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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “Farewell to Seafaring” Down in the Dirt, v153 (the January 2018 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the issue book At Midnight the Down in the Dirt Jan.-Apr. 2018 collection book		get the 418 page Jan.-Apr. 2018 Down in the Dirt issue anthology 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Deep in the Pool

Bob Strother

    Lucia is the first to come work for us—tall, raven-haired and single, and as lovely as her given name is, it’s easy to see why her friends call her Legs. Her former co-worker buddies Lila and Gwen follow within three weeks’ time—Lila petite, sexy-eyed and flirtatious, Gwen, more ripe than plump with a knowing smile that all but asks can you handle this. George, the boss, is a sanctimonious control freak but has great taste when it comes to hiring secretaries. He has pirated some poor asshole’s whole pool. A hat trick, these three—the kind of girls who make our wives feel nervous, have them applying cosmetics before cooking breakfasts, and offering accommodating smiles at bedtime.
    He takes a special interest in Gwen—who wears short skirts and fuck-me heels and her blond hair feathered to frame her face—which makes her the de facto head secretary, a responsibility she takes seriously as evidenced by her spending a lot of time in George’s office and, as needed, working late hours along with the boss.
    We are okay with this arrangement as George is less sanctimonious and smiles more, so we’re grieved when George’s wife arrives unexpectedly one afternoon to find Gwen sitting on her husband’s desk, skirt bunched high around her generous thighs, and one too many buttons open on her blouse. There’s nothing going on he assures her on her way out the door, but she’s more proactive than persuaded, and Gwen is history by the end of the week. Lucia replaces Gwen and relocates from the reception desk I can see so readily from my office, and into the far-removed alcove by George’s.
    My disappointment at losing Legs is forgotten when, two weeks later, a red-haired angel takes her place outside my office. Mona is a single mom in her twenties with bottomless, brown doe-eyes, her hair a shimmering torrent of late afternoon sunlight cascading down to her shoulders. She smiles and says hello and stares at me like I’m a book she’s eager to read.
    Married ten years, I am smitten.
    So much so that when my wife takes an out of town trip two weeks later, I invite Mona to come by my house after work, and she says okay that sounds like fun, and we end up in bed for the first time, and later, at work, she gives me this note saying she wants to play with me forever.
    No matter she has a ten-year-old daughter and a long-time boyfriend who owns his own business, no matter I will ultimately lose a wife, a house, and a new ’74 Olds Cutlass; all that matters is she wants to play with me forever.

.....

    Forever is what it feels like when I’m waiting in my third-floor-walkup, poorly-furnished, just-separated-from-my-wife apartment, for Mona to show up. She’ll try she says, but she’s living with her parents, and she does have a child, and sometimes she just has to do something with Terry, the boyfriend of longstanding whom her mom and dad and daughter seem to really like but whom Mona tells me she’s not really that much into. Then I spy her Monte Carlo turn into the drive and meet her at my door and we race for the bedroom and everything’s all right again until the next time.
    Except it’s not, really.
    Every night I spend alone, submerged in a watery blackness of longing and fear, floating in limbo between despair and hope, looking up toward a dim and distant light where Mona is my surface, my salvation, my ability to breathe and always just a little bit out of reach.
    My divorce becomes final, and I ask Mona to go with me to pick out an engagement ring, and she agrees but then thinks I should meet her daughter first and maybe her parents, except now is not a real good time to spring our relationship on them, so instead she invites me to go with her to visit her sisters in Charlotte.
    Her sisters, and her sisters’ husbands are fun and gracious and charming, and I am charmed because this is what I dream of—to be accepted as part of Mona’s family, and that night when we are alone in the guest bedroom, her head on my chest, one leg thrown casually over mine, it seems almost attainable.
    So when I ask again about the ring, she explains how we really can’t get married right now because she has to marry Terry first. Everyone expects it, she says, since he has his own business, an auto parts store, and will be such a good provider for her and her daughter and besides, he’s building a race car in his garage and won’t really be spending that much time with her.
    I’m sinking to the bottom again, darkness swallowing me, air bubbles floating up toward the surface, now so far, far away, all the while thinking I’m her lover but not her love.
    The Monte Carlo is back in my parking lot and Mona and I are back in my bed two days after she returns from her honeymoon in New Orleans, where she says she cried a lot and that having sex with Terry is nothing like making love with me. And by the way, Lucia’s getting married, too, and leaving, and George has offered her the head secretary’s position. Isn’t that just exciting?
    I’m not sure what’s worse, me staring at the empty reception desk, or having a married and less accessible Mona sitting there as a constant reminder of my misery. My quandary is soon solved when Susie shows up, hangs her shoulder bag on the reception area coat rack, and places her new nameplate on the desk. Dark-eyed, dark-haired and tan, she followed her now-long-gone boyfriend up from Daytona, and drives a lemon-yellow MGB convertible. Give George another check mark in the secretary-hiring column.
    I’m waiting for Mona again, a cheap cabernet open on the nightstand beside two grocery store wine glasses, and trying not to stare out the window so often when I hear the knock on my door. It’s Susie, looking all slinky and feline in a sundress that matches the MGB and she’s telling me Mona can’t make it after all and asked if she’d come by to let me know, and is it okay if she comes in for a while. And of course, it is okay.
    She plops down on my ratty imitation-leather sofa, pulls a nicely rolled joint from her purse, and asks Do me? I light it wondering about her terminology and we share a few hits, a couple glasses of cabernet, and then we’re naked and in bed and I cease to wonder about much of anything except for how deep in the pool I am. Could be Mona really does love me, sending Susie by this way, or maybe it’s just one of the many ways to leave your lover. Either way, it’s beginning to feel like home.

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