Synopsis:
In Part Three, I learned that there are no negatives to waking up with a brunette you have just met, especially if she is a real firecracker and you have the whole July 4th weekend ahead of you. At this point in the tale, Stitches is leading the four of us — and our pillion queens — to breakfast, as a passing motorist has identified the unconscious Fast Freddie as a naked, dead body on the lawn. The breakfast run is an effort to give the cops a chance to watch the house for a few hours, to prove we are not ritual killers. For readers just joining Twisted Roads, Part One of this saga can be read here. Part Two can be found here. And Part Three is located here.There are references to actions and phrases in Part Four that can only be explaned by reading Parts Two and Parts Three.
“The Conclusion”
Some say you can tell who the dominant riders are in a line of bikes by the order in which they assemble; the leader being the strongest individual, astride the most powerful bike, thoroughly confident in the choice of route and destination. If the line of bikes before me was a pride of lions, “Stitches” (at the head on a new Ducati ) would be the one who had the first taste of the kill, his choice of women, and his pick of the best spot in the shade in which to nap. That would make “Fast Freddie” (on the Norton) the second strongest, with the second most powerful bike, and the second smartest.
Personal knowledge of the four riders ahead of me shot that theory to hell.
Stitches was in front because he knew the best place for breakfast. Otherwise he neither led nor followed, firm in the belief that his life was his road alone. The other three guys followed, content to passively pursue the next stage of a good time on a three-day weekend. I was voluntarily last because the two-stroke engine on the Kawasaki H2 would occasionally lay down a smoke screen that overpowered the scent of new mown hay, flowers in bloom, and road-kill deer. And when the smoke wasn’t in evidence, the stink of burned two-stroke oil left an invisible presence. This tended to prejudice other riders from trailing in my wake.
Stitches had been right about one thing: his Ducati was smoking nearly as badly as my Kawasaki. (He would later admit to having ignored the break-in instructions, riding the machine on the edge of the redline two hours after rolling off the showroom floor.) I wondered how the Ducati’s exhaust would color “Fast Freddie’s” hangover or Christie’s (the stage-weary exotic dancer) cheery outlook on life.
We rode north on the tight road following the Pennyslvania side of the upper Delaware River. Stitches cut right in Damascus, crossed the bridge into New York, and slid to a stop on the gravel driveway of a general store that served breakfast. This was a regular stop for Stitches as the place offered a decent breakfast, with great coffee, and sometimes had a hot tamale of a waitress. We were barely twenty minutes from the house. (The “fifty miles before breakfast” rule was invented by someone who lived fifty miles away from a diner.)
There is something immensely satisfying about going for breakfast on a motorcycle. Whether you are headed for a “greasy spoon,” a trendy café in some well-preserved tourist town, or the counter at a rural general store, a proper motorcycle breakfast is the most significant part of the day... Not necessarily for the nutritional value but for psychological balance.
While not quite as formal as the Japanese Cha ceremony, a proper motorcycle breakfast has a number of unspoken rules and rituals which are not subject to debate nor change. The ideal spot for a motorcycle breakfast is set back from the road (to reduce noise) and indirectly illuminated (out of respect for those who are hungover).
The waitress will either be a seasoned plate jockey (Kirk Douglas in a wig), who would never approach the table without a pot of coffee attached to her arm, or a hot young thing wearing the kind of uniform that accents a tanned cleavage, a tight waist, or the subtle curves of a naturally sculpted ass. (And even so blessed, this expression of perfection should always have a coffee pot in her hand too.) On the subject of coffee, it should never be more than 10 minutes old in the pot. Professional waitresses have telepathic powers that sense the presence of riders en route to breakfast, enabling them to serve the freshest coffee possible.
The motorcycle breakfast ritual begins with the selection of a table that allows each rider to survey the door. Like a dog circling to lay down, this is thought to be a throwback to the days when bikers were Ostrogoths, Visigoths, or savage Huns, and when watching the door was a matter of self-preservation. Most sociologists agree that this has evolved into a reflex to look over every woman entering or exiting a place, as an on-going comparison in which each rider can revise his wish list. (This is not my philosophy... I am only reporting scientific fact.)
