Free Fiction Ebooks: Free ebook sample of "Romance, Crime, Good Food: The Kathleen Valentine Sampler" by Kathleen Valentine

Table of Contents

1. TWO STORIES FROM MY LAST ROMANCE AND OTHER PASSIONS

2. TWO STORIES FROM love, murder, etc.

3. TWO ESSAYS AND EIGHT RECIPES FROM FRY BACON. ADD ONIONS

BONUS MATERIAL

TWO STORIES FROM MY LAST ROMANCE AND OTHER PASSIONS

My Last Romance and other passions is a collection of eight short stories each about the wonder of finding love. These stories feature lovers of all ages, in all sorts of circumstances – young lovers, married lovers, older lovers, murderous lovers. Each story is a “little jewel” (Amazon reviewer) sure to make you laugh, weep, and be amazed at the many variations of the human heart.

Flynnie and Babe - Whenever Babe needed a shoulder to cry on Flynnie's was right there. It took her long enough to realized that Flynnie was right there, too.

Danse Avec Moi - Beverly loves her sophisticated husband for his elegance and charm. She sees a whole new side of him when he takes her back to his bayou home and teaches her how to dance.

FLYNNIE AND BABE

The clouds over the mainland are low and dark. The thin strip of sky that shows between them and the sparkle of lights along the shore is coral and shimmering—that usually means lightning. They must be getting one heck of a storm. I’d say it’s headed this way. The air has that ozone smell that means storm-coming. The gulls are screeching, soaring across the channel in swirling clouds. The lower they fly, the more scared they are. From up here on Flynnie’s bluff they appear to be coming straight at me.

There’s something sad and dreamy about all those gold lights twinkling away over there. I don’t want to be there—I love life on this island. But they make me wonder if I’m missing anything. It’s like standing outside on the sidewalk and watching through a window at people dancing. I don’t like dancing but they look like they are so happy. I wonder if I’ve missed something.

Autumn is definitely here. The flowers in Flynnie’s garden look worn out except for the climbing roses that twine over the picket fence. The heads of the sunflowers droop all the way down as though they were put up before a firing squad. Maybe there was a coup in the garden today and the sunflowers lost. Flynnie’s garden is like a party in the summer—snapdragons and hollyhocks, Japanese lanterns and columbines, moss roses and lilies of the valley peeping out between the marigolds. Fat yellow bumblebees, droopy with pollen, drone lazily between blossoms. The hummingbirds dart nervously in and out of clematis. Flynnie takes a lot of pride in his garden. As many people come up here to look at the garden as come to stuff themselves with his fat, juicy clams, spicy french fries, and crunchy onion rings.

Flynnie’s was the first place I ate at when I moved here all those years ago. During the winter Flynnie’s is filled with the artists and locals who live here year round but when the tourist season is in full swing the artists stay away. Flynnie’s Clam Shack is one of the island’s main attractions. When the tourist ferries arrive and all those determined-looking folks armed with backpacks, water bottles, digital cameras, camcorders, and Chamber of Commerce maps, fill the streets it seems every map has Flynnie’s circled on it.

It won’t be long now until the tourist boats only run on weekends—and after Christmas not at all. Then all of us will get out our fleece or down jackets and tramp the headlands looking for renewed inspiration to paint. We’ll paint all day and gather at Flynnie’s in the evenings to drink and eat and congratulate ourselves for being the lucky ones who get to stay.

The candy pink and white striped umbrellas over the tables on the deck are flapping with increased fury. There’s a storm coming alright. I run around the deck cranking them down. Where the hell is Flynnie? The inside lights are on but I can’t see him.

"Flynnie!" I love this place. It is plain and open with plank floors, wooden tables and chairs, ceiling fans and big, double-hung windows which I begin slamming shut. The wind is getting steadier now and paper-lined straw baskets bearing the remains of clam dinners skid across the tables and topple to the floor. Before the first abandoned clam lands, Mad Max comes bounding out of nowhere to snarf it up. As I close the windows a few more baskets go flying and Max occupies himself roaming the wasteland of the floor in search of fallen goodies. That dog loves clams and makes sure Flynnie’s floors are always clean. Flynnie says Max is the offspring of a female chow he once had who mated with a vacuum cleaner.

"Flynnie!!!" I gather up the baskets, dump the remains in a trash barrel and stack them at the end of the service bay.

"That you, Babe?" Flynnie’s voice comes down the stairs from his upstairs apartment—a slightly smaller and much cosier version of this room.

"Yeah. Want me to come up?"

"Right down," he hollers drowning me out.

I plop on a tall wooden stool by the bar. Two or three nearly empty beer mugs sit on paper coasters among a litter of peanut shells.

"Max," I call, "beer!" And, doing it just as Flynnie has taught me, I toss the remaining beer from one mug with a snap of the wrist. Max bounds across the floor and, with an experienced leap, catches the beer in his open mouth. Max has been known to catch as much as four ounces right out of the air without spilling a drop.

"What happened now?" Flynnie asks trotting down the stairs, "Your knight in shining armor turn in his white stallion for a skateboard." He grins and the gleam of his white teeth against his dark face makes me smile. It’s a good thing for Flynnie that he has that grin because the rest of him is kind of cartoon-like. His gray-streaked, sandy hair sticks straight up and his beard radiates out around his face making him look like a cross between an Aztec Sun God and a Kodiak bear. His eyes are buried under bushy, pale eyebrows. They disappear completely when he laughs. Flynnie’s age is a mystery to everyone. He claims to be really old and there’s nothing to tip you off one way or the other. His skin has been tanned to leather since I’ve known him and it doesn’t get lighter in the winter. His voice is sort of raspy, like he’s getting a cold, and his hands are huge with bulging veins and knobby knuckles. They’re kind of scary looking—like they’ve spent more than a little time wrapped around somebody’s throat. He’s wearing a blue chambray shirt with the neck open and sleeves rolled above his elbows. The veins on his arms stand out thick and hard. The sturdy, dark legs below his khaki shorts are so bowed you could sail a Frisbee between them.

