Sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin a story.  Like starting with the time you were born, or when your first conscious memories appeared, or when you graduated from school, or when the universe came into being.  There’s a lot of places on the timeline to start.

But it’s easy to tell where this story began.

It began the day I saw her.

My name is Bill McGregor, and please don’t call me Rob Roy, okay?  That one gets old really fast.  I’m about to become a senior in college.  This happened on the summer between my sophomore and junior years.  June 12th, to be exact.

I didn’t really feel like going home that summer so I snagged a job as a checker in a grocery store.  It was just past six and I was out of the Working Class Hero uniform till the next day, walking down to where I’d parked the car.  It was hot, up to 99, which was a pretty wimpy temp considering it’d barely drop under highs of 100 for the rest of the summer.  My mind was somewhere else, and I’m not exactly sure where.   Maybe on how I was going to pass my pre-law curriculum when I started up again in a few months.  Maybe on how long it was going to be before the new Star Wars and Lord of the Rings came out.  I don’t know.

You wouldn’t think of yourself becoming a hero in ordinary circumstances.  Most of the time, if you saw something bad going down, you’d do the sensible thing.  Like go back in the store and grab the phone and call the cops, right?  Absolutely.

Only the other side of the street was pretty sparsely populated at that time of evening, except for two punks who were trying to break into a car.

The car was a used silver Chrysler and didn’t look that tough a job to crack.  The two guys who were trying to bust in were not your typical car thieves.   At least, not the way I think of them.  They looked like college types.  Not unlike me.  One of them, I swear, was wearing an Izod shirt.  Little alligator and all.  I can’t swear to it, but I think the other was wearing Keds.

I could see the crowbar in the hand of the Izod guy as he swung it to break the window.  Right in broad evening light.  He had to crack it twice more before it gave way.  Keds helped kick it in afterwards with his sneaker.

Don’t ask me why those prep-types wanted to ‘jack this car.  Maybe everybody needs a thrill every now and then.  Maybe they did stuff like this and got their jollies from being protected by Daddy’s money after they got caught.

Or maybe they weren’t exactly prep-types.  That last hypothesis seems to have some weight, in light of later developments.

Whatever.

Like I said, don’t ask me why I crossed the street, double-timing it, making sure I scrutinized the licence plate on the way.  One too many superhero comics, one too many Stallone movies, I don’t know.  My feet were on automatic, more or less.

One track of my brain was saying, “Stupid, this is not your problem, get back over there and call the cops!”  Unfortunately, the overriding track was operating my feet and my mouth, and I heard the latter saying, “This your car?”

Hypothetically, that was a possibility.  I would’ve been glad of it.  The guys could have locked the keys inside the car and had to bust in, being too stupid to call up a locksmith.  But how likely was that?

The way Izod looked at me and hefted that crowbar, I knew it wasn’t likely at all.

I put up my arm and went in, wishing I wasn’t just wearing a short-sleeved shirt, but in those temps, you just did not wear a jacket, man.  The idea was to bash aside his iron-wielding arm and simultaneously tag him in the chin with my right.  Things worked like that in the movies.

Guess I didn’t read the script right.  I got hit on the shoulder and it hurt just this side of brokenness.

Down on my knees I went, grabbing my damned arm, tears coming to my eyes.  Keds was just standing there, like he didn’t have to even get involved.  He didn’t.  Izod was looking at me with calm assessment, wondering what part of my body to lay the stroke down on next.  Or if he should just forget me and go back to breaking into the car and hot-wiring it.

That was when we heard the voice.

“Stop.”

Both the punks jerked their head in the direction from which it came.  So did I, even though my shoulder was still negotiating separation from my body.

Did I mention the voice was female?

It came from a girl who was holding two big paper bags of groceries with a half-gallon plastic milk jug hanging on her two last right-hand fingers.

She was blonde and she was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt that ended in a kind of frilled thing that bared her stomach just above the navel.  She also had on blue jeans and brown shoes with flat heels.  No, I didn’t consciously take all that in during my first look.  I’m just telling you now so I don’t have to describe it later.

What I did take in was her face.

She had a face that wouldn’t leave your memory in a month of watching your favorite movie queens.  Throw in a Sports Illustrated bathing suit video, too, and she still wouldn’t leave your mind.  She was somewhere in between tanned and pale, and if she was wearing makeup besides a bit of eyeshadow and some frosted lipstick, I couldn’t tell.  Her eyes were blue and fairly large, but not disproportionate to the rest of her face.  High cheekbones, a nose that was a bit upturned, a chin that was a bit more rounded than pointed, and the blonde hair which shone like gold and reached to her shoulders in back.

Somewhere between All-American Girl and a possible startout for a modeling competition.  And something beyond that.  Mainly in the eyes, I think.  The undefinable brightness of the eyes.

There was one more thing that was quite distinctive about her: the hank of blonde hair that hung right over her forehead.  It flopped there, as obvious as Superman’s spitcurl, but it didn’t look messy or out of place.  It just seemed to be her trademark.  No, it wasn’t like A Flock of Seagulls.  It was a hell of a lot nicer looking than that.  And so was she.

I wouldn’t exactly say that it was worth getting my shoulder bashed to see her.  I will say that it was a nice partial recompense for it, though.

The car had to be hers.  I was still holding my arm, and I was looking straight at her as I found my voice.

“Run!  Go get the cops!”

She walked up closer, still holding the bags and the milk.  I couldn’t believe it.  If this girl thought that chivalry was going to keep Izod from bashing her with a crowbar, she was dumber than a Delta Zappa.

“Didn’t you hear me?  Go call the cops!  These guys are armed!”

“I know,” she said, walking to her car and setting the bags and milk on the trunk.  “Does it matter?”

At which point I turned my head and looked at Izod and Keds.

Both of them were standing where they were, jaws open like a pair of bass, hands at their sides, Izod’s crowbar drooping, both of them looking as glass-eyed as if they’d been told they’d won the state lottery.

“What’d you do to them?”  I managed to get to my feet, one leg at a time.  I still felt as though I should hold my arm in place, for fear it would fall off.

“Nothing,” she said.  “They’ll be all right.”  She was reaching for the rear door nearest the curb.  I grabbed her arm and stopped her.

“Hold it,” I said.  “Don’t disturb the scene.  The cops will want to photograph it as evidence.”

The girl looked at me, and it was then I realized I was not only inches away from, but actually touching, a woman I wanted in my life more than any woman I’d met before.  Probably including my mother and my 3rd grade teacher, Miss Othmar.

She sighed and looked a bit annoyed.  “Look.  I want to thank you for what you did.  That was a very brave thing.  But I don’t need the cops.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” I said, still holding her arm firmly but as gently as I knew how.  “Believe me.”

She opened her mouth again and was about to say something.  I spoke first.  That may have saved my bacon.

“I’m a pre-law student and I know enough about how the law works in this,” I said, pretty quickly.  “You’ve got a busted window.  You want your insurance to pay for that?  You’re going to have to call the cops.  You want these guys to pay for what they’ve done?”

“I don’t care about them,” she said, in a definitely put-out tone.

“Well, I care about you and the next person they’re going to carjack, and the next one after that,” I said. “And don’t think somebody hasn’t seen this, even if nobody’s come over yet.  Furthermore, I got my shoulder bashed.”

“I can make that better.”

“Well, thanks, but this isn’t about massage and Ben-Gay.  Those guys committed an assault on me, and I want them charged with it.  If I need X-rays, medical attention, whatever–“

“I can take care of it.  I told you.”

“—my insurance will want to know what happened to the guys who did it to me.  If you don’t swear out a complaint, these two guys—“

I took a look at them.  They were still standing and staring.  We were lucky they hadn’t yet drawn a crowd.  But it suddenly hit me that, for no damned obvious reason, these two jerks were not even moving.  Probably not even registering our presence.

Swallowing hard, I turned back to her.  “—these two guys may get off.  They’ll hurt somebody else like they hurt me.  So we’ve got to call the cops.  It’s like having an accident.  You don’t drive your car home after you get hit, you leave it there till the cops can come see it and take down the information.  Am I coming through?”

She sighed.  “I can take care of this.”

“No, you can’t!  I don’t know what you did to them, but you cannot take care of this.  Now, please.  Come with me, and let’s go call the cops.”

“Do we have to?”

“We do.  Come back to the store with me.  I work there.  We can call from there.”

“I’ve got some stuff that might spoil.”

“I’ll carry one bag for you.  We can put it in back of the freezer case till the police get here.”  I stooped and picked up one of her bags from the trunk.  I think I winced.  Even that much movement made my other arm hurt.  She reached out to touch it, but I shrank away.  “Please,” I said.  “It hurts enough already.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.  She picked up the other bag and the milk.  “Look, I can take that bag, too.  I know you’re hurting, and you were really, really nice to do what you did for me.  But—“

“It’s all right.   I’ll take it.  Now come with me.”

The light was with us, thank God, and we strolled across the street.  I wanted to get things in motion before Izod and Keds decided to quit playing Statues.

On the way, I realized something I didn’t know.  I turned to her and asked a question.

“What’s your name?”

She looked at me, hesitated, and said, “Wendy.”

“Wendy?  Okay.  Wendy.  That’s a nice name.  I’m Bill.”

“Hi, Bill.”

“Hi, Wendy.  If you give me your last name, I’ll give you mine.”

She shook her head.  “Don’t know if I should.”

“The police are going to know it, Wendy, and I’d like to know it before they do.”

“Corrigan.  Wendy Corrigan.”

“Okay.  Hello, Wendy Corrigan.  I’m Bill McGregor.”  I automatically started to reach out my free hand to shake hers, but a few shooting pains made me consider a new line of thinking.

She smiled.  I never forgot that smile.

“Under the circumstances, it’s nice to meet you, Bill McGregor,” she said.

I looked behind us.  The two idiots were still posing for an invisible sculptor.

I made us cover the last few steps double-time.

 -W-

In re: the matter of the two carjackers, it was about as weird as anything else that had happened to date.  Which, considering Wendy, was pretty weird indeed.

The cops came down shortly after we called.  People were starting to gather around the two paralyzed ‘jackers.  But Wendy and I didn’t go back across the street till the police arrived, and Izod and Keds didn’t make a move besides breathing until we got back there.  Then each of them seemed to draw a deep breath, looked around, and appeared astonished.  Izod looked at the car tool in his hand like he’d never seen it before.  They asked the cops what they thought they were doing, handcuffing them like they did.  One of the fuzz pointed to the busted window and said, “Because of that.”  Then they hauled ‘em away.

The two of us were taken aside separately by the officers for our statements.  But after that, of course, Wendy had to take her car, with the broken glass whiskbroomed out of it, back to her place with her groceries in it.  I insisted on carrying something and she gave me the milk.  But the real reason I wanted to help her was obvious.

“Wendy,” I said as we started crossing the street.  “Hate to push my luck like this.  But could I take you out to dinner?”

She shot me a look, rolled her eyes, and said, “Oh, please.”

“Aw, come on.  I did try to save your car, you know.”

“I know, Bill.  And I’m grateful to you, believe me.  But that doesn’t give you dating privelages right off the bat.”

“Are you seeing someone else?”

“No.  But that doesn’t matter.”

“Well, it does to me.  I mean, you do like guys, don’t you?”

We were in the middle of the street and she stopped dead.  “I’m not gay, if that’s what you mean,” she said, tersely and under her breath.

“And.  Is there any reason you couldn’t like me?”

“Yeah.  I don’t know you.”

“Yet.”

“Yet,” she admitted.  Then she looked a bit sad, and, fortuitiously, a car came by and made us both stop for a few more seconds with our feet on the white line.  She looked down, then looked at me, and spoke again.

“Bill.  I know we’re going to see each other again, when we make our statements tomorrow.  But, well, it’s just not that easy for me, going out with somebody.”  She sighed.  “Could we talk about this some other time?  We’re right in the middle of the street.”

“Okay,” I said.  “As long as you’ll do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“After we make our talk to the insurance people tomorrow, will you consider having lunch with me?”

She gave me an appraising look with those bluest of eyes and it was probably the longest three seconds I’ve experienced in my life.

“I’ll consider it, Bill,” she said.  “Now let’s get across the street, okay?”

“Okay.”

If my arm was hurting anymore, I didn’t notice it.

 -W-

So we went down to each other’s insurance company in the morning, after having told our bosses we wouldn’t be in till after lunch, and gave our statements.  They asked more questions than the cops.  That was because the cops wouldn’t have to pay out money afterwards.

Along the way I found out that Wendy was 21, that she worked at the public library, that she looked great in a pink dress, and that yeah, she would go out with me.  Just once.  So we took it down to Quizmo’s for subs and iced tea, which was within my budget.

“So,” I said, sitting my tray in front of hers.  “Tell me about yourself.”

She was munching potato chips and even managed to make that look coquettish.  Considering they were Lays Barbecued, that was quite an accomplishment.  “You know about all I can tell you, Bill.  I’m 21, I’ve got two years in college, had to drop out because of money for the moment.  I hope I can go back in a year or two.”

