6. Chapter 6
Chapter six
Charles
It is nearly midnight when James calls from the lobby to say that he is here with his sister and all her luggage. I don’t want to leave Cece alone, so I call down to the front desk and have them make a keycard for Kate and get her signed into the security system.
When Kate and James arrive at the penthouse entry, I meet them and take over from the bellhop. “Sorry about not coming down,” I say. “But I didn’t want to leave Cece alone. Em and I are . . .” I pause, realizing once again that I was no longer a “we”. I swallow down the pain and go on, “were very particular about making sure that there was always someone she could call out to, in case she got scared at night.”
“I understand,” Kate says, coolly professional and correct. “Night can be scary for young children.”
“Did you get the contract I sent to you?” I ask.
Kate gives her brother a dirty look. “My phone is out of data, and the Internet at the farm is offline. Is there someplace I can set up my laptop?”
There are some interesting undercurrents going on there, but I don’t really have time to examine them right now. “Of course,” I say, “You can use the kitchen guest access for tonight. I’ll get you set up properly tomorrow.”
“Mind if I take off now?” James asks. “I got a pretty good drive ahead of me.”
“You could use the guest room,” I invite.
“Nah, I gotta hay the cows and feed the chickens in the morning.” He grins at me.
I knew that his farm was set up so he could be gone for days on end, so I can only think that he wants to be sure that his sister can’t back out.
“Be careful going back,” I say. “Pavements are slick when wet.”
“Don’t I know it!” James agrees. “I’ll check in with you two in the morning. I know the way out.”
And just like that, he is gone, leaving me alone with a young woman who looks angry, perhaps a little bit scared, and with whom I have an antagonistic history.
I can’t fix whatever is bugging my CFO and best friend, but maybe I can help her feel less . . . what? Alone? Worried? Scared that her neighbor was right and that she might be raped and killed? Show her that I’m not the total ass she’d always seemed to think of me?
Professional. That is the right approach. I can cover a lot of emotional ground with professionals.
“Why don’t you set your laptop here on the kitchen table? The system will automatically give you guest access. I’ll give you a few minutes to look over the contract. Would you like something to drink? Water? Juice?”
She looks really uncomfortable, then she blushes. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, a bathroom? We drove straight here, and that’s about six hours.”
I give myself a mental kick. Dolt! Of course she would want the facilities. “I’ll show you your room,” I say. “There’s a bathroom attached to it. Are you hungry?”
She looks up at me, her hazel eyes wide and innocent like some wild creature that has been startled, but not yet taken flight. Is this the little harridan I remembered? “I don’t know,” she says, seeming lost. “Water sounds good.”
I walk down the hall and open the door to the guest room that is next to Cece’s bedroom/playroom combo. “You’ll be in here,” I say. “Cece is next door. Your bathroom door is there on the left.”
“Thank you,” she says, shrugging out of her windbreaker. “Where should I put my coat?”
“Anywhere you want,” I say. “But there’s a coat closet here by the door. I’ll show you the rest when you are more comfortable.” I then withdraw, leaving the door open.
That leaves me alone with my thoughts. Since my thoughts aren’t going anywhere good, I put my nervous energy to work. I rummage in the refrigerator and find a covered dish of sliced cheese and some grapes. I then check the cupboards and find an open box of butter crackers.
I stick a glass under the refrigerator door dispenser and fill it with ice and water. I am just turning around from that, when Miss Bailey comes back into the kitchen, carrying her laptop. Perhaps it is my imagination, but she seems to have filled out a little since my college days. It looks good on her.
“Here is your water, and a light snack,” I say, suddenly feeling a little nervous myself. This is my first good look at Miss Bailey, the adult, when she is not wearing an unflattering daycare uniform or a coat. She is tall for a woman, and slender, but subtly rounded at hip and breast. Her long, dark hair is neatly braided back from her face and only a little mussed from her long ride. She is not classically beautiful, but she has regular features and a competent, put together air that is reassuring and oddly appealing. “I’ll just go look in on Cece and do a couple of things while you read through the contract.”
I go out into the hall, then walk down to Cece’s room. Her door is shut, and I don’t really need to check on her, but suddenly I want to see her. It is as if I need to remind myself that I am a father, a . . .what is the term? A widow? No, that isn’t right. A widower. Yes, a man who was once married, but whose wife was . . . and definitely not a man interested in the live-in nanny. Talk about a cliche!
