in an annoyed tone. "They told the entire neighborhood to watch out for me."
This I did not know. We had a Neighborhood Watch against house thieves, so I suppose that using the same watch against nookie thieves made sense. Her parents could not expect me to sit guard day and night.
Before I could react, Haley dropped off the chair onto her knees and went for the zipper of my trousers. "But you're the one living right across the street. You're the one who can tell my folks that I was good."