“If my folks had money, I’d have them help you.  But they can barely get me through school.”  I shifted in my seat.  It was no big secret this gal was making me nervous.  Anybody who could do what she did to Izod and Keds would.  But I was trying not to show it, and having about as much luck as any man does who tries to conceal the signs before a woman.  “Are you from around the City?”

She drew a long breath and let it out.  “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’d just as soon not get into it, Bill.”

“Are you an orphan?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.  Never adopted?”

“Yes, I was,” she said.  “My foster parents, the Brownings, died in a crash a year before I graduated.”  She looked off into space, and probably time as well.

“I’m really sorry, Wendy.”  I ventured to touch her hand.  She flinched a little, but didn’t draw back.

“I wanted to go with them that night,” she said, still looking three years back.  “They were just going for miniature golf.  I loved miniature golf.”

“Uh huh.”  It seemed about the wisest thing I could say at the moment.

“But something told me not to go.  So I didn’t.  I tried to get them to stay home, too.  But Dad was stubborn.”  She shook her head.  “So stubborn.  Maybe I should have gone with them.”

“Don’t talk like that, Wendy.”

She gave me a blazing look.  “I’ll talk any way I darned well want to.  And don’t you forget it.”

“All right, all right,” I said, throwing up my hands.  “Look, I didn’t mean any harm.  And I’m sorry about your folks.”

“That’s all right,” she said.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t mean to sound like a bitch.”

“If it was my parents that got killed, Wendy, I think I’d be a little touchy about it, too.”

The waiter came by with our sandwiches right then (turkey swiss for her, roast beef for me), which was something of a save.  I was hungry.  It was halfway through the first half of the sub that I said, “You never knew your birth mother?”

“I don’t know of her now.”  She gave me a look that was a lot gentler than the one I’d gotten a few minutes ago.

“How is that so?”

“I’d just as soon not talk about it.”

“Okay.  What do you like to do?”

“Oh, girl stuff.  The forest.  I like to go out in it and just meditate sometimes.  I feel the trees talking to me, almost.”

“I talk to the treeeeees, but they never listen to meeee...”

“Shut up.” She had a wry grin on.  First down.  “It’s not like that.”

“I like boating, sometimes.  And the beach.  Like mysteries by female writers.  Should I act as if this was a dating video?”

“If you want.”

She sat up, pretending a camera was on her.  “I enjoy long walks in the park, as long as there aren’t a lot of unleashed dogs yapping at me.  I like moonlight, some old Broadway soundtracks, c and w, plus whatever else I happen to be into.  And I don’t do a lot of dating.”

“Do you dance?”

“Sometimes.  At home, in my apartment.  Not with guys, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I worked on the second half of the sandwich thoughtfully.  “You mean you’ve never been to a club?”

“Not very often, and not for very long,” she admitted.  “I got dragged along a couple of times by my girlfriend.  I made excuses and left early, and she finally stopped asking.”

I paused.  “What do you feel bad about, Wendy?”

She looked at me.  “I never said I do feel bad.”

“But you do, don’t you?”

“Yeah.  Sometimes.  But that’s just feelings.”

“But they’re your feelings, Wendy.  And that’s important.”

“Oh, boy.  Are we playing 80's Caring Man?”  She chuckled.  I liked the way even the flourescent lights sparkled in her eyes.

“Whatever it takes, honey.   Whatever it takes.”

“I haven’t made my mind up about you yet, Bill.”

“You don’t have to yet, Wendy.  I’m not the Predator.  I just think I like being with you.”

“Even though it makes you nervous?”

“I never said I felt nervous.”

“I can tell.”  She smiled the smile of a wise woman, and rubbed her chin.

“Okay,” I said.  “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.  Deal?”

“No promises.  And you first.”

“Nope, you first.  I paid for the sandwiches, so it’s you first.”

“All right, all right.”  She rested her elbows on the table, interlaced her fingers, and lay her chin on top of them.  “I feel bad about my parents dying.  I feel bad about not knowing who my real folks were.  I feel bad about a few other things.  But that’s not going to stop me living.  And that’s all I can tell you right now.”

“Okay,” I said.  “That’ll do for right now.”

“Your turn.”

“All right,” I said, and lowered my voice.  “I’m nervous because of what happened to those two guys out there, Wendy.”

“What two guys?”

“You know.  The carjackers.”

“Oh.  Them.”

“Yeah.  Right.  Them.”

“Well, what about them?  Aren’t you glad they’re in jail?”

“Sure.  But they were about to hit me until you told them to stop.  And they stopped.  Dead stop.  Paralyzed.”

She stiffened a bit.  Her breaths came bit deeper.  Wendy looked a bit like a cat who felt threatened.

But I plowed on.  “They couldn’t move or speak until we got back over there.  Why did that happen, Wendy?  Why did they stop just when you told them to stop.”

She got up.  “I have to go.”

I grabbed her arm.  “Sit down, honey.  If you don’t want to tell me, don’t.  But you asked what was making me nervous.”

She shook her arm free and grabbed her purse quickly.  “This date is over.”

“Wendy.”  I stood up, grabbing what was left of my sandwich.

“Don’t follow me, Bill.  Please don’t follow me.”

But I did.  All the way out to the parking lot, asking her to come back, all the way out to her car.  She slammed the door.  I pressed my hands and face against the driver’s window.  “Wendy,” I said.

“Please,” she said through the glass.  “Go away.”

She started the engine.  I stepped back.  When I was far enough back, she pulled out and left.

I stared after her car.  Sure, I could have gotten in mine and followed.  But I didn’t.

I figured she needed space, and time.  I knew where she lived, anyway.  Later on, I could give her a call.  I could keep on giving her calls until she answered.

Unless she told me to stop.

And, against my will, that thought did make me shiver.

I finished the sandwich and went to my car.

For the rest of the day, and all of the next, I sleepwalked through my duties at the local Kroger’s.  The boss noticed it and, finally, asked me who I was in love with.  I said I wasn’t quite sure, but it was somebody definite.  At least I thought so.

“That blonde with the broken-into car?”, he asked.

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“So you think you can keep up with work, anyway?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Provided there aren’t any more carjackings.”

Luckily for me, he smiled.  I got through the rest of the day okay.

What was I supposed to do?  As soon as I got home, I called.  Got her recorded message, which wasn’t surprising.  “This is Wendy.  When you hear the beep, please leave your name and number.  Thank you.  BEEP.”  Very functional.

I started out with, “Wendy.  It’s Bill.  Please call me,” and giving my number.  By the time of my sixth recording, I was down to singing “Mammy” on one knee.  That last might have qualified as abusive stalking, given my ability to imitate Jolson, but I didn’t care.

No answers.

I gave up and tried to get some sleep.

The next day, Abel the bossman took me aside and said, “Bill.  One of three things.  Either get ahold of her, forget about her, or quit work.  But if you keep this up, I’m going to have to tape up the bags under your eyes with duct tape.”

“That’s an idea, boss,” I said.  “I’ll try choice number one tonight.”

“Okay,” he said.  “Get some sleep.  In the meantime, want some Jolt Cola?  At the register, you’ve got to stand up.”

Some people should have the Comedy Channel permanently blocked from their cable access, and Abel is one of them.  But I like him anyway.  I got through the rest of the day, hung up my apron, left through the back way, got into my car, got home, washed up, changed, and made one last call.  “Wendy,” I said.  “I’m coming over.  Fair warning.  Bye.”

Then I did.

It took me about half an hour to get across town.  The place where Wendy was living wasn’t exactly a condo.  It wasn’t a one-bedroom, one-bath, living room and kitchen kinda setup.  It was an efficiency apartment.

Well, what the hell.  Working in a library wasn’t exactly going to qualify you for a penthouse place, and my digs weren’t all that much better.  She was on the second floor and I mounted the iron-railed steps like Douglas Fairbanks about to cross swords with the bad guy for the virtue of the female lead.  I suppose I would have looked ridiculous to anyone passing by outside, but I don’t think anybody was at the time.

Her apartment was 3B.  I halted before it, banged on the door.  No response.  I looped the banging one more time.  No response, again.

“Wendy, it’s me.  It’s Bill,” I said.  Less than inspired, but functional.

A voice came from within.  O, frabjous day!  Even though she said, “I’m busy, Bill.  Go away,” it was evidence she still inhabited this world.

“Ain’t gonna do it, Wendy,” I said.  “You have to come out and talk to me, or let me in and talk to me.  I’m gonna lose my job if you don’t.”

“What?”  The voice held a note of curiosity, muffled though it was.

“The boss told me to either resolve this thing with you or quit.  I want to keep my job, Wendy.  Come on and open up, okay?”

“Bill, I just can’t.”

“I’ll wait till you get dressed, for crying out loud.”

“It’s not that.”

“Go to the bathroom.  I’ll wait.”

“It’s not that either, you idiot.”

“You’re cooking.  I like your cooking.”

“You’ve never had any.”

“I’m always looking far ahead.”

“Fine.  Then you know I’m not opening the door.”

“Nope.  That’s how I know you are.”

I leaned up against the railing, folded my arms in full view of the spyhole, and waited.

Three minutes later (I was checking) there was a fumbling at the lock and the door opened just enough to show a face-sized sliver of Wendy.

“Go.  Away,” she said.

“Will not,” I said.

“You’re stalking me, Bill.”

“Am not.  I’m just standing outside leaning up against the rail.  Ain’t it fine weather we’re having?”

She sighed.  “You prat.  Just exactly what am I going to have to do to get you out of my life?  Not that I should give you any ideas.”

I looked at her seriously.  “Just tell me you want me out of it.  Honestly.”

Wendy, all her blue eyes and most of her golden hair in view, said, “All right, Bill.  I want you...”

She stopped, with her mouth wide open.

“Yes?” I said, not moving from the railing.

“I want you...”

“Wendy, are you all right?”  I was beginning to be concerned.

Her mouth was barely open and her eyes were showing consternation.  “Wendy,” I said, starting to move towards her.  “Please, let me help.  I promise, I won’t try to do anything more than that.  And I mean it.”

She threw open the door and stood there, barefoot and blue-jeaned, in a red halter top that showed some of the nicest suntanned skin I’d seen since I had time to go to the beach.  Which, all things considered, had been a long time ago.

Altogether, Wendy looked pretty and sexy as hell.

But after taking that in, I was still concerned with what I could read on her face.  She was looking nerved and conflicted, and I could bet it wasn’t all about me.

“Come on in,” she said.

So I stepped into her room, and she locked the door behind me.

I looked around the place and saw the paneled walls were decorated with, of all things, a LeRoy Neiman football print, a framed color photo of a fortysomething couple who, I assumed, were her foster parents, her high school diploma, and a newspaper article behind glass.  There was a small stove, a microwave on a counter, a refrigerator, a bookcase full of authors like Ray Bradbury and Tom Wolfe, a blue-green couch which also served as a fold-out bed, an eMachines PC (that made me wince), a small trunk, an aquarium with two or three tropical fish, a phone hanging on the wall, a small Formica-top table and three white plastic chairs, a door to the bathroom (closed), a pair of folding doors to the closet (also closed), and green carpeting all over the floor.

Altogether, she kept it pretty tidy, which gave me an inferiority complex about my own place.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she said, standing before me with her hands behind her back.  “I really don’t.”

“Maybe you can tell us both, Wendy,” I said.  I tried to touch her shoulder in a big-brotherly fashion, or so I hoped.  She flinched and moved back.

“Don’t do that,” she said.  “Please don’t do that.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Can I sit down.”

“Sure.  Certainly,” she said, waving towards the couch.  “I’m sorry the room is such a mess.”

“A mess?  In that case, I’m afraid to have you even come near my place!”

A smile sidled across her face.  “In your dreams, Bill.  Not in your wildest.”

“Okay,” I said, sitting on the couch.  It wasn’t too firm or too well-worn, which was a good sign. “Let’s not assume you know what made me come over here, Wendy.”

She was still standing there, her arms crossed and one beautiful bare foot resting on the other.  “And why do you assume I know or care?”

I spread my hands.  “Look.  Forgive me if I’m being bold by saying it, but to me, you look scared.  About something. And I don’t think it’s me.”

She flinched again.  But it wasn’t about me, I knew.

“I don’t know what’s gotten under that pretty tanned skin of yours, Wendy, sorry about saying that...”

“No, it’s all right,” she said.  “And thank you.  I’m sorry, I don’t want to be a poor hostess.”

“And I’ll try not to be a poor guest.  But good Lord, Wendy, it’s not just because I like you, because I can’t stop thinking about you, because I’m not getting as much sleep as I should and the boss keeps offering me Jolt Cola as a result, but it’s...”

“What?” she said.

“Curiosity,” I finished.

She looked down and appeared a bit sad.  “Not always the safest trait, I’m afraid.”

“Wendy.  Will you sit down?  Please?  Just for me?”

“All right,” she said, resignedly.  She took the end of the couch farthest from me, with one arm thrown across the back of it.

“Will you tell me what’s going on?  Are you in trouble, Wendy?  In some kind of danger?”  She looked a bit like a frightened fawn when I said that, which sounds cliche, but it’s true.  “Were those guys that bashed your car somebody you knew?”

“I never saw them before in my life.”

“Then were they maybe somebody operating for somebody you know?  Do you like, maybe, owe somebody money that plays hard?”