I can’t face the emptiness where my life partner had been. We’d not had a fairy tale romance, but Em had been something solid in my life, a presence I could count on. Until I couldn’t. Until she wasn’t there.
I step into the shadowy bedroom. Cece has her face turned away from the nightlight. The soft illumination shows her rounded cheek and tousled hair. A tuft of white sticking out from under the covers suggests that her cat, Mr. Fluffy, is cuddling with her. The sound of her soft breathing steadies me. I’m her dad , I think. I’m who she has. My job is to take care of her.
When I go back to the kitchen, I find Miss Bailey nibbling at a cheese and cracker sandwich and frowning at her computer.
“Is everything all right?” I ask.
“Yes,” she replies. “This will be fine. I was just wondering how to sign it. I don’t have a program to write on a pdf.”
“Not to worry. I’ll print it out on the office printer, and you can sign that. Would you like some juice to go with your cheese and crackers?”
She shakes her head. “I’ll not be able to sleep if I have any.”
I studied her for a moment. The harsh kitchen lighting reveals that she isn’t wearing make-up. Her oval face has a farm-girl tan, with a light sprinkling of freckles across her nose. Her cupid’s bow mouth has a tired droop to it, and for just a moment she looks as young and vulnerable as Cece. That fleeting expression reminds me that she is my best friend’s baby sister, given to me in trust.
Then she looks up from the laptop, and she seems almost like an avenging Athena, timeless and wise. I suddenly remember the stupid remark I’d made about her high school friend, and how bad I’d been about closing farm gates. As an undergrad, I really had been pretty much of an ass.
She is calm and no-nonsense, like every teacher I’d ever had, all rolled up into one stern young woman. “Thank you,” she says. “I’d rather not wrestle with software tonight.” Her eyes are bright and almost look as if she’d been crying, although I could not think why she should.
“I’ll just go get those papers,” I murmur. It seems safest to simply retreat.
By the time the contract is signed, and I have given her the schedule for the cook, the maid, and the dog walker, it is nearly 2:00 in the morning. We roll the luggage cart into her room. I leave her to explore her room or to fall into bed as she prefers and retire to my own room.
I settle into bed, put in my earphones, and listen to the recording of the last video chat I had with my wife.
The hospital had cropped her hair close to her head, and she was wearing one of those ugly hospital gowns. We had talked for a little while, then she said, “Charlie, listen to me. You are not to blame yourself for this. It was my decision to go to the convention, and my decision to take care of the other people in quarantine.”
“I know,” I hear my recorded voice saying. “But if I’d fought you harder on going in the first place . . .”
“I would have gone anyway,” she said. “Thankfully, we’ve said goodbye to the era when husbands owned wives. Mostly, anyway. But I am sorry that I didn’t hug and kiss both of you more while we were together. Video just isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” recorded me said, the voice hoarse with unshed tears. Real me lets the tears fall. If I had known that the day I took her to the airport would be our last together . . .!
Her recorded voice goes on, inexorably saying the words that had run around and around in my brain as I watched the funeral presentation. “Charlie, I know we’ve not had the best marriage, even though we both tried.”
“Em . . .” recorded me protested.
“No,” she interrupted, “hear me out. If you meet someone, take the chance. You are a handsome man, a good man. You deserve to be happy. Just make sure she’s someone who will love Cece.”
That got me, every time. As if I would let the classic wicked step-mother into our lives!
Oh, Emily…I yank a handful of tissues out of the box beside the bed, wipe my eyes and blow my nose. I shut the recording off, and set the sound system to play some bland music advertised as guaranteed to lull you to sleep. Ha. As if.
Emily and I are together again, and we are in the honeymoon suite we’d reserved for after our wedding. I caress her lush breasts with their high, perky nipples. She has beautiful breasts, pillowy and soft with sweet, pale pink nipples. Her skin is pale. She’d lamented her inability to tan. I ran my hands down her sweet curves, admiring her soft, slightly rounded stomach. Her skin is like silk. She shivers under my touch and reaches for me.
I let her pull me in beside her and brush my hand over her pubic curls. They are as delicately blond as the hair on her head, proving that it is all natural. I use my fingers to explore her mysteries, marveling at the warmth and growing wetness of her private places.
