Chasing The Last Road To Stockholm

There I was in Kansas, the start of the road to Oz, somehow standing by the side of a lane through a desert of golden wheat, holding on tightly to a small naked woman who had recently tried to mug me. This wasn't who I was. I knew that. I'm British, and we don't do that sort of thing; at least not in public.

I knew it didn't mean anything to her, it was just a need for comfort -- a human touch in a time of desperation. I still had no idea of what and why and how, but the last few days must have been a nightmare for her. I knew that she had been hiding out from someone or something, that much was blatantly obvious, but why she hadn't gone straight to the authorities was anyone's guess at this stage. Perhaps a rabid boyfriend or stalker, or possibly criminals of some sort were after her -- or maybe she was the criminal and was hiding out from the authorities. All that was apart from the fact that she'd been abused in some way.

Desperate not to send any messages of weirdness, I just held her tightly to me with one arm, and simply stroked her wet hair with the other hand; combing my fingers through it very slowly and gently from her scalp all the way down her back.

The problem started when she began to gently rock, as if subconsciously longing for a return to infancy, to a time when being rocked in a cradle, a mother's arms, or on a father's lap meant comfort and peace. That was her need.

However, my need was quite different. In my reality my cock was urgently trying to alert me to the fact that a naked woman with a fairly stunning body was pressed firmly against me from my knees to my chest. That was one thing. The rocking was quite another -- it was a simulacrum of sex.

I wasn't filthy rich, but I was comfortably well off, despite all my ex-wife's efforts to the contrary. I wasn't ugly, overweight, particularly stupid or trying to hide baldness, so I hadn't been practicing to be a virgin recently, either. I'd had a few short-term relationships in the past from those wounded birds I couldn't resist, and I wasn't desperate. Besides, I was my own right-hand man.

In that moment, however, I felt like a man who had been locked away from every aspect of the fairer sex for the past ten years, while forced to continually wear boxing gloves. I felt an extreme anxiety within me -- a desperation almost -- to simply take this woman, throw her to the ground and use her, and for her to use me, for a long, hard time.

Somehow -- I don't know how -- I knew she would have allowed that; she might have hated it, but wouldn't have fought me; perhaps because I was trying to be nice, despite us getting off on the wrong foot, but more likely because she had been forced to react that way to an authority figure, and right now, that was me.

My erection felt like someone had attached a crowbar to my scrotum and drawn a happy face on the front end of it. It felt as if it was alive within my jeans, straining and struggling to find an opening within the material -- even just a few loose threads that it could peremptorily break through, bursting into the light and then onward, into the contrasting, welcoming darkness within her.

She looked up at me, her face still wet and streaked with tears. Her eyes were steady on mine, wider than normal, the pupils seeming hugely dilated. Those eyes contained a message -- a ciphered message I was desperate to read but didn't dare decode. At that moment, with the dirt that had muddied my view of her now washed away, I thought that she was quite lovely. However, naked women often look beautiful to the men they are pressed up against, and I knew I had to fight against the Knighthood within me.

"Summer," I whispered helplessly. I had met her less than an hour before, but it felt as if we had spent a lifetime in conflict together; an aeon of emotion. She didn't blink, her eyes still locked on mine.

I have no idea why I did it, except for the fact that I didn't know what else to do.

I sang to her.

"Out of my depth, in too deep / drowning in the rolling waves / I call to you / I call your name."

The words seem stark and trite when written down on paper, but the tune was a pretty one and despite my voice, seemed to carry my feelings of confusion and fear, desire and desperation. I made the shift into the minor key.

"In the dark deeps / sinking into the blue / I look to the light above / I call out to you."

Trite or not, they seemed to have an effect on her. Her lips parted, the tip of a pink tongue just touching the centre of a generous bottom lip, before darting back into hiding.

"What was that called?" she whispered.

"Wavelength," I replied.

The answer seemed to satisfy her. She seemed to consider for a moment, and then she kissed me, very lightly, her lips unmoving against mine. We held that position for what seemed an age, while in actuality just a few seconds strolled by relentlessly. Then she drew back and placed a tiny hand to my cheek.

"Told you -- a pervert!" she whispered. A smile flashed across her face, and a wave of gladness swept through me that no matter what she had gone through, she wasn't completely broken, and I hadn't added to that injury.

"Goblin!" I whispered back, and with sheer force of will, let my arms fall to my sides. "Get some clothes on before you get us both arrested."

She sniggered. "They won't arrest me. I'll tell them you threw water all over me, got me naked and then wouldn't let me in the car after using me most grievously."

"I hardly consider a hug to be grievous usage," I protested mildly, and then snorted. "As for the rest: no fair using partial truths to lie through your teeth. And grievously? Do people really talk like that here?"