“No, Bill,” she said, dangling one leg over her other knee.  “I’m solvent.  For the moment, anyway.”

“That’s good to hear.  Tell me why you act like a cat hanging over a hot griddle.”

“Oh, please!”  She laughed.  That was good to hear.  It faded out to a snort and chuckle.  She put her hand in front of her mouth and flushed.  “You...oh, Bill, that was such a stupid image.”

I smiled.  “Well, it got the job done, didn’t it?”

“In a way,” she admitted.  “But I don’t open up a lot about my life, I’ll admit.  I’m kind of a private person.”

“We’ve all got private parts,” I leered.

“I won’t show you mine, you don’t show me yours.”

“See?  I knew she was a comedienne.”

“Opening Wendy’s Comedy Store tomorrow.  You can work in the janitorial staff.”

“Promise?”

“When you see the sign, go in and apply for a job.”

“It’ll probably pay better than what I’m getting now.  Wendy?”

“What?”

“I want to get serious for a minute.”

“Fine,” she said.  “But I don’t know that I can answer all your questions.”

“Just answer what you can, then.  And I’m not trying to hurt you when I ask them.  All right?”

“Yeah,” she said, thoughtfully.  “Bill?”

“What, Wendy?”

“I’m not worried about you trying to hurt me.  I think you’re, well...”

I waited.

“...kind of a nice guy,” she finished.

“Wunderbar.”  I was beaming like an airport searchlight.  “I was about to ask what you thought of me.”

“I think you’re kind of a nice guy,” she said.  “Maybe kind of courageous, maybe chivalrous, and maybe a little bit stupid.  That much I could pick up from the way you tried to save my car the other day.  So thanks very much.  Again.”

“Hey, you’re welcome.  Again.”

“You’re also very stubborn and very pushy.  At times.”

“Bad traits?”

“Um, irritating.  Not necessarily bad.”

“Okay.”

She waited.

“Should I say what I think of you?”

“Oh, I think I know what you think of me,” she said.

I shrugged.  “Tell me, then.”

“You think I’m pretty.”

“Uh huh.”

“You think I’m mysterious.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“You think you’d like to find out all about me.”

“Keep going, Wen.”

“But you wouldn’t, Bill.  Believe me.”

“Why not?”

“You just wouldn’t.  That’s all.”

I got up, put my hands behind my back, and started pacing.  That helps me get my thoughts together, like I was in a courtroom.  See what you can pick up from Perry Mason TV movies?  But really, one of the things I wanted to do was take a look at that newspaper article on the wall.  So I stopped in front of it.

“Bill,” said Wendy, still on the couch behind me.

“Just a second, Wendy,” I said.  “I’m reading.”

The photo in the article was of an 11-year-old Wendy, in some sort of thing that looked like a parka, only without drawstrings and it went all the way down over her feet, kind of like footie pajamas.  I can’t reproduce the article verbatim.  But it spoke of how she’d been found by the city P.D., stone unconscious, lying on a snowy street ten years ago.  They’d gotten her to the station house, warmed her up, awakened her, given her something hot to drink.

She was an amnesiac.  All she knew was that her name was Wendy.

The rest of the article was about where she’d been found, how her fingerprints weren’t on file, how nobody had yet been able to identify her, and an appeal for anybody with information to come forward to tender same.

Apparently, nobody had.

I managed to say, “Wendy, I had no idea, really,” and started to turn around.

That’s when she cried out, launched herself across the room, landed against my back, and wrapped one arm tight around my eyes.

“Bill, don’t move,” she said.  “Whatever you do, don’t move.  And don’t open your eyes!”

That girl was serious.  I didn’t know what about, but, even though I was pretty sure I was stronger than her, I didn’t try to disobey her.  I didn’t even think about the weight of her body against me.

I could hear her muttering something underneath her breath, something indistinct.  I don’t know that I quite heard something else, or that I didn’t.

Or maybe I perceived something with a sense other than the usual five.  I don’t know and I’m not sure I want to.  Stephen King can have that.

Only I feel now that if I shook her arm off right about then, I might have seen something that would have put Stephen King in the rubber room for the rest of his life.

I doubt that the whole process took over ten seconds.  Finally, Wendy’s voice came back to normal.  She also unwrapped her arm from my eyes and her body from my back.   “It’s okay, Bill.  We’re safe.  My God, I shouldn’t have let you in. Not like this.”

“Wendy.  What the hell happened?”

“Nothing, Bill.”  She was standing there with her hands on my arm.  “Believe it.  It was nothing.”

“That is one thing I do not believe.”

“I don’t want you to be hurt, Bill,” she said.  “Just please, it’s best that you go.  You’re safe now, but it’s best you go.”

“Wendy,” I said, putting both my hands on her shoulders.  “You just said you didn’t want me to be hurt.  And the only way I will be is if you make me go away, now.  But if you want me to, I will.”

She looked at me, mouth half open, and hesitated for one hell of a long half second.

Then she was up against me, hugging me, not quite crying but not quite not, and my arms found their way around her back as well.  Her head and blonde hair felt very good against my chest and her arms had surprising strength.  I mused, idly, that this was one librarian who maybe kept some free weights behind the stacks.

“Please, Bill,” she said, after awhile.  “Don’t ask me a lot of questions right now.  And don’t ask me for sex, okay?”

“Okay on both counts, if you want,” I said.  “I’m not the Predator, Wendy.”

“But will you stay with me tonight?  I could use...”

“It’s okay, Wendy,” I said.  “Where do I sleep?”

She looked up at my face, and her blue eyes seemed wet without tears.

“Let me make us both some supper,” she said.  “Then we’ll talk about that.  And other things.”

And we did.

Over the bird and vegetable matter, I said, “Can you tell me about yourself, Wendy?  Like, maybe, starting with when they found you in the snow?”

She looked at me intently, stuffed some chicken in her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully to give herself time to respond.

“I really don’t know what to say about it,” she admitted.  “Memories from that time are, well, like, hard to retrieve.  I think I remember waking up with these guys in blue suits around me, looking down at me, and a doctor with one of those cold stethoscopes on my chest.  They must have said something to me at first, but I don’t recall.  All I do remember is that they asked me my name, and I said, ‘My name is Wendy.’”

“Uh huh,” I said.  “And they weren’t able to track you down from that?”

She shook her head.  “There were a few lost girls with that name, but they didn’t fit my description.  If I had a last name, I didn’t know it.  Still don’t.  I knew how to read and write, how to do arithmetic.  But I didn’t know anything about where I was.”

“You mean the city you were in?”

“I mean the country, maybe the whole world,” said Wendy.  “I don’t think I’d ever heard of America.  I knew nothing about its history.  But I knew English, and my accent wasn’t too far off.  So the doctors figured that I had some kind of selective trauma.  They tried hypnosis on me, they tried drugs.  Nothing worked very well.  And like the paper said, my prints didn’t seem to be on file anywhere.  I didn’t match any birth records.”

“A girl without a past,” I said.

She nodded.  “Just like in a lot of old movies I’ve seen.  But I tested out okay, intelligence-wise.  So they put me in sixth grade after some special instruction, and I did all right.  I mean, I sucked on history, but I did all right in other things.  Especially literature.  When I got to high school, I was pretty good in botany and chem, too.  Got to work on the school paper, band, pep squad, speech, all for a time.”

“For a time, Wen?”

“Yeah.”

“And thereby hangs a tale. Correct?”

Wendy sighed and said, “Correct.”

“Talk to me, Wendy.  If we’re going to be in this thing together, I need to know.”

She looked at me intently over her fork.  “How do you know you want to be in this thing with me?  Or that you can be?”

“As to point one, I know.  As to point two, I don’t know, but I’m willing to try.”

“You don’t know a thing about it yet.”

“I know,” I said.  “That scares me.”

“Wise man.”

“But I can’t stay ignorant forever, Wendy.  Not if I want to be involved with you.”

“Bill.”  She lay her hand on my wrist and I loved the warmth and electricity of it.  “Don’t you know that’s why I haven’t gotten involved very much with men before?  Because of the danger.”

“I didn’t know you hadn’t,” I said.  “We’re just getting to know each other, remember?”

“Maybe you should tell me your story first.”

I covered her hand with mine.  She didn’t seem to object.  “No fair.  You started the story, now you have to finish it.”

“All right,” she said.  “Let me fill in the personal stuff a bit.  I got sent to the state orphanage first.  Then, after a year or so, I got adopted by Dave and Terri.  The Brownings, you know.  He worked as an accountant for the city, she was his wife, and they were both okay.  I was glad to be in with them.  Living with a bunch of kids, it’s like school all the time.”

“I can imagine.  Go ahead.”

“Well, I liked living with Dave and his wife.  Christmases were just great, you know, I’d never really experienced that except once at the orphanage.  Just the feeling of, like, us three, two people that seemed to care for me, no, did care for me, and the tree and all the presents...”

“Jesus, too?”

“Oh, yeah.  I went to church.”

“Good.”

“Are you religious?”

“I’m sitting across from an angel.”

It was the first time I’d seen her blush.  “Shut up!”

“So keep talking.”

“All right.  Terri was surprised at how good I was at cooking.  I was, too.  Anything that had something to do with mixing, formulating, preparing, I could do.  So I must have been a pretty good girl cook when I was younger.  If I can’t get back into school soon, I might just try being a chef.”

“Hey, no complaints from me.”

“Thanks.”  She smiled in genuine appreciation, and that was nice to see.  “Mom thought it was neat.  I knew more about herbs and natural flavoring and such than she did.  She like, asked me how I knew, and I just said–“ She shrugged.  “–‘I know.’”

“You’re the great ur-chef of the Julia Child set.”

“Even though this is pretty conventional, I gotta admit,” she said.

“Are you kidding?  I’ve never tasted chicken cooked like this in my life.  It’s really good, Wendy.”

She blushed.  “Way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, I guess.  Way to a woman’s heart is through her ear, about his stomach.”

“I’ll say.  With this, you’ll always have a job assured as a chef.”

“Thanks.”

“At KFC.”

“ARRGHHH!”  She was smiling, but she picked up a forkful of rice in her hand and pitched it at me.  It got partly on my face and partly on my shirt.  I grabbed up a handful and retaliated.  Rice fight!

Before I knew I was holding her down on the floor and rubbing rice against her forehead while she squealed.  “Dammit, Bill, get OFFA me!”

But she was laughing.

So I kissed her.

Not a tongue kiss, not that deep yet, but I did kiss her.  When I opened my eyes, I saw hers wide with surprise.  Or at least I hoped it was surprise.

“Uh, sorry, Wendy,” I said.  “If I went over the line, I apologize.”

She drew a couple of breaths.  Then she grasped me and pulled me closer and kissed me.

This time it was a tongue kiss.

It lasted for a long time.

When we finally broke, she sighed. “It’s been a long time since I did that.  It’s been a long time since I dared to do that.”

“Since you dared?”

She nodded, and looked serious.

“So,” I said.  “I love you very much when you’re daring.”

Wendy hugged me, running her hands over my back.  We stayed like that for a good long while.  She had to be feeling my reaction.  I sure as hell know I was feeling it.

“Bill,” she said, almost in a whisper, “I don’t want to sleep with you tonight.”

“Okay,” I said.  “If you want me to, I’ll go.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said.  “I just...don’t want to go so fast.  But I’d really like to have you stay over tonight.  I, uh...”

“But just not in your bed.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, hugging me harder.

“That’s okay.”  I was running my hands over the area from her neck to her beltline in back.  “Would you like to keep telling me the story of your life, Wendy?”

“Not tonight, Bill,” she said.  “But if you’ll come over tomorrow night after work, maybe.”

“All I needed was the invite.”

“I like you, Bill.  I like you very much, I think.  Can we keep it there until I’m more sure of things?”

“As long as it keeps me near you, kid, I’m in favor of it.”

She rested her head on my shoulder and we just lay together and breathed for awhile.

Then she gently disengaged herself, got up, and went to the sink.  She came back with a pair of moistened Bounty towels.  “I’ll wipe yours off if you’ll wipe mine,” she said.

“You could go to work like that in the morning.  They might think it was some new kind of makeup.”

“Shut UP!”  She almost whacked me with it, but she was still smiling.  So we wiped each other’s faces.

Then she went to her closet and pulled out every spare blanket and sheet she had, along with a pillow from below, and made up a pretty fair pallet on the floor.  “Will this be okay?”, she asked, hopefully.

“Sure,” I said.  “As long as the maid doesn’t kick us out in the morning.”

“Funny man,” she said, disparagingly.  “And I warn you, I wear jammies.”

“Boxers for me,” I said.  “Not briefs.”

“We’ll change that later.”  As soon as she said it, she flushed.  Hope was still loose in the world.

She took a pair of tanned pajama bottoms and tops, went into the bathroom, closed the door, and reemerged in her nighttime outfit.  “How do I look?”

“Haven’t I seen you on page 138 of the Sears catalog?”

She grinned in a nose-wrinkling way.  Then we sat on the couch, talked, and watched A&E for an hour or two.  Once, I wanted to check out the WB, but she pretended to gag.  “I hate their stuff.  Teenage garbage.”  So we didn’t.

