PIT3/13: Who Else?

Points In Time

Westlake Village, California

March 18, 2010

The Landing

7:12 PM

And that was the last time you’d seen Lita?

“Yes. Never heard from her again.”

Feeling sadness for Mitchell’s loss, and happiness for her gain.

Rising, joining Marsha at the railing, his back to the lake.

“How’s about you?” Mitchell asked – motioning to the waiter and, catching his attention, making a writing motion in the air.

Both aware that this lengthy conversation must end eventually.

Both aware that when all conversation ends on this night that they will ‘somehow’ find themselves in bed together renewing their prolonged lives with renewed carnal knowledge.

And as the sexual coupling of the seventy-six year old man and seventy-four year old woman will be as life altering and as solemn an occasion as placing a wedding band about her finger...

Both Marsha and Mitchell wanted this whole-heatedly.

Problem was, they had no idea how to go about it in less than a clumsy, teen-age approach.

“The whole twenty-four years?” Marsha asked.

“No. Guess we’re still in the ‘clearing the air’ time, so anything you feel is important enough to get out of the way.”

“No, nothing else really.”

Both Marsha and Mitchell standing with their backs against the railing, some people at nearby tables still glancing in their direction thinking the striking couple old friends or old lovers or an old married couple, quickly averted their eyes if the eyes of the old friends or old lovers or an old married couple caught their attention.

7:20 PM

“Your cousin, Maxine… God, I haven’t spoken to her in what? Fifty years. You and she get along okay when you got there?”

“I told you that Marty picked me up at O'Hara and drove me to Max’s shop on Devon Avenue, then to my place on Peterson, that had eight private working stations – which I didn’t know at the time, brought nearly enough rental cash in to pay most of the expenses of the place, which became my obligation after I got my license and began to work.”

The waiter returning with their luncheon bill on a small silver platter, without a glance, Mitchell dropped his credit card onto it.

“My apartment?” Marsha went on. “Max charged me a very fair rent that I was able… Hell, after my ‘settlement’ money came in I had no problem paying rent, and covering my share of the expenses at ‘Marcie’s Manicures’. So I ended up owing my cousin nothing. Matter of fact…” she said rather proudly “... a few months after starting my station, I was making enough to cover all of my expenses without touching what I had from our divorce.”

“Most of mine went into the down payment of...” jerking his thumb westerly “… our place.”

“Glad you did, Mitchie.”

Returning, Mitchell scribbled his name on the restaurant’s copy leaving the young man a fifteen percent tip.

7:30 PM

Come on, baby.” Taking Marsha’s elbow, Mitchell led her down the three long concrete steps to the boat docks and onto the slightly rocking pontoon party boat.

Taking the same position she’d had on the outbound trip– starboard’ of the counsole  Marsha watched as Mitchell unhitched the half-hitches from the two dock cleats, gave the boat a shove to clear the dock and jumped aboard.

Turning the key, starting the engine and putting the lever into the ‘reverse’ position, the boat slowly clearing the dock, Mitchell rotated the wheel to starboard taking a forward moving port tact.

Sliding to his left, “Come here, baby…” urging Marsha to sit behind the boats control console “...you drive.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You drive a car, don’t you!”

“Sure.”

“This is like a car, only a thousand times slower. Just give yourself plenty of time if you want to turn, or steer away from something…” pointing “...like one of those sailboats.”

“Uh-oh!” About a hundred yards distant, Marsha turned the wheel sharply to starboard clearing the little sailboat by a hundred yards, but causing their boat to circle to the right.

“Okay, turn the wheel midway back to port…”

Slowing the circling motion, the boat straightened into somewhat the direction they’d been heading.

Rubbing her thigh, “Good girl!” Mitchell said.

7:40 PM

“So let me ask you, Mitch… if you don’t mind my asking.”

“It’s okay, so ask.”

“Lita left you the same day I took off to Chicago, so I can’t believe that you didn’t find another lady…” giggling “...Other than those ‘little old ladies’ you and you’re pal Milt picked up at The Landing– I can’t believe that in twenty-four years; if you don’t mind my asking– that in all those years there wasn’t someone else.

‘Barbara’, coming to mind. But too difficult to explain why and how it all came about.

“Yeah, there was one other lady that I did want to marry.”

“Really! Again…” turning the wheel a bit to port to avoid another party boat about two hundred miles distant “...if you don’t mind; what happened?”

“I met Barbara online…” completely simplifying the entire affair “...and we had a ‘online’ affair.”

“ ‘Really’!…” turning her head, looking at him “... How much of an affair?”

“Enough to want to get together in person.”

“So, did you?”

“Yeah. She lives in Long Island, New York and had a weekend meeting in Chicago, and since I hadn’t been back since we moved to California in…?”

“Nineteen, seventy-four.”

Amazed the date came back to Marsha so quickly and easily. “Yeah.”

“You met her in Chicago?”

“Yeah.”

“So, was this…?”

“ ‘Barbara’.”

“Was she what you expected, in person?”

“Didn’t really know what to expect. But physically she wasn’t what I expected at all.”

Relaxed at the wheel now, maybe because there was not another boat in sight. “Didn’t look as good as you expected?”

“Barbara wasn’t attractive at all, and not ugly either, more-so, I guess you could say that Barbara was ‘plain’.”

“Did it bother you, that she wasn’t pretty?”

“No. Not in the slightest because she was one of those really rare people that you might meet once in a lifetime that ‘to the soul’ you knew was just a really good person.”

“You and Barbara, you got together, uh sexually?”

“Marcie, let me tell you that ‘really’ good women like to fuck also.”