I alone among the men sat with my back to the door. All I wanted to do was look at the brunette who’d ridden on my pillion. She was wearing no make-up and no underwear — as I had liberated her panties and stashed them under the Kawasaki’s seat — and she twisted my DNA into a knot every time I caught her eye. Yet I didn’t want to surrender so early in the game, so I took my time looking the waitress up and down.
Our waitress was an all-American, farm-raised, butter-milk biscuit beauty of 18 years, who appeared like magician’s assistant, with a coffee pot in her right hand. This was her second summer season here, and like Stitches, I occasionally thought to see her naked.
“Do you have decaf?” asked Stitches.
“What’s that?” she asked in mock innocence. “Something they have in the big city?”
“Good answer,” nodded Stitches, never taking his eyes off the menu.
The first part of the motorcycle breakfast ritual is total silence as each rider looks at the menu. The only permissible sound is a spoon quietly stirring cream and sugar into the coffee. Riders use the menu as a kind of eye-chart, to determine how badly out of focus their vision is from the night before, as they will simply order whatever the hell it is they want like line items on a municipal budget anyway.
“I’ll have two eggs over easy, toast, home fries, and two pancakes,” said Stitches.
“That’s ‘Farmer Zed's Favorite Plowboy.’” said the waitress, raising an eyebrow.
“I want the scrambled crumble, with hot peppers, sausage, and onions,” said Louie.
“That’s the ‘Ballet Dancer’s Tutu.’”
“Bring me the ‘Rahway State Prison Anal Sex’ Breakfast Special,” said Fast Freddie.
“That’s a western omelet,” said the waitress.
“How do you know?” he askeh, laughing.
“You look the type” said the waitress with a smile.
The ladies had ordered first and managed to do so without the comic relief. But my brunette, had passed, being undecided when it was her turn. Gesturing at the menu, she looked at me, then at the waitress and said, “I don’t see any of those names on here.”
“I’m just making them up,” said the waitress. “These guys do this to me all the time.”
“Then I’ll have what he usually has,” said the brunette, tipping the menu in my direction.
“That would be a nose bucket of angst.”
“How are you, Lucille?” asked Stitches.
“Better than you,” said the waitress, whose name was Lucille. “You’re still running with these bums.”
“With the prices you charge here I can’t afford real friends.”
“When are you going to take me for a long ride on that Ducati?” Lucille said, over her shoulder, on her way back to the kitchen.
“Yeah,” hissed Smidgeon, making a face. “When are you going to take her for a long ride on that Ducati?”
“Ten minutes after I drop you off at the bar tonight,” said Stitches, with the broad kind of smile that could have been genuine, had it been on an alligator.
Breakfast appeared in record time and Lucille filled us in on the local news. There had been a fire in a barn, an accident on Route 97, and the state cops were setting up a sobriety check-point in town, specifically to catch bikers... Right outside, in fact. But the cops on the Pennsylvania side had a report of a naked, dead body somewhere on the river road.
“That was him,” said Stitches.
Fast Freddie simply smiled.
“You reported a body?” asked Lucille.
“I was the body.”
“They should have buried you.”
It was interesting to see the women together at breakfast. Wearing a tee shirt under a light jacket, Smidgeon could have been your average coed at any university or college. A half dozen guys looked her over when she walked into the place, undressing her with their eyes. They could have rested their respective imaginations by paying the $5 cover charge at the shit hole where she danced. She was a sweet kid, who’d get worn out before her time, by guys whose idea of romance was two beers and a trombone solo.
Thin, angular, chemically blond and perpetually aggravated, Christie was another exotic dancer, though much farther along the road of male disillusionment. If you wanted to see her without a cigarette, you had to catch her on stage, or in the shower. I think she hated the kind of guys she always seemed to find — and hated herself for always finding them — but was terrified at the thought there was at least one level beneath that, waiting for her. She was paired with Fast Freddie, who was less of a human and more of a virus.
“Sindy” aspired to be an exotic dancer but ended up tending bar instead. This was because the owner of the topless joint where she poured beers and splashed shots singled her out for himself. It’s hard to say how that arrangement would have worked, as the last shot he had was between the eyes. She was about 5’6,” had a dynamite body, and a cute face. Louie was the “gin and tonic” at the end of the bar, who asked her if she knew anything about English motorcycles. When she replied “No,” he asked her “if she wanted to learn the hard way.” They’d been together for a year.