Then we had to turn in.  Early hours and all that.  I helped her unfold the couch bed and make it.  After we were done, she stood there in her bare feet and held my hands.  “You know what I really like about you, Bill?”

“What?”

“That I know you like me.   And that I can trust you right now.”

I gave her a big hug and she gave it back.   Then she let me go, she turned out the lights, and I went in the john to strip to my underwear, coming out in a borrowed robe.  I turned off the bath light, draped my clothes over a chair, and got into the pallet.

“Your floor could be a little softer,” I complained.

“Hey.  You want I should put a pea under your mattress?”  She was already in bed.

“Good night.”

But for a good while, it wasn’t a good night.   And finally, she sensed it, too.  She turned on her bedside light.  “Bill?”

“Uhm?”

“What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean, what’s wrong?”

“I mean, you’ve been tossing and turning for an hour or so.  You’ve got to get some sleep.  I’ve got to get some sleep.  We’ve got work tomorrow.”  She was sitting on the side of her bed now, looking like a Boris painting of an angel in that subdued light.  “Come on, tell me what it is.”

“Wendy,” I said.  “I’m nerved.  I don’t know what happened tonight, when you jumped on my back, and I’m not sure I want to know.  But I’m having a hard time turning my mind off about it.”

She nodded, not smiling.

“And that bit about the two ‘jackers,” I said.  “I’m trying to look past it all.  But it’s not so easy, right here and now.  Especially not when I’m trying to sleep.”

“I understand, Bill,” she said.  “Better than you, I understand.”

“Have you maybe got a Tylenol PM or something?  That might help.”

“I have something even better.”  She got out of bed, barefooted it over to me, and knelt beside me.  If I had been expecting something different, I was about to be disappointed.  But definitely surprised.

She lay one warm hand on my brow and said, “Sleep.”  In the tone of a command.

I was about to say, “Now, wait a minute, Wendy,” but I don’t even think I completed the N.

My head hit the pillow and the next thing I knew, a fully-dressed Wendy was nudging me with her shoe.

“Wake up, Joe Boxer,” she said.  “Haven’t got enough time to make us brekkies.  But if you get dressed quick enough, you can take me for hotcakes at Mickey D’s.”

I shook my head.  “Wendy.  You know who you remind me of right now, more than anyone else in the world?”

“Who?”

“Scheherezade.”

She smiled again.  “You’re not as dumb as you look.  Get dressed, Bill.”

I wrapped the blanket around me and got up to do just that.

I wouldn’t miss the next Arabian Night for the world.

“You’ve gotten the first good sleep in three days, Bill,” said Abel at work.  “That’s good.”

“Thanks, Mr. Renzik,” I said, threading a paper tape through the innards of my cash register.  “I’m glad it shows.”

“How did you manage it?”  He seemed genuinely curious.  I humored him.

“Wendy told me to sleep,” I said.  “And when that woman gives an order, you don’t mess with it.”

He grinned.  “Okay.  Just make sure you’re...”

“Mr. Renzik,” I said, facing him with eyes a bit wider.  “I said sleep, not...sleep.”

Abel was still grinning.  He nodded.  Then he left.  Oh, well, you don’t tell the boss off until you’re sure you won’t need his recommendation.

If my mind was on her for most of the day, which it was, at least I was physically better-equipped to cope with the customers.  I shoveled them through my station with great efficiency.  I shoveled in my lunch with even greater efficiency.  And, when work was done, I whipped off my apron faster than Gypsy Rose Lee could have done it, got in my car, and varoomed home.

We had agreed that Wendy would come over to my place tonight.  There was no way in hell I was going to be able to make everything look good enough for her, so I just tidied up as much as I could before I heard the honk of a car horn outside my place.

“Oh, boy,” I muttered, ran to the john, combed my hair, checked my neck for stubble, tucked in my shirt, and ran to the door.  Then I casually opened it and saw, among the other cars outside, Wendy in her silver Chrysler.  She was grinning.  I smiled back.  Then I locked the door behind me, walked over, and got into her car.

As usual, her effect was casual but stunning, which may have been more of an effect of Wendy than what she wore.  Black pants, red tube top, black jacket, and sandals.  I don’t know where women learn that bare feet turn a guy on, but I’m glad somebody out there is telling them.

“My compliments to the escort agency,” I said.

“Say that again and I’ll knock you into the middle of next week.”  She was still smiling.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Wen.  Honestly, I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.  Besides, if I was working for an escort agency, I could afford somebody higher-priced than you.”

“All right.”

“But I might not like them as well.”  She leaned over and kissed me on the nose.

“Thanks.”  I leaned over and kissed her on the lips.  She didn’t object.  “Now where to?”

“It’s your date tonight.  You choose.”

“Okay.  Italian, if you please.”

“Fine by me, Bill.”

“They may even play selections from the Mafia Hits CD in the background.”

“Now you’ve got me hooked.  Tell me where to go.”

 -W-

So we went to Luigi’s, which is a pretty nice downtown place, and I had stromboli (my favorite, a folded-over pizza) while she stuck with spaghetti and meatballs.  Wendy was a lot neater than I would have been with that.  “A little too much oregano,” she said, “but otherwise it’s fine.  I think I could do a bit better, though.”

“Yeah, but the best part is, you didn’t have to,” I said.

“Tush, Bill.  A woman likes to show off her abilities.”  Then she smiled wickedly.  “But don’t let that give you any ideas.”

“Too late, Wendy.”

She playfully kicked my ankle under the table.  “I’m glad I don’t know why I like you.  It’d be too hard to analyze.”

“Yeah.  But I’m glad you do like me.  And that I like you.”

“You’re a sweet guy, Bill.  An idiot at times, but a sweet guy nonetheless.”

“And you play too hard at being Little Miss Enigmatic.  But you’re still a doll.”

She sighed.  “Glad you think so.  But it mostly isn’t play.”  She sipped some red wine.

“Well?”

“Well, what?” She looked up at me, quizzically.

“Aren’t you going to finish telling me the story of your life?”

“I...well, I want to, Bill.  But could we save it for last?  After we’re out of here?”  She looked more than a little troubled.

“Well, sure, if you want to.  But don’t you trust me, Wen?”

She touched my arm, gently.  “Oh, yes.  Yeah.  I think I can trust you.  As much as any guy I’ve ever met, I guess.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“I’m just scared,” she said.

“So I’ve noticed,” I replied.  “And I wish you’d tell me what you’re scared of.”

“That’s not just it.”  She looked serious.  “If you knew...”

I waited.

“...Then it might be our last date.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”  I lay my hand on her wrist.  She moved her hand and interlaced her fingers with mine.  I’ve never met a girl who could make that seem a sexier motion than her.  “Because, from everything I’ve seen, I want to be with you for a very long time.”

She smiled, a bit sadly.  “Well, thank you.  I appreciate that, Bill.  But you haven’t seen everything, that’s the point.”

“Well, we could start with a bikini.”

“Shut up!”  She smiled, disengaged her hand, and slapped my wrist.  “But thanks.  Maybe sometime.  That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“I know.  I’m just trying to make a joke.”

“Emphasis on trying,” she said.  “But I appreciate it.”  She paused.  “Bill?”

“Mm-hmm?”

“I really like you, too.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know if it’s love or not.  It’s too early for that, still.  But I don’t know that it isn’t.  And I do know I like being with you.”

“Yeah.  And as strange as it may seem, mystery girl, I like being with you as well.”

The smile she gave out made her blue eyes crinkle.  I loved it.

“Too bad they don’t have a gypsy violinist here,” I said.

“Yup.  Or maybe even a guy with an accordion, like in Lady and the Tramp.”

“You watched Disney?  I can’t believe it!”

“Oh, yeah!  I loved Disney.  Well...most of Disney, anyway.”

“I liked the heck out of it when I was a kid.  Mom used to rent the cartoon videos all the time.  101 Dalmatians, Fantasia, Snow White...”

She shivered.  “Snow White scared the hell out of me.  I got to see it with some other kids in the orphanage.  Hardly slept that night.”

“Oh,” I said.  “How’s about Sleeping Beauty?”

She stiffened.

“Hey, hey, Wendy, I’m sorry.  Won’t bring it up again.”

Wendy exhaled, very slowly.  “It’s all right, Bill.  When we talk about Disney, why don’t we stick to stuff like Donald Duck and Goofy?  Those, I can handle.”

“It’s okay, Wen.”  I took her left hand in both of mine.  “It’s really okay.  I just didn’t know about your pressure point there.”

“That’s fine.”  She was getting back to normal.  “I did love Cinderella, though.  I guess every girl does.  Wanting that freaking prince to come looking for the foot that’ll fit his glass slipper.”

“Cinderella must’ve been the hardest gal to buy shoes for in the world.”

She was smiling again.  “Must’ve been.  Especially if you had to shop at a glass works.”

We both laughed.   “You’re a freak, Wendy.”

“Jerk.”

“But a nice freak.”

“And you’re a nice jerk.”  She held my hand, rubbing the spot between my forefinger and thumb with her thumb.  “Thanks for putting up with my cartoonophobia.”

“Any time,” I said.  “Long as you’re with me.”

“If it wasn’t too far, I’d lean over and kiss you on the cheek,” she said.

I got up, went over to her chair, bent over politely, and let her do so.  “Thanks,” I said.

“A pleasure,” she said.  “I’ll put it on your bill, Bill.”

“Will you do it enough to bankrupt me?”

“What?  I’m not dating a rich man here?  Get me a cab!”

“How’s about a pumpkin?  A silver pumpkin with six mice under the hood?”

“That’ll do,” she said.  “Quite nicely.”

“Wendy,” I said.  “You like to dance?”

“Sure,” she said.  “Don’t get enough opportunities to, but yeah, I like dancing.”

“Then let’s pay and get out of here.  I know the place to take you.”

 -W-

And I did.

It wasn’t exactly a pumping rock ‘n’ roll place or an emporium of latter-day disco, but the place was nice, a converted airplane hangar with plenty of foot space.  I’d taken dates there before.  The band was good, equipped for country, pop, light rock, and some other stuff.  You could shake it down, slow dance, or, sometimes, even line dance if you were good enough at that.  And maybe brought your boots.

I liked it because, among other things, the band would take requests.  Since there’s been a song written about almost every girl’s name in creation, and since they knew or could fake a lot of tunes, I could ask them for a song with the name of the girl I happened to be with.  Over time, that required them to play Kiss’s “Beth”, “Amie” by the Pure Prairie League, and one they nearly foundered on, “Joanne” by Michael Nesmith and the First National Band.  It sounds corny and maybe I liked it more sometimes than the girls did, but I never heard complaints.

Wendy seemed to like it, too.  We were one of about seven dancing couples on the floor and, after a little more wine, we’d done a spirited 50's dance to “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee”, gotten close in for “Little Surfer Girl” (she seemed to like putting her head on my shoulder during that one), and then got ready for the next onslaught.  I was wondering when the fiver I’d given each band member would take affect.

Then I heard the opening notes: Dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-DAH-dah-dah-dah...  Not as good as the Association would have done, but it was over thirty years later, after all.

I sighed and she looked up at me curiously.  Then she started to recognize the song.  “Bill, you nut!  You didn’t.  Tell me you didn’t.”

I leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.  The lead guitarist launched into his vocal:

“Who’s peekin’ out from under a stairway
Smilin’ at everybody she sees?
Who’s reachin’ out to capture a rainbow?
Everyone knows it’s Wendy!”

She grinned fiercely, slapping me on my shoulder.  “That’s supposed to be ‘Windy,’ not ‘Wendy.’”

“I know.  I paid them to change it.”

“Like I haven’t been sung that song half a billion times before!”

“You don’t like it?”

“I love it.”  She kissed me.  Then we kept on dancing.

And for a long time, it seemed like it was just us and the music out there on the dance floor.  I know it’s cliche, but it’s true.  Or it feels like it, anyway.  The subdued light and the substantial feel and good smell and lovely sight of this blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman in my arms, actually enjoying being with me, and I, needless to say, with her...well, the perceptions slowed down quite a bit.  That was very good.  That was very, very good.

By the second chorus, I was singing along with the band.

“And Wendy has stormy eyes that flash at the sound of lies...and Wendy has wings to fly above the clouds,” I sang.  Badly, I’m sure, but I sang.

“Above the clouds,” sang another, female voice.  I looked, startled.  Wendy was singing.  Singing the counterpoint chorus.

“Above the clouds,” I responded.

“Above the clouds!” she finished.

For the rest of the song, it felt as though that was more or less where we were.

Finally, a year or so later, the song wound up and we left the dance floor, arms wrapped about each other.  I don’t know how many folks there knew who the subject of the song had been, but they probably had a good idea from looking at us.

It didn’t seem like we could speak for a few seconds.  But when one of us did, it was Wendy.  “I want to go,” she said, her head against my chest.

“Okay,” I said.  “Don’t feel like talking about it tonight?”

“No, I will,” she said.  “But I want to talk about it someplace else.”

“So we’ll go,” I said.  “And then you’ll talk?”

“I’ll try.”