"Men suck, Flynnie," I tell him. Flynnie knows more about my personal life than anyone.

"I know, Babe." He lays his ever-present journal on the bar and draws us each a draft. "We’re bastards."

"Don’t say that!" I hate it when he agrees with me. "That’s just so damn easy for you guys. You say ‘hey, what did you expect, I’m an asshole’ like that’s some kind of an excuse."

He refills a basket with peanuts from under the bar and pushes it toward me. "Well, it is an excuse. A lousy excuse but an excuse all the same."

"Flynnie, this guy worked harder to get me to fall for him than any guy I’ve ever met. I tried so hard not to make the same mistake I made the last time but look what happened!"

He comes around the bar and sits on the stool next to me. "What happened?"

I shrugged. "He’s going back to his wife."

"Yeah? Sounds like you got a better deal than she did."

I kick the toe of my sandal against the bar. "That doesn’t help, Flynnie."

He sighs. "No, I don’t suppose it does."

"Why did he do it, Flynnie?" I promised myself I wouldn’t cry again but I can feel my throat tightening. "Why would he chase me like he did and then turn around and do this? I don’t get it. What’s wrong with me."

Flynnie gives me a hard look. "You know better than to ask that. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you’re a good artist, you’ve got those big knockers." He gives me a Flynnie wink—at least that’s what I think it is when his invisible eye twitches back in his head like that.

"Let me tell you something, being pretty and having big knockers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be."

"No?" He sips his beer. "I don’t think very many people—male or female—would agree with you on that. I see how the guys in here look at you when you come around. There are a lot of women who would love to have guys look at them like that."

I glance at myself in the mirror behind the bar and then look away fast. That’s the thing I can’t ever explain to Flynnie—I don’t know what in the heck it is he sees when he looks at me but I sure don’t see it. "You know what, Flynnie, that’s just bullshit."

"It is not bullshit. There are girls half your age in town who wish they got the attention you do."

I stare at him. "So what? So what if guys look at my boobs and my whatever else they look at. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean they love me or even like me. It just means I have big boobs. Big deal. It’s not like they’ve done me any good!"

Flynnie laughs and claps his hand over his mouth to avoid spitting beer.

"I’m serious." Now I’m pissed. "I’ve had these monsters since I was fifteen. I’ve been hauling them around for almost twenty-five years now and all they’ve done is make my life miserable. And now they’re starting to go south! Why the hell would anyone want this?"

Flynnie is smiling. He swivels his chair toward me and reaches out one of those big, scary-looking hands to brush my hair back from my face. "I never thought of it that way," he says quietly.

“Well, why would you?" I pull back and then instantly regret it. His hand falls back in his lap.

"I’m sorry," I lower my voice and look up at him. His expression is inscrutable. "I didn’t mean to be gross."

He shakes his head. "You weren’t gross."

"I just want to be happy. All my life I’ve dreamed about having a nice guy and a nice home and maybe some kids. What’s so wrong about that?"

“There’s nothing wrong with it, Babe, it’s just not right for everyone." He turns back to his beer. "Being married and having kids is for people who don’t want to do anything else."

"Why aren’t you married?" As long as I’ve known Flynnie we’ve never talked about that.
He sips his beer. "I have been. I’m just no good at it."

"Really?" Flynnie married is hard to imagine.

"Well, let me rephrase that. I’m real good at getting married. I’m just no good at staying married."

I stare at him. "You’ve been married more than once?"

He smiles slowly and holds up three fingers.

"You’re kidding me?"

"Why?"

"But... no kids?"

"No. No kids—none of the marriages lasted very long."

"What happened?"

He shrugs. "For what it’s worth they all left me. Not the other way around."

"I can’t believe you. You’re such a nice guy. I can’t imagine anyone leaving you."

"You know Suze Crawley that works at the post office?"

"Sure, of course." Suze is a big, energetic woman who wears long, flowered skirts with Birkenstocks, has a thick braid down her back, and grows herbs in the sunny windows of the tiny post office building on Center Street. All the letters that arrive around the world from our town smell like Suze’s thyme and coriander.

"She was my second wife." He reaches over the counter and fills his beer mug from the tap. "Ready for another?"

I let him fill my mug while I try to imagine him and Suze together. Funny thing is, I can. Easily.

"Flynnie, I think you and Suze would be good together."

He nods. "I thought so too."

"But?"

He shrugs. "She said I was too romantic. Lots of women like that idea in theory but they find it hard to live with."

"Because you write poetry?"

That’s one of the more enigmatic things about Flynnie. He is forever sending off poems to these obscure little magazines with odd names and getting back checks for miniscule amounts. When the published piece finally arrives in the mail he mounts the page with his poem next to the magazine cover on tan cardboard. He frames it and hangs it on the wall of the stairway leading to his apartment. He says he is waiting for the day when the check covers the cost of the frame—then he’ll consider himself a success. I glance up at the wall across the darkening room. There must be thirty or more poems there.

"Naw," he says. "She always liked my poems. She thought I’d be a great poet someday." He frowns at his beer letting his mind drift. "No. I’m not sure what it was, really. She said being my Muse was too hard. To tell the truth, I never knew what she meant by that. Suze is a beautiful woman. I didn’t think I ever expected anything more from her than letting me love her for that."
I study him trying to figure out if he is being serious. I like Suze. She’s always friendly and nice but "beautiful"?