“Peaches” — a.k.a Linda M. — was drop-dead gorgeous in the classic biker woman sense of the word. She was a real blond, with a real tan, and a real nice ass, which was framed in an open pair of black leather chaps over skin-tight jeans. She was warm, trusting, pleasant, and dumb as a stump. She adored Weasel and for his 20th birthday, posed on his Moto Guzzi, wearing the chaps only. (Peaches would be unbelievably pissed if she knew Weasel had shown us the Polaroids.) I liked her a lot and once thought about moving on it (before she was with Weasel), when I realized any of my conversations would give her a headache. (She once asked me if I knew that NASA had faked the moon landings... She insisted it was true having read it in the newspaper while waiting to checkout at the supermarket.)
And then there was the brunette... She stood 5’7,” with shoulder-length dark hair, spilling over an olive complexion, framing the kind of face that made me want to write her things... The kind of things that she’d want to save and read to our children 35 years later. She had the body of a swimmer and a wit like a whip. She was well read and well spoken... After prodding a huge plate of breakfast for a bit, she claimed her food appeared to regenerating. “Like mitosis,” I suggested. She looked at me and replied, “What kind of a biker uses the word ‘mitosis’ in breakfast conversation?”
“Yeah,” said Weasel. “The proper expression is ‘fucking mitosis.”
"I didn't know you could get mitosis from sex," said Peaches.
"This is how public opinion gets started," sighed Stitches.
With the breakfast formalities observed, we got to the business at hand: discussing our plans for the rest of day. Initially, the agenda called for shooting clay pigeons, then sampling some of the other weapons in Stitches’ collection. Yet the early morning visit from the authorities questioned the wisdom of that idea. The guys decided to ride...
“Do I need to drop you at the campground,” I said to the brunette, dreading the necessity to ask.
“I want to let my friends know where I am... And I need to get some clothes. Someone stole my panties this morning. Then I’m free for the rest of the day. It’s after 10am now, and my blond friend is barely awake.” The brunette was referring to the other woman who was in the canoe when I first met her, only the day before.
“Won’t she be worried that you’ve been gone all night.”
“Nope,” said the brunette. “I told her yesterday that I would go riding with you if you showed up in the bar...” She then gave me the frankest look I have ever seen in a woman’s eyes.
Women’s eyes are the pinnacle of human evolution. Whether blue, brown, hazel, or the incredibly elusive green, they are stained glass portals to the soul, letting out a special light that permits a man to see in only one direction. And they can be switched on or off at whim. This one had eyes like miniature copies of the rose window from Notre Dame cathedral. I could feel them on me, like a rip-tide of blue, drawing me into the deep water.
We were savoring a final cup of coffee, when a guttural exhaust cough announced a Harley had pulled up outside, and choked. There was nothing significant in that, yet the voices that could be heard a few seconds later turned my blood to ice. I slid my chair around and stared at the door.
I had heard one of those voices on my pillow as the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning for two years. I’d heard it whispering in the dark and laughing in the sunshine... I’d heard it on the beach, in the mountains, and on New York City streets... I’d heard it in the shower... And I’d heard it in a million adolescent dreams.
In walked a guy I once knew as a friend, with my former girlfriend, who he’d been boning every night that I was out catting around. She saw me, paused, and started back out the door. But he stopped her, looked at me, and grinned.
It was the grin that did it.
Despite the fact that I had been having a great weekend... Despite the fact that I’d spent the night in the arms of a red hot brunette less than 72 hours after getting the good news about this bullshit... Despite the fact that the brunette I was with now was every bit as beautiful as this one standing in the doorway... And younger... I went from “Zero to Fuck You” in 2.5 seconds.
I had one thought in my head, and that was to put my fist through this ferret’s face. But I wasn’t good with my fists, so I grabbed my helmet. Nothing gets somebody’s attention like getting whacked in the face with a motorcycle helmet. Some guys act first and think about it later. I was a different person in those days... I’d act and never think about it. I was on my feet and moving in one fluid motion.
So was Stitches... What he had seen and I had missed was the uniformed figure of a New York State Trooper behind the focus of my hatred. The cop was on a donut run from the 4th of July traffic safety check-point from outside. My display of manhood would have been short-lived.
Stitches power-walked me straight out the back door. Louie was right behind us, asking “What the fuck just happened? I thought we only had to hide Freddie from the cops?”