We got in the car, a little lifted by the wine and a lot more so by the love vibes, but both of us still capable of driving.  Wendy drove.  She drove us past the outskirts of town, off on a rather country road, and down to a wooded area.  That was where she stopped.  Then she looked at me, almost apologetically.

“I’m sorry if this is pretty far out for you, Bill.  But I like coming out here.  I feel at home in the forest, if that makes any sense.”

“Uh huh.”  I wasn’t exactly a woodsman.  I wondered if she had parking or anything further out on her mind.  But I’d come this far with her and had one of the nicest times I’d ever had in my life.  So I decided to follow it out to the end.

A thought crossed my mind.  What if the thing Wendy was afraid of was something truly nasty?  Just suppose she had another personality locked away in her mental chest somewhere.  Suppose she’d taken other guys out to this woody place and done something a lot worse than parking with them.  She sure as hell didn’t seem like the type.  But you never knew, until you went through with it.

So, since I didn’t know, I decided to go through with it.

“When I tell you some things, I want it to be out here, because that’s where I feel most secure.  Okay, Bill?”

She was giving me a very sincere look.  Well, whatever she wanted to do to me, at least it’d be service with a smile.  “All right, Wendy, if that’s the way you want it.”

“Thanks, Bill.” She gave me a squeeze on the forearm.  “Thanks for being understanding.  Come on, let’s go.”

We left the car and she took my hand, leading me into a copse of trees.  It was a clear night and the half-moon above gave us adequate enough light not to trip over any damned stump or fallen trunk.  But she seemed to know her way, even at night.

“There’s nobody out here, is there?” I asked, not knowing what the answer could be.

“Nope,” she said.  “Just us.”   She stopped.  We were in the midst of what seemed like a small circle of trees.

“This is what I call my Thinking Place,” she said.  “But right now, I’ve gotta do something else before I do any thinking or talking.  Okay, Bill?”

“Like what?”

“I’ve gotta take a whiz.”

“Oh, boy.”  I sighed.  “Well, okay.  Don’t take any longer than you have to, okay?”

“Don’t worry.”  She kissed me on the cheek.  “I’ll be back.”  She walked off, treading on a few fallen leaves as she did so.  She must have gone far enough so that she would be out of hearing as well as out of sight.  I stood there in my light jacket, a slight breeze chilling me, wishing like hell she’d stopped at a gas station along the way.

After a minute or so, I heard a sound that didn’t seem to be one she could make.

I wish I’d handled the following business better, but I have to say one thing in my defense.

If it had just been the trees forming faces in their trunks, I might have been able to handle it.

It was when their branches started reaching for me that I started to scream.

Try facing something that, despite all evidence of your senses, cannot rationally happen.  Your conscious brain will not process all the information.  Given the limitations of your conscious brain, you’d most likely be dead.

That’s why it was a good idea when God placed enough common sense in our unconscious brain to make us get the hell away from danger, no matter what our jammed-up conscious brain is telling us.

My feet and body lurched me away from the reaching branches of those trees with the mug shots in their bark.  I fell to the ground, rolled away, the leafy wood-fingers brushing air just about where my head and shoulders had been.  The problem was that the damn trees were too close in at this place.  There wasn’t that much room to avoid them.

They were going to open a branch office in my body.

The ones behind me, to the side of me, were reaching.  I somehow bounced to my feet, flailed out with my arms, hit some of the thin branch-ends and broke some of them off.  But I’d put myself in range of some of the beefier limbs, and they were reaching out towards me with pops and cracks, displaying remarkable flexibility nonetheless.  I screamed.  I kicked out at them and ran to another side, but it just put me within reach of another bunch of wooded octopi.

Then there was something around my middle and it was dragging me back.

I was lifted off my feet and the world turned into slow fear.

Despite that, I had two thoughts.  One: how do you put down on an obituary that the deceased was treed to death?  Two: At least the trees didn’t seem able to talk.  I really couldn’t have taken that, if they had been trying to say something to me.

I had a feeling I was about to find out what the interior of one of those tree mouths was like.

Then I heard a quite familiar and quite welcome voice, in a shout: “KAH!”

That’s an approximation of what she said.  I don’t know if it’s written quite that way, and I’m not sure that I want to know.  But it’s sufficient for here.

The confining branch stiffened at the word, and, from my vantage point a couple of feet off the ground, I could see a figure rushing into the circle of trees.  Wendy, moonlight gleaming off her blonde hair, looking astonished and huffy.

Thank God she didn’t look like she’d set me up.

Wendy positioned herself in the midst of the trees, raised her arms, and started rattling off dialogue in a language I had never heard before.  I can’t reproduce a bit of it.  I’ve heard talk from Japanese and Arabs, among others, and this was nothing like their wordage or any I’ve ever heard before.  I doubt even an ancient Egyptian would know it.

She turned in a circle to face each tree in turn, and her tone was stern, as if she were lecturing them.  That was fine by me.  I could almost imagine the trees turning sheepish, like they’d been caught by a schoolmarm disturbing fishes in a tank, or something.  At any rate, they didn’t seem to be much interested in me anymore.

“Wendy, get me down from here!” I yelled.  The grip of the wood wasn’t exactly comfortable.  She didn’t halt in her strange speech.  Maybe, at that point, she couldn’t or didn’t dare.

At the end of it, she closed her eyes and twirled once again, her hands extended towards the trees.  She seemed graceful, like a ballerina.  I knew she’d been on pep squad, but I didn’t think she’d learned this move in any high school dance class.  She finally ended up on her knees, her hands touching the ground.

The faces of the trees were swallowed up by the bark.  The branches were retracted to their normal positions.  The limb around me let go, and I dropped a couple of feet to the ground, landing on my knees and shins with an “Umph!”.  Wendy looked up, and about one and a half seconds later had her arms around me.

“Are you hurt, Bill?  Did the limb squeeze you too hard?”

I could barely speak.  “Wendy,” I said.

“I blame myself for this, Bill,” she said, earnestly.  “But it wasn’t my doing.  You have to believe me.  I never thought they’d have the power to reach us here.”

“Wendy,” I repeated.

“I’m sorry, Bill.  I’m so, so sorry.”  She hugged me and she almost seemed an inch away from tears.  But I was still shaking.

“Wendy,” I said, “get me the hell out of here.”

She got to her feet and helped drag me up.  I looked at the trees and shrank back.  She had me by the arm.

“You’ll be just fine now, Bill,” she said.  “The spirits have gone.”

“The what?”

“The spirits.  The ones that invaded the trees.  Oh, hell, I should have done a shielding before we came here.  But I never dreamed they’d try and attack me in a place that I hold holy.”

“They didn’t attack you!  They attacked me!”

“And they won’t do it again.  I made sure of that.  I’m sorry, Bill, and I know you’re scared.”

“You’re telling me!  The hell with Joyce Kilmer!”

“Bill.”  She looked at me sternly.  “We have to go.  Just come with me.”

Despite the residual fear, I felt somewhat stupid.  She led me towards a break in the trees.  I kept as far back from the nearest one as I could, but it could still have reached out and turned me into pulp for tree writing material if it had wanted to.  Wendy kept a firm grip on my arm, and we made it through.

We kept on walking till we were back in her car, at which point we got in and locked the doors at my insistence.

“I didn’t mean that to happen, Bill,” she said, looking at me pleadingly.  “I really, really never expected that to happen.”

“But it did,” I said, my hands still shaking despite one track of my brain telling me how bad this looked in front of my girl.  “It happened, Wendy.”

“I know,” she said.  “And from now on, we’re not going anywhere without shielding.”

“Shielding,” I said.

She nodded.  “It keeps the spirits from inhabiting things.  From using them against us.”

“Against us,” I said.

“If you’re going to keep repeating the ends of my sentences,” she said, “I ought to end this one with, ‘I love you.’”

“I love–“ I stopped.  “Oh, cripes.  Wendy. Wendy, what are you?”

She sighed.  “I’d hoped to tell you in my Thinking Place, Bill, because that’s the place I feel most at home.  It would have been special there.  Believe me, I didn’t in a million years think that would happen.”

“Stop stalling,Wendy.  Tell me who you are.  Tell me what you are.”

“Okay,” she said, holding the wheel with both hands and staring out through the windshield.  “My name is Wendy Corrigan, and I’m a magician.”

“A magician.”  I rolled it around on my tongue, in my mind.  “A magician.”

“You’re repeating me again,” she said.

“For cripes’ sake, Wendy!  Cut me some slack!  I’m the guy who almost experienced tree surgery of a different kind.”

Suddenly she hugged me.  Harder than she’d ever hugged me before.  Her chest was heaving and I think she was holding back crying.  I wasn’t exactly sure what for, then, but I think now it was all about acceptance.  Or not getting it.

“Bill, Bill.  You’ve got to believe me.  Please believe me.  I wasn’t setting you up.  I like you too much for that.  Maybe I love you too much for that, I don’t know.  But I don’t want to see you hurt.  I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt.  And maybe...”  There was a sob in her voice, now.  “...maybe I’m not sure if I can.”

I put my shaky hands around her body, and it was as warm and fine as it had ever been.  “Wendy,” I said.  “Oh, Wendy.  Why the hell couldn’t you tell me before?  Why couldn’t you tell me somewhere other than this?”

“Because it’s never happened with this intensity before.  Or so many times,” she said.  She was still holding me.  “Bill, please.”

“Please what, Wendy?”

“Please stay with me.  At least till we find out if we can love each other or not.  I’ve had guys leave before—“

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Shut up!  And I don’t want it to happen again.  I’m on guard now, Bill.  I can keep things from happening.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as I can be,” she said.  She sighed.  “It’s getting pretty late, Bill.  Do you want me to give you the condensed version on the way back to your place?”

“Why not?” I said.  “Why the hell not?”

She started the engine and we pulled out, back to the main road.  While she was talking, I kept watching the trees.

 -W-

This is what Wendy told me:

“It started out...at least I remember it starting out...when I was in the orphanage.  The woman who was in charge of us was Mrs. Meyers, Lucinda Meyers.  She introduced me to all the children, particularly the girls.  I’ll skip over a lot of that because I know what you want to hear about.

“They liked to let us do sports and such, to amuse us, to keep us fit, and I suppose to keep our minds off the fact that we didn’t have mothers or fathers.  I was still learning stuff, and I had a lot to learn.  But I was, like, found in winter.  And there were a lot of snows that winter.  One of them powdered down a hill we had near the orphanage, and we had some sleds.  So after school, Mrs. Meyers let some of us girls and some of the boys go sledding.  She had one of the older guys, Ricky Davis, go with us to watch out.  Which was great, because I’d never gone sledding before.  I was Little Miss Bellywhomper, but I loved it.

“I was standing there at the bottom after one run, holding my sled, snow all over my snowsuit and in my eyebrows, not caring a bit about it.  I was having fun.  Maybe the most fun I’d had since I woke up in that cop station.

“So anyway, here comes Jimmy Morrison on that Flexible Flyer he was using.  Only I guess he wanted to impress somebody—God knows who, it couldn’t have been me—and he wasn’t holding on as well as he should to the front.  Maybe he wanted to play daredevil.  He hit a bump, and whop—up he goes, not too far, but far enough, and as the sled’s coming down without him, he’s coming down hard on his back.  Right on top of a rock which was pretty well-concealed, as we found out.  And all of a sudden, Jimmy isn’t moving.

“Cherie, one of the girls beside me, started calling out to him to get up and quit joking.  But he wasn’t getting up.  Then she called his name about twice more, and he still wasn’t moving.  So us two girls and the one boy who was down there with us start up the hill towards him, on feet and hands, yelling up at the kids above us that Jimmy’d been hurt.

“Ricky was down there like a shot, skidding down on his butt and legs, ‘cause it was the fastest way he could get down there without a sled.  He was, like, 16 and a lot bigger than yours truly.  Older, too.  Cherie and I and the other two got up there a few seconds after him, and we saw that Jimmy wasn’t only, like, not moving.  He was not breathing.  The damn air had been knocked out of him, and he couldn’t get anymore in his lungs.

“So Ricky’s pushing on his chest to try and get the breath back in him, like maybe he’d seen on Baywatch or something.  And nothing’s happening.  Kelly, who was the other girl, put her mouth over Jimmy’s and tried breathing in it, but we were just kids.  We didn’t know how to do CPR.  Even Ricky didn’t know.  Cherie’s going nuts, maybe ‘cause she had a crush on him, I don’t know, and trying to hold up his legs so they’d be higher than his head.  And the other kids are, like, wanting to scoot down too and help, but Ricky’s yelling for them to go back to the house and get help.

“But me, all I was doing was standing around like a little dummy, ‘cause I didn’t know anything I could do.  I wanted to help him.  I wanted to do something, ‘cause I felt like, well, if nobody did anything to bring Jimmy around, he wasn’t going to be there to help by the time the grownups got there.  Right then, I wanted to help Jimmy more than anything I’d ever wanted in the world.  Including getting a new Malibu Barbie, which was really high on my list of priorities that year.

