Smith's Monthly #17 Read online

Patty hugged me, smiling, and I could feel even more energy pouring through me.

  “Mom,” Sherri said, “Let me get you home and into bed.”

  Lady Luck nodded, but didn’t move. “Stan, want to jump us both there and come back. Not sure if I dare risk it yet.”

  Stan nodded and the three of them vanished.

  Patty was working to get me to my feet and into the booth and Screamer was helping Ben up from the floor when Stan appeared.

  “Stan, same kind of help if you don’t mind?” Ben asked.

  Stan nodded and smiled. He looked at me. “We have some talking to do.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  He laughed. “Tomorrow. Great work, once again.”

  He vanished with Ben.

  “You two going to be all right?” Screamer asked.

  I nodded. “After some rest.”

  “Great work,” he said, “as always.”

  “You too,” I said. “Tell Madge we’re done for the night.”

  He nodded and turned and went through the door into Madge’s Diner.

  Outside the windows of my office, I could see the hint of sunrise starting to color the eastern hills. Below, the lights of Vegas looked wonderful.

  It felt great to be home.

  I couldn’t remember being so tired.

  And so satisfied at the same time. Especially sitting there in the booth of my office, holding Patty.

  Finally, she pushed away from me and waved her hand. “You need a shower, big boy.”

  “Sweat?” I asked, smiling at her.

  “Perfume,” she said.

  I stood and she held me as we headed for the door to her apartment below.

  “You might need to soap me up some,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m pretty tired.”

  “Raspberry soap?” she asked, smiling back and hugging me.

  “Of course,” I said. “Just like the first time ten years ago.”

  “I don’t think either one of us has the energy to do what we did that first time ten years ago,” she said, kissing me as we went through the door and into her wonderful apartment.

  And, of course, she was right.

  But the next night we certainly tried to repeat what we had done ten years before in that wonderful shower with that wonderful-smelling soap.

  And we honestly came pretty darned close.

  And in sex and raspberry soap showers, pretty darned close is pretty darned nice.

  Great moments exist for all of us at different times in our lives. From a simple taste of a cookie to meeting the love of our life.

  Bill Wallace lived through five of those special moments. Bill considers himself lucky to experience five. Many people never get any.

  USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith peeks inside Bill Wallace’s life and his special moments.

  A LIFE IN WHOOPEES

  My name is Bill Wallace, I’m seventy-two years old, and I feel like one of the lucky people in life. I had a good marriage, great children and grandchildren, a good career. And I had five whoopee moments.

  I hear some people never even have one.

  My First Whoop

  I was ten. It was the last day of school before Christmas, and it was snowing lightly outside our family house in Madison, Wisconsin. As I came through the door, the warmth of the house hit me in the face, combined with the fantastic smell of Mom baking Christmas cookies.

  “Yes!” I shouted. I dropped my backpack on the hall table and headed toward the kitchen.

  “Billy!” my mom shouted from the kitchen. “Take off your boots at the door.”

  I stopped, yanked off my boots and went sliding in my stocking feet on the hardwood floors to get a cookie.

  That Christmas turned out to be the best Christmas ever, since Grandma and Grandpa were there, Dad was still living at home, and Mom seemed happy. None of that would ever happen again, so I still look back at that Christmas as the best ever.

  My Second Whoop

  Debbie pushed me away and slid back across the front seat of the car. She was clearly breathing hard and as excited as I was.

  We had parked on a canal road a good four miles outside of town. The only thing close was a farmer’s house a half mile away. I still had the car radio on, and the light from it and the moon through the steamed-up windows was enough for me to see Debbie’s face.

  Her short brown hair was messed up slightly, and her cheeks were red.

  Debbie and I were both sophomores in high school and had been sort of hanging out for a month or so together. It was common knowledge that we were together, and we went out on sort-of dates a lot, but that was about as far as it had gotten.

  Twice after I had gotten my driver’s license, we had parked out here on the canal bank, and both times all we had done was kissed. I was hoping tonight might be a little different, but so far it was turning out to be the same.

  The seat between us was one of those bench seats that only Dodges and pick-up trucks had during the seventies. Luckily my mom had bought a Dodge.

  “Billy, you promise you won’t tell anyone we’re parking?”

  “Who am I going to tell?” I asked. “Of course I promise. What happens here, what we talk about here, is just between you and me.”

  She looked at me for a long time, but of course, in that situation, any amount of time seemed long. Then, in a quick motion, she slipped her sweater over her head and tossed it into the back seat.

  Her white bra was like a beacon in the night. All I could say was “Wow!”

  Five years later, during our second years in college, we were married. I have to admit that even after we were married the sight of her in a bra still took my breath away.

  My Third Whoop

  The letter came from the State Bar association. Four years of college and three years of law school and it all came down to one stupid envelope in my hand.

  I just stood there in the doorway of our apartment, staring at the envelope. I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking.