Weasel and Fast Freddie brought up the rear. They were right at home in flash disagreements. Neither had moved, and they didn’t need to fill in the blanks. These two guys had the ethics of cockroaches, the reflexes of cobras, and the loyalty of cocker spaniels. Weasel got his nickname from his negotiating skills with regard to certain pharmaceutical transactions. Fast Freddie wasn’t a big guy. But he could turn into a human Tasmanian devil and easily beat someone half to death with his fists.
The clock stopped with the douche and the stolen woman standing by the counter, with a cop ordering donuts and coffee, and two guys and four women sitting at a table in silence.
Weasel was the first to realize there was nothing to do here. He glanced at the check and put a pile of crumpled bills on the table. “Keep the change,” he said to Lucille.
“You’d have to add another ten to that to get fifty cents change,” she replied.
Weasel looked at Freddie, who added another twenty to the pile, with a shrug. Then they and the ladies slowly exited.
“The chic with that guy used to be Jack’s squeeze,” Peaches said to my brunette pillion candy.
“I didn’t think she was his sister,” the brunette replied.
“Yeah, but did you know she was his old girlfriend? He just found out about it.”
“I felt like I was looking into a mirror,” said the brunette.
My former squeeze was about the same height, the same weight, and the same build as the woman who’d been with me for the past night. They were both brunettes. They were both fairly flat-chested and they were both hot. At that moment, I was pretty hot myself.
Stitches was a pragmatist. “What is the matter with you? You replaced that bitch in one afternoon on a ride to a party. What does that say for your sense of enduring romance? You were gonna clock that cocksucker right in front of that cop. He’d have arrested you, setting Weasel and Freddie off like a couple of hand grenades. The street is crawling with cops. We’d have all ended up arrested. Pull your head out of your ass and think. Now let’s get on the bikes and ride someplace.”
The brunette came up behind me and pinched my ass. “Take me someplace where I’ve never been before... And show me something I’ve never seen.”
“How about rational thought and common sense,” said Stitches. “He’s never seen them either.”
“Did you have someplace in mind?” I asked the brunette.
“Shohola Falls.”
“Shohola Falls? Like on the coffee cup?”
“Like on the coffee cup.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“What about your stuff at the campgrounds?”
“We’ll get it later,” she said, pointing at the road. “Started it up and go.”
The town of Shohola Falls, was less than 60 miles away on the Pennsylvania side of the river. This was a hopping place between 1879 and 1907, when a gravity-operated railroad conferred amusement park status on a bucolic community better suited for trout fisherman. It is my understanding that huge crowds from New York City and Scranton came here on excursion trains run by the long-defunct Erie Railroad, to dance, roller skate, drink, gamble, and run riot during the last years of Queen Victoria. A change in venues, several downward economic shifts, and a hurricane have pretty much reduced Shohola Falls to its pre-1879 status.
The “falls” part of Sholola Falls is on Shohola Creek not far from a dam and is not anywhere near as built up, nor as touristy as Bushkill Falls, billed as the “Niagara of Pennsylvania.” Located at the tip of Pennsylnania state game lands, Shohola Falls is a regular destination for hikers, kayakers, and photographers. It is either too buggy for skinny dipping or too fast moving for easy access. The town is cute, sleepy, and pleasant to look at while maintaining 40 mph. I didn’t see anyplace for an afternoon stop.
Pulled over by a trailhead, I leaned back and asked the brunette, “What did you want to see here?”
She shrugged, and replied, “I wanted to buy you a new souvenir cup from “Shohola Falls.”
I tilted my head back and laughed out loud.
Stitches laughed too. “That cup is about 80 years old. You’d have to find an antique shop. These guys want gas and a cool drink. Let’s head back toward Barryville.”
Riding the back roads of Pennsylvania, near the Delaware can be fun if you’re not in a hurry, if you’re with friends, and if the squeeze on the back is unpredictable good fun. With her head over my left shoulder, the brunette watched the road, sensing when to hang tight and when to relax. When it got hot, she’d lean back against the sissy bar. And when I stopped, she had enough control to keep our helmets from banging together. I reached down and rubbed her leg three times, which drew a long squeeze and a laugh.