"How long ago was that?"

He shrugs. "Ten years, maybe. It always took me more time to get over a woman than I actually spent with her. Figure that out."

"Did you write a poem about her?"

"Every poem I wrote was about her—well, while I was with her. It was like that with all of them..." His voice trails off as a wall of rain crackles against the windows. The lights dim for a moment and thunder rolls in. Mad Max whimpers and crawls across the floor to cower under Flynnie’s bar stool.

"Come on, Max," Flynnie coos sliding off the barstool and hunkering down to stroke the shaking dog. "Don’t be scared. I’m here." Max huddles against him as a brilliant flash of lightning floods the room. Through the windows I can see the waves churning up in the channel.

"Damn. Danny Choate and I were going to go diving for lobsters in the morning. Now the floor will be too murky." He stands up and walks to the window as the lights flicker out but then blink back on. "I’d say business is closed for this night—we’ll be losing power soon." He turns to me. "Want to come upstairs and I’ll fix us some supper?"

"Sure." I stack the dishwasher then wipe down the bar and the tables as Flynnie cashes out and locks up. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. Flynnie the poet. Flynnie the husband of three women. Flynnie the guy who thought Suze Crawley was beautiful and wanted only to love her for that.

As we climb the stairs a loud crack of thunder sends Max flying up the steps past us knocking me backwards.

"What a noble beast," Flynnie laughs as he catches me and sets me back on my feet. "There’s nothing to fear when Max is on guard. Dog-butt stew, Max!" he hollers up the steps but Max is long gone—under the bed for sure. "I’m going to cook up a batch of dog butt stew!"

Sometimes Flynnie and Max remind me of an old married couple.

Upstairs the rain hammers the roof sounding wild and wonderful. Flynnie lights a few lamps and pops in a CD of Celtic music. The violins, flutes and bodhrans, underscored by pelting rain, fill the big open room. I love this space. It always reminds me of an attic belonging to some whimsical grandmother in a fairy tale. The beamed ceiling slants down to a few feet above the floor and the room is crowded with peculiar treasures—pirate’s chests supporting oil lamps and piles of books, old sofas covered in patchwork quilts, a wooden cigar-store Indian guards the alcove that serves as a bedroom. An enormous balsa wood and rice paper airplane hangs from the apex of the ceiling. A fire smoulders in the pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room and Flynnie’s still-warm coffee cup rests on the arm of his home-made couch. Flynnie built this place himself, including most of the furniture in it. The foundation is the remains of an old barn—stone stalls and tack rooms where his woodshop is now. But from the first floor on up every board was put in place by Flynnie’s big hands.

"Make yourself at home?" Flynnie mumbles, his head in the refrigerator. "You don’t mind lobster, do you? I can make an omelet."

"Flynnie, for most people lobster is a treat. We don’t live on it all summer."

"Most people don’t go diving every few days."

"Yeah." I pick up the yellow legal pad by the sofa. He is working on a poem. "Lobster-diving isn’t a popular sport in Kentucky."

"No wonder you left it." He assembles the ingredients for his masterpiece on the counter. Everything Flynnie has ever cooked for me was delicious. "Why do people live in places like that?"

The power goes out just as we are sitting down to eat. Flynnie fires up the oil lamps and the soft flickering glow makes the room even cosier.

"One of these days, I’m going to rig up a way to run the CD player on lamp oil," he says but the rain is hammering the roof so hard we wouldn’t hear it anyway.

We clear the dishes away in silence, the rain isn’t letting up and it makes conversation more like a shouting match.

As I stack the plates in the drying rack the little bird in the cuckoo clock cuckoos eleven.

“Are you staying?" he asks not looking at me.

"I guess so."

He nods and gets me a clean white t-shirt from his dresser. "Here, you get first turn in the bathroom."

While Flynnie splashes around in his bathroom, I snuggle down in his comfortable bed and stare up at the rain pelting the skylight above. This is how it is with Flynnie and me. I get my feelings hurt, or have a bad day, or just feel lonely, so I climb Flynnie’s bluff and he makes everything alright. He comforts me and bolsters my ego. He makes me dinner and invites me to spend the night. We crawl into his warm bed, chat for awhile and then drift off to sleep. Deep in the night a foghorn blows, Max barks in his sleep, or a ship’s bell clangs in the channel. Sleepily we move into each others’ arms. That’s when the real enchantment starts for then Flynnie is at his best.

We do not speak. We pretend this is all happening in a dream. Flynnie makes love to me so sweetly, so deeply, so caressingly that I am reduced to the tender, beautiful, lovable girl that he seems to see me as but which I can never accept. When finally the first pink of dawn grows out of the far horizon I sleep the best sleeps of my life.

It is always the same. When I wake there is coffee on the stove and hot muffins on the table with a note saying "gone fishing" or "diving with Danny" or "business on the mainland", followed by "hope your day is wonderful." And the next time we see each other we act as though nothing has happened.

Flynnie carries an oil lamp to the bed and when he is snuggled in beside me, blows it out and puts it on the floor. He slides his arm under my head and says, "Sweet dreams."

"Flynnie," I say, "do you love me?"

There is a long silence filled with rain and distant fog horns.

"Yes," he says. "I do."

"Why haven’t you ever said that to me before?"

He rolls onto his side and traces my cheekbones with his fingertips. "Good question," he says finally. "I guess because I know that you’re still looking for Mr. Wonderful and I ain’t him." He sighs. "And I’m tired of getting my heart broken."

"Oh, Flynnie." I kiss his fingertip and move closer to him.

He leans over and kisses me softly. "Go to sleep, Babe."

