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"Hey cuz! Happy Birthday! Recognize my voice?"
He instantly placed her Long Island accent as belonging to the cousin he shared a birthday with. "Well, Happy Birthday yourself, old lady!"
"Watch it whippersnapper. Have some respect for your elders," Jan replied. Though they shared the same month and day, she was actually one year older than Tad.
"Jan, it's been years since we've seen one another or even spoken. What prompted this call," Tad asked.
'Well, I tracked you down through your brother Levi. He gave me your number and address. I googled it and guess what?"
"Umm, Google Maps showed you where I live? That's not exactly earth shattering you know. It's pretty much exactly what Google does!"
"Still the smartass I see. What I found out is that the tourist town I booked my vacation in is only about 10 miles from your house. I got in late last night and put calling you on the top of my to do list for today. Do you have plans?" Jan asked.
"Not really. Do you want to get together for lunch? There's a place where you are that has great bison burgers, and lots of other good food if that's not your taste," Tad told her.
"Okay. Say 11:30?"
"That's perfect. I'll see you there!" Tad gave her the name and location of the restaurant and they hung up.
While they hadn't stayed in touch over the past fifty years or so, when they had both attended another relative's wedding about a decade ago they fell right back into the same easy rapport they'd always had.
In addition to having the same birthday, Jan's parents were Tad's godparents. She lived on the Island while he lived upstate but every summer he'd spend at least two week staying with her. And most summers the two families rented a lake house together in Maine.
Tad smiled to himself as he thought back on those days. Jan was always trying to get him to play doctor, so to speak. But he was painfully shy around girls and never let her go any further than listening to each other's heart with her toy stethoscope, always fully clothed.
There were lots of other activities, of course. They had learned to water ski in Maine, put on silly shows for the adults, did a lot of swimming and just general 'stuff' kids did back then.
His recollections sped forward to freshman year in college. A pounding on his door was accompanied by a shouted "Phone!" as the floor shared one payphone. Dorm etiquette dictated that whoever heard it ring answered and tracked down the intended party.
"Hello?" he said tentatively.
"Tad, it's Mom."
"Oh, hi Mom. Is everything okay?" His mother rarely called.
"I'm afraid not, Tad. That worthless wanna be mobster who got your cousin pregnant and then married her shot her twice and then killed himself," his mother explained.
"Oh no! Is she alive? What about the baby?" Tad asked, panic stricken,
"Leah is fine, untouched. Jan was hit in the mouth and out the cheek and in the shoulder. She crawled across the lawn to the neighbor's house who called for help. She'll need reconstructive surgery on her face but thankfully there shouldn't be any permanent damage."
"Okay. Do you have a number for her? I'd like to call." And he did, later on.
Tad arrived at the restaurant right at 11:30. As he told the hostess he was meeting someone she turned to look at a table where a single woman was seated. Tad's eyes followed and he immediately spotted Jan. "Yes, that's her," he told the hostess and headed over.
Jan jumped up when she saw him approaching, rushed over and gave him a giant hug, followed by a kiss on his cheek that actually touched on the side of his mouth. "Tad! I can't believe it! Damn, you look good."
"Look who's talking. I swear you haven't changed a bit since your twenties!" Tad said, honestly. She was about 5'6", maybe 120 pounds, nice large B cup breasts. The only change from her 20s was shorter hair, befitting a woman now in her early 50s.
They sat and, after giving their orders to the waitress, started catching up with one another. Jan had never remarried and Tad had been single for several years, having sworn off marriage long ago in favor of relationships that could end without need for lawyers.
After lunch, Tad gave Jan a guided walking tour of the mock Bavarian town. Originally settled as a logging town due to the plentiful southern yellow pine trees prized for lumber, when over-harvesting led to a complete decline in that business, the town fell on hard times. A single investor purchased nearly all the storefronts on the three block long main street and set about breathing new life in it.
He first reached out to a small town in Bavaria and negotiated a "sisterhood", appropriate due to both being nestled in their respective mountainous regions. He then remodeled the facades of the shops in the chalet style Bavaria is known for. He built a large 'Festhalle" and when fall rolled around advertised a huge Oktoberfest, with music, food, and of course lots of beer. In a few years it became hugely successful, attracting tourists from all over the southeast. Enterprising entrepreneurs rented the storefronts for everything from a cuckoo clock shop to the kind of tacky t-shirt souvenir places found in every tourist town.
"What are we going to do for dinner?" Jan asked.
"Well, you have three choices if we stay here. There's a nice, upscale American restaurant, a rather good and authentic German place, and a very good pizza place," Tad replied.
"Let's save the fancy places for some other night. I love pizza!"
Tad laughed. "Ok, but keep in mind this isn't New York pizza. We do things differently down here."
It was Jan's turn to laugh. "I'll let you in on a secret. I don't particularly care for New York style pizza. Sacrilegious, I know and I'd never say that out loud back home, but it's the truth!"
Retrieving his car, they drove the two miles to the edge of town and had dinner at the pizza tavern. "This is delicious!" Jan announced.
When they finished, Jan said, "I'd really like to see your cabin, Tad. Can we go there now? Maybe have a nightcap."
"Sure. What do you like to drink? There are a couple of liquor stores here in town. Ridiculously overpriced for the tourists, of course, but we can bite the bullet," he said.
"I did notice you asked for the 'local's discount' at both lunch and dinner. I'm a bourbon girl."
"Yeah, most of the restaurants offer local's a break, since we're all they have off-season. But other businesses generally don't and particularly the liquor stores. Anyway, now we're in luck because I have a bottle of bourbon at the cabin. Where's your car? You can follow me home."
"It's in that lot next to where we had lunch," she told him.
Fifteen minutes later they pulled up the steep driveway to his cabin. He pulled his car into the garage while she parked in the drive. "It's adorable, Tad! I love that huge rocking chair porch!" Jan exclaimed.
They crossed the porch together and she was shocked when he turned the doorknob and it opened, not having been locked. He saw the look of amazement on her face and grinned. "I only lock it when I go to bed or out of town. Lots of people around here are the same and some even leave the keys in their car, even without a garage," he explained.
It took only a couple of minutes to give her the grand tour of the 1200 square foot cabin and then he fixed drinks for each of them. Bourbon on ice with a splash of water for her and Johnny Walker, neat, for him. When he handed the drink to her she kissed him again, this time on the lips. Hiding his surprise, he asked Alexa to play smooth jazz and they sat in the living room.
"So, Tad, how's your love life? Looks like you live alone. Any girlfriends?" Jan asked.
"Not at the moment. It's a bit challenging to date around here, being as rural as we are. And most women our age are extremely conservative, and I don't mean politically."
Jan laughed and said "I hear you. Gotta keep things adventurous, don't you think?"
Tad just nodded at what he assumed was a rhetorical question, so she continued, "You know, your's was one of the first cocks I ever saw or touched. It was at your house. I was visiting to celebrate your 18th birthday and my 19th. I finally convinced you to strip down for a real game of playing doctor. I still remember that, do you?"