“And all of a sudden, Bill, all of a sudden, I felt something.  A rush of power, kind of, like an aura around me.  Maybe it was an aura.  That’s what it feels like, to this day, when I use it.  I didn’t know what it was.  It just felt warm and kinda electric, like I was toasty out there even in all the cold.  I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t have time to wonder.  All I knew—all I felt—was that it was maybe something I could use to help Jimmy.  And that was good enough for me.

“So I pulled off my right glove and I got in close and knelt down and put it on Jimmy’s chest, right above where Ricky was pumping away on him.  Ricky was saying something like, ‘Are you nuts?  Give me room!’  But I wasn’t concerned with him.  I could feel the aura around me, like it was ready for a command or something.  Like it was Ali Baba’s genie, the one I’d heard about in Story Time.  If it was like that, I was willing to give it a try.

“So I said, ‘Breathe.’

“And I felt part of the aura, part of the power, going into him.  Don’t ask me how, but I did.  I said, ‘Breathe’ again, a little louder, just to make sure I’d be heard and there’d be no mistake.  And Jimmy was in pretty bad shape, I could tell.  His lips were turning blue, and it wasn’t from the cold.

“That’s when Jimmy drew in a breath.

“Cherie saw it and she screamed.  She said, ‘Look, he’s breathing!  Jimmy is freaking breathing!’  Only she didn’t use the word ‘freaking’, and we didn’t much care.  She was so excited she dropped his legs and just about slid down the hill herself.  But Ricky saw it, too, and he kept pumping away with his hands on Jimmy’s chest.  He finally just pushed me away with one hand, told me I was getting in the way.  Not mean, but not very courteous, either.  He made Kelly get away from Jimmy’s mouth, too.

“But none of that mattered, Bill, because Jimmy was starting to suck in air and push it out again, and his lips turned pink again and everything.  In a couple of minutes, his eyes opened up and he went, ‘Where am I?’  I swear, that’s what he said.  And Ricky just sighed and smiled, and Cherie ran to his head and hugged him, and the rest of the kids just broke out cheering.  As far as anybody knew, Ricky was the big hero of the day.  That was okay, because I was standing over there to the side of them, and knowing I had a secret.  It was kinda frightening, but kinda reassuring, too.  If I could do something like this, it was a nice secret to have.

“And that was the first time I used my power.  The first time I can remember, that is.”

I let it hang there for a long moment.  Then I said, “What about...what about...”

“The spirits?” She turned to me with a sad and sober look.  “I was just about to get to that, Bill.  Sit back, and make yourself comfortable.”

How does one make oneself comfortable when less than an hour ago, you were grabbed by trees with faces, you’ve learned your girlfriend can do magic, and she tells you she’s going to tell you about spirits?

“I’m fine,” I said.  “Go ahead.”

Wendy put both hands to the sides of her face, sighed, then clasped her hands in her lap and looked at me.  “Bill, I’m sorry.  I know you were scared by the trees.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I would be too, if I hadn’t gone through everything I had since I was 12 or so.  I mean–“ She shot me a look of uncertainty.  “–I think I was 12.  They just had to guesstimate my age when they found me that night.  I’m really not sure how old I am, Bill, but I know I’m around 21.  I even had to pick my own birthday.”

“Which was?”

“November 27th.  The night they found me in the snow.”

“Okay.  Very, very nice, Wendy.  Now, you were speaking about spirits?”

“Yeah.  All right, Bill.  Settle back, because this is where it gets scary.”

Nice to know everything up to this point had just been entertainment.

 -W-

“It wasn’t very long after that incident with Jimmy, maybe four months, max, that I got the first Visitation.

“But before that, I started getting the Dreams.  Or maybe it was the Dream.  I don’t know what else to call it.  Not that long at first, just kind of like a subliminal frame stuck in a movie.  But it scared me, like putting dry ice on your back.  These three old women.  Could have been the Fates, I don’t know.  Indistinct at first, not all that much better the last time I saw them.  I don’t often have nightmares, but I remember these.  They’ve got the same cast of characters.  They didn’t start till after I helped Jimmy breathe.

“That week, I saw the three old women for the first time in my dream.  I won’t say I woke up right then, but one of the girls in my room woke me up.  She said I was thrashing around in my sleep.  I guess I was.  Sheets and covers were tangled.  I got up, took a jog down the hall and back in my PJ’s, felt better, managed to get back to sleep.  But I didn’t forget the dream.

“About three months after the Jimmy thing, I saw them again.  A bit longer this time.  You can’t really estimate time in a dream, but they were more distinct, and it was a longer experience.  I could see them, dressed up in some robes and hats, just like something out of Macbeth.  They were in some forest setting, I think.  I know they were later on.  They also had this big cauldron between them, just like ‘Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,’ and all that stuff.  You might think I’d picked that up from a movie, or from that Shakespeare play.  But I’d never seen Macbeth, I was just a little girl.  And I never saw a movie with a scene like that.

“As near as I can tell, it was something I may have remembered.

“And it looked to me at the end of it like they were turning and looking at me.

“I wasn’t just thrashing in my sleep then.  I screamed.  Sally, one of my roomies, shook me awake.  I almost slapped her.  I thought one of the witches had me.  I came to and she had to hold me to keep me from shaking.  God help me, Bill, I was scared.  I went to the doctor and he prescribed some pills.  They kind of helped.

“But they didn’t stop the Visitation.

“You know I’m a good cook, Bill.  I don’t know why, but I guess I’ve always had the talent.  Maybe I learned in my early life.  Anyway, they let me help out in the kitchen, and I was good enough for them to trust me on my own after a little while.  We had a gas stove there, and it was just me one afternoon.  Me and a pan of tomato soup I was heating.

“Yeah.  That’s what I thought.

“So there I was, little 12-year-old Wendy, stirring the soup, and all of a sudden...on the far side of the pot...

“...the flame formed a hand and reached around for me.

“I screamed, natch, and upset the pot.  Soup went all over the place, on my apron, on my dress, on my face, on the linoleum.  It burned, but lucky enough the pot didn’t touch me.  I wasn’t even thinking about that, though.  I was on my butt and sneakers, trying to back away from that damned stove.  I...oh, God, Bill, give me a chance to get my stuff together.  This was as bad for me at least as the tree thing was for you.

“Okay.  Okay, let me go ahead.

“These three...beings...these three demons...they were made out of flame.  They were coming out of the burner.  They had human shapes, but they were made out of blue gas flames.  And they were...

“...They were coming for me.

“I had scooted across the room, all the way to the wall.  Those things were out of the burner now, walking on the floor, burning their prints into the linoleum.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away from them in time, not to the side or whatever.  I was still sitting down with my back to the wall and I guess my eyes were like saucers, and it was like one of those dreams where you want to scream and you can’t, you just can’t, and the damn things were so close, Bill, they looked like they had faces, and they were reaching out for me and they were gonna touch my face and...

“...And I screamed, ‘KAH!’

“Yeah.  ‘Kah.’  Just like you heard me say in the Thinking Place.  I didn’t know where it came from.  I didn’t even know what it meant.  Now I know it’s a command.  It means ‘Stop’.

“And they stopped.

“There the buggers were, just standing in front of me, flickering and sending smoke up to the ceiling, burning the damned floor with their feet.  But they weren’t getting any closer.  I could see their faces.  I didn’t want to look at their faces.

“I just sat there, looking at those burning demons for a couple of seconds, breathing in and out, in and out.  Then I started saying something.  Something really fast.  Even I wasn’t certain it was me saying it, until a few seconds into it.

“I was talking in the language you heard me use to the trees, Bill.  The magic language.  It was like, automatic.  I didn’t understand it, but I understood the meaning of it, kinda.  Does that make sense?  I know it didn’t to me.  And I don’t know how I knew it.  But I did.

“It was a spell I was speaking.  A shielding.  It kept those butane buggers away from me.  It was like I had a force field, and maybe I did.  A strengthening of my aura, maybe.  But I didn’t even know I had an aura, back then.  Anyway...

“There they were, just standing there, burning holes in the flooring.  They were a few inches away from me, but I managed to sidle away from them and got on my feet.  Still scared as hell, you bet, but I was kinda curious, too.  About them, about me, about what I was saying.  I knew somebody would be coming pretty quick, and I didn’t know what I was going to do.  They were paralyzed, yeah, but they were still out of the burner.  And I thought, What if I could make them go back inside?  Then I wouldn’t have to talk to Mrs. Meyers about it, and how am I supposed to explain three burning demons and the fact that I could stop them by saying something I didn’t understand?

“That’s when I started talking again.

“It was pretty similar to what you heard me say in the ring of trees, Bill.  It’s kind of a scolding thing: ‘You are not where you belong.  You have no right to do what you are doing.’  And so forth.  It also implies that there are higher powers that can punish them for what they’ve done.  Finally, you give an order for them to go back where they came from and not come back.  I didn’t really know this stuff when I was doing it, but I did it.  I could half-sense the meaning of it, not the individual words, but what they were supposed to do.

“And the three burning men turned around, walked back to the stove, and jumped in the burner. Just like that.  They were gone.

“I couldn’t believe it.  Neither could Mrs. Meyers and the staff.  They busted in a couple of seconds later and they asked me what had happened.  I told ‘em the stove had backfired or something.  The burner was still on, but it was just acting like usual.  She turned it off, told them not to monkey with it, got me cleaned up and put some stuff on me for my burns.  They weren’t too bad.  Then she asked me what had happened.  I told her the fire under the pot had flared up like it was an explosion.  Wasn’t too far off.  Finally convinced her I wasn’t playing with the gas.  We had to get a new stove, even though there wasn’t anything wrong with the old one.   It was a good long while before she’d let me cook again, and she always had somebody watching me.  But I was good enough so that she’d let me help fix meals on a regular basis.  Betty Crocker’s understudy, that’s me.

“I had a few more dreams after that.  Witch dreams.  But I got adopted by Dave and Terri.  They came to the orphanage and I did an interview and we got along okay.  I mean, there’s not a lot more to it than that.  They couldn’t have kids and she didn’t want to do artificial-i, so they adopted.  They promised they’d take good care of me, and see if they could help me get my memory back.  So I went with them and it turned out all right.  Except for the memory.  And except for a few other things.

“One other thing was that I had to save them both from a water spirit.  It came up right out of the pool where they were swimming and tried to drown them.  I had to run out there in my little red bathing suit and stop it.  They were scared as all get-out.  That’s when I had to tell them everything.  Everything I knew.  I prayed that night, Bill.  I prayed that they wouldn’t give me back to the orphanage.  They didn’t.

“But every now and then, things would happen.  The neighbors’ house on the south burned up.  A pack of dogs, like twenty or thirty, chased our car down the street.  I told them to stop, in the magic language, and they did.  Things like that.  But it’d only happen maybe once a year, or once every two years.  The witch dreams weren’t that frequent, either.  We coped.  We kept our secret.

“And yeah, I did some dating.  But by that time, I’d gotten to figure out the drill.  Anybody that was around me for too long a time, they might be a candidate for attack.  I was safe, as far as I know.  I kept up the shielding spell.  But you have to say it when you’re under attack, or when somebody else is.  I didn’t want that to happen to a guy because of me.  So I didn’t date any one guy very long.  I had to be a Runaround Sue.

“Then I met this guy in my junior year, Robin was his name, and don’t do me any Batman jokes, okay?  He was on the tennis squad and he was really nice.  I liked him, he liked me, you know the whole nine yards.  So I broke my rule and went steady with him for a long time.  I thought sure...I thought sure this would be the guy I could love.  I was going to do it with him, Bill.  I was...going to lose it.  I was going to love him.

“I even had the place picked out.  I was going to ask him out, do dinner and a movie, then have him go up to a lover’s lane and have him do me.  Oh, yes, we can be very methodical about it when we want to.  I don’t know if Robin knew what I was planning, but the way we’d made out, I didn’t think he was going to much object.

“That was the week that my mom and dad asked me if I wanted to go miniature golfing with them.  But I said no.  I wanted to stay home, do my homework, and think about what it was going to be like doing it with Robin.  If it would hurt or not, if it would feel good or not...I’m sorry if I’m getting too graphic.  Am I?  Okay.

“And...you know what happened.

“Their car went right off the street, up a sidewalk, into the side of a building.  I don’t even know how a car could do that if it was out of control.  Maybe it wasn’t out of control.  Maybe it was just out of Dad’s control.  Whatever.  Nobody else got hurt.  All the walkers managed to get out of the way.  Both my foster parents died.

“I was...oh, God...I don’t want to talk about it, Bill.  I just don’t want to talk about it.  Just let me get through this thing, okay?

“I had a witch dream that night.  The witches were laughing.

“That’s why I had to break up with Robin.  I couldn’t risk something like that happening to him.  He just thought it was because I was shook up over my parents’ deaths.  It was that, all right.  And more.

“I got the house and most of the property, in Dad’s will.  That let me go to school for a time.  But not more than a couple of years.  And about my name...I changed it.  I wasn’t Wendy Doe, like I’d been in the orphanage, and Browning was a nice name, but it wasn’t my name.  So I kept Browning for one of my middle names, and gave myself another middle name, Lee.  But my last name was one I chose for myself.