"No," I whisper. "I don’t want to keep pretending nothing happens when we’re together. I don’t want to wake up in an empty bed tomorrow."

He is quiet for a long time. "When you pretend something doesn’t happen, it makes it easier when it stops happening."

He is lying very still not touching me. I push back the quilt and touch his face with my fingertips drawing them along the plane of his hard, lined cheeks and down through the prickle of his beard.

"You’re a beautiful man, Flynnie," I whisper. I slip my arms around him kissing his mouth softly. "You’re the most beautiful man I know."

The sound he makes is strange—half a laugh, half a sob.

"I’m going to make everything alright," I tell him, snuggling close, sliding my leg between his thick, bowed legs. "I’m going to make sure you never get up and leave me again."

In the darkness I feel his smile.

From My Last Romance and other passions available in paperback or e-book.

DANSE AVEC MOI

Jean-Luc has powerful arms. He is not a large man but every bit of him is steely and intense. Just now his arm around my waist crushes me against him and the pressure of his thighs against mine are determined and single-minded. I gasp for breath and he tilts his head back to look at me with those ice blue eyes. He whips me around effortlessly and smiles. I am not a small woman but when he holds me like this I am a child, a rag doll, a puppet on the strings of his private rhythms.

His face is inches above mine and I can smell the intoxicating fragrance of him—a mixture of pine boughs and leather, wine and fresh air. He looks as though he is going to kiss me. It is a maddening habit of his that he will let his mouth come so close to mine that I burn for its touch—then he pulls back and looks at me teasing. The one thing he knows—more than any truth on this earth—is how much I yearn for him.

He tightens his grip on me and turns again, carrying me with him. He throws back his head and laughs with the turn. It is so hot here. He doesn’t seem to notice the heat but I am not accustomed to these steamy tropic-like nights. I find the air thick and suffocating.

The music stops. My feet return to the ground. He steadies me then guides me to the open door. Outside lanterns hang in the giant pin oak trees creating dozens of little moons orbited by thousands of tiny night creatures.

Old women sit on the porch fanning themselves with dried palmetto leaves, chattering in the exotic staccato of this beguiling music they speak. I have only heard this language since coming here with Jean-Luc. Now that I am his wife he can bring me with him to visit his family and the people he has loved all his life. During all the years we lived together in the Northern city that is our home his rare trips home were solitary ones. Whether his family knew that he shared his life and his bed with a woman I did not know but now that we wear matching rings I am welcome among them. To me this is an unimaginable world.

When he walked into my office and my life years ago I could not have envisioned this elegant, reserved man with his portfolio of sophisticated illustrations and softly accented voice in this remote and torrid swamp land.

In the shadows of the night he takes my face in his hands and kisses me as no one else in the world can kiss me. His kisses stir rivers in me that I never knew I possessed before him.

"Ah, Bebe," he whispers brushing aside my hair and letting his breath cool my ear. "You are so exquisite." And he kisses me breathless.

The old women stop rocking and there is tittering. Jean-Luc releases me saying he will get us wine. I lean back against the wall gulping sweet night air and he strides along the porch flirting with the old women in the odd music of their language. They laugh and slap his legs and backside with their fans. I watch his solid, compact body in fine white shirt and tan trousers until he disappears into the room filled with heat and light and laughter. No one from our world, from the publishing house where I spend my days surrounded by technology and academics, from the design studio where he creates as ably with PC and stylus as with pen and ink, would imagine him in this environment.

"It’s my parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary next month," he said one morning as we sat over our Sunday breakfast of café au lait, brioche and apricots. "I think that would be a nice time for them to meet you."

****

Light streamed through the clerestory windows of our loft. Music from the CD player was slow and dreamy. I love our Sunday mornings together—filled with music, good food, laziness and lovemaking. We are still newlyweds though we have been together a long time.

"How wonderful," I said. "How long will we be gone?"

"A week maybe. We can fly down for the party and spend a few days with them and then I’ll show you New Orleans. You’ll love New Orleans."

In his soft drawl the words New Orleans sounded like a mirage of pastel light and carnival music. New Orleans, I knew, was his destination on the few occasions when he went "home". The prospect of going there together excited me.

"Yes," I said. "Can we eat in sidewalk cafes and go to jazz clubs?"

"We can hardly avoid it," he said smiling.

"Can we stay in the French Quarter?"

Jean-Luc has the most rapturously beautiful smile. It captured my heart the first time I saw it and has never lost its hold on me. He is a stern-looking man normally. Focused and not inclined toward nonsense. But when he smiles his light blue eyes sparkle and his teeth gleam, the long dimples that bracket his mouth soften his stern face and shatter the illusion of severity.

"We will do everything, Bebe, I promise."

From the air the Mississippi Delta looks like a great white scallop shell opening into the tropical blue of the Gulf of Mexico. Jean-Luc wears the headphones of his iPod. From his relaxed expression you would think he is listening to music but I know better. My husband is an ambitious man with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Right now he is listening to audio books—masterpieces of world literature. The seat belt light flashes on and he removes the headphones and leans forward to kiss my shoulder.

"Look," I whisper pointing out the window. I always sit by the window when we fly because I love the mysteries below. He tucks the iPod into place beside his laptop and closes the leather case filled with pens and brushes and books and drawing pads. His illustrations are exquisitely rendered and he works on them obsessively. He says they are his children and he cannot bear to be away from them for even a day.

On the ground he shoulders the garment bags and I carry the large box wrapped with golden paper and gold ribbons. It contains the carrickmacrosse tablecloth I chose for his parents. It is an elegant gift—one any mother would adore. The first thing I notice when we step from the body of the plane is the heat—heavy, intense and penetrating—a feeling I soon learn to dread.