  Debbie, who had spent seven years putting me through college, looked at what I was holding, then gently took it out of my hand.

  I was already an associate at David, David, and Jennings, one of the best law firms in town. But I still had to pass the bar, and the results of that bar exam were inside the envelope. Three weeks ago I had walked out of the exam convinced I had passed, but with every day since I became less and less sure, to the point where I could hardly sleep I was worrying about it so much.

  I couldn’t watch as Debbie quickly opened the letter.

  Then, in the loudest release of breath I had ever heard, she handed me the letter and then hugged me, smiling and crying at the same time.

  I glanced at the letter. I had passed.

  “Oh, thank God!” I said.

  “You did it,” Debbie said.

  I looked her right in the eye and shook my head. “We did it.”

  All both of us could do after that was just smile.

  My Fourth Whoop

  My secretary knew what I liked. We’d been having an affair for almost a year, and she said that she had something very special for me for Christmas this year.

  Debbie and I had had two kids, a boy named Ben and a daughter named Karen. With Debbie focusing on the kids and me focusing on building my law practice, we sort of drifted apart. At some point a few years back we just sort of stopped making love, one or the other of us seeming to always be too busy. We talked about it once in a while, but never really acted on the talk.

  We also fought a lot, especially right after the kids were born. It seemed I never knew when I went home if Debbie was going to be angry or not.

  I don’t think Debbie knew I was having an affair with my secretary, Heather, and I never wanted her to find out. She had developed a real temper over the years, and I sure didn’t want her letting that temper loose on me for something as major as an affair. It was bad enough on the small stuff with the kids and the house and money.

  Heather kne
w I was never going to leave Debbie, and she didn’t much care. She was open sexually and had no thoughts at all of wanting me as a husband.

  “So what’s this surprise you’ve been talking about?” I asked Heather as I came back into my office after my last meeting. It was a little after six in the evening three days before Christmas, and Debbie didn’t expect me home for at least another few hours.

  Heather beamed at me, her twenty-something smile lighting up the room. She had long blonde hair, even longer legs, and a body that looked far too good in a lace bra and underwear.

  “This way,” she said, motioning me with a finger.

  She had that sexy look on her face and I knew I was in for something fun.

  She led me into my darkened office, and then before I could turn on the light, she put her hand on mine and said, “Not yet. I’ll tell you when.”

  She closed the door and turned the lock, sending the room into almost complete blackness, since the blinds were down on the window and it was a dark night outside.

  I could hear a faint rustling in the dark. Then Heather said, “Go ahead.”

  I snapped on the light. The sight that greeted me was something I could have only dreamed about. Heather and another young woman were both sitting on the edge of my desk. Both were wearing only lace underwear. The sight took my breath away, so it was a moment before I finally said, “Wow!”

  Heather smiled at me. “This is Heidi, a friend of mine. She’s going to help me give you a very special Christmas present.”

  Two and a half hours later I finally managed to stagger to my car. Never, in all my life, had a Christmas been like this one.

  My Fifth and Final Whoop

  I was just over an hour late getting home after my special present from Heidi and her friend. I expected to find Debbie sitting in her favorite chair, watching television, wrapped in her blue bathrobe, more than likely angry at me. But instead, when I opened the door, I was greeted with the wonderful smell of baking cookies.

  I took off my coat and dropped my briefcase on the hall table, then headed for the kitchen. I had skipped dinner because of Heather’s little surprise, so the smell of the cookies was almost more than my rumbling stomach could handle.

  When I went through the kitchen door, I got a sight that not in a million years would I have expected to see. Debbie was leaning over the stove in her white lace bra and underwear, taking out a fresh batch of cookies.

  Until that moment I hadn’t realized just how attractive she still was. Even after having two children, she had kept herself fit.

  “Wow!” I said, for the second time in the same night.

  She looked up at me and smiled. “Welcome home. I thought I’d give you a little surprise.”

  I glanced around, then back at her. “Where are the kids?”

  “At my mother’s for the night,” Debbie said, smiling her old sexy smile. “So we’re all alone.”

  She put the hot batch of cookies on the stovetop, closed the oven, and moved over to a plate of cookies already frosted. “I bet you’re hungry,” she said, offering the plate to me.

  “I am,” I said, taking two cookies. “And these smell wonderful. And you look wonderful.”

  I almost swallowed the first cookie whole, it tasted so good.

  “I do, don’t I?” she asked, turning around so that I could see her from all sides.

  “You do,” I agreed between bites of the second cookie. “Really good.”

  “As good as Heather and her friend Heidi?”

  I froze in mid-bite, staring at her smile.

  She laughed, twirling around to give me another look. “I’m surprised you would even be interested after what those two young things put you through in your office.”

  I had no idea what was happening, how she knew about Heather and what had happened in my office, or how she was even going to react. So being a good attorney and a fearful husband, I ventured nothing, and said nothing.

