Read Online Deadline by Gerry Boyle - Free Book Online Page B

Burlington, Vermont, back home to Portland. I’d shown her around, and then we’d come back to the house and talked and gone to bed. I thought of it often. Until Arthur had died, it had kept me smiling like a fool.
    Roxanne was refreshing, rejuvenating, energetic, uninhibited, and, unlike the last woman I’d been involved with, in New York, didn’t make me feel like I was needed to act out a fantasy from the pages of Cosmopolitan . With Roxanne, I didn’t feel like a foil. She didn’t pattern herself after some abstraction of the ideal woman. Roxanne was the way she was. If you didn’t like it, that was tough.
    But I liked it.
    Her hair was pulled back and her cheeks were flushed from cooking. She was wearing ripped Levi’s and a blue-and-white-striped sailor’s jersey from L.L. Bean.
    â€œDid you wear those clothes to work?” I asked.
    â€œI changed in the guest bedroom,” she said, pouring the wine.
    We clinked bottle and glass and walked into the living room. Through the bedroom door, I could see a skirt and blouse and stockings strewn on the bed.
    â€œSo go ahead and mess up my house,” I said. “I’ve been cleaning all week.”
    â€œYou could clean up all year and still not make a dent in this place. I’d go crazy if I lived here.”
    â€œI’d go crazy if you lived here.”
    She put the guacamole and tortilla chips on the table and sat down on the couch. I put my beer down and eased her back on the cushions. She laughed and quickly turned to me and we kissed. I loved the taste of her, the smell of her, soap or perfume or whatever the hell it was.
    â€œDo you want to eat now or later?” she said, pulling her mouth away.
    â€œWhat are you serving?”
    â€œYou’re going to smell it burning if I don’t turn the stove down.”
    â€œTurn it way down,” I said.
    I grabbed my beer and her glass and went into the bedroom. Roxanne came behind me and sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off her running shoes. I unlaced my boots and tossed them toward the door.
    â€œSo how was Waterford?” I asked.
    She pushed me down on the bed and rested her chin on my chest.
    â€œIf I’d wanted to talk about Waterford, I would have gone back to work,” she said.
    â€œWhat do you want to talk about?” I asked.
    â€œYou,” Roxanne said. “And how good you’re going to make me feel.”
    â€œIs that an order or a prediction?”
    â€œI brought my crystal ball.”
    She pulled her shirt off over her head and slid out of her jeans as I did the same. We sat on the bed and kissed, and I leaned back a moment to look at her. She smiled and raised herself up, arching her back and lifting her breasts. I grinned.
    Roxanne knew she was beautiful. She reveled in it. She knew I thought she was beautiful, that I wanted her. She turned her head to let her long dark hair fall across her shoulders. No coyness. No self-consciousness. Just that open smile, delicate white shoulders, a statue’s breasts, strong smooth legs.
    I shook my head as I leaned toward her.
    â€œI think I’m developing a taste for younger women,” I said.
    â€œTaste this younger woman,” Roxanne said.
    She smiled.
    I gulped.
    We made love deliberately and steadily but with a gathering momentum, like a wave moving toward shore, an offshore roller. Before it broke, we were face-to-face, sitting up with her hair falling on my chest and shoulders. She was forceful. Intent. Then out of control.
    When I finally reached down to the floor for my beer, it was warm. I drained it anyway, but Roxanne said she’d get me a cold one. She went over to the closet and took a faded tan chamois shirt out of the closet and put it on. I watched.
    She went to the kitchen and from the bed I heard the refrigerator door open and shut. Outside, shriveled oak leaves rattled against the dormer window. Roxanne came back into the room with two