A Change of Needs (22 page)

She lived in Archer Lodge, a small community in Johnston County. Divorced within the past two years, she had moved to North Carolina from Florida when her son had enrolled at an area university, she had a daughter who was a couple of years older than Jake’s boy. She was the kind of woman that the silence was never awkward or uncomfortable, and that alone made her unique. When she finally let him undress her, it was one of those events he’d remember. The Native American could ride like a
reverse cowgirl
, and when she
came
it was like a stone skipping across the water, the orgasms rolling one into the next, growing in intensity and closer together before the final sinking plunge. Like watching the sunset, you could see it disappearing on the horizon, and then it was gone, and beautifully so.

“
I’m gonna call you pebble,
” he said grinning, “
Because…?
” she asked. Not wanting to tell her the real reason for fear it would inhibit her, “
Because you’ve aged well,
” he laughed. She thought to hit him, but then he followed the quip with a more acceptable explanation, “
because you’re cool and smooth, and you haven’t allowed life to make you jagged.
” “
If I’m pebble, I guess that makes you rock,
” she responded, tugging at his
hardness
. “
Rolling stone might be more accurate,
” he confessed. “
How ’bout you just call me ‘again’?”
he said. “
How ’bout I just call you ‘often’?”
was the reply.

She liked the man, he was strong enough to be gentle. Beyond the literal implication that he was physically strong enough to be gentle in
handling
her, but in that sense he was secure enough in his manhood that he didn’t need to posture or pose as such, and it allowed him to be tender. She was right there, in his life, unencumbered, uncomplicated and available, but he wasn’t, not in the way she needed him to be. He had approached it from the very beginning like every other occasion where he had seen a woman more than once, telling her upfront that all he had to offer was friendship, he needed his freedom, and she of course was afforded hers. After all friendship was the firmest foundation of all, and out of it many things can grow, and things began too, but it wasn’t long before that emotional claustrophobia reared its ugly head.

By early October they were spending most of their free time together. She could sense there was an obstacle, he hadn’t said as much, but he didn’t need to, but she was content and not in a hurry, and they would grow closer, or as close as they could. All he knew was that for the first time since the affair had begun he felt an outside draw, it was a confusing time for our man Jake. He’d desire, but perhaps not deserve her, but he wouldn’t
play
her either.

He would search himself for reasons not to give in to the relationship, but all he really needed was the one reason …Rae. It was incredibly fucked up to be sure, but not unlike him. He’d heard the proverbial “click,” and felt that fateful sensation that accompanies stepping on a landmine, knowing it was going to go off, but not
when
or
whom
it would hurt. It was exactly the sort of situation he had purposely and desperately avoided, yet there he was, quietly stuck between a
pebble
and a hard place.

He hadn’t seen Rae in the month since meeting Nicole. It was a busy time for both, children heading back to school, and Glen was around more than usual. Aside from that he had long since learned the proper balance in his communication with her, too much had the effect of creating that appearance of neediness and the resulting apprehension and distance would follow as a consequence. If he waited, she would initiate the contact, and since he had met Nicole he was finding himself …distracted? He was still hungry for time with Rae, would’ve made himself available anytime the opportunity arose, but he wasn’t starving like he had and she sensed it. Someone else, someone he wasn’t talking about had changed the tone of his voice, the
stray
dawg was being fed elsewhere, and it made her insecure. It would seem some women aren’t much different than men in the sense that she might not have wanted him for herself as much as she didn’t want someone else to have him, she damn sure didn’t want to lose him. He was her biggest fan…

The flight from Raleigh to New Orleans went through Charlotte. The airport code on the ticket said MSY, it stood for Moisant Stock Yard, better known as Louis Armstrong International Airport. We all know it by a number of different nicknames, the “Big Easy,” “NOLA,” “Naw’leans,” home to “Fat Tuesday” and Bourbon Street where vice was not only welcomed but
expected
. It was an enchanting, exotic place, one of those few cities in the U. S. where you felt as though you were visiting another country all together. Or at least that’s how the boy from North Carolina who had never been further south than Charleston perceived it. The people, the culture, the language …all
seductive
.

Rae had family there, her mother’s side, they weren’t native to the area, but longtime residents, and she had also gone as part of an outreach through her father’s church. The destruction of Katrina in 2005 had devastated the city, but part of what makes New Orleans special is its resiliency. Geographically it was always vulnerable, like a glass chin on a big-mouth little man daring someone to take a punch, the hurricane had, and the region had not entirely recovered from the blow.

She had been there nearly a week, but before she left Raleigh had invited Jake to come and spend the last weekend with her. In retrospect she must’ve sensed him drifting and the invitation was an attempt to bring him close again …and he didn’t need much coaxing either. He wouldn’t tell Nicole anything other than he was going out of town for a long weekend. It was an asshole thing to do, but all the relationship required of him. He was a follow your heart kind of man and his took him to New Orleans.

He would arrive early Thursday, take a cab to the Bed and Breakfast he had made reservations at, and they would spend the next three days as an ordinary couple, or as ordinary as their circumstances would allow. As difficult as it had been to be apart for those long periods, it can be
more
difficult to be in close proximity to someone you have such strong feelings for and to have to keep them on a leash, to not allow yourself to act on the affection that seemed so natural. They had the kind of chemistry that’s hard not to notice, and the weekend presented the first real opportunity to be uninhibited and not conceal it. He knew what she was in need of, what their relationship was in need of, some space beyond the confines the necessary secrecy of the affair demanded, some romance and intimacy beyond the sex, some semblance of what a normal healthy relationship between a man and a woman looked like. She’d never really had it in her life. It was what it was, and he was intent to make the most of it.

