and Mayfair, until such time as Mother Nature sees fit to humble all of us, regardless of how well we are equipped, configured, programmed, and installed. In other words, until lightning strikes again!”
She dashed to the chair before the desk, took up her place before the screen, and began typing again, just as if she’d completely forgotten he was standing there.
Granny shouted from upstairs, “Mary Jane, go on, this baby’s hungry!”
Mary Jane pulled on his sleeve.
“Now wait just a minute,” he said. But he had lost the amazing young woman, totally and completely, he realized that, just as he realized that she was purely naked under the white shirt, and that the light of her gooseneck lamp was shining right on her breast and her flat belly and her naked thighs. Didn’t look like she had any panties on, either. And those long bare feet, what big bare feet. Was it safe to be typing on a computer in a lightning storm in your bare feet? Her red hair just flooded down to the seat of the chair.
Granny shouted from above.
“Mary Jane, you got to get this baby back by five o’clock!”
“I’m going, I’m going, Dr. Jack, come on!”
“ ’Bye there, Dr. Jack!” shouted the beanpole beauty, suddenly waving at him with her right hand, which was at the end of an amazingly long arm, without even taking her eyes off the computer.
Mary Jane rushed past him and jumped in the boat. “You coming or not?” she said. “I’m pulling out, I got things to do, you want to be stuck here?”
“Get that baby where by five o’clock?” he demanded, coming to his senses, and thinking about what that old woman had just said. “You’re not taking that baby out again to be baptized!”
“Hurry up, Mary Jane!”
“Anchors aweigh!” Mary Jane screamed, pushing the pole at the steps.
“Wait a minute!”
He took the leap, splashing into the pirogue as it rocked against the balusters and then the wall. “All right, all right. Just slow down, will you? Get me to the landing without dumping me into the swamp, would you do that, please?”
Clickety, clickety, clickety.
The rain had slacked up a bit, praise God. And a little bit of sun was even breaking through the heavy gray clouds just enough to shine on the drops!
“Now, here, Doctor, you take this,” said Mary Jane, as he climbed into the car. It was a fat envelope just full of bills, and, he saw by the way she ruffled them with her thumb, all new twenties. He eyeballed that to be a thousand. She slammed the door and ran around to the other side.
“Now that’s just too much money, Mary Jane,” he said, but he was thinking Weed Eater, lawn mower, brand-new electric shrub clippers, and Sony color TV, and there wasn’t a reason in the world to declare this on his taxes.
“Oh, shut up, you keep it!” she said. “Coming out on a day like this, you earned it.” There went her skirt, back down to her thighs. But she couldn’t hold a candle to that flaming darling upstairs, and what would it be like to get his hands on something like that, just for five minutes, something that young and that sleek and fresh and that beautiful, with those long long legs! Hush now, you old fool, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.
Mary Jane threw the car into reverse, wheels whirring in the wet shells of the road, and then made a dangerous one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and headed off over the familiar potholes.
He looked back at the house one more time, the big hulk of rotting columns and wood towering over the cypresses, with the duckweed muck lapping at its half-sunk windows, and then at the road ahead. Boy, he was glad to get out of here.
And when he got home and his little wife Eileen said, “What all did you see out there at Fontevrault, Jack?” what was he going to tell her? Not about the three prettiest young women he’d ever seen under one roof, that’s for sure. And not about this wad of twenty-dollar bills in his pocket, either.
Twenty-eight
WE INVENTED A human identity for ourselves.
We “became” an ancient tribe called the Picts, tall because we came from the northern countries where men grow tall, and we were eager to live in peace with those who would not disturb us.
Of course, we had to go about this very gradually. Word went out before we did. There was a waiting period at