  She leaned against the counter across the kitchen from me, that damned white lace bra of hers making her look very sexy. “Surprised, huh?”

  I nodded slightly and she laughed.

  It was getting damned hot in that kitchen at that moment. Too hot.

  “Didn’t you know I would find out what you were doing? Hell, I went to take you to dinner to talk about things and even got a little show tonight.”

  Damn, she had a key to my office. I had made her one years ago.

  “So I thought I’d just come home and give you a little show of my own.”

  I could feel my heart racing, my blood pounding through my head. I couldn’t seem to think straight.

  I tried to say something, but the words didn’t want to come out.

  “Oh, good,” Debbie said, laughing and coming toward me, “the poison is working.”

  I wanted to say, “Cookies?” but again nothing came out.

  The next instant, instead of staring at Debbie’s white bra, I was watching the tile Debbie and I had picked out specially for the kitchen come rushing up at my face.

  I woke up six hours later in the hospital. A woman who looked like a doctor was standing over me, frowning.

  “Poison,” I managed to croak out.

  “We know,” she said, nodding and staring at some instrument beside me. Then she patted my arm. “Just rest.”

  I must have rested, because the next thing I remembered was waking up to the blinding light from the window, my head pounding so hard I thought it might explode.

  Debbie was already in jail. She served a total of six years in prison for trying to kill me.

  I lost my position in the firm and had to hang out my own shingle because it came out in court what Heather and I were doing that caused Debbie to snap.

  The kids lived with me, with my parents helping out, and visited their mother every other Sunday while she was in jail, and every other week after she got out and got a job. I never did make as much money as I had been making at the firm, but I did all right for myself over the years. And never once hired a secretary.

  I never remarried either. Couldn’t see much point in it.

  I was thirty-two when Debbie poisoned me with that cookie. Now I’m seventy-two, no longer practice law, and have three wonderful grandkids. But in all those years, I never had another whoopee moment.

  I guess I should be happy to have a five-whoopee life.

  From what I understand, some people never even have one.

  I feel sad for them.

  All he wanted to do was wash his green Rambler Classic, but the volcano blew and started dumping ash everywhere.

  And just wouldn’t stop.

  An end-of-the-world story for one man who just really wanted it to rain.

  And yes, I lived downwind from Mount St. Helens in 1980, and that is where this story came from.

  BETWEEN SHOWERS

  ONE

  It rained yesterday, which was the day before the volcano blew.

  I was annoyed at the rain, because it caught me by surprise. Actually, I was napping at the time, but I was still surprised when I woke up. Not a fun-surprise sort-of-thing, either.

  The rain, in its untimely arrival, had given me no time to get my freshly-washed-and-waxed green Rambler Classic under the shelter of the overhang on the back of my house. I usually wash my car three times a week, and when I saw, to my surprise, that it had rained, I figured I was going to have to wash it again today. In fact, I prepared myself last evening for a morning of car washing.

  But that was before the volcano blew.

  Everything changes when volcanoes blow.

  Now, as ash drifts down outside my living room like a lazy snow, covering everything in a gray blanket, growing deeper by the hour, I hope for rain.

  Rain, I believe, would clean out the air, turn the ash into mud, and make it safe.

  One day I am mad at the rain, the next I hope for it. I am clearly divided in my rain loyalties.

  I am also a divided surprise junkie, it seems. Yeste
rday, I was angry at the surprise of the rain, now I want to be surprised again by it. I have even thought of napping to see if the rain would come. But after tossing and turning on the couch for a half hour I came to the conclusion that sleeping just after a volcano blows is not possible for me. It might be for some people, but not for me.

  So maybe my inability to sleep will hold off the rain.

  I feel powerless without the ability to nap. I can only now hope for rain, wish for rain, think about rain.

  I thought for a short time about praying for rain, but on that strategy I have a problem. I am not a religious man. Religion hasn’t come to me in a flash of lightning, or even an itch like a bad fungus between my toes. I haven’t caught it like a cold, or ran into it like a car wreck. It just hasn’t happened to me, so I can’t pray for rain. No god to pray to.

  Just hoping and wishing and thinking are my choices, and I alternate between those choices as the ash builds up outside.

  TWO

  Looking through my front window feels like viewing the world through an old black-and-white television.

  I had bought an old black-and-white television a number of years back from a thrift shop. It had a big wood cabinet with carved legs and round marks on the top where people had left glasses and scarred the wood. It only worked for a day and then smoke came out of the back. I now use it for a stand to hold up the smaller color television with no circle stain marks that I bought six months later from the same thrift shop.

  Right now that color television is working just fine, only there is no picture. Just gray fuzz like the ash outside.

  I walk back and forth in my living room, first staring out the window, then going back to stare at the empty television. The gray in the television and the gray in the windows is turning my entire life gray, sucking the colors from my green living room carpet, my old maroon reading chair, even the covers of my books stacked in the corners.