Riding becomes automatic after a bit, especially if the road isn’t littered with curves and gravel. I found myself daydreaming... Supposed this summer day became a fall day... And suppose the fall became winter. What would it be like to wake up with this beauty in my apartment on the cliffs of Guttenburg, NJ? Would there be a KZ900, and rides to the ocean? Had I listened, I would have heard the motorcycle gods laughing, and gotten the answers to my questions.
There was a sad, "down at the heels" gin mill not far from Barryville, where we stopped and had little cold bottles of “Rolling Rock.”
“Why is Rolling Rock like having sex in a canoe?” asked Louie. “Because sex in a canoe is fucking close to water, and so is Rolling Rock beer.”
The rest of that run can be typified as your average, hot, July day. Smidgeon and Christie were dancing that night, and wanted to spend a few hours off their feet and off the bikes. The other guys were ready to try some shooting, and I didn’t mind being alone with the brunette. We were close to the campground where she had left her friend and the two of us headed over that way.
“Would you mind waiting at the bar while I take care of a few things?” she asked.
“I’ll run you right up to your tent. I wouldn’t mind seeing your blond friend again. I’ve already seen her taking a piss. We have a history.”
“It’s better this way... I won’t be long.”
She took exactly 90 minutes, during which time I had 5 rum and cokes and got to watch a bartender read the paper. I wasn’t exactly half in the bag when the brunette returned, but I could see it in my future.
“Anyone sitting here,” asked a familiar voice. The brunette slid onto the stool next to mine and took a long sip out of my drink. In fact, she finished it. She was wearing an Ivy League jersey (from Yale) and ratty jeans.
“Would you like one of your own?” I asked.
“Yeah, but not here.”
“I can understand that,” I said, glowering at the bartender.
“Is there rum back at the house?”
“Not more than a few gallons. Is it going to be a long night?”
She kissed my ear and dragged me out to the bike.
“Is this really a fast motorcycle?” she asked.
“It’ll snap your neck in four gears.”
“Show me.”
She wasn’t kidding.
But it was late in the afternoon and traffic was heavy on Route 97. Restaurants like the German joint “Rebers” were doing great business, as were the ice cream stands to be found in each little hamlet. There were thousands of people drifting on the river, in tubes, in canoes, and in large flooby rafts. These folks were headed for shore, and eventually the road. Pick-up trucks roared by towing trailers stacked with rental canoes. And the cops were out.
Still there are a couple of straight stretches along the river, where visibility is good. I passed five cars at one spot, with that two-stroke engine screaming, laying down a nice blue smoke screen behind. The road was curving to the right when I pulled back over — probably at 100 miles per hour — and I could feel that sinister wobble that gave the H2 its reputation as the “Widow Maker.”
I hadn’t had enough rum to get smashed... But the few I swilled were enough to let my balls work the throttle.
“Hang on,” I screamed, chopping the gas but resisting the urge to hit the brakes or down shift. The engine didn’t backfire, but made a series of noises that sounded like nitro-glycerine fueled farts. The road went to the left at that point and I leaned gently in that direction, but nearly too late. We followed the curve on the extreme right edge of the pavement, on the lip of a rock-filled trench.
The brunette was clinging to me like a rash.
With the speedo again reading a sane 55 mph, I took a deep breath and straightened things out.
“That was cool,” she yelled. “Was there something on the road back there?”
“Two weeks in intensive care,” I thought.
I shrugged, and paid attention to business. There was a speed trap in the next town and I would have been busted for sure. That would have been a real pain in the ass as I never bothered to get a motorcycle endorsement on my license in those days.
We found the guys hustling dinner back at the house, while the ladies lounged in various poses. Stitches was grilling steaks over embers in the fire pit. There had been some kind of a bet; the girls won, and so the guys were cooking. Had the guys won, the ladies would have been cooking topless.
The porch was littered with the evidence of two hours of target shooting. A couple of shot guns, an AK47, and an AR16 leaned against the wall, cooling off. Apparently, the ladies outshot the men when it came to the clay pigeons, hence they won the bet.
“Too bad I wasn’t here,” I said. “I’d have made the difference.”
“No doubt,” said the brunette. “May I?” she asked Stitches. She snapped open one of the over and unders, checked to see it was unloaded, and in one move snapped it back, tracking an imaginary clay bird in flight. Her stance was perfect.
“I guess you learned that at Yale,” said Stitches.
