"Yes, certainly, I will."
"Bye, Marianne."
"Good-bye, Freddie.
Over time, the feeling of Lynn came and went, sometimes stronger and other times weaker. Sometimes I felt her for only a few minutes before the feeling of her faded away while other times she was there with me most of the day. When she was there, I felt her looking over my shoulder. The feeling of her blowing on my neck or in my ear was nerve racking. I could imagine her laughing when annoying me like that.
Certainly, I felt her presence stronger when her mother was here. Yet, even though the feeling of her there came and went, always, she was there with the advent of some anniversary, such as, our first date and our first kiss. She returned for her birthday and for my birthday. I know she was here when Seymour got loose and was nearly hit by a car that stopped just in time. I know that Lynn saved Seymour's life. Then, for the longest time, I felt nothing. She stopped coming to see me.
I tried to feel her by closing my eyes and concentrating on the memory of her. On those days when I was so alone and lonely and missed her so terribly much, I tried summoning her by concentrating on the image of her and holding her picture or something that belonged to her and that she cherished. When she didn't materialize, I feared she was gone for good.
I needed her here with me even if only as a ghostly spirit or as a feeling or a sense of something skulking around the house. After the orgy of physical and sexual contact with Jamie, Gwen, and Marianne was over, I was so sad, so lonely, and so empty with the loss of her. It was comforting when I felt her here with me. When she wasn't around, I was depressed. I felt so alone and so lonely without hearing her voice and her laugh and without feeling her body next to mine in bed as we spooned. Never did she return to me, as she did the night of her death. That night was our last intimate time together and a memory that I'll cherish for the rest of my life.
It was such a bittersweet experience to feel her there with me one day and then not to feel her at all the next. I had no control of when she'd come, when she'd go, and how long she'd stay. I wondered if she was out in Rochester visiting Marianne or in Boston visiting Gwen or Jamie. Maybe she was in Heaven, finally, where she belonged.
Still, Marianne said she'd call me if she felt Lynn's presence there with her and I never doubted that she'd call me to let me know. I suspected, though, that Lynn would make less visits, as more time passed. A gradual process of mourning her again, days turned into weeks and weeks into months without feeling the presence of Lynn. Finally, I figured she wouldn't return again. She was gone for good and all that I had left of her were memories.
I made a pilgrimage out to Rochester to visit her grave selfishly hoping that it would stir her to return home with me. I took a stool with me and sat there for couple of hours talking to her with the dogs. I would have stayed longer, but it started thundering before it started raining, really pouring, and I feared being struck by lightning. Besides the dogs wanted no part of sitting out in a storm. Unfortunately, my praying and my visit to her grave didn't encourage her to follow me home. I feared that she was gone forever.
No longer did the dogs stare up at the wall or at the ceiling wagging their tails. No more did they get wild for no apparent reason. I knew she was gone and I wanted to call Marianne to tell her that Lynn was gone, but I thought better of it. It was better that Marianne believed that Lynn was still around me. I didn't think she'd want a telephone call from me telling her that her daughter was gone, finally. I figured by my silence, she knew that anyway.
I wanted to see Marianne when I was in Rochester, but I felt guilty. How could I look her husband in the eye after having sex with not only two of his daughters but also his wife? If he hated me before, he'd want to kill me now. Besides, it would have been awkward to visit with Marianne and her daughter Gwen, after Gwen moved back home when her job didn't last.
Gwen was unpredictable and there's no telling what she may have said about what had happened between us in front of not only her father but also her mother. I could just hear Gwen laughing while reminiscing of the time when she tossed my salad in the shower. Just as I could hear her father saying, "You did what? Marianne, where's my shotgun?"
Now, I felt terribly alone again. I hate being alone. Whether she's dead or alive, I need a woman in my life. Only, I don't mean that how it sounds. I need someone in my life, but not just any woman.
I want that special woman, someone who I'm deeply attracted to on all levels, a woman who I think about when leaving the house and who makes me not want to leave her bed. I want a woman who I think about all day long, a woman who makes me impatient to get home, and one who I love to kiss and hold. I want a woman who will never make me want to look at another woman. I want a woman who makes me giddy with happiness and lustful with desire, and when we make love it's magical. That's the woman that I want. If there's such a woman for me, where is she?
