Women In Their Underwear John E. Wynne   © Copyright 1995 by John E. Wynne

"So what do we do now"? She asked with those soulful brown eyes peering across the table from him making him feel a bit uncomfortable. Frank Dolby was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. It had been years since he had gotten the boot by Jesse and in the ensuing five years had run from being the local Don Juan to the edge of alcoholism and debauchery to settling down with a beautiful wife and even establishing a small floor covering business, thank you very much. Now as he stared into those eyes that captivated him so many years ago he knew he was weakening. So what do we do now? He thought. As if he didn't know.

The bar they decided to meet in was dimly lit even in the early evening sun. It was called Spanky's and was a favorite haunt of theirs all those years ago. Spanky was gone now and so was most of his gang. The old record machine that once sang out the phrases of "Sunset Grille" and "Hotel California" now digitally burnt out compact disc offerings by obscure street kids rapping about how whitey has screwed them or how they'd like to have sex with anything that walks or better yet.....crawls.

Frank moved uneasily on his stool and leaned into her from across the corner booth, almost knocking his Budweiser longneck on it's ear. Jesse was staring right through him. She hadn't aged a bit in the five years since he had last seen her. Her blonde hair swooped across her right eyebrow and hung straight and delicately to rest on her shoulders. They were caught up in the mating ritual. The one thing they did have in common during their brief sojourn was as the Eagles put it: "they were great in bed". He knew that if they were to take this to it's illogical conclusion it would be even better now. He unglued his eyes from hers, retreated and sipped his beer. As he did his attention was pulled to the bar and he noticed that Spanky had been replaced by a new owner/ bartender who wore a black T shirt proclaiming the merits of Marlboro Mediums topped off by a red baseball cap worn backwards on a retreating forehead. He was large and pudgy and was tightly held together by an acre of blue jeans. He was telling a new joke he had heard to a skinny bleached blonde woman at the bar, he ended it with a series of loud gawfaws which startled the rest of the room.

"So, what do we do now about what"? He asked playfully. But he really wasn't feeling playful. He knew about Jesse's bad experience with Stewart Mainstreet, sometimes actor, sometimes murderer, now residing in a mental institution somewhere near Orlando. She still visited him every other weekend and still believed he was innocent of murdering his Director or would be Director, Sally Singleton, now a mere wisp of a corpse probably pretty well rotted away by now as Stewart sits in the hospital eating fish sticks and staring at the duck pond.

She lit a Marlboro 100 with a deft practiced hand and blew the first puff to one side and sat with it perched at the end of her fingers with that pose that you see every hour of every day in any bar USA practiced by all of the female smokers across this fine country of ours. It always somehow reminded Frank of a line of swans standing on one leg he had once seen at Sea World. South Florida is a wonderful place if your looking to view the swans, bird or human. Come On Down!!!!!!

"Well, here we are again, only this time I'm single and your married." She said slowly, choosing each word carefully.

"If you remember I was married to my first wife the first time you walked into my life." He reminded her.

"Oh yeah, that's right." She replied, clearing her throat and taking a long drag on her 100.

It was back in 1983 and Frank was going through a particularly rough time with a wife who was going through the seven year itch. Jesse was there with a soft shoulder to cry on and a firm bed to bury his sorrows in. She was twenty five at the time and he was thirty three. Now forty five and a bit heavier around the middle with the only thing getting thinner being his once thick black hair, he marveled to himself as to how little she had changed . At thirty seven she still had a youthful glow about her and hadn't yet started to show the usual signs of age that began creeping in at this stage of a woman's life. She still had a great laugh and he was adept at bringing it out almost at will. He took another slug of beer.

One month prior to the Spanky's meeting they ran into each other at a Blues Bar just down the strip from where they now sat. The beer was flowing and the inhibitions were loosening and the flirting began. "Well Johnny, tell Frank what he's won."...... "Yes Frank you win an all expense paid trip to the parking lot where you'll be whisked away by your once girlfriend into infidelity land, where you'll be wined and dined into sexual oblivion. Then you wont be able to think straight for weeks while you try to cover your tracks and make up plausible excuses to your wife for why your not worth a flying fuck anymore and probably end up making a return visit to.......Yes Mr. Dolby, Divorce Court! How about that?

He was now sitting across the table from trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with she; she who is damnation and eternal fire--hallelujah!

She was crushing out her cigarette, she was wearing a white T shirt with something about the environment or something emblazoned in orange and black across the front with short denim cutoffs showing off the best pair of thighs anywhere. ZZ Top was right, he thought, She's got legs, she knows how to use them.

"Well we've got a few options as far as I can see." He said with as much confidence as Bill Murray stepping into the ring with Mike Tyson.

"We can keep sneaking around and taking what we can get. Or I can bust up things at home. Or we can marry you a rich old guy and after he's gone and you get everything, we take off to an island somewhere and fuck each other's brains out." He chuckled, she stared.  The last few weeks were beginning to wear on her. She wanted him but on her grounds. And she didn't want him bad enough to be killed by some raving maniac of a jealous wife. She had only met Alicia twice but she knew that she would be a formidable person to come up against under those circumstances. Meanwhile Alicia was getting a bit tired of Frank's late nights at work and his lame excuses for never being around and had begun an inter-office affair with a young studling at the accounting firm of Screwum, Dowee, and Howe. Frank and Jesse had no idea, they were too caught up in their own adulterous schemes. He saw a sadness in those soulful eyes that he hadn't seen since the day eight years ago when she told him they were going to have to call it quits.

"We can't keep doing this the way it is." She said as her eyes were momentarily blinded by the wash of sun that followed another patron into the den of Spanky. "I want you but I don't want to be the cause of your breakup with Alicia." She was rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger trying to regain her sight.