At the car rental desk he thumbs through the plastic cards in his wallet and selects the all-purpose platinum one. The girl behind the desk is coffee-colored and beautiful. She looks at him in an open way that I find disturbing but he appears not to notice.

It is one of the great enigmas of our relationship that we find each other so alluring. Despite his thinning hair and hard features I find him utterly devastating and the fact that he finds my lush curves so enticing awes me. After a life time of diets I have finally stopped trying to change my body thanks to his adoration of it.

It never occurred to me that his family would live anywhere in Louisiana other than New Orleans. When we head northwest out of the city he tells me that it will be a three hour drive. I am astonished. My refined husband bears no resemblance to a small town boy. After we travel through an endless sea of open grain fields and enter the dense, moss-covered swamplands I am speechless.

The population of his town is less than that of the building I work in. The houses are small, wooden and neat with large, continually occupied front porches. The trees are mammoth. Their branches extend across entire yards, propped up here and there by metal poles. The people are like Jean-Luc, compact, dark and handsome. They treat us like celebrities. His parents cannot do enough for us. We are given the only room in the house with an air conditioning unit—one which Jean-Luc bought for them years earlier but which they never use. It is a blessing for me.

Watching my husband here is fascinating. I feel I do not know him as he chats in this curious, lovely language. He introduces me as "ma femme Beverly" to women who clap their hands together and kiss my cheeks. To men who catch me round the waist, twirl me around and pronounce me something that I do not understand but which makes Jean-Luc laugh.

He laughs a lot here. He sits on the porches with his feet on railings drinking wine and, when he remembers my handicap, translating the conversation for me. He goes fishing early in the morning and returns slightly drunk bearing lines of the ugliest looking fish I have ever seen. He takes me to the only clothing shop in town and buys me dresses of soft, gossamer-light cotton in luscious colors—deep rose, violet and seafoam green. They drift over my body making me look wanton and voluptuous. He presents me with a pair of gold hoop earrings big enough to wear as bracelets.

And we dance. Every night there is a party. Everyone goes—children, old people, teenagers and long-married couples. The food is surpassed in quantity only by its quality. The music is lively filled with guitars, violins and accordions. My husband does not miss a dance. I have never danced with him before except for a polite waltz at some company function. I watch his face and the laugh lines I never noticed before are deep and beautiful. He holds me tightly when we dance, carrying me with him. There is such joy in him. I cannot stop looking at him—at the way he moves and talks and laughs amid these people. He flirts with all the women and banters with all the men. He is proud to bring me among them. He caresses my face when he talks to me, holds me close against him as we walk together as he would never do in the city. He kisses me often. Everyone looks at us and smiles but he only looks at me.

After the parties he brings me home to his parents house and makes love to me so slowly, lingeringly, taking half the night. He has become a man I scarcely glimpsed before.
Tomorrow we leave for New Orleans. I will be more at ease in a city, a place more familiar to me but I fear to lose this man who captivates me so. This morning he woke me early and took me down to the bayou. In a wooden boat we rowed out into the gray mists rising through veils of Spanish moss sweeping the still waters. He made love to me as soft coral light infused the pale morning haze and brown pelicans watched from tree branches.

I am wearing the rose-colored dress tonight. Because it pleases him so. I sit on the porch rail as I wait watching flashes of heat lightning in the distance, wondering if I could ever be part of this world. I feel the brush of his thigh as he steps over the rail and straddles it behind me. He snuggles me tightly against him lifting a glass of wine to my lips.

"Très adorable, Bebe," he whispers in my ear. He brushes aside my hair and kisses my neck.

"I love you, Jean-Luc," I say turning.

He kisses the wine from my lips and says, "J’taime, Bebe." His hands caress my hips and thighs. I melt from the heat of my love and the night, longing for this dreamworld to claim us both.

Inside the music begins again. I turn to him hungry for his mouth. He pulls away, stands and takes my hands.

"Danse avec moi, Bebe."

"What would you rather do?" I gasp. "Dance or make love?"

He laughs and pulls me to my feet. "Ce qui est la différence?" he asks.

From My Last Romance and other passions available in paperback or e-book.

TWO STORIES FROM love, murder, etc.

love, murder, etc. is a collection of eight stories – four about love, and four about murder. Currently it is only available in e-format.

Home-made Pie and Sausage (crime/horror): Sometimes the most ordinary things in life can turn out to be the most horrifying - especially if you're the sheriff of a small town who didn't pay attention when he should have.

Mardi Gras Was Over (love): He arrived on a Harley one dark night and swept her off to Mardi Gras -- then off her feet. Now a lot of years have passed and there are things a mother doesn't want her daughter to know.

HOME-MADE PIE AND SAUSAGE

Cletus Wilkes has a smooshed up, squashy kind of face that looks like someone punched him real hard up under the chin making his whole face sort of scrunch up and jut out. If that’s what happened it happened a long time ago cause now he’s got so many chins a punch would just sort of bounce off. Right now his chins are wobbling as he chews and a fine sheen of grease pools up on one chin before slowly sliding down to the next one finally dripping lazily onto the big paper napkin tucked into his collar to protect the light tan of his uniform shirt.

“Damnation, honey, I believe you make a better smoked sausage than your old man done,” he says grinning at me as he licks a slick of ketchup off his thick, rubbery lips.

“There’s still two more in the pan, Chief Wilkes,” I tell him smiling. “No sense in them going to waste.”

“Well...,” he pretends to think about this even though I know good and well he’s been eying them all along.

“An empty frying pan means a sunny day tomorrow.”

He laughs and his belly rattles the dishes on the counter. “Well, I’ll just eat them as a community service then,” he says. “Effie Parnell likes to hang her wash out on Thursdays and gets damn cranky if the sun ain’t shining.”