And for the first time, she didn’t have a clever retort.
Everyone was going to cheer Smidgeon and Christie that night. I found the thought of being alone with this brunette, in this little country house above the river, to be more intoxicating than the rum I’d been drinking. Yet when the bikes pulled away, the silence was overwhelming. I knew the taste of this woman’s lips, the scent of her skin, and the feel of her mouth on my body; and yet, I knew damn little else about her. I thought of Humphrey Bogart in the same dilemma with Ingrid Bergman in Casa Blanca, and resorted to his lines.
“So who are you? What did you do? And who were you before?”
“What difference does it make? I met you and you intrigued me... Whatever happened to you in your entire life up until yesterday made me say, ‘This guy is worth spending a couple of days with...’”
“It’s not really a day yet,” I said. “I only met you last night.”
“How is it going so far?”
“I’m having fun...”
“But...”
“I really like you... I want to know more about you,” I said.
“If all you could ever know about me started from yesterday, would you want me to leave now?”
I didn’t have anything to say. Not because the obvious answer was “No;” but because I had never thought about anything like this before. And I sensed that I had revealed the shallowness of my emotional imagination in asking her anything at all.
“Just think,” she said, “your entire opinion of me is based on what you know about me right now.”
We were sitting side by side on the porch steps and she leaned against me, with her head on my shoulder. The scent of her hair had been intensified by the heat of the helmet she’d worn all day, and I didn’t want her to move.
“Okay... You can ask me one question.”
In spite of the fact that I was a male, I knew this was a test. What question could I ask that showed I understood her point?
I have always called women by the first thing that came to mind after meeting them. One had been “Kitten.” Others were “Princess, Lambkin, Tsunami, Texas,” and “Swig.” I had been calling this one “Cricket.” This woman and I had shared a bike, a bed, a night and a morning — and I didn’t even know her real name. But I also wanted to know her age and where she came from. And I wanted to ask about the Yale shirt. But I knew that asking any of these questions would mark me as an average man... And the law of averages wouldn’t apply here.
I finally asked, “Would you like a rum and Coke?
It took a second... But she slowly smiled and nodded. I had passed.
We hardly spoke at all after that. What was there to say?
Have you ever noticed how fast an hour goes by when you want the day to last forever? It got dark before I was ready... And my only objection to the darkness was that it brought us closer to the return of the others. The moon eventually made its appearance, and again tinted the river silver.
“Want to go down and touch the moonlight?” I asked.
“Can we?”
“Easily.”
Stitches’s folks owned a half-mile of the shoreline on the Delaware, and I knew a path to the water they always kept mowed. I put two cans of Coke and a bottle of rum in the bag on the sissy bar.
“Hop on.”
“No helmet?”
“It’s real close.”
We rode down the driveway and tuned right on the road, looking for a little overgrown switchback on the left. This quickly became a grassy path that meandered to the water’s edge.
“Hop off and steady the bike by the seat,” I said.
The soft ground was just firm enough to hold the Kawasaki upright on the center stand. There was a large rock at the water’s edge, and we sat there, each holding a can of Coke to which a couple of ounces of rum had been added.
In its natural state, water has a cool, clean scent that doesn’t really smell like anything. This scent mixed with the aroma of the path’s cut grass, and the drifting smoke from the smoldering embers up by the house. The river bank smelled like the height of summer.
The brunette put the Coke down and removed the Yale jersey. Then she kicked off her jeans and stood in the moonlight. Her silver body reminded me of an art decco statuette.
“Coming?” she asked.
The water was warm in the shallows, and the rocky bottom, though smooth, was hard on the feet. Moonlight has an elusive quality; it is always just beyond reach, even in the stillest water. She swam toward it in every direction, and tried to catch it in water cupped in her hand. There was another large rock under the surface not far from shore. I could sit on it, and still be largely submerged. She climbed into my lap, and wrapped her legs around me. She put me inside her and started to gently move up and down, cupping my face in her hands, covering my mouth with hers. I started to meet her half-way, pausing at the end of each thrust, until we were writhing and contracting like an alien muscle creature, emerging from the water. I tensed into a bellow that must have been heard in town, while she stifled a scream by biting my shoulder.
Then we just held each other for a long time.
We stepped out of the water by the light of fireflies and embraced again by the bike. There was something special about this for both of us, that neither one would spoil by speaking.