"I'm going to lose you again aren't I?" Frank was trying the guilt angle.

"I'm going to leave here today and never look back." She said in an almost self convincing tone.

"Would somebody please remove this knife from my heart." Frank said hoping the humor routine would work.

"I'm serious Frank, I can't keep going like this not knowing when I'll see you next, sneaking around hoping we don't get caught. It just isn't working out." She said a bit louder than she wanted to.

"Are you saying that even phone sex is out?" He whimpered. >p> "Even that, especially that, you get me all squishy then I can't wait to see you again, it's got to stop and one of us has to be strong enough to do it'"

Shadows were growing long outside. Evening would soon be full fledged night. The south Florida humidity hung over the square making it seem to those outside the air conditioned confines of Spankys like they were under water instead. You could always count on some fool at a time like this to say:"It's not so much the heat as the humidity". The same fool that on a wintry sub-zero day up north would ask: "Cold enough for yuh?"

Frank and Eyes were on their fourth longneck and Frank's hand was on her thigh. He could always get her in the mood. Always before now. She slid his hand away just as it was making it's way north.

"It's not going to work anymore, buddy." She said in no uncertain terms.

"Buddy? Is that what I am now? Buddy? He said mockingly.

"You've got your choice, friends or nothing, I'd rather be friends than to never see you again at all.

"Alright, friends. But after we end it right, tonight." He was beginning to think she was serious. A roll in the hay at their favorite motel tonight was looking less and less likely.

"No." She said letting him know that it was definitely not in the cards.

As the two of them stared at each other through eyelids becoming increasingly heavy with Mr. Bush's finest ingredients, two miles away Alicia was planning.

In the course of an affair there are three different stages to be gone through. 1) The initial attraction stage. 2) The I don't care as long as I can see you sometimes stage. 3) The shit or get off the pot stage. Alicia was there, so was Jesse. Frank of course didn't even know he was at a stage. He was sucking down beer and trying to get between those thighs. Alicia was just coming out of stage two but she had known all along that three was steaming toward her like a roaring freight train. The train was at her stop now. She looked at her watch and checked the time, 8:15. She thought about Robert her office boy. She thought about Frank and the bitch. She walked out of the house and headed for her car parked only a few feet away in the shellrock driveway. The humidity draped her like a heavy velvet curtain but she'd soon be cooled by the more than adequate hum of her Bronco's air conditioning. She motored down the road at a good clip while 'Retha' sang about how she felt like a nat-u-ral woman on the stereo. She thought about Spanky's and it occurred to her that,that was an ironic place for them to meet. It was a good place for Frank, he always liked spankings, she mused to herself. It's also a good place to die. It's a good night to die. You make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like a nat-u-ral woman.

Frank was beginning to take on the character of his namesake Major Burns on MASH and was at the point of begging now. Frank and Hotlips Jesse. But Hot eyes was holding her ground.

I know because I was there. There I am right at the end of the bar with the tacky Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses. All I need is a pair of black socks and some sandals and I'm Mister Tourist. Another Margarita and put on some Jimmy Buffet will somebody. I've been here since 3:00, hell ,what else do I have to do. Let's have another beer. I spent some time at the beach today, now my back is burning like a firecracker on a day in August. How's that for cliché? Of course I'm not thinkin' real clear right about now. Marguaritaville and all that. I'm just gonna let ole' Frankie keep pushin' that little fox with the thighs over there just so far then I'm gonna send him airborne through Spanks front window, hell it looks like shit anyway.

I'm Stewart Mainstreet, escaped mental patient and as some people would have you believe....murderer. I don't have to worry about Jesse recognizing me, she's got her back to me and hell, I'm wearing sunglasses. Hell, it worked for Clark Kent and he wore clear ones. Now I'm back at old Spanky's although the faces have changed to protect the innocent. He's pulling on her arm now, she doesn't like it. Excuse me for a moment, got to go.

Frank was on his seventh or eighth beer when he decided to force the issue. It was then that he felt the hand on his shoulder. He spun around only to be met by a crushing right which immediately broke his nose. He saw white light for a moment and thought he was sliding into unconsciousness when he felt himself being lifted from the floor. All chatter in the bar had ceased as they watched the man in the dark glasses lift Frank with the broken nose and catapult him, through the window.

Alicia was approaching the front door to the left of the picture window. She was in the process of relieving the pistol from her purse when a great swwooooosh and crash and broken glass imploded toward her, followed by her now window acrobatic husband. He rolled and came to rest on the side panel of a red Mustang. Another body flew out of the now gaping opening and landed on top of Frank pounding him and urging him not to get up.

Hi, I'm back.

It was then that I felt the first bullet rip through my left shoulder blade and into my heart. It feels hot and stingy, oh there's another and another. I feel woozy and don't think I can hold on much longer. I can just open my eyes enough to make out the outline of an attractive brunette standing over me with a gun in her hand. She's wearing a short black skirt and I can just make out a hint of garter at the top of her black stocking. She still has the gun trained on me. She widens her stance over me and as I fade into a long sleep I can just see her crotch. Black lace. As I sink into an endless doze I can't help thinking, I love women in their underwear.

Frank recovered from his flight and also came to his senses and is happily married to a stripper in Ocala Florida. He forgot all about the motel that night.

Alicia was found not guilty since she was only defending her husband from an escaped mental patient/murderer and is married to her boy toy Robert Camp.

Stewart Mainstreet died that hot August night on a south Florida sidewalk. He will be surely missed.

Jesse walked down the street and into the night, and as she said earlier, never looked back.
 

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