Reunion at Forty-eight Chapter 22 By Ezra Randle Four Months Later
Ben spoke quickly into his phone as he stood outside of the cluster of chain stores. "Sure, Honey, I'll be there in forty-five minutes. Look for the car near the entrance."
He returned to his Accord and was about to turn the ignition when he glanced out the side window and saw a middle-aged man pushing a shopping cart loaded with several bags of purchases and a large box containing a television. He looked twice because the man reminded him of Dan. He wasn't as trim and was a few inches shorter than Dan, but his short hair and beard were cut in the same way and the contours of his face were very similar to his old friend's appearance. The man stopped at a maroon van two cars away, opened the back, and unloaded the bags. But the corner of the box was wedged into the side of the cart so awkwardly that the man was having little success budging it without the cart rolling away beyond his van. Without thinking, Ben lowered his window. "Need some help?"
"Yeah. That'd be very nice," the man said.
The man's smile made him think even more of Dan. While Ben held the cart, the man loosened the box and lifted it to the top of the cart and began to slide it into the cleared area of the van, but it wouldn't go smoothly. "Wait, let me help with the lift," Ben said, "you don't want to damage your new television before you get it home."
Ben took one side and together they boosted it into the back, then the man shut the back hatch. "Hey, I really appreciate it. I was about to go back into the store to get a worker to help me."
"My pleasure. Hope you have someone at home to assist you."
"I'm good with that. Thanks again." The man extended his hand, and Ben shook it in vigorous fashion. But he didn't want to disengage from the man just yet. "Do you have to drive far? Wouldn't want the TV to slide around too much."
"Less than ten miles. I think it will be just fine. It's a surprise for my mother-in-law. Actually, my wife is going to be just as surprised. We'd talked of getting her a bigger screen, but nobody expected me to run out and do it," the man said.
"Are you having a case of buyer's regret?"
The man laughed. "Nah, we all love Mom. She deserves the best. But my wife thought I was dashing out for a gallon of milk."
Ben laughed but was feeling an urgency to touch the man again. He stuck his hand out and they shook a second time. Ben gripped his shoulder as their hands clasped and he looked at the man's ass. He'd been doing that lately. Almost against his will. Not at the groins of the men like he'd been doing last year, but at their ass cheeks as they protruded against their jeans or khakis.
He stood alongside his Accord as the man returned the cart, comfortable in the unusually warm December weather. The man returned to the van and offered Dan another broad smile as he took his time getting into the van. He pulled away and waved one last time. Ben returned the gesture not really wanting the interchange to end. He reached for the door handle to his Honda, but paused and put his hands together like he used to as a kid making a church steeple. The sun reflected off his wedding band. The man he had just assisted wasn't wearing a ring. That didn't really mean much. It seemed like one out of every four or five married men he met no longer wore their bands. Sometimes his felt too tight, as well, though better since he'd lost the weight. He glanced at his watch and knew he had half an hour before he would swing around by the clinic, and he wished he had grabbed the Wisconsin State Journal on the way out of the store. He sat in the car and tilted the seat back a bit and turned on the radio. Judy Garland was singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." He turned up the volume and sang along with her. He and Ellie had recently watched Meet Me in St. Louis and had replayed that scene of her wistful rendition of this song several times, marveling at her voice and youthful beauty. He was fully aware of how the studios in Hollywood manipulated audiences, but, sometimes, the effects of that deception were so blissful he yearned to give himself up to the con.
He closed his eyes and enjoyed her voice, and a lingering image of the man he'd just helped flashed into his mind. He was an attractive guy, his weight somewhere between his own and Dan's. He was wearing just an undersized long-sleeve green t-shirt, hanging loosely at his waist. When they slid the TV in the van, the shirt had risen halfway up his back revealing the dark hairs of the man's lower back and belly. An impulse ran through him of wanting to lift off the shirt and see the man's nipples. He shook his head admonishing himself. He now realized that the man looked only vaguely like Dan. Just enough to rekindle the desires for men that he had mostly banished since he and Dan had met in August at the motel room. What had made him so suddenly vulnerable again? He slapped his thigh in irritation, hoping it would hurt. He had certainly gazed at men regularly over the past four months, whether it was at work or the locker room at the health club. The desire that prompted him to look at them was different now that he had experienced what naked men might do in the privacy of a room. His lusty glances were a generic craving as hadn't thought much about Dan, except in anger and disgust, for over four months. His Christmas glow vanished. For one of the few times since that night in August, he let himself drift back beyond his self-loathing to those grey images of him kissing Dan on the lips and chest. Then allowing his hands to touch Dan's cock, followed by an extended session of oral sex and explosive orgasming. He could almost feel the acrid juices gathering again in his throat as he thought of his own naked body slumped in the chair in the motel room cursing bitterly at his foolishness. His fists clenched as he recalled his fleeting glimpse of Dan leaving the room in a silence that screamed out in betrayal and pain.