“I didn’t think to bring a towel,” I said finally. “You can use my shirt if you want.”
“The sweaty shirt you’ve been wearing all day?” Then she picked it up and sniffed it. Then sniffed it again with a deeper breath. “Sweat, cigars, and angst,” she said.
“I don’t think anyone has ever done that with one of my shirts and lived.”
“You mean to tell me you don’t intend to sniff my stolen panties.”
I opened the seat on the bike and pulled them from the tail piece. “These will need recharging soon. They’re all sniffed out.”
Though cooler than the afternoon, the night was warm and we sat on the rock in the moonlight, passing the rum bottle back and forth. When we stood up again, you could clearly see the outline of her perfect wet ass on the stone in the moonlight. I stepped into my jeans and unlaced boots, pulling the shirt over my head. It was sticking to my body.
She jammed her boots, jeans and jersey, along with the rum, into the ruck sack on the sissy bar. I laughed and started the bike. She climbed on and tapped my leg three times. I laughed again, and guided the bike up to the house. She dismounted, collected her stuff, and went inside. That was the first and only time a naked women has ridden pillion on my bike. Ten minutes later, Stitches and crew returned.
They pulled up with all the elan of a three car pile-up. It was then I noticed that the pillion behind Fast Freddie was empty.
“What the hell happened to Christie?” I asked. “Did she fall off.”
“As you are aware, it is the custom of grateful patrons to slip a dollar into the ‘G’ string of exceptional dancers,” said Stitches. “Well some drunk dropped twenty nickels in Christie’s ‘G’ string.”
Stitches was laughing so hard I thought he was going to choke.
“Let me guess... She yelled and Fast Freddie beat the shit out of the guy.”
“Oh she yelled all right... And then she saw that Fast Freddie was chatting up another dancer and never looked up. She threw the change at Fast Freddie like shrapnel. And you know how they have that bucket of water on stage for the wet tee shirt number... She threw that next.”
“Christie threw a bucket of water on Fast Freddie in the bar?”
“Actually, the water was first and the bucket followed. It was pandemonium. It was the first time the bouncer had to restrain one of the dancers,” said Stitches. “She is spending the night in the talent trailer.”
“Freddie should have said something to the guy,” said Smidgeon.
“Like what?” asked Stitches. “It wasn’t like the guy dropped fifty cents in her ‘G’ string.”
“How was your night, Jack?” asked Peaches.
“Quiet and nice.”
“Really?,” she replied. “That’s good. Stitches said you’d be pounding freshwater clam on the half-shell. Where is Cricket?”
“Stitches has no faith in mankind. She's inside.”
Louie threw some wood on the embers and built up the fire, but this group called it an early night. I found the brunette in bed already asleep. I slid in next to her and ran my hand over her back. Sometime later, I woke up to find her on my pillow, facing me. Her deep, rhythmic breathing told me she was asleep.
It was barely 5:30am and the grey light of dawn was leaking in the window, when I opened my eyes again and found myself alone. This time, her clothes and shoes were gone. The bedroom door was open and I could hear movement in the hall. She tip-toed in from the bathroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and kissed me.
“You have to take me back to the campground,” she said. “Now, before anybody gets up. Please.”
“There’s two more days left in this weekend,” I said. “It’s barely Sunday.”
“My weekend is over today,” she said. “Please take me back, or I’ll have to ask one of the other guys to do it.
“They won’t.”
“Stitches will,” she said.
And I knew he would.
“Why do you have to go back now? It’s 5:30 in the morning.”
“Because I should have stayed there last night,” she said. “And I wanted to be with you.”
“Tell me what the problem is and we can fix it.”
“Nobody ever fixes anything. They just find easier ways to leave the wounded. I was awake when the guys rode in last night. Do you think Christie is hurting any less than you are today, just because she’s used to it? Christie is only two years older than Smidgeon. Did anybody put nickels in Smidgeon's 'G' string?”
I had nothing to say to that. But I was thinking I'd run a crdit card through Smidgeon's 'G' string, if I could hold it in my teeth.
“You met your reality at breakfast yesterday,” she whispered. “I get to meet mine today. I got you through yesterday, and this weekend was what I needed to get though today. Besides, you're not done with your old girlfriend yet... Not by a long shot.”