“Corrigan.  Look it up.  It means a wise-woman.  A magician.  Which I guess I am.  Not too sure how wise I am, but I do have these powers.  It’s not hocus-pocus, Bill, and it’s not like those stupid posers with their books and their charts and their made-up spells and all that.  Nothing I do is like that.  It’s just drawing on powers and saying spells.  I don’t think I’m some witch out of a fairy tale.  I feel more like, say, one of those characters in that movie, X-Men.  You ever see it?  Okay.  One of those girls with built-in powers.  That’s kind of what I have.

“But I didn’t date when I was in college.  And I got awfully lonely.

“Then this thing happened with you, Bill.  That’s why I didn’t want to let you in, at first.  I was afraid for you.  I guess I should have been, the way things have turned out.  But I was...I was lonely.  I guess I was, well, willing to chance it.  Even though that carjacking...it had to be the work of the spirits.  Those guys didn’t know what they’d done, afterwards.  But I let you in.  I wanted to see if it could work, Bill.  I wanted to know if, even with all this crap happening around us, if we could want each other enough to make it work.

“And...maybe we have, Bill.  Just maybe, maybe we have.

 -W-

“Bill?  Are you still with me?”

“What?  Oh, oh yeah.  I’m listening.  I’m definitely listening.”

Wendy moved her legs a bit.  They must have been cramping or going to sleep.  “So...what do you think, Bill?”

“About what?”

She looked straight on at me.  “About us?”

“I...”

I was about to say nothing could matter.  I was about to say we were in love, and that’d be the end of it.  I was about to say that nothing could keep us apart, no force of humanity or nature or even blue butane burner people.

But then I looked out the windshield at the copse of trees, in the distance, where I’d almost ended up as not-quite-naked lunch for a bunch of Wooden Willies.

I finally sighed and said, “I’m scared, Wendy.  I’m still scared.”

She looked pained, grasped my wrist, held it in a warm grip.  She looked into my eyes with those big blues of hers, and if there was any further I could fall for her, I fell.

Yet, there still was the stuff she had told me.  And the moving trees.

I had to be honest.   God help me, I had to tell the truth.

“I want to go home, Wendy.  I want to sleep on it.  Can you take me home?”

“All right,” she said.  “But that doesn’t change things, does it?  We’re still together, aren’t we?”

“Wendy.  I want to go home.”

She looked at me a couple more seconds and then let go of my wrist.  She twisted the key in the ignition and the engine fired up.

A little while after that, she pulled up in front of my place.  I opened the door.  I didn’t trust myself to look at her.  But she was looking at me.

“Bill,” she said.  “Please don’t shut me out.  Please let me know.  I’ve got to know.”

I hesitated.  I finally looked at her.  If I’d let myself go, my heart would have broken so hard right then and there an industrial vice wouldn’t have been able to hold it together.

“There’s so much to think about, Wendy.  So much to, I don’t know, integrate.  I feel...”

She looked at me, hopefully.

I had to finish it up.

“Scared,” I said.

Her expression wilted and died.

“Will you give me a call?” she asked.

“Yeah.  Yeah, definitely,” I said.

“I can say a sleep spell for you,” she said.

“That’s very nice of you, Wendy.  But I’ll try a Tylenol PM.  Okay?”

A long, long beat.  “Okay,” she said.

“You take care, Wendy,” I said, and held out my hand.  “You take care.”

She took it.  We held on for a while.   But if there was any warmth, it was hard to feel.

Finally I let go, got out, and slammed the door shut.  I went to my apartment, opened it up, went in, shut the door.  I didn’t even bother turning the lights on.  I just sat there.

It was about five minutes before I heard her car engine start up again.  By the time I looked out the window, she was gone.

I took the Tylenol.  It helped me get to sleep.

That was all it could help me with.

The alarm went off too early.  I did the morning rituals, drove to work, put in my eight hours.  Abel asked me what was wrong.  I told him everything was fine.  He didn’t believe me and I don’t blame him.  But he let me alone.

One of the girls, Shannon, got a strange expression on her face and asked me if I’d like her to come along with her to lunch that day.  I said no, thanks.  She said, “Okay,” and that was it, outside of her shooting me a worried glance or two that afternoon.

I came home and wondered why I was there.  I wondered why I wasn’t trying to get into the arms of the most wonderful girl I’d ever known.

Then I remembered the trees, and I knew why.

About nine o’clock the phone started ringing.

It rang once, twice, three times.  I thought for sure it would quit after three.  But no, it kept on.  Twelve times.  I counted it.

I finally got up and there was nobody on.  They had quit trying.

I pressed the numbers that let you dial the party who’s been calling you last.  I let the phone ring twelve times and I was tempted to go for a thirteenth.  But I didn’t.  I just pushed the disconnector and then hung up the receiver, none too gently.

Nobody else tried to get me that night.  I fixed a Swanson’s turkey dinner in the microwave, ate it, tried to read, gave up, tried TV, said to hell with that, messed about a little on the Internet, and went to bed.

I know I went to sleep because I wasn’t tired in the morning.  Not physically, anyway.

Thought about tossing her an e-mail but I didn’t know her addy.  I suppose she didn’t know mine, either, because I didn’t get one from her.  I checked it five times before I left for work.

By about 10 a.m., Shannon came over to my station.  “You’re going to lunch with me, Bill.”

“Thanks, Shannon,” I said, “but I’ll just brown-bag it today.”

She stepped up to within ten inches of my face.  “I said, you are going to lunch with me today, Bill McGregor.   No arguments required.”

I shook my head.  “All right.  Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.”  Shannon sauntered back to her register.  She was auburn-haired, kind of short, pretty enough, but nothing like the girl whose call I hadn’t taken.  I wondered if she was trying to move in on vacated territory.  Somehow, it didn’t seem like it.

I was right.

Over pizza at the Food Court, she grilled me as thoroughly as any burger.  “So.  What’s your problem, and what’s her name?”

I consulted with a pepperoni before answering.  “So who says it’s got either?”

“Come on, Bill.  You’re wearing your heart on your sleeve, you know?  If it was out there any further, I could give you CPR on your arm.  She left you, right?”

I sighed.  “Look, Shannon.  It isn’t exactly like that.  Something happened and I...well, I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

“Something bad?”

“Something scary,” I said.

She waited before answering.  “Was it her fault?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Bill, there’s either a yes or no answer to that.  Was it her fault, or not?”

I was getting mad.  “Damn it, Shannon.  Exactly why do I have to tell you everything about my love life?”

“You don’t,” she said, calmly.  “I’m just a friend.  If you want me to keep my little busybody nose out, I will.”

We ate in silence for a few minutes.  Then she said, “Wendy what?”

“Huh?”

“You said something under your breath.  Sounded like Wendy something.”

I put down my pizza slice and leaned my head on both hands.  “It’s that obvious, huh?”

She smiled with one corner of her mouth.

“Wendy Corrigan,” I said.  “She works at the library and I think she’s an angel.”

“That’s a good sign,” Shannon said.

“Something happened last time we were out that shook me up quite a bit,” I said.  “Don’t want to talk about it.”

“But you seem to indicate, Bill, that it wasn’t really her fault.”

“It wasn’t.  Not really.   It kind of happened because of the place we were in.”

“Well, if it’s a place, you can stay away from there, can’t you?”

“I’m not ever going back there.  Ever.”

She nibbled on her beef-and-anchovies.  “But what about her?”

“I don’t know, Shannon.  I just don’t know.”  I grabbed my tea glass to stop my hand from shaking.

“Too much caffeine, Bill?”

“Not enough.”

Shannon got up.  “Gotta go to the ladies.  I’ll be back in just a minute.”

“Shannon.  The ladies is that other way.”

“I’m taking the long way around.”

And after she got back, we got in her car and went back to work.

 -W-

It was 5:30 and just about time for my shift to be over.  I was looking forward to it, though I didn’t have a good reason for doing so.  Maybe I could study some of my law books.  After all, summer vacation wasn’t going to be there forever.

I’d just got finished with a woman whose two rugrats seemed inextricably bound to the cart when I noticed the next cart in the line and I couldn’t believe it.

The damn thing was piled over the top with enough expensive items to choke a politician’s fund-raising dinner.

At least seventeen joints of meat, all the plastic-wrapped kind.  The most expensive cheeses we had on the rack.  Pate.  Five bottles of champagne and three of wine.  A long ton of various vegetables.  A sample of every kind of pasta we had in stock, a rackful of seasonings, four bags of sugar, four family-size boxes of Lipton’s tea bags, various cans of fruit and soup, a 12-pack of Classic Coke, three bags of Pillsbury’s flour, a box or two of Bisquick, and, riding on top of it all like a conquering hero, a box of Alpha-Bits.

I think I knew who was wheeling the cart before I got up to her eye level.

She was standing there in a three-piece blue suit with brown sunglasses and the greatest hair and makeup job I’d ever seen on her.

“Well?” said Wendy, sweetly.  “Aren’t you going to check me out?”

When I found my jaw and replaced it, I said, “Wendy.  Come on.  There’s no way you can afford this stuff.”

“I didn’t know it was the place of employees to argue with the customer,” she said in a haughty manner.

“You don’t have enough money to pay for all this?”

“How do you know?  Have you checked my bank balance lately, sir?”

There were three people behind her already, and the line was bound to be getting longer.  “Wendy,” I protested.  “What’s this all about?”

“I’m checking out.”  She smiled.

“Do you just want to talk to me?”

“Well, I recall phoning someone the other night and having it ring almost an unlucky number of times.”

“Yeah, and I called back and let it ring the same number.”  I paused.  “I’m sorry.”

She nodded.  “Apology accepted, Bill.”

“Thanks.  And I understand why you didn’t pick up, either, I guess.”

“Maybe you do,” she said.  “I’m not sure I do.  But I hope you’ll forgive me that, too.”

“Don’t even need to ask.”  I was smiling.  Don’t ask me how, but I was smiling.

“Hey, you guys,” said an old man in back of her with French bread and sardines in his cart.  “Break it up.  Some of us gotta get home before we go back to work, you know?”

“Wendy,” I said.  “Go put this stuff back.”

“I thought you wanted to make a sale.”

“Do you want me to come to dinner?”

“Well, that might be a nice way to start out.”

“Okay,” I said.  “7 o’clock?”

“Sure.  If you’ll help me fix it.”

“I will.  Now go put this stuff up!”

“Absolutely.”  She turned to the folks in the line behind her.  “Excuse me.  Could you people please back up so I can come through and put a few things back?  I’d appreciate it.”  They complied.  Our drama hadn’t gone unnoticed, I guess.

Just before she went, she pecked me on the cheek.  The line and the other cashiers gave me a standing ovation.  The blonde minx was grinning as she took the buggy back to the various places of replacement.

Shannon, at the next register, cupped her hands over her mouth and called out.  “Hey, Bill.  I think you were right.  She does look like an angel!”

I think I melted into a puddle.  But over all the laughter, I couldn’t really be sure.

 -W-

So after work I showed up at her apartment with my VCR under my arm, two videos (Wag the Dog and a Harrison Ford film), and me.  She opened the door and hugged me before I could put anything down.  “Welcome back, Wandering Bill,” she said.

“Guess all roads lead to Wendy,” I said.  “At least, the ones that don’t go to Rome.”

“Come on in before your arms fall off,” she said.  She was wearing a red T-shirt, blue jean overalls, and an apron.  As usual, she was barefoot.  “You get to stir the sauce.”

“You’re cooking Italian?”

“Uh huh.  Spaghetti and meatballs, garlic toast, Caesar salad.  I’ll have the Mafia eating out of my hand in no time.”

“They’ll have to fight me for it.”

“Oh, I’d like that.”

Within a few minutes, I think I’d forgotten the impact of the event of two nights back.  Not exactly forgotten, but repressed.  Well, it was understandable.  With the presence of that lovely blonde cook in close proximity to me, and us finding excuses to accidentally bump into each other more often than not, the warmth in that room was only caused in part by the cooking.

Nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven.

Can’t believe I wrote that.

When we carried the stuff to the table at last, we each had one arm around the other and our heads on each other’s shoulder.  Think it’s easy to carry in spaghetti, garlic toast, and salad like that?  You haven’t tried it.  But we managed.

“Hope you don’t try to hog all the meatballs,” she said.

“We’ll treat it just like they did Roger Rabbit,” I said.  “Count every one of them and make sure no meatball gets more screen time than the other.”

“You nut!”

We set everything down, went to our places, and dug in.  “Very tasty, Wendy,” I said.

“Thank you,” she beamed.

“The food’s nice, too.”

“Shut up!”  She was grinning like before.

A little while later, I said, “Shannon called you, didn’t she?”

Wendy looked at me sideways.  “What could give you that idea?”

“Masculine intutition.”

“You’ll never be a good spy, Bill.  Can’t keep your lip zipped.  But I love you for it.”

“What’d she tell you, Wen?”

“Confidential information.  Sealed in a time capsule till the time Star Wars really happens.”

“Okay.  Then whose idea was the cart?”

“Oh, that was my idea.”  She smirked.  “Was it a good one?”

“The best.  But I think my boss died a small death when he saw you weren’t really going to buy all that stuff.”

“You might have broken your quota.”

“Might.  What if I’d started checking you out?”

“I would’ve taken the stuff back anyway and gotten a refund.”