I slide my finger inside her, exploring this foreign territory. I wasn’t completely inexperienced, but I’d not had a lot of practice in the bedroom arts. Most of what I knew was gleaned from books and articles in gentlemen’s magazines. It was our joy to learn about sensuality together.
I feel again her intake of breath that tells me I’ve found a good spot. I explore a little more, then she catches my hand, moving my thumb to a nub of flesh that is somehow a little larger than it had been a minute before. I let my thumb run over it, eliciting a soft sound that was almost a purr. But I must have gotten off target, because she asks, “Do I need to draw you a map?”
I had nearly lost my erection at that point and say, “Maybe?”
But she touches me, doing her own exploration. It feels so good, I am quickly ready to go again. Then, inexplicably, I am inside her, caught in our first fumbling, but sweet, coupling as we find our inexperienced way of joining. I can feel my manhood sheathed inside her, I can see her wide, blue eyes opening even wider as we find our perfect rhythm. She is warm and alive in my arms, moving under me in a perfect symphony of motion.
I want it to last forever, locked in memory and perfect ecstasy as we dance our way toward a mutual climax. This is where I want to be, reliving the very best of my time with Emily.
Then, suddenly, the eyes that stared into mine are hazel, wide and slightly alarmed. The hair spread out on the pillow is dark, long, and straight. The body beneath me is athletic and narrow with small, high breasts, instead of richly curved. The sweet, cupid’s bow mouth says, “I don’t know how to sign this. We can’t do this if we don’t sign the document.” Somewhere, an alarm bell starts ringing.
It rings and rings, pulling me up and out of wherever I was, like I am being lifted by a crane. The woman under me disappears into the distance, but I can still see those eyes — wide, innocent and a little frightened.
I awake, hard as a rock and as frustrated as a teen-age boy in a room full of naked women that he can’t touch. The phone is ringing, an angry insistent buzz.
I answer it. “Charles Emory.”
Manuela’s voice comes through the connection. “I am so sorry, Mr. Emory. There’s been a sickness in our apartment building, and nobody is allowed to leave. I won’t be able to come help with Miss Cece.”
I try to pull myself together and to shake off the after effects of the dream. “It’s all right, Manuela. I found someone for her. I’ll put you on paid leave of absence. Do you need anything?”
“They say we’re supposed to get grocery and food deliveries, but I don’t know . . .”
“You call me if you need anything, anything at all. If ‘they’ don’t come through, you can count on me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Emory. Gettin’ paid will help. It’ll keep me from being evicted.”
Good God! I hadn’t even thought of that. But I had funds in escrow and insurance to take care of my people. “Don’t you worry. Just call if you need something,” I say.
I make the usually polite noises that go with ending a phone conversation and look at the digital clock on my nightstand. It is 4:30 in the morning.
After that dream, I don’t even want to go back to bed. Sure, it had been a while since I’d had a woman sleeping with me, but those eyes . . .I’d been dreaming about James Bailey’s baby sister! Maybe the old biddy on the party line wasn’t all that wrong.
I get up, walk myself into the bathroom, take care of business, and dump my overly emotional self into the shower. I run it on cold, blasting myself awake .
It doesn’t help. I’m still hard, and I can’t get the dream out of my head.
I turn the water over on warm, soap up and have a quick session with what my father used to call “mother thumb and her four daughters,” all the while remembering those eyes, wild like a deer caught drinking from the edge of a pool.
I knew from experience that masturbation probably wasn’t going to solve all my problems. But it should get my libido to the point where I can behave like a decent human being.
I had just stepped out of the shower and am toweling off when the phone rings again. “Charles Emory,” I answer it.
“Mr. Emory?” Sherry’s voice comes from the phone, “Mom says I can’t come to work until all this is over. She saw on the news that someone in your building got sick. She won’t even let us go to the grocery store. She’s ordered a delivery.”
I sink down on the bed. Of course, Sherry’s mom wouldn’t let her go out of their house to work. Shoot, if it were Cece, I wouldn’t let her go out, either. “It’s all right, Sherry. You’ve got paid time off coming to you. Is everyone ok at your house?”
“Yes. We’re ok. Mom says she wants to keep us that way.”
“You have a smart mom. You just keep listening to her. Call if you need anything, all right?”
“All right, Mr. Emory. Thanks for understanding. You’re the best.”
I flop back on the bed. I am down two chaperones, and I doubt if I can count on the dog walker. Now, what am I going to do?