“How will I get in touch with you?”
Once again, she gave me the frankest look I’d ever received from a woman. Then she said, “Write your number down and give it to me on the bike.” And I knew this was a lie she thought I needed to hear.
She was by the bike when I stepped out and handed her the slip of paper. She put it in her pocket and said, “Can you start this thing quietly. I’m not up to saying good-bye to everybody, and I really had a good time.”
I mounted the bike, turned it around, and held it on the sloping driveway with the front brake. “Get on,” I said quietly. When she was settled, I shifted into second gear, switched on the ignition and released the brake. The engine surged into life when I popped the clutch at the end of the driveway. Cold and cranky, the H2 ran like total shit for a mile before firing on all three. I rode at the absolute speed limit, hoping something would occur to me before Barryville. Nothing did.
With less than a mile to go, the brunette tapped my leg three times. I held her arms around me with my left hand, and then we were there. All of her stuff was in her bag and she was off the bike in a flash. I got a hug. She looked me dead in the eye and said:
“It’s Donna.”
Then she was gone.
I rode back in utter anguish, cursing the motorcycle gods every inch of the way. I missed the bridge at Narrowsburg, and I was tempted to miss the one to Damascus too. But I hooked the left at the last minute and realized the general store was open. The situation called for breakfast for one. (Had I gone back to the house, I’d have been rip-roaring drunk in less than an hour.)
“Where’s everybody else?” asked Lucille.
“Sleeping. I have a thing for riding at first light.”
I ordered coffee and apple pie, then asked if there was a Sunday paper. There was one from Scranton (as if anybody would give a shit what happened in Scranton). There was a lull in the breakfast action, and Lucille sat down with coffee of her own.
“Were you really gonna smack that guy in here yesterday?” she asked.
“It occurred to me.”
“It occurred to the cop too. He was going to talk to you about it. I told him that guy owed you a lot of money, that you lent it to him for food and clothes for his kids, and that he used it to buy a Harley.”
“Did you really?” (I couldn’t help but notice that Lucille had eyes like miniature stained glass windows too.)
“Yupper... You and Stitches are friends. The cop asked me how I knew all this, and I told him you were a friend of my brother’s. Well they pulled that guy over in the safety check, and found he was on the suspended list someplace. They took that bike away on a tow truck. Then that guy got into a big fight with that woman and he left her here. She was drinking coffee at this very table all afternoon.”
“What happened to the woman?”
“She asked about a bus out and there’s only the one. So she checked into the hotel in town. Old Pete ran her up there in his car.”
“What time is the bus out of here today?”
“Not until late... Being a holiday an all.”
“Can I get two of those apple turnovers and two regular coffees to go.”
“Sure.”
“Lucille, would you like to take a long ride on a red hot Kawasaki some time?”
“You’re cute, Jack, but I go riding with Stitches... A lot.”
"That smug-faced son of a bitch," I thought. "He's already seen her naked."
A piece of white paper fluttered to the floor when I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket to pay. Lucille picked it up and looked at it. “Is this number important?” she asked.
It was mine.
My former girlfriend of four days was surprised to hear my voice on the phone in her room. (I was surprised the room had a phone.) She was more surprised to find me at her door, a minute later, with hot apple turnovers and fresh coffee. I got a life and death hug, and a stream of hot tears on the back of my neck. In that moment, I wanted her back more than anything. It would be six months before I realized that there is never any going back. And I spent years thinking about those two words whispered to me on Rt.97 in Barryville.
Epilogue...
It’s 35 years later and the Kawasaki is long gone, replaced by a BMW. Of the four guys I rode with that weekend, one is missing; one died in a bar fight; one is a lawyer; and one is a successful, semi-retired businessman. Smidgeon, Christie, Peaches, and Sindy have faded into history. Things were never the same with my former girlfriend, and we grew to hate each other in new and creative ways. It took me years to meet a woman who made me forget all of the others, or at least who rendered their memories painless. I traded my youth for arthritis and a hatred for the disingenuousness of corporate America. I have a computer loaded with useless programs that aggravate the hell out of me. One of them is FaceBook. It is the venereal disease of social networking. Just yesterday I got a message from someone who wrote: “Did you ever have coffee in a cup from Shohola Falls? It was signed “Donna.”
©Copyright Jack Riepe 2011
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