The subsequent months had been almost comforting, a near total absence of any need to acknowledge his complicity in the events of that night. There had been very few thoughts of Dan during their physical intimacy or even of them in any of their moments together years ago. The relief was a gift, an unasked for absolution. Much like he felt as an eighth-grader leaving the confessional with the priest's blessing after admitting how many times he'd jacked off throughout the previous two weeks. Knowing of course he'd be repeating the same acts within a day or two. He was no longer a believer in such simple forgiveness for what we do wrong in our lives. Certainly he no longer ascribed to the evils of virtually all forms of sexuality that the Catholic Church pounded into his head throughout religion classes in grade school. But the feeling of deep cleansing that washed over him during these recent months had been like a forgiveness from papal hands. Most peacefully of all, his dream life had been purified. The haunting images that made him seek Dan out in the first place had been purged.
What if simply touching this man in the parking lot was the impetus to a resumption of those damn images and dreams? Would he lose control and do something impetuous again? Getting naked with Dan four months ago had been strategically planned on his part, but it was still an impulsive act. He pictured the man he had just helped again and chastised himself. Part of him still wanted to pull the man closer and kiss him. Shit. He gave himself a quick slap to his face. He chuckled as he cautioned himself. The desires had little chance of coming back. He had mostly taken care of them. His fingers relaxed and he expelled a pent-up lungful of air. A half smile returned to his face as Johnny Ray sang "Jingle Bell Rock." He laughed at the crazy way life spun its wheels, often providing solutions even as it mocked his foolishness. He hadn't known specifically what was going to happen when he wrote the email to Dan in August, then followed up by suggesting the site of the seduction. But he was fully cognizant that he had his motives. He allowed himself at least this much understanding about that night: in his perverse way, he had gotten from Dan exactly what he craved. He needed to fully exorcise what he now believed was a fucking undesirable disruption in his life. To return to a less complicated sense of what was at the heart of who he was: his manhood and what he did as a sexual creature. He momentarily let his subconscious flow vocalize, "The `fucking undesirable disruption' had been fucking up my fucking." He chuckled, as though he'd just heard one of his favorite off-color jokes.
The events of that night with Dan led to an invigoration of his intimacy with Ellie--and their evenings together were more enjoyable. Like the happiness and simplicity he felt watching the wholesome family scenes with Judy Garland's fictionalized family in St. Louis. The deeply felt physical satisfaction he experienced later that night when he and Ellie went to bed were better that he could remember for the past ten years. He didn't understand why his bizarre misstep with Dan apparently added steam to his moments in bed with Ellie. Nor did he want to try to make the connections. Because sex was mostly powerful and single-minded again, and with Ellie seemingly responding in kind to his sexual advances, he was driven to be more solicitous toward her in every other respect as well. Ellie craved this, his willingness to seek her out and ask her about her work, carefully listening to her litany of issues and advising her about solutions. Even though he knew, in his heart, he wasn't deeply concerned about many of them. He was simply helping the woman he loved put order to her life. That is what she had done for him seven years earlier during the uncertainty of his employment reshuffling.
He thought about her a moment, even allowing himself to become aroused in anticipation of what might happen that night or tomorrow at the latest. It had been years since he let himself look forward to an evening of sex with her as he showered in the morning or taken a piss in the privacy of the bathroom at work. Though he had to admit the sex with Ellie had become very different throughout these four months. He'd always enjoyed pleasuring her orally, but now it was like an insatiable hunger. Sometimes he didn't even enter her after she was exhausted from orgasming so often from his tongue's activity. Instead he wanked onto her belly or into his hand and then privately licked it off. A few times in his zeal he had come close to licking her even lower wondering what she would do if he licked her bum. These were the same thoughts he'd had with Dan. As he had licked Dan's balls and taint, he wondered what it would be like to lick Dan's anal zone. Rimming was an acceptable activity in the world of man to man sex. And then he pondered what else they hadn't done in bed. Those thoughts often aroused him. Since he had seen Dan, he regularly fingered his anus while showering. His cock was usually at full alert and leaking when he did.
He cursed himself again, reprimanding his desires for backsliding. He had crossed the line with Dan but satisfying his curiosity was apparently what he'd needed. For the most part, but not completely. He breathed in deeply. That's what it was like: inhaling deeply and unpleasantly, exhaling, then going on with the vision of himself that he'd always had. He pulled up Dan's email address on his phone. It was many months too late, but Dan at minimum deserved an apology.
Hey, Dan. Don't know if you expected to hear from me again, but wanted to say I feel bad about what I put you through. Don't know what got into me that night. Sorry to pull you into my shit. Everything else copasetic for me. Hope so for you, too. No need to write back. I'll understand. Ben.
The words were mostly true and maybe the overture would help him deal with the occasional shame he felt about manipulating Dan that night. He had been on target with his assessment of Dan's nature, confident that, in all likelihood, Dan, too, wouldn't be able to walk away that night without satisfying his own curiosity. He felt comfortable reading people and Dan, it turned out, was a simple lesson, though this realization didn't bring him much satisfaction. He glanced down at his watch, reread the email, and sent it off.
Ellie was standing in the accumulating dusk just outside of the clinic back door when he drove up. As she slid in, he could see she was crying. "Hey, what's up?"
She looked at him, tears flashing. "My pap smear came back positive. They want to do a biopsy next week."
He was speechless and Ellie started sobbing.
"It's probably cancer. Just a matter of how much it's spread. Just like with my mom and sister."
He reached over and touched her hand.