Even though I've had an abundance of sexual relationships within the past year and a half with Lynn, her best friend, Jamie, Lynn's sister, Gwen, and Lynn's mother, Marianne, believe it or not, I'm a one woman type of guy. I much prefer love to sex and would rather have someone to talk to and laugh with, do things with, and travel to places, as well as having the intimate relationship with all the hugging, holding and sex.
I'm too old and too set in my ways to be partying with the young chicks anymore. I want something real and everlasting. I need someone my own age this time around. I miss having a meaningful conversation. I wish I could find someone who's totally into me and who shares my interests.
It was at the supermarket where I met Kate. Obviously, by her looks, I was attracted to her at first glance. She was tall, thin, good looking, and wearing a Red Sox baseball cap. It's always good to meet another faithful Fenway fan and the fact that she was beautiful made her so much more interesting. From the back, because of her gray hair, she looked fifty-something but, after looking at her again and upon closer examination, especially from the front, her beautiful skin contradicted her age. Had she colored her hair, she'd look thirty-something.
I never understood a woman who turned her back to youthfulness by allowing her hair to gray naturally without coloring it, that is, until I met Kate. It not only suited her but also, amazingly, it looked good on her. Now, after seeing her with her shoulder length, flowing gray hair, I couldn't imagine her hair any other color. In the way of first introducing rich cream to dark, strong coffee when it swirls around before mixing with and turning a lighter shade of brown, or when seeing the glistening glass and chrome of modern architecture next to the brick and wood of old world charm, she looked young and old at the same time while capturing the qualities of both youth and maturity in one glance. I liked the look.
It was weird, in one look I could see how she looked in her youth and could imagine what she'd look like as she aged. When she turned away from me and I viewed her from the back and then when she turned towards me and I viewed her from the front, I felt as if I was viewing Oscar Wilde's picture of Dorian Gray, but as a hologram, young to old and old to young. Weird, so very strange.
Yet, puzzlingly, there was something so very familiar about her. I felt that I had met her before or knew her from somewhere long ago. Without a doubt, it was her eyes. Filled with an expressiveness of emotion, they were deep and electric grey-blue eyes. Her eyes reminded me of Lynn's eyes.
It was apparent that intense intelligence abounded behind those sexy and erotic eyes. She captured me and summed me up in one look. I felt transparently violated and her look made me feel used. She made me feel naked but not in a sexual way. In a truth be told sort of look, she removed the layers of pretenses, deception, and foolishness about me. I felt that she saw the real me and was looking at the person that hid beneath my masked persona. Immediately, by her overt look, I could tell that she liked what she saw and a mutual attraction flickered before catching fire.
Suddenly, I thought of that movie, Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty playing Joe Pendleton and Julie Christie playing Betty Logan, the remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan with Robert Montgomery and Evelyn Keyes. In the original movie, Joe Pendleton is a boxer who's in the pink of his physical fitness, whereas, in the remake, Joe Pendleton is the quarterback of a professional football team at the height of his successful career. In the original movie, Joe dies of a heart attack in the boxing ring, whereas in the remake, Joe is hit by a car while riding his bicycle through a highway tunnel.
Nonetheless, as it was in the original movie, the main character died when an angel, hoping to spare him from the pain and the suffering of dying, prematurely, pulled his spirit from his body. Only, just as happened in the original movie in the boxing ring, the boxer wasn't having a heart attack and would have not only survived but also won the fight. In the remake, the car would have swerved and missed him and there would have been no accident. In an attempt to rectify his mistake, the angel takes Warren Beatty around to different people who are about to die hoping to find a comparable body for Joe Pendleton to inhabit. Finally he puts him in the body of a rich industrialist, Leo Farnsworth. Only, unbeknownst to Joe, there's a plot, by his wife and his wife's boyfriend, to murder him. Now, Joe and the angel are on a panicked mission to find another body to inhabit before it's too late and he's dead forever.
Meanwhile, he meets a woman, Julie Christie, and has fallen in love with her. He knows now that the angels are searching for another body to place him inside. Fearing that he may lose touch with this love at first sight woman, he warns Julie Christie that if anything was to happen to him, and that if he was to die, she should give a stranger a chance. Figuring that fate would intervene and inevitably bring them together again, but that he'd be a stranger to her, he tells her that it's in the eyes.