I carry his plate back into the kitchen. The bell on the back of the door jingles and two city hunters in neon orange caps and camouflage jackets head for the beer coolers.

“So, what’s Old Bruno think about this being a cyber-café now?” He raises his voice so I can hear him even though I’m not ten feet away and the kitchen door is standing wide open. He pronounces the word “ka-FEE”.

I pretend to think about it as I spoon the sausages onto his plate and add another scoop of baked beans.

“I don’t think Pa has any idea what the internet is,” I say putting the plate down in front of him. “He just knows it makes money and that’s good enough for him.”

As though on cue I see the hunters settle into the folding metal chairs at the two work stations tucked between the camping supplies and the display of sweatshirts, baseball caps, coffee mugs, and other junk with the words Pine Creek Gorge, Pennsylvania’s Grand Canyon on them. I glance at the clock but those two have been in here before and never argue when I tell them what they owe for on-line time.

“How’s the old reprobate doin, anyway?” Cletus says spearing the sausage with his fork sending a spray of hot grease in my direction. I jump back.

“Not good.” I grab a dishrag and wipe the counter around his plate. “He hasn’t been downstairs in weeks now. I keep telling him he should see a doctor but you know him.”

Cletus laughs while he chews, his cheeks puffing out like a blowfish. “I sure do. All Bruno’s problems can be found in one place - the bottom of a rum bottle.”

“You could go up and see him,” I offer. “Might do him some good to talk to someone besides me.” Like that’s gonna happen. The last thing Cletus Wilkes is likely to do is haul his fat ass up two flights of steps to the rooms above the store.

“Some other time,” he says. “You tell him I was askin after him though.”

“Excuse me.”

One of the hunters is leaning over the counter. He has a pair of iridescent orange sunglasses on a Philadelphia Eagles lanyard around his neck.

“Sign out front says you dress out deer here.”

“That’s right,” I walk to the end of the counter just glad to be away from Cletus’s slurping sounds for a minute. He sounds like a pack of coyotes on a dead cow. “You fellas get lucky?”

“One guy in our group, so far, what’s it going to cost him to have you take care of it?”

“Depends,” I retrieve a price list from under the counter. “We can just dress it out for you or cut it up and package it or...” I explain the different cuts of roasts, chops, and steaks plus our sausage making and smokehouse options.

“Says here you can store the meat, too.”

“Yeah, we have a big walk-in freezer downstairs. Some folks don’t have room for a whole deer at home.”

“Can I take this with me?” He indicates the brochure.

“Sure.” I smile at him. The men that come in here from the city never give me a second glance, they like their women to have some body on them, and that’s just fine with me.

“You ain’t cuttin up them deer by yourself, are ya?” Cletus asks.

“Nope. I used to but I got Porky Heinz coming in whenever I need him to do the skinning and butchering. He was working at the IGA up there in Binghamton till his mama got sick and he come home to look after her. He’s a pretty good butcher.”

Cletus nods. “Good thinkin. You got your hands full runnin this place now that Old Bruno’s taken to his bed.” He looks around. “Place looks real good, I have to say.”

“Yeah. Business is growing. We got a lot a hunters up from Philly and Baltimore this year. City boys tryin to have an ‘authentic’ wilderness experience.” I laugh, I heard about that on the talk radio last week. I like listening to the talk radio while I work in the big kitchen in the basement where Porky cuts up deer for the city fellas and I make the sausages and pies we sell.

“Glad to see you doin so well,” Cletus shovels beans into his big mouth. “I used to worry about you and Old Bruno bein stuck out here so far in the woods alone but it looks like you’re doin jest fine.”

Lying sack of shit, I think but I just smile.

“Sorry to bother you again.”

I look up. The hunter is back. “No bother.”

“Do you have any 7mm cartridges? Remington Magnum.”

“I’ll look.” I know darn well we don’t but these city guys think we’re a bunch of hicks if I don’t at least make an attempt.

“What you huntin with?” Cletus asks as I enter the storeroom.

“It’s a custom-built,” the hunter tells him, “bolt-action.”

“Got one a them built-in range finders in the scope?”

“Yes.”

I can hear Cletus snort all the way in the closet. “Figgers.”

“Sorry,” I tell the hunter. “All I have is 30.06.” I hold up a box.

“Naw, that’s okay. I think I’ve got enough for now. Do you have any pies left?”

“Just Dutch apple and lemon meringue. I’ll have fresh ones tomorrow.”

He nods. “Wrap up an apple for me.”

As I’m boxing the pie, Cletus eyes it with disdain. “Don’t tell me I’m too late for a piece a your mincemeat pie today?”

I give him a smile. “I keep the mincemeat in the kitchen. It’s just for my favorite regulars. Too much work to make it for everybody.”

Cletus looks genuinely relieved. “Your momma made the best homemade mincemeat pies I ever had in my life. She musta passed her pie-making genes on to you.”

“You fellas just like the mincemeat because of all the booze in it,” I tell him as I finish tying the string on the pie box. “Mama used a good amount of suet in her mincemeat. It helps marry all them spices. I’ve got plenty of suet.”

“Well, if Porky’s makin deer sausage I reckon he’s butcherin some pigs, too.”

I keep my back to him. “Something like that.”

“I can’t hardly b’lieve you can cook like she done. You was just a little kid when she passed on.”

“I was ten,” I tell him trying to keep the edge out of my voice. Ten years old and forty miles from civilization with a drunken father, not that any of that concerned you, Chief of Police Cletus Wilkes.

Cletus shakes his head, “It’s a wonder you was old enough to remember.”