“Okay.”  I paused.  “I apologize for being such a chickensh—“

“Bill.”  She grabbed my hand, fork and all.  “Don’t apologize.  It’s okay.  It was frightening.  God knows, this stuff scared the crap out of me when it first happened.  Several times thereafter, too.”

“You, uh...weren’t frightened when it happened two nights ago?”

“Oh, yeah, I was afraid.  Afraid that something might happen to you.”  She gave me a soulful look.  “But that’s all past now, Bill.  Isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said.  For tonight it was, anyway.

Her hand caressed mine.  “I’m glad, Bill.  I’m very, very glad.”

Before we could eat anything more, I leaned over and kissed her.  We both tasted of spaghetti and garlic.

Later on, watching Dustin Hoffman do the funniest spin-doctoring in the world, she lay with her body on my legs and her head against my chest.  Both our hands were clasped, folded on her chest.   “I like having you back, Bill,” she said, softly.

“I think it’s great having you back, Wendykins.”

“Everybody thinks they’ve gotta make a new name out of Wendy,” she said.  “WendyWoo, WendyBird, Wendell.  Guess I’ll just have to put up with it.”

“Right, WendyBird.”

She snuggled against me.  “You’re off tomorrow, aren’t you, Bill?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to go to the lake with me?”

“You bet.  Haven’t seen you in a bathing suit, yet.”

“Hey, that goes for me with you, too, sweetbuns.”

“I don’t wear Speedos.”

“Not yet, anyway.”  She smiled.  “Bill?”

“What, Wendy?”

“I didn’t want to lose you.  I’m so glad I haven’t.”  She turned her head to look at me.  Her expression was very serious.  “After you, I don’t think I could go back to being a Runaround Sue.”

“I’m glad you didn’t have to,” I said, giving one of her hands a gentle squeeze.

“I like you a lot,” she said, freeing one hand to stroke the side of my face.  “You don’t look like Harrison Ford.  But you’re a good man.”

“Well, thanks, Wen.  And I know why I like you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re like you.”

She turned around on me and gave me a body-to-body hug.  It lasted a long time.  “I know it’ll take some getting used to me, Bill.  But I want us to make it.”

“Uh huh,” said I, rubbing her back from shoulders to waistline.  “Me, too.  I don’t want to miss out on having you, Wendy.”

It was nice just lying there, feeling her chest against mine as she breathed.  The human touch, it seems to mean everything.  Not just sex, but closeness, contact, acceptance.  The feeling that, hey, this beautiful girl is accepting me, and I’m accepting her, too.  The feeling of your emotions going out and her giving them back, amplified, in a circuit.

All right, I’ll say it.

The feeling of love.

“Bill?”

“Um humm?”

“Would you stay over again tonight?”

“Um hmm.”

“I’ve got a strange request.”

“What?”

“Could I get you to sleep in the same bed with me, and not have sex?”

I looked at her.  “Wendy.  What’s the problem?”

“I’m just kind of nervous,” she said.  “About that.  But if I can be with you, maybe I can get past it.  Soon.”

“You’re putting me to the test.”

“I know.”

“Oh, hell,” I said.  “Will there be snuggling?”

“The best.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“Sweet man.”  She kissed me.  I kissed back.  We moved against each other.

Later on, after TV, she introduced me to a Ray Bradbury story from, I think, The October Country.  It was called “The April Witch”.  Big surprise, right?  She read it aloud in a clear voice and did quite a good job on it.  Then she had me read one, a story about a boy whose dog digs up something probably best left where it was.  I don’t think I did as well as she did, but she liked my effort.

Finally, we got in our jammies and went to bed.  I’ll admit that I was a bit put out.  It seemed that she was just dancing too damn much around the topic of how far, when, and what was I supposed to do while she was making up her mind about it all.

But when we folded out the couch, put on the sheets, pillows, and a light cover, and climbed in, I had to admit that it was worth it.  She lay there in the crook of my arm with the lights off.  Her arm was around me, as well.  I knew we’d have to change positions or wake up with our arms numb as wood in the morning.  But right now, I wasn’t too concerned with that.

“You feeling all right?”  I asked.

“Never better,” she said.  “Thanks for obliging me, Bill.  I appreciate it.”

“Why don’t we try to get some sleep?”

“Sure.  Bill?”

“What, Wendy?  What?”

“If I tell you something, will you believe I’m not trying to tease you?”

“I’ll try.”

“If sex with you is better than this, then I’m not dying before I have a chance to try it.”

“Go to sleep, Wendy.  Please.”

Yep, sometimes, whether she tried to be or not, she seemed like a tease.

But somehow, I didn’t mind much at all.

And finally, against all odds, we each drifted off.
 
 

“Joe Boxer?”

No response.

“Billlll?”  She nudged me with her foot.

“Mm hmmm?”  Didn’t have my eyes open yet.

“Get up, Sleepybuns.”  I felt the sensation of her lips on mine and opened my eyes.  She was leaning over me, dressed in a white T-shirt with a “One Tequila Two Tequila Three Tequila Floor” legend on it, blue jean shorts, and her customary bare feet.  I flashed on the kind of girl who’d probably show up on an old Beach Boys album cover.  “I want to fix breakfast for us both, you’re not up, and I’m getting hungry.”

“O—kay,” I said, throwing back the covers with some reluctance.  “Then we go to the lake?”

“First we get you a suitable bathing suit,” she said.  “Then we go to the lake.”

“Suitable by whose standards?”

“Mine, of course.  Get up, get up.”

I raised up.  “I am not wearing Speedos.  No way, Wendy.”

“Oh,” she said in mock horror.  “Then I guess I’ll have to put back that tiny white bikini I was going to wear.  What a shame.  I even had to do a wax job for it.”

“Now, wait a minute!”

“We’ll talk about it after brekkies.  Get out of bed, Bill, I’m starving.”

I hauled myself out of the sack.  “You know, for a girl who says she hasn’t done a lot of dating, you’ve got major training in being a pain in the ass.”

“One of my most endearing traits.  Come help me, slugabed.”

Once out and in pants and a spare apron, Wendy instructed me in the finer arts of making an omelet.  I’m a graduate student in Guy Food, which means anything that can be shoved in a microwave or toaster or comes in a tray with directions, I’m on.  But I’m not limited to that.  I do a mean macaroni and cheese.  She had to take over a couple of times but the results were quite satisfactory.  “Gonna make a chef out of you yet,” she said.

“Men were meant to be lawyers, not cooks,” I said, holding the pan handle in one hand and putting my other arm about her waist.

“Better not tell that to the Iron Chef,” she said, putting her chin on my shoulder.  “He’ll come after you with his secret Ninja throwing dicer knives.”

“You can deflect them with your Amazon bracelets.”

“Hmmm.  I’m a magician, not Wonder Woman.”

“You read comic books?”

“Not much.  Just saw the show in reruns when I was a kid.  I thought she was neat.  Used to...”  She broke and twirled herself around on the floor.   “Never got a costume when I did that.  Kind of disappointing.”

“From your point of view, maybe,” I said.  “Me, I kinda liked it.”

“You would!”

So, after omelets and toast, we went down to the mall to the biggest department store on site.   Wendy, in the aforementioned outfit plus a pair of sandals, led me to the area where they had the swimming trunks.  She picked up a pair of multicolored drawers with wavy patterns.  “Nuh-uh,” I said.

“Good,” she said.  “I was just testing you.  How about these?”  She held up a pair of what we euphemistically called “ball-huggers”.

“Wearing those would practically ensure that we would never have children,” I said.

“Ah.  A bathing suit that’s its own contraceptive.  I love it,” she said, putting them back.  “How’s about...”

“How’s about you let me pick out my own suit, Wendy?”  I reached for a pair of fairly conservative trunks.

“Hey,” she said, putting her hand on my arm.  “I’m paying for it, I deserve to have some input.  Girls like having something to look at, too.”

“Well, if you wanted that, I could have slept without my jammies last night.”  I leered.

“Shut up!”  She whacked me playfully on the arm.  “Keep trying, Bill.  We’ve got to get there before sundown.”

Finally we picked out a pair of black trunks that were tight and small enough to satisfy her and loose and big enough to mollify me.  We got into a small argument before we checked out.  I insisted on paying for half of it, as I knew she wasn’t pulling in big bucks at the library.  She insisted on paying for it all, because it was supposed to be a gift.  I negotiated by asking her if she’d like me to throw a hammerlock on her right then and there in the store.  We went half and half.

Then we got back in the car, in which we’d also stored a cooler with a six-pack of Classic Coke, some chips, and some sandwiches she’d made, and didn’t stop till we got to the lake.  As usual, I couldn’t stop stealing glances at her on the way.  The windows were down and her hair was blowing back in the breeze.  She was wearing sunglasses and the aforementioned T-shirt and shorts and was smiling and hanging one arm out of the window and dammit to hell, she looked like the perfect beach babe, not the Baywatch kind, to be sure, but the kind of girl you’d be proud to have on your arm, be honored to be seen with, and absolutely love to look at.

I didn’t consider myself any great package, but I was glad she seemed to like looking at me, too.

But, hell, with Wendy it was more than just a nice surface.  If that was all there was to it, I would have probably bugged out long before then.  No, I loved her.  Because she was the person she was.  She had a heart, she had a brain, and she was fun to be with.  But it was more than that.  If you’ve ever been in love, you don’t need me to explain the process.  You just know that you’re in it, and all you can do is pray the other party feels the same way.

That’s something you remain unsure of for too long a time.  But you have to put up with it.

At the lake we found a parking space, then disrobed in the car.  She said, “You first,” and I made a big joke deal about unbuttoning my shirt, but she had to help pull my sleeve off.  Then I managed to de-pants myself, with the suit she’d bought me underneath.  “Well?” I said.

She looked at it appraisingly.  “Looks even better in 3-D.”

“Hardy har har.  Now it’s your turn, Brooke Burke.”

“Okay,” she said, with a wicked smile.  With that, she pulled her T-shirt over her head and revealed her upper body in a small white bikini top.   Wendy closed her eyes and smoothed back her hair in an affected manner.  Try and tell me she wasn’t giving me time to watch.

She wasn’t exaggerating about the size of the suit, but it was enough to cover her assets and still leave enough exposed.  Her breasts weren’t huge, but they were well-proportioned to her frame, nicely rounded, and a definite turn-on.  Plus the sight of her tanned skin against the white bra was enough to get my motor in idle right there.  Her stomach was toned without going for the six-pack look of a fitness type and, thankfully, she didn’t go in for a navel piercing.  In case you’re wondering, she had an innie, and her waist did definitely nip in a bit.

Then Wendy unbuttoned and unzipped her blue jean shorts and shoved them down her legs.  The white bikini bottom was pencil-thin where it met the sides of her legs, supporting a triangle of white in front and back that was straight out of a James Bond girl fantasy.  She had thighs, calves, and a butt to die for, as the phrase has it.  I’ve already praised her bare feet and toes enough for you to get the picture.  They completed the total package, and it was everything I’d been dreaming of.  And suspecting.

I was wondering where in the hell she’d gotten that kind of a tan working in the library.

“I go to a tanning place once a week,” she explained.  I must have been too obviously curious.  “Well, Bill?”

“I like the general effect,” I admitted.

“Oh, poo.  Is that all?”

“Nope.”  I pounced her, held her down, rubbed my chin all over her cheeks, and made her shriek and giggle.  Her arms flailed out.  One of them went up against the back of the seat.  The other one whacked the glovebox in just the right place.

Up until then, I didn’t think much of the fact that the glovebox had an easy latch.

The thing popped open and various things spilled out onto the floorboard.  A flashlight, an assortment of maps, my registration, a bottle of Bayer Aspirin, and a small white box.  It was this last that caught her eye.  “Hold on,” she said, and reached out for it.

“Um, Wendy,” I said.  “I’d really like to hit the beach right now, if it’s okay by you.  I mean, really...”

She slid out from under me, sitting on doubled knees with me kneeling on the other half of the front seat.  She was eyeing her prize, then looking up at me.

It was a box of Trojans.

“Sooooo,” she said, slowly.  “Tiger really thinks he’s getting lucky tonight.”

“Wendy, I’m sorry,” I said.  “It’s just a precaution.  I mean, I wouldn’t really...”

She laughed, threw the box at my face, popped open the door, and ran down the asphalt to the grass and sand.  I shoved it back in the glove compartment and shut it, then ran after her, slamming the car door behind me.  The flash and maps were still on the floor, but I didn’t give that much of a damn about them.

Wendy ran, threading her way through the small number of bathers who were walking the sand or lying on blankets, with me in hot pursuit.  Given the temp of the sand that day, I’m not exaggerating.  Some of the guys she passed by took long pauses to admire the view.  I had to say, “Excuse me,” more than once as I dodged them.  She hit the water a few seconds before I did.  When we were far enough out for us both to swim, I went underwater, circling her with one hand stuck up in what I hoped was a manner worth of Jaws.

“Catch me!” she yelled, and struck out for deeper water.  I took up the challenge.

Wendy was a strong enough swimmer, but I had incentive on my side.  I think she wanted the shark to catch her, anyway.  I grabbed both