Chapter Five
Baltimore, Maryland
April 22, 1951
Lisa Horcek was an all-American girl, born of one of Baltimore's leading upper-middle-class families and educated at William and Mary. She had been teaching since she had graduated in 1945, and had been "seeing" (Fifties slang for "fucking") a nice Catholic boy she had met at school, who was now pursuing a law degree somewhere in the rural bowels of North Carolina. According to her file, he saw her on holidays, briefly, but that was it. The engagement ring on her finger was getting a little tarnished, by now. I could only guess how randy her schoolmarm cunt would be.
She lived in a lovely brownstone apartment over on Union Avenue, which would be bulldozed in a dozen years or so to make way for the Jones Falls Expressway -- but right now, the Eisenhower Interstate system was a planner's dream and a political talking point, not a reality. She taught at a nearby school, the very picture of the modern independent career woman -- which meant in Fifties terms that she smoked, drove a car, and was desperate to get married.
Pretty girl, too. Thin, delicate features, blonde hair, pretty smile. But no tits. And it would be a few years before some Southern California stripper would get silicone injections to increase her bust and make history. Hell, back home they usually sucked your thighs and did your boobs all at the same time on your lunch hour. Of course, Lisa didn't have enough meat on her bones to provide any left over for boobs.
I scouted her out after school, watching her walk the eleven blocks between there and home. She carried herself well, stopped twice to gossip with friends on the way and once to duck in to a butcher shop and pick up something, but then she was back on her way. By the time she had gotten home, I had come no closer to coming up with a brilliant plan to lay her. So I found another coffee shop and went back to her file. Then it hit me. I checked the date on a discarded paper, then grinned. Tonight, it seemed, was her poetry club.
I'm no stranger to poetry. Back in my own college days it was one of my sure-fire ways of getting laid. The third-rate state school I went to was right down the road from a private liberal arts college filled to the rafters with sensitive young pussy who would believe just about anything, if you said it the right way. I had memorized reams of the stuff, especially the Romantics, and I knew a couple of dozen Shakespearean sonnets by heart. I tried to stay away from saccharine crap like Dickenson -- not that it didn't work, but there is such a thing as pride.
Her club met every Thursday at a local church. I scanned the very brief description of the group the Wayback Machine had come up with and formulated a plan.
An hour later I was in one of the dusty church classrooms chatting, smiling, and introducing myself as Jerome P. Steward, a scholar and aspiring poet who had heard about the group from a friend of a friend. I told myself off as a visiting scholar at one of the morbid little liberal arts colleges that dot the Maryland countryside, and professed my eagerness at participating in such an erudite group. Four old ladies, two older gents, and a nerdy set of young twin girls with coke-bottle glasses were present, and they hung on my every word. Of course, the pheromones from my lapel flower probably had something to do with that.
We didn't get started until Lisa arrived -- she ran the group -- and I have to admit, it was actually a lot of fun. Everyone picked a poem to read aloud and then the group ripped it to shreds. Except mine. I recited it from memory, entitled it Sweethearts, and put every bit of passion I could into it, while catching Lisa's eye at the poetically suggestive parts. Of course it wasn't really mine -- they were famous song lyrics from 2018, my grandad's era, by a band called Big Bear. Pretty stuff, and still popular decades later, but without the thumping drums and heavy metal chords it loses something.
It was enough for Lisa, though. I timed my delivery perfectly, using my hand motions and body language to lure her into my intimate personal space before I had even spoken directly to her. By the end of the meeting I was perhaps the most popular person there, and the two teen girls would have done anything I had asked. They were wound up, I could tell by their responses. I chatted with them a moment while Lisa said good-bye to the old folks, and got their names -- no lie, Candy and Brandy -- and found out they lived in a dorm at William and Mary. I promised them if I had time to stop by and look at some of their poetry. It made me nostalgic for college, where I had bagged a few dozen of their spiritual great-great-granddaughters.
Finally the girls left Lisa and myself alone. I thanked her kindly for the meeting, and she thanked me for coming -- all very polite and above-board. She was already flashing her eyes at me, I could see, her intellectual interest starting to meld in with her physical interest. An invitation to a cup of coffee was given and accepted, and before ten o'clock we were back in the same friendly coffee-shop I started the evening in.
"So, Jerome, how long are you in town?" she asked, batting her lashes at me. Long, delicate lashes, too.
"Actually, I leave day after tomorrow for a seminar in New York," I lied, "but after that I'll be back for the rest of the semester. Unless I can find a publisher for my work up there that can grant my every whim and desire for a book contract."
"Really?" she breathed, giving me a small, quiet grin. "I have to say, I was impressed with your work. Very imaginative -- and all of those made-up words, those were really interesting. But didn't you think the subject matter was a little . . . suggestive?" she asked as the waitress brought us coffee.
"Romance and passion have ever been the province of the poet," I countered with a chuckle. "They happen to be my favorite subject matter . . . in front of the proper audience, of course."
"Yes, I noticed the Evans Twins seemed to be smitten by your voice," she giggled. "They aren't usually so easily impressed."
"So my poems weren't to your liking?" I asked, eyebrows raised. I wasn't worried -- it was all part of the essential playful banter that all women used in their flirtations. She liked me, lusted for me a little, I could tell by her eyes, her hands, and her breathing patterns. But her ancient concepts of "virtue" mandated that she not give me any real praise. That would put her in an intellectually vulnerable position.
"They were all right," she conceded. "But . . . well, I'm sure you spent a lot of time on them. They're good, perhaps publishable, but they don't really capture the heart of the matter, do they?"
"Aren't there a million ways to describe that feeling, though?" I asked, eyeing her intently. "And none of them can do it conclusively. I find that extemporaneous professions are usually best. Nothing like a quick and dirty poem, made up on the spot, to fit the occasion."
"So what occasion produced that poem?" she asked, curiously. "And did your fiancé object, or was she the subject?"
"No fiancé, actually," I admitted. "As incredibly good-looking as I am, few women of quality want to hitch their fortunes to that of an itinerate poet who's greatest goal is a cushy teaching job with tenure at some sleepy country college. No, the subject of that poem was a seductive neighbor of mine, back in Massachusetts. Mya, was her name. Dark haired Italian beauty, looked like a movie star."
"I see," she grinned, dimpling. She had a very pretty smile. "And how did you and . . . Mya? How did you and Mya get along?"
"Never spoke to her," I admitted. "I just saw her in the hallway of our apartment building. Pulled her name off of the mailbox. But she enchanted me and haunted my dreams. I saw her hanging up laundry one day and, well, that's when I wrote that poem."
"So you never spoke to her?"
"Never got up the nerve. I was shy in my youth."
"I find that extraordinarily hard to believe," she said, stirring her coffee absently.