“I started helping her when I was old enough to stand,” I say. Somebody had to, I think. “Pa had me stuffing sausages when I was big enough to reach the grinder. I made them sausages you’re eating now.”

“Well, they’re fine. It’s a wonder you have the time to run this store and do all the cookin and still take care a your old man. Harry Jenkins says he and the missus drive out here every Sunday after services just so’s they can have some of your mincemeat pie.”

The Reverend Harry Jenkins is the pastor of the Baptist Church my folks belonged to, not that I can remember ever going there except on Christmas and, after Momma died, not even then.

“Yeah, him and Barty Hollaway used to come out to play pinochle with Pa. Whitey Pringle, too. I made Reverend Jenkins take them each a couple pounds of sausage and a pie just this past Sunday.”

“Ain’t you a sweetheart!” Cletus chuckles. “I ‘member some of those card games. I filled in often enough. You was always lurkin around - skinny kid with those big, wide eyes a yours...” He widens his eyes and mugs for me. I look away to hide my disgust. “Bringin us sandwiches and pie. You was so obligin.”

Like I had a choice. I carry the box over to the counter by the cash register. The hunters are both looking at the same PC monitor laughing at some Flash movie one got in his email. Snow falls like glitter through the lights in the parking lot. Only four o’clock and it’s dark outside. Winter is closing in.

“Looks like more snow,” Cletus says, cutting the last sausage into small pieces as though it will be the last sausage he ever eats and he wants to make it last.

“Never know what will happen during a long winter.” I turn my back to him and start refilling the coffee-maker. I normally get half a dozen fellows in around supper time and, when the days are short, supper time comes early.

“Your Pa sure is lucky to have you. Don’t know what he’d do being sick and all way out here in the middle of nowhere. I’m real glad you worked things out with him. I recall a few years back you wasn’t too happy here.”

I grit my teeth and control my breathing. I was fucking miserable, I want to scream at him. I was beaten and abused and used like a whore and you fat fucks just brought him more booze and played cards and pretended not to see anything. I take a deep breath.

Not any more.

“Well, all that’s changed now,” I say to the coffeemaker. “I turned eighteen and can sign the checks and keep the store running. If Pa kicks the bucket over the winter I’ll just stick him down in the meat locker until Spring.”

Cletus almost chokes himself laughing. “You do that. You got room for two-hundred and seventy pounds of useless meat down there?”

I turn around. “Yes, I do.”

A bewildered look flashes across his face. “You know,” he says gravely. “Your father always loved you.”

Right. Every chance he got till he was too fat to find his dick.

“I know,” I say. “Only thing I worry about is that he’ll get up in the middle of the night and try to go hunting again. He hasn’t done that in some time and I always found him and brought him back but if he were to go out when I was sleeping, well, who knows what could happen?”

He studies me a minute. “We got SUVs now and cell phones down to the station. If anything happens all you gotta do is call.” I watch the cluelessness muddle up his dumb look. Cletus has cultivated that for so long it has settled in permanently.

“We’ll be fine. Frankly, I think this is going to be a real good winter,” I lighten my tone of voice. “Hunters are already starting to bring in deer to be processed and I’ve got a lot of plans for the store here. I might start having some of the ladies in town bake pies for me and Porky comes in when I need him. But don’t worry...” I give him my best smile and this time it’s for real. “I’ll still make sausages and mincemeat pies with my own hands just for Pa’s special friends.”

Cletus grins happily. “You’re a good girl, honey. Still takin care of us and all.”

“Glad to,” I say. I put my hands on the counter, lean forward and fix him with a reassuring smile. “I put aside a whole shelf full of meat downstairs that I’m keeping special just for you boys.”

About two hundred and seventy pounds of it.

“You ready for that mincemeat pie?” I tease. “With a nice scoop of ice cream on it?”

Cletus claps his big, fleshy hands together and rubs them vigorously. “You bet, honey, you bet.”

I go to the kitchen and take out the very special mincemeat pie I keep on hand. I keep it in a separate compartment next to my very special home-made sausage.

“The secret to making mincemeat,” I tell him as I scoop vanilla ice cream onto it, “is to make sure the suet you use has been soaked in liquor for a good long time.”

Home-made Pie and Sausage was previously published in Windchill: Crime Stories by New England Writers. It is also part of a two story collection called Home-made Pie and Sausage and Killing Julie Morris. From love, murder, etc. available in eformat (coming in print).

MARDI GRAS WAS OVER

My husband and our daughter are fighting again. This latest installment of the fight has been going on for three days but they have engaged in an ongoing battle since she was old enough to have an opinion. Our daughter has many opinions.

I concentrate on chopping onions and slicing tomatoes for the salad. The table is set, Byron, our three year old, is in his booster chair wearing a bib. Camille, who is eight and Mommy’s Little Helper, is carefully folding the napkins at the dining room table and keeping a nervous eye on the combatants. Ten-year-old Marcus has vanished.

"You’re afraid of being alive!” Maya screams, her hands on her narrow hips, and all the outrage of her thirteen years of life burning in her bright cheeks.

"You are so boring!”

My husband, his face also red, stares at her. He has never understood his first-born child. "What does that have to do with anything?” he asks. Only I can hear the hurt in his voice.

"You’re jealous,” Maya spits. "I’m young and you’re old and you’ve never done one interesting thing in your whole stupid life so you don’t want me to have fun either.” We’ve heard this complaint before. It is her favorite explanation for why her father and I are so impossible to get along with. She is young, we are old. She wants to have fun, we are stuffy old bores who stand in her way.

My husband turns his back and walks out of the room.