New Orleans was indeed a naughty place. He had done his homework ahead of time and made an informal agenda, his hope to make the occasion special for her, Jazz club, Cajun cuisine, perhaps even a fortune-teller. Part of that agenda also included Scarlett. It had now been a year since that first encounter at Leon’s. In that time, among the many things she had confessed and confided to our man, she had expressed her desire to explore a sexual experience with a woman. Jake had noted in her emails a correspondence with an individual named Jamie, and he could never accurately assess the gender but he suspected Jamie was a female simply by the tone, or maybe it was the
pink
font …but it seemed to have never come to fruition, in part because of the chaos he had created in sending her the text.

She had explained in great detail how she wanted to experience such an encounter with Jake, but their activities were so unpremeditated it didn’t allow for the cultivation of a third party, so it had remained a fantasy, and she seemed to have abandoned the idea. But he had never forgotten, and wanted to provide her the opportunity. It was easy enough, escort services in New Orleans were abundant, and he arranged it in advance online.

He knew the type of woman she was attracted to, he’d been a witness to it, Nicole would have been such a woman …but her river didn’t flow in that direction. He knew that for her to thoroughly enjoy herself it needed to be someone attractive, but not more attractive than her …and someone younger, but not too young, and someone who
could carry on an intelligent conversation
… He found that in Scarlett, a buxom redhead originally from Texas, a graduate student taking a rather extended break from school, now working part-time as an escort for an upscale service in New Orleans who was “
open to couples.
” He anticipated the evening could get a bit too lively for their quaint accommodations at the Inn so he rented a room for the evening at an upscale French Quarter Hotel in advance without her knowledge.

They had hardly gotten out of the room the first day, making up for lost time. Friday, however, it was essential to his script that they get out and see the city. Following their dinner reservations, they proceeded to a Jazz club of some notoriety. It was there that they would meet Scarlett. He would receive a text confirming her arrival but she was hard to miss, he was undoubtedly the luckiest man in the room with the two beauties at his side,
all the worlds a stage, and we are merely players …
and the scenario that had been discussed played out perfectly.

The whole thing would take place without Rae ever knowing Jake had paid for the woman’s company, and it was essential to her taking pleasure in it. He would never forget the wicked grin on her face as she took his hand while he
completed
the redheaded task on the agenda. Nor the look on hers as the woman devoured her, an involuntary pained expression of joy at the moment of climax, “
I love you
” she whimpered, her eyes fixed on the man she wished was someone else, still our man Jake, only that she wished he was someone more than who he was relegated to be in her life. It was erotic, loving …and tragically genuine.

For an ordinary couple such an occasion might have represented a last ditch effort to rekindle something fading, an absence of intimacy or erosion of it, but for these two it was galvanizing. A thing of beauty, and well worth the $800 it cost the hardworking man and for him to have been the first man she would ever experience it with …priceless. The gift not being in the money it cost but the illusion that it had all happened by chance, and thus the true
gift
lay in the fact she would never know it was a
gift
.

The following day couldn’t have been anything other than anti-climatic. We’ve all been there as the last day of our vacation winds down and we begin to think about our return to the real world. Every great exhale and sigh of relief in life followed by an equally expansive inhale, and the influx of awareness reminding us about the responsibilities and life we are returning to. And so it was for Jake and Rae, melancholic. She had that look about her, the tentativeness of a prisoner on work release who knows that the respite is temporary, the appearance of normalcy an illusion, and they’ll have to return to their “cell” shortly. He wanted to fix it for her, but it was beyond him.

They had passed by the fortuneteller’s shop several times in the past couple of days, the last item on his agenda. They stood studying their reflection in the large window, Jake clutching her hand like a child clutching his mother’s on the first day of school, knowing he would have to let go. She gently squeezing his, aware she could not hold onto him indefinitely, neither wanting to step inside for a glimpse of the future, or seemingly already in possession of the knowledge.

The affair would always be like that lima bean in a Dixie cup we all grew in 1
^st
or 2
^nd
grade, excited at the fact that it had emerged from the small amount of soil provided, but confined and constricted, it would never be more than just
a lima bean
in a Dixie cup. And it was apparent to them both, they didn’t need a crystal ball, the shop window would suffice. So in lieu of the pretense of some future other than what they both foresaw, they passed on the fortune telling and opted for tattoos instead. It would serve as a symbol of their connection, not the images, but the act, a branding ceremony of secret significance if you will.

He got one he had long ago decided upon, only waited for the proper occasion. It was an
ouroboros
, the image of the snake eating itself. Plato had described such a creature as the first living thing in the universe, entirely self-sufficient and subsisting upon itself. A recurring theme found in some form or variation in nearly every religion and culture, symbolic of rebirth and renewal …the circle of life, and of life everlasting. But to Jake, it simply looked to him as though the snake was his own worst enemy, devouring himself, the epitome of his experience as he saw it. The tattoo represented an
awareness
of the fact, not a
celebration
of it, and that was what held meaning for the man. A souvenir of the weekend, a postcard of sorts forever inked on his being, draped over his left shoulder it was large and enigmatic like her place in his life.

She was at an internal crossroads, a four-way stop sign in a sense. She didn’t want to get something common, and yet what she wanted it to represent,
change
, was especially so. Probably the most common tattoo women get at such a juncture in their lives is a tattoo of a butterfly, symbolizing the emergence and evolution of themselves, coming into their own, but Jake talked her into getting a caterpillar instead. It gave the implication of change, represented the same transformation, only it would leave the mystery of what that “
change
” would look like unanswered. She liked it, and the fact that he understood her so well. A fittingly incomplete circle, it found a home around her bellybutton, small and discreetly placed like their relationship, hidden in plain sight. Her children would love it. Glen, like most everything else about his wife, simply wouldn’t get it.