Tags
"...warm welcoming wet of Sandy’s shower...", Beautiful Vistas, Bryan, Cat, Cat Etiquette, Deer, Foilage, Ninja, Photos, Rebel Alliance Tattoo, Sandy, Tinfoil Series, View
The warmth felt great after his bone chilling ride in the cool April mist and Bryan lingered far longer than normal in the warm, wet embrace that was Sandy’s shower. The large bath towel somehow reminded him of her and he realized that she did indeed wear perfume but that she used it so sparingly that instead of smacking him in the olfactory and causing him to recoil as was the case with so many people and their application of scent that hers was a beguiling subliminal connection that he only realized existed once he came into contact with something that contained her sweet scented essence in absence of her corporeal self. Smelling the towel he felt himself stiffen. The image in the mirror looked even hungrier for attention than his growling stomach was for food and looking down he shook his head and muttered, “Don’t you ever give up?”
His clothes had been in the dryer for less than ten minutes and would take two or three times that long to lose the majority of moisture they had soaked up during his dawn ride. Warmer now that he had showered, he wrapped a towel snuggly around his waist, opened the bathroom door, looked toward the staircase and neither hearing nor seeing anyone turned to the left and scanned the downstairs family room. It too was empty so he made his way to Cassie’s office and the comfortable office chair that looked out on her lawn and the nude grove of trees beyond and caught a peek of the Cedar River in the distance.
From May through the end of October the trees would be in foliage, creating a nearly impenetrable visual screen of the terrain beyond, but with the possible exception of October’s colorful display the view that greeted him now was likely more impressive than any the warmer months could possibly compete with. The rain had stopped -and wonder of wonders!- the sun which had risen an hour earlier was now clearly visible through the cloudbank in which it played hide and seek. Perhaps in answer to the sun’s adolescent antics a small herd of deer appeared on the glades edge and frolicked amongst themselves. He looked for fawns and seeing none wondered if they were hiding in the brush or had as of yet entered the world. The drops that the rain had left behind glistened on the grass and though he had seen far more breathtaking vistas in his travels Bryan could not remember a more peaceful, quiet, and beautifully serene view than what appeared before him now. “Wow,” he whispered.
On a shelf to his right were half a dozen photo albums grouped together and sitting amongst Cassie’s books. He grabbed the one on the far right and opening it found an album of a very young Sandy and a variety of people he had never met. There were many shots of her on the court, both in action and standing with a basketball hooked under her right arm, and the posed shots almost always contained two or three other women.
There were newspaper clippings scattered throughout and Bryan’s fairly attentive perusal of the album intensified when the photos became populated with her and her friends in skimpy bikinis on the beach. “Down, shit head,” he again admonished himself and turning pages came upon a section that was teeming with pictures of Sandy and Jon wrapped in each other’s embrace and looking very much in love. The family photo of Jon that hung from the wall in the main room hardly did him justice. Gorgeous was so inadequate a word that it would have blushed at its inability to translate the visual reality of the young couple to the poetry of language. “Jesus,” he said shaking his head.
He finished looking through each picture in the first album and exchanged it for the one that had sat next to it. These photos were older, the first he surmised had been taken in the late nineties while these were shot roughly two decades earlier. The opening three pages held photos of a very conservative looking couple holding a baby wrapped in pink. The parents smiled and looked pleased but not especially close. There were older people in the pictures, Bryan assumed aunts, uncles, grandparents and the like, and as he neared the middle of the album he heard a, “meow,” issue from the cat at his feet. “Jesus, Ninja,” he responded with a startle. “Now I know where you got your name!” he added in a calm voice. “How you doing, sweetie? You want up here with me, do you, my sweet little girl?” he asked, extending his hand slowly in her direction but making no move for contact.
Bryan had issued an invitation to Ninja and he sincerely hoped she would take it and come to him but he would not force the matter. Some cats would rather die than be touched by a stranger and he didn’t know Ninja, her personality or her preferences so he was looking to give her as much leeway as he possibly could. If she didn’t come to him now, fine; if she did, better. She sniffed his finger, butted her head against his bare ankle and then wove a figure eight through his feet, leaving her scented calling card on his bare skin. Reaching down between his legs he petted her, and after gently putting his hand under her belly and giving the cat a three count to protest or run away, lifted her, placed her in his lap and gently petted the black ball of purr.
“She likes you,” Sandy said quietly from the office’s doorway.
“Jesus!” Bryan exclaimed, nearly dropping the cat. “Sorry, Ninja. Cassie nearly made me jump out of my skin! How long have you been there?” he asked, placating and reassuring the cat with further tenderly delivered strokes.
“Oh, five minutes. You know your awfully pretty sitting there in your birthday suit but you’re a bit of a distraction. Do you usually enter people’s houses, strip off your clothes and then hide in the basement, or am I one of the lucky ones?”
“Uhm, you’re the first, as far as I can recall. It was misting out earlier and my clothes got pretty wet so I-“
“Put them in the dryer. I figured. I heard it running. I’d kiss you good morning but that outfit you’re wearing might prove a little too easy to lose. I made coffee. I’ll toss down some of George’s old clothes and you can slip into those while yours dry; okay?”
“Yes, except one chaste kiss before you go. Surely we’ve got that much self-control?”
“You might, mister, not so sure about me. It’ll wait,” she said brushing her hand over his bare right shoulder. “Nice tat, by the way. What is that, a Star Wars thingy?”
“Thanks! Yes, Rebel Alliance emblem. My mom had a cow when I got it. She hated tattoos.”
“I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. I wasn’t allowed to have any growing up but I have one that I got fairly recently, probably be my only one. I’ll throw down the clothes, snake into ‘em before you come upstairs; okay?”
“Yeah, will do,” he said with a smile and wave to Cassie’s retreating form.
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