Incident in San Francisco

“I got a letter from my seester in Fresno. She’s going to have a baby thees weenter, and they’re having a party thees weekend. Do you theenk Roberto and me, we could go?” she asked.

“Oh, sure, yes, Mercedes, you guys go and have fun. I’m going up to San Francisco for a couple of days, but I should be back by Thursday, so tell Roberto to go ahead and leave Thursday, or even Wednesday, if you want. Go and have fun, and I’ll see you back here Monday or Tuesday”, replied Monty, so relieved to have the conversation over with that he was hardly conscious of what he was saying. Good thing she didn’t ask for anything really important, he thought. I probably would have said yes just to get out of here.

“Oh, thank you, Meester Marteen!” she exclaimed, but Monty had already turned and was heading rapidly toward the house.

“You’re welcome, Mercedes”, he tossed back over his shoulder, afraid to look back. Afraid that like Lot’s wife, he’d turn into a pillar of salt - or a pillar of something, he thought. And thank you, Mercedes, he thought also, for a sight I will never forget. I sure hope Roberto knows just what a lucky man he is.

But there was no lust in his heart. Like a car buff who can walk around a Ferrari and devour it with his eyes, yet never touch it, and perhaps not even desire to drive it, Monty could admire the perfection of the girl he’d just seen without wanting to possess her. Of course, if she were unmarried and otherwise unattached, and if she were a also little older or more sophisticated so that she considered them equals, he would have been interested, and certainly strongly attracted physically. But he had always been a reader, and perhaps the old English novels with their outmoded morals had provided some influence. His parents were not Puritans, but they had held strong ideas about right and wrong, and those precepts had been handed down to their son. As a result, Monty had never engaged in the locker-room macho sexual talk of many of his teenage peers, and had always treated women with respect. Mercedes was married, and that put her entirely out of reach, even as far as thinking about her in a sexual way.

Later, Monty let the hot water of the shower relax his muscles, and a lifetime habit of not wasting water made him turn off the stream while he lathered up. Still tumescent, his body responded to the soaping, so Monty shrugged and resolutely turned his thoughts to other girls, other times, as he gave himself up to pleasure. If God didn’t want humans to play with their genitals He shouldn’t have placed them where they fall so readily to hand, he thought drowsily.

The shower over, Monty rustled up some dinner and sat down with a book. He had a couple of hours to kill before the wild boar would head down out of the hills for a feed of prime baled barley hay. Monty intended to see that it would be his last meal.

Chapter 6

It was almost 6 o’clock before Laura was able to fire off the e-mail note to Quality Assurance to tell them that the report modification was ready for their testing. Her testing, as always, had been so thorough that she was sure that they would be able to approve it and move it into production. However, she did notify them that she’d be in San Francisco for the next three days, but would religiously check her voice mail and e-mail every day to follow up on any problems.

Laura had no way of knowing that events in San Francisco would keep her from following through on that promise.

After the e-mail note had been dispatched she quickly brought up each hidden window on her PC screen and closed them down until the final option to shut down or restart was presented. She clicked on the option to lock the computer, but not shut down. Like most PC users, Laura had read all the arguments pro and con about the merits of turning the power off versus leaving the machine in a quiescent state when not in use. Her nature rebelled against leaving an electrical appliance turned on overnight, or in this case, for five days. She had finally been swayed by the argument that shutting down and restarting the computer caused the circuit boards and solder to expand and contract, and electronic equipment was now so energy-efficient that the power wasted was negligible. However, unlike most users who left their machines on permanently, she did not use a screen saver which continuously displayed some kind of random design or picture on the screen. To Laura’s mind, setting the monitor to display a totally black screen when not in use was much more sensible. Besides, Laura had spent too many hours working on a computer to get any enjoyment out of doing playful things with one.

Her already-neat desk was made immaculate when she whisked the last stack of papers into a top drawer. From the bottom left drawer she pulled out a pair of comfortable, yet stylish, low black walking shoes. An identical pair in brown remained in the drawer. In the winter, these would be replaced by serviceable, yet stylish, walking boots, again matching pairs in black and brown. She also took out a small string bag which was used to carry her office shoes, if she was using a purse which wasn’t roomy enough. If she had a large handbag, the string bag went inside one shoe, and the shoes went into the handbag.

With a practiced gesture, Laura reached around behind to slip the shoe off the slim foot at the end of the slender leg which had been bent back and up at the knee, a very nice knee which was several inches below the hem of the straight black skirt. At a little over five and a half feet tall, Laura had legs which were long enough to allow wearing skirts a few inches above the knee without the skirts appearing too short for the office. They were also very good legs, and while she had no desire to attract unwanted male attention, she also had no intention of hiding her body under long, bulky clothes. She might be facing 30 in the very near future, but she had a figure which was more than a match for that of any of the little eighteen-year-old clerks who flitted about the building. Her taste in office clothes tended toward suits, but suits so well tailored that the jackets accentuated rather than hid the curves of her body, both the outward curves of chest and hips and the inward curve of the waist. Skirts were either straight, as today’s, or occasionally flared, a flare which caused the hem to flip as she walked briskly to some destination.