Mentally questioning: He saying that I’m not a good person? Which Marsha knew she hadn’t been.

However also feeling a twinge of jealousy. “So you did?”

“Yeah. Whenever we could for the, I guess you could call it the thirty-six hours we were together.”

“You wanted to marry her?”

“Oh, yes! I did! The way she looked didn’t matter. I loved this wonderfully plain woman, and she loved me.”

“You think?”

“No, I know.”

“So what happened?”

“There were a few problems; Barbara was married, but that was the very least of her problems because she would have left him. But she was also a care-giver to her sick mother and Downs-syndrome sister.”

“That’s really tough!” Marsha said sincerely.

Spotting the shadow of a boat on her port side, and being the good driver she was, Marsha angled to starboard, then turned the wheel back to port.

“So what did you do?”

“Living thirty-five hundred miles apart with Barbara’s obligations, to say nothing of the fact that I was twenty years older and wouldn’t want her to have to take care of me when her family obligations ended…”

Looking at Marsha as she looked at him. “I’m okay… At  least ‘that’ way.”

Realising she was in the process of returning to a seventy-six year old man that she hadn’t had contact with for twenty-four years, that could have any of a number of age related health issues–which, of course, he might have the same concerns regarding her health.

“So what happened between you and Barbara?”

“We decided that since meeting each other, and ‘being together’ as we had– like in reality, it would be impossible and too hard to continue a long distance ‘online’, pretend relationship. So Barbara said, ‘when she gets home, she was going to change her Email address ’so we would have no way to contact each other again.

So when we said goodbye at the airport, it was the last time we ever spoke to each other… In ‘any’ way.”

“Seems like your women just keep driving or flying away from you.”

“Yeah, well I’ve survived and it all turned out for the best because Lita was right at the time and so was Barbara.”

7:58 PM

Squeezing her thigh. “You doing okay, baby?”

“Yeah, I’m enjoying this.”

“We’re about ten minutes till we get home and It’s kind of tricky pulling up to the dock, so I’ll take over when you round the bend…” pointing to the far western point of Westlake Island.

“Okay.”

“If you don’t mind ‘me’ asking now! When did you make contact with your muscle guy?”

Turning her eyes from the imagined road in the water. “Mitchie…” looking at me “...if you want me to tell you about Stan and me as a part of… as my, uh, confessional to you, I will. But ‘please’ remember that to tell you in a way that makes some sort of sense, I will. But please, don’t get angry and ‘please’, don’t let anything I say effect you and me and…” motioning about “...don’t let it hurt what we have here.”

“That bad, eh?”

“The way I’ll have to tell you, yeah. I think so.”

Marsha’s eyes back on the rippling road.

Thoughts and remembrances flicking through his mind. Wanting this woman in his life. Wanting to believe all she had told him. Needing ‘everything’ regarding their past lives as the dissipating wake following the little boat.

“Yes. Say what you have to. It’ll be okay.”

Clasping his hand. “Promise?”

“I do promise.”

Marsha’s voice in a remembered tone. The harsh tone of urgent, quickly spoken words. Words that must be spoken to clear the lingering darkness of their marriage.

When did you make contact with your muscle guy?

“Actually it wasn’t for years. Because when I got back to Chicago and went to school for my cosmetology license I was a fifty-one year old ‘divorced’ woman making an entirely new life for myself, doing something I thought I’d love doing and Stanley, like you, Mitch, were in my past and felt like I just wanted to move forward.

It was about thirteen years later – and I’m well into my sixties when one of my customers mentioned this really good looking much older ‘trainer’ that had started at her gym by the name of Stan Jacobson and, like I said, maybe I was trying to regain some of my misspent youth.

So after thinking about it for a few days, and as there were only a couple of private gyms in the area, I tried one and he did not work there, so went to the second and sure enough Stan did work there, but was off for the day giving me about twenty-four hours to think about it – and in thinking about it, in retrospect, I should have let it go. But come the next afternoon, there I was, Stan Jacobson's ‘old’, and I do mean old girlfriend that he hadn’t seen in forty-six years.”

“He look pretty good to you after forty-six years?” I asked.

“He was a ‘trainer’ so had to keep his body up and, as I later discovered he’d had two face-lifts. So, yeah, he looked really good to me, and wearing those tight shorts, same as he used to wear – being horny as hell…

This still coming under my ‘confessional’, right?”

“I’m the one that asked. So, yeah. It’s okay, go on.”

As I was saying: I remembered what was beneath those tight shorts and wanted it, badly, and Stan was very happy to pick up where we’d left off  back in ‘fifty-five’…”

“When we got married.”

Sadly, “Yeah…

So we began to date, and something else I discovered really quickly: He never paid for anything. As a matter of fact Stan was still living in that basement room at his parents home.”

“In his sixties! Still living off his parents?”

“Turns out Stanley Jacobson had been married and divorced twice on physical cruelty grounds, and was paying child support for the two kids he’d fathered with his second wife.”

“Marsha…” I asked “...why the hell did you marry that bum?”

“Guess I thought I loved him and felt sorry for him, and wanted to get him out of his parents home and– as it turned out, Stan used me as a ‘cash cow’. And now, ten years later, I still have no idea why I even thought I still loved, let alone marry the bastard.”

8:12 PM

Rounding the bend of the westerly point of Westlake Island, bumping Marsha with me hip, “Scoot over.”

Moving to her right, both arms about Mitchell’s neck. “We okay?”

“Yeah, baby…” taking the wheel and angling the boat in the direction of ‘their’ dock “...we’re okay.”

Next: PIT3/14: Bed Time