"Maybe so,” he says, "but you’re still not going to Mardi Gras with your friends.” I hear the front door slam. He will be outside on the porch trying to calm down, sneaking one of the cigarettes he is supposed to have quit but which I know are still hidden on a rafter under the porch roof. My husband cannot bear these fights. He will be upset for hours but neither will he change his mind.

"Mo-o-o-m!” Maya pleads.

"You heard your father,” I say keeping my eyes on the tomatoes.

"YOU went to Mardi Gras!” she says.

"I was eighteen,” I say. "Not thirteen.” Maya flings herself into a chair. "That was like a million years ago! It’s different now! Girls are more mature at thirteen than they were back then.”

"You act like this and then you tell me you are more mature?” I turn and stare at her. She is huddled on the chair in the corner by the door, slender arms and legs crossed, fury and outrage clouding her lovely face where the cuteness of the child she once was is transforming daily into the beauty of the woman she will one day be.

"Listen, my darling daughter, you are not going to New Orleans with a bunch of girls I don’t care whose older sister will be going along. You are too young and that is that.”

"I HATE you!” she screams again, "You’re both old and boring and stupid.” She runs out of the room, caroms down the hallway, and slams the bathroom door.

"She’s just mean, Mommy,” Camille says watching me with her big, worried eyes. Eyes made too wary by too many scenes like this. "Don’t listen to her.”

"It’s okay, my angel,” I tell her cupping her soft little chin in my hand and bending down to kiss her silken cheeks, "she’s just being a teenager. She’ll grow out of it.”

"I hope I’m never like that,” Camille says.

I sigh. "I was like that too when I was her age,” I say. And I was.

My mother still tells me that she was too easy on me. Even after all these years, and four grandchildren whom she dearly loves, she never misses an opportunity to tell me I was too wild. She still dredges up what might have happened. How lucky I was not to end up in a gutter somewhere. When I complain to her about Maya’s temperamental behavior she laughs and says,"It’s the fulfillment of The Mother’s Curse: Someday I hope you have a child who acts just like you do.’”

"I was a lot older,” I respond.

"You were always too big for your britches,” she claims.

I was eighteen when I ran away. She’s never let me forget that. It was a typical South Carolina winter, dark and cold and raining. I had graduated from high school the June before but had to wait a year to enter college because I hadn’t completed my applications on time. I was waiting tables in a downtown diner by day, looking for trouble by night, and driving my parents crazy. I didn’t think I could hang on until it was time to leave for college. All my friends were gone and I wanted to be too. I wanted adventure but it was adventure that found me. It arrived on a bitterly cold January afternoon riding a gleaming black and silver Harley-Davidson.

He was big, tall and broad, and he walked with the easy confidence of someone accustomed to being in control. When he unzipped his black leather jacket the first thing I noticed was the promise of tattoos beneath his shirt’s open neck. When he took off his helmet the first thing I noticed was a face that had starred in my wildest dreams, only better.

"What would you like?” I asked pouring coffee as he settled onto a stool at the counter.

He grinned at me. White, white, white. Beautiful. Eyes like pools of melted caramel. Thick, long hair the color of the coffee that streamed into his cup.

"Steak,” he said, "rare. Home-fries. Pie.”

"Is that it?” I asked my heart hammering against the front of my uniform.

"You,” he added. "I’m on my way to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. You should come with me.”

Okay,” I said.

His name was Caleb. He didn’t say where he was from but I loved his voice, soft and gently accented. He was back from the Persian Gulf. He had an Army buddy in New Orleans and no plans beyond that. He stayed for a week and we spent every free minute together. He would pick me up at the diner after work on his Harley and we drove out past the high school, through the salt grass marshes to the beach. He brought beer and Marlboros. He didn’t do drugs, he said. He liked to ride. Riding was his high.

For a week he drove me mad with hot kisses and cool gazes. We made love everywhere, in the dunes, in the alley behind the diner, in his hotel room, on the porch of my house, on the Harley. Tattoos covered his arms and chest. He was ten years older than I was but I didn’t care. My parents forbade me to see him but that made him all the more alluring. The other waitresses in the diner drooled over him. "He’s dangerous,” Emmy said. "You better watch yourself.”

"He’ll probably break your heart,” Sandy Mae said, "and leave you pregnant.” Every warning anyone issued made him all the more enticing.

It was less than a week to Mardi Gras. If we were going to make it to New Orleans in time we had to hurry.

"Come on,” he said biting my neck, running his hands up my thighs under the skirt of my uniform as he backed me into a corner behind the men’s room door in the diner. "Come on. Meet me at the ballfield tonight at eight. You don’t need anything. We’ll ride all night.” There was a tattoo of a grizzly bear rearing up, claws and fangs bared on the bulging bicep of his left arm. I licked the curve of the bear’s back and he grabbed my hair in his fist, pulled my head up so he could cover my mouth with his, thrust his tongue down my throat, nail me to the wall with the relentless heat of his pelvis.

"Come ON,” he said. "What’s stopping you?” So I went.

The craziness of Mardi Gras was nothing compared to the craziness in my heart. His buddy lived in the French Quarter and we could crash there. I don’t know how many people were staying there and it didn’t matter. We never slept. For days we never slept. We danced and we drank and we ate and had sex everywhere ---in the apartment, in the courtyard, in the alleys behind St. Louis Cathedral, under floats, in the backs of restaurants. Everything was brilliant and loud and wet and hot, so hot. So very hot.

When it was over we got on the bike and sped down to Venice where we crawled into his sleeping bag and slept on the beach for days. "Where to next?” I asked one morning as we lay in the dunes listening to the waves of the Gulf of Mexico pounding the beach.

He smiled at me."You’re not tired of me yet?”

"No! How could I be?”

He laughed. "Want to go to Mexico?” he said.

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