Laura had only a slight inkling of the effect she had on the males in the office. She would have been astonished to know that the combination of that great figure wrapped in a snug-fitting suit, with skirts worn above the knee, caused most of the men in the office to suffer silently whenever she was within sight. Conditioned to avoid even a hint of sexual harassment, they never dared to make any verbal comments, not even to compliment her. And the self-paced course on the subject, which Human Resources had provided via their computer network and required them to complete, had even defined “staring at another person’s body” to be harassment.

One of the men was reminded of a high school English class in which the teacher, an elderly gray-haired woman, had attempted to explain the concept of an oxymoron. From somewhere in her reading she had dredged up the phrase, “pleasing pain”, an unfortunate example when presented to teenagers obsessed with sex and losing one’s virginity. But pleasing pain was what many of her male co-workers experienced daily. It was a pleasure to be treated to a mere glimpse of cleavage in the V-neck of a severe white blouse as Laura leaned over a desk to point out something, or to admire, with surreptitious glances, those elegant long legs. But it also brought pain, because most of the men were married, a couple were gay, and the few singles who had the courage to ask her out had not sparked enough interest from Laura for a further date, so they enjoyed the view but suffered from the unrequited lust it stirred.

As she stepped out the door, Laura glanced back into the office before she switched off the light. Satisfied that it appeared as unused as a newly-entered hotel room, she pulled the door closed and hastened out of the building. Her flight left Pierre Trudeau airport at 10 tonight, and she still had to pack. Somehow work always took longer than planned - she had expected to slip away an hour early today, but the same dedication to getting the job done which led her to be at work today, instead of using it as a travel day, had kept her at her desk until late.

The sidewalks, which had been so busy when she had looked down at them earlier, were now more sparsely populated. Some people, like Laura, were leaving work late, some were emerging from pubs after a quick drink or two before heading home, and a few were on their way to an early movie. But this was the lull between the working day and the playing night, and there was still an hour or so before the evening crowds would appear to fill the brightly-lit streets and sidewalks with life again. She was able to walk briskly without having to dodge other pedestrians, and like most Montrealers on foot, wasted little time waiting for traffic lights to change. The traffic was light at this hour, the few cars racing homeward at 45 miles an hour, and with long practice, Laura estimated their speed and distance. Like a duck hunter leading a distant bird before calculating when to pull the trigger, she judged when to step off the sidewalk to clear the rear bumper of the passing car, and make it safely to the other curb before the next vehicle came along. The daytime population downtown contained no children or old people, and accidents involving pedestrians and vehicles so rare that they merited front-page news for days. The drivers gave no quarter: it was up to the jaywalkers to be alert enough and quick enough to cross the street in mid-block or against a light. Like the speeding traffic, these lawbreakers were mostly ignored by the police. Everyone’s concern was rather to move as many people about the city as quickly as possible, and the people seemed capable of handling it safely, whether afoot or behind the wheel.

Even when traffic was heavy, Laura was able to make good time. She lived and worked at opposite corners of a large five-by-ten-block rectangle, and so had many alternate routes if one path was blocked by a stream of cars or a red light. Her little red Supra stayed in the apartment’s underground garage except on weekends. She saw little sense in driving to and from work every day, paying the exorbitant downtown parking fees, and then paying further to join a health club to use a treadmill. Instead, her daily walk gave her exercise, time to think about problems at work, the opportunity to experience life in the city, and even more money to salt away in one of her several investment accounts.

When she arrived home and opened the door of her apartment, it too, like her office, looked like an unused hotel room. The furnishings were unlike those in any hotel, though. Laura had eclectic tastes, and had amassed the artwork and furniture slowly, buying unusual pieces when she found them. They had to go with what was already there but did not have to match it. Like a well-planned museum exhibit, each piece was unique, interesting in itself, but blended perfectly with the whole. Although neat and tidy, the rooms did not have a sterile appearance but rather invited one to sit and enjoy. They had looked much more lived-in during the brief month that Bryan had lived here. Too much lived-in, and that was why Bryan no longer lived here.

“You’re such a neat-freak”, he had said once, only half-teasing.

“I just like order in my life”, Laura had replied. But for one usually so sure about her decisions, she still had nagging doubts about the break-up of that relationship.

Like all love affairs, it had started off wonderfully. A girl in the office had invited Laura to a Friday night party being given by friends, and she had decided to go along. The friends turned out to have a great place for a party, which they jokingly referred to as a penthouse. Actually, the apartment builder, who was also the owner, had used some latitude in interpreting the plans. What was to have been merely a small utility room beside the elevator shaft terminus on the flat roof became a one-bedroom apartment. A sizable pre-Christmas gift to the building inspector allowed this minor revision to the approved plans to go unnoticed. The landlord gained another rental unit, and a couple of Yuppies found a relatively inexpensive apartment just above St. Catherine Street with fabulous view of the city from the top of a twelve-story building.

Laura had noticed Bryan immediately. He was quite good-looking, but did not have the arrogant air of some handsome men who believe that their male-model looks should automatically result in adoration and deference from less-favored individuals. She found herself close enough to him a little later to overhear him talking with a couple of others, and she liked what she heard. He made witty, intelligent comments, and when supporting his side of an argument, did not raise his voice or ridicule the other’s opinions, unlike many when the first few wine bottles have completed the journey from refrigerator to recycle bin.

Wither through accident or artifice, or a little of each (for Bryan had also noticed this woman, a stranger to him, who was well above average both in height and in looks), they had found themselves in the same little group. When they had each made a few contributions to the conversation and had individually decided that the other appeared to offer something more than just a strong physical attraction, a couple of people had wandered off to refill their glasses, and they found themselves alone.

They made the usual introductions, names, occupations, where they worked - he was a corporate law lawyer with one of the major insurance companies headquartered in Montreal. When he learned what her field of expertise was he had some questions about difficulties encountered with software on the home computer he’d just bought, and was impressed with both Laura’s quick grasp of the problem and her ability to explain clearly and concisely what he needed to do. She, in her turn, was impressed by how well Bryan had stated the problem, and how easily he grasped the concepts required to master the software. The mutual admiration of intellectual abilities enhanced the already-strong appeal each had felt based on physical attributes. The indefinable elements which make up the chemistry of human attraction were all present, and it was the start of a wonderful relationship. They moved from the overly-warm interior out onto the roof deck and talked for an hour in the warm summer night, looking out over the city spread out below, the distant St. Lawrence a lengthy black hole running through the Milky Way of the city lights. It was a magical night, and when they exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses at night’s end, Laura knew that she’d hear from this man again.

Bryan had called on Tuesday to ask if she’d like to see the new Spielberg movie next weekend, and they discovered a mutual love of movies - action, romance, foreign, the genre didn’t matter as long as the writing, acting, and directing were above par. But the relationship developed slowly, since both were deeply involved in important projects at work, and some dates got canceled when work demanded more than the normal 40 hours. The level of intimacy was raised slowly, too, because Laura had experienced several short-term flings in college and wanted this to be different, and Bryan sensed that he shouldn’t rush this woman and was quite happy to share her company without involving sex. But finally the time felt right, and when a friend offered the weekend use of a cabin on a lake up in the Laurentian Mountains, Bryan asked if she’d like to go, and Laura accepted. Both knew that the relationship had moved to a new level.

Although they both worked late through the week to ensure a free weekend, Friday afternoon, as always, brought crises which had to be dealt with, so it was well after dark when they arrived at the cabin. The love-making that first night was tentative, their eagerness for physical intimacy after such a long wait tempered by their desire to get it right. But the next morning, when Bryan joined her outside a few minutes after she’d awakened, the breathtaking beauty of the little lake nestled in that forested mountain setting worked its spell, and they were soon back in bed, delighting in the pleasure each gave to the other. After that, the weekend became an idyllic escape from the real world.

In a radical departure from their normal eating habits, Laura whipped up bacon, eggs, and pancakes for breakfast in the little kitchen, Bryan barbecued thick steaks for lunch, and they collaborated on pasta and salad for dinner. The good food replaced the calories burned off by their physical exertions. Most of the time was spent enjoying each other’s company. They canoed silently around the edge of the quiet lake, close enough to the shore to peer back into the trees and watch the squirrels, chipmunks, and screeching blue jays. They hiked along a fire trail that took them to the top of a hill nearby, where a break in the trees gave an incredible vista of miles of rolling mountainous hills, densely carpeted in the dark green of the evergreens that comprised most of the forest. They sat on the porch and talked. But periodically they also fell into each other’s arms and made love, sometimes making it to the bed, often in a less traditional place - late Saturday night, a stroll on the dock in the moonlight turned into an unforgettable episode of sex, a couple of boat cushions hastily pressed into service as a mattress, the waves quietly lapping against the rocks of the shore and the pilings below them.

The love-making sessions usually left the area strewn with pieces of clothing, but those were retrieved afterward when they got dressed to follow some more mundane pursuit. However, Bryan also left other things strewn about - eating utensils remained on the table after a meal, his towel was left on the bathroom floor after a shower.

“Didn’t your mother make you pick up things after you used them?”, Laura asked jokingly, as she cleared the table.

“The maid always did that”, Bryan replied.

“Oh, sure”, she mocked. “And the cook prepared all the meals, so how did you learn to cook?”.

“No, really, we had a maid. I grew up in Westmont”.

Westmont was an area of very large houses, mansions, and estates, and many of the residents did have maids. What a shame, thought Laura, for parents to use their wealth in a way which permitted their child to grow up believing that he could leave the world a messy place, and someone else would follow behind and clean it up. It was just a fleeting thought, soon put aside in the rapture she felt that weekend. The setting was romantic, with perfect summer weather without rain or humidity to spoil it, and it was too early in the season for the dreaded black flies and mosquitoes. They were two healthy young people on a much-needed vacation from demanding jobs. They were both fit - Bryan played squash regularly at a club near his office, and Laura’s walking to work every day kept her in shape - and they had quickly reached the level of familiarity which made their physical intimacy so enjoyable. They had found a great deal to like in each other, and it was a weekend which neither wanted to end.

But it did end Sunday night when they got on the Autoroute and headed south with thousands of others, like parolees returning after a weekend pass. Back in the city, though, their relationship had entered a new phase, and now Bryan stayed over instead of kissing Laura goodnight and leaving. Before long, Laura suggested that he bring over some changes of clothing, and soon they were, to all intents and purposes, living together. Bryan still kept the large apartment he shared with a fellow lawyer, and neither ever explicitly stated that they were living together because they were still concerned with taking things slowly enough to get it right.

It was wonderful to have someone you loved, to share life with, thought Laura. If only his parents hadn’t had a maid - the one trait Bryan had which she found very hard to deal with was his failure to pick up after himself. He seemed oblivious to the fact that Laura kept the apartment tidy, and her jokes and gentle prodding had only short-term effects on his behavior. Finally, she had sat down to have a serious talk and had tried to explain to him that she had a lifetime habit of keeping her surroundings straightened up and tidy, and it was as jarring to her to see items left lying around as a wrong note on a piano would be to a professional musician. He admitted that he had a lifetime habit of not picking things up until he needed them again, and said he’d try to change his ways if she would try to be a little more tolerant of his habits. And so they agreed to compromise, she to unbend a little in her quest for perfection, he to try harder to attain it.

Like many good intentions overcome by bad habits, though, his resolve didn’t last, and Laura began to feel that he mustn’t have the same deep feelings for her that she had for him, if he couldn’t do that one thing which was so important to her. In all other ways, their relationship was perfect, but neatness was so much a part of who she was that Laura began to fell resentment toward him whenever she was confronted with yet another mess.

The end came one Saturday. Laura had to go in to work for a few hours, and left very early in the morning. Bryan was going golfing later with some buddies so didn’t get up when she did. The night before, she had told him that an out-of-town aunt was coming over with her mother at 11 Saturday morning. Laura would try to get back earlier than that, but she asked him to please ensure that he tidied up the apartment before he left, in case she didn’t get there before her guests did.

As always when working with computers, there was one more bug or one more program enhancement to work on, and Laura’s plan to get home early did not work out. Since there was lots of parking available downtown on Saturdays she had driven, and she left the office at 5 to 11 and sped home to greet her mother and aunt at the door. When she unlocked the door and ushered them in, she saw immediately that Bryan had left without cleaning up.

Perhaps people just had different definitions of what was messy. To Laura, having breakfast dishes sitting in the sink, a coffee mug on the counter, was a mess in the kitchen. A large bath towel draped over the edge of the tub, with a foot of its length snaking out over the floor, was a mess. An unmade bed in the bedroom was a mess. And in the living room, the morning paper spread open on the coffee table and sofa constituted a mess. Although her guests didn’t seem to notice, Laura was mortified, and quickly served them coffee out on the balcony so that she could race around and straighten up the place. She hid it well, but the incident was so upsetting to her that she had trouble enjoying the visit. When they left, Laura had made up her mind that she could not live with that kind of behavior, and realized that that facet of Bryan’s personality was not something she would ever be able to adjust to. Her emotions fluctuated between seething anger at the state he had left the house for her mother to see, and deep regret at the loss of a wonderful lover. A few tears fell while she was packing up his clothes and toiletries, but she finished the job and set everything just inside the door with a note on top, then went off to a double feature. She didn’t trust herself to remain civil if she confronted him, so she felt it best to be absent when he returned from golf.

The note read, “Bryan - when I opened the door and let my mother and aunt in today, I was totally embarrassed by the condition of the apartment. Maybe I demand too much neatness in my life, but it’s something I just can’t compromise on. You are either unable or unwilling to make the effort to keep the house tidy, and I just can’t live my life like this. Thank you for some very wonderful times, but please take your belongings home, and please don’t see me again. Goodbye - Laura”.