She smirked, and didn't answer. I turned away, again having to force myself to do it. Then I thought of something and went to the boot. When I returned, she had the all-too-big shorts on and was using some kind of feminine magic to cinch and knot them tight around her waist. Her still naked breasts bobbled like delicious jellies as she struggled to draw the knot tight, and she finally had to clap her hands to break my attention away from them.

"Oh, right. Sorry," I said automatically, willing myself not to blush again. I held out the hairbrush I had in my hand. "I thought you might need this."

She took it, faking a frown. "This is yours. You got cooties?"

"I don't even know what cooties are," I confessed. "I guess they're a type of what... an American disease? Nits? Fleas?"

"I'll risk it," she said, her tone offhand but her expression showing pleasure at the gift.

"Got a cap?" she asked as she started to brush the waves of still-damp hair. "I need a cap. Or I could..."

She glanced pointedly at the scrap of filthy wool on the ground where I had thrown it. I shuddered. "No way! Not a chance! That's never coming back in this car."

"Then I need a cap."

"You don't want to leave your hair to dry?" I asked, reluctant to see that gorgeous mane hidden away.

"No, I need a cap. Give me a cap. Or I take the hat." Her mood had grown dark again, very quickly.

Okay -- that was strange, but then the whole day was more than strange. Two complete strangers, each knowing nothing whatsoever about the other, having an emotional moment after being locked in battle, viciously cursing each other. Her insistence on covering her beautiful hair was perfectly logica,l in comparison.

I thought for a moment, and then it was back to the boot once more for another search-dive into my suitcase. Successful, I handed it to her and she unfolded the square of silk.

"It's a handkerchief. My sister gave it to me as a joke. She says she's determined to transform me into a gentleman. I don't think she's backed a winner on that one."

Summer held it up, the pale blue almost transparent in the afternoon sunlight.

"It's beautiful," she said quietly. She gathered her hair together, made what looked like mystical movements over her head, and suddenly her hair was bound up in a bun. She covered it with the handkerchief, knotting it at the back.

"Ooh, fifties chic," I commented. "Very classy."

She struggled into the oversized shirt I'd given her, looking amused at my comment. I was less pleased, as her actions meant those pretty little breasts were now hidden from view. I had really enjoyed feasting my eyes on those whenever she hadn't been looking.

"We need to talk," I said after a moment. The irony that it was me saying that made my stomach clench up, and I put it off. "We need to do it while finding you something to eat. Let's go!"

She looked more than relieved when I ran around, threw the trash in the boot, slammed it shut, and got in behind the wheel. As I swung back on to the road and accelerated up, I got a glimpse of her face and the expression there made it seem like she'd just been granted a reprieve, rather than a ride.

We drove for a while, the tension seeming to build up between us once more, her mood now bleak and cold.

"So, where's the nearest reasonably good place to eat?" I asked, trying to break the silence.

"Dunno. I'm not from around here."

"Oh. Where're you from?"

She waved a hand towards my side window, but pointedly said nothing.

Okay, that went well.

"Got a surname?"

"No!"

"Ah, bar sinister then," I sighed. She turned and stared at me.

"I'm not going into any bars," she said sternly.

"No, that's not... It means illegitimate. It's from heraldry. You know, the left-handed bar across the shield..."

I stumbled into silence; strike two - or two wickets down in the first over, depending on your place of birth.

I tried to think of something neutral to say.

"So, you hang out and hijack cars around here often? Is it a local custom?"

"What? Stop asking me questions! Especially stupid ones." Her tone was hostile. So was mine.

"An hour ago you were trying to hijack me, and now I'm actually giving you a lift to get food. I think I'm owed an answer or two, don't you?"

"Fine!" she said, her voice carrying a flounce that couldn't have been plainer if she'd stamped her foot, crossed her legs and arms and glared at me. She didn't actually do those, but it was all there in what was left unsaid.

"Fine!" I shot back. "What's your real name? Why are you a fugitive and from whom? And how the hell did I end up giving you a lift after you threatened to kill me?"

"Nothing to do with you!" she yelled.

"It has everything to do with me!" I shouted back, losing it once again. "For all I know a convoy of police cars could tuck onto my tail any moment now -- threatening to shoot me if I didn't hand you over. Or even worse, some wise-guy with a toothpick in his mouth and an ice pick in his hand could invite me to go somewhere quiet for a special conversation. And I don't even know your real fucking name!"

She hesitated and then sagged into the seat. "Fine! But you tell me something about you first. All I know about you is that you managed to fight me off and then kind of abducted me. Oh, and your name rhymes with tin. For all I know you could be some kind of rapist and murderer!"

"No, because then I'd be wearing a cap with the words 'rapist and murderer' written on it, wouldn't I?" I came back, with a silent apology to Marty Feldman for stealing part of his joke.

She stared at me in bewilderment. To be fair, she certainly wasn't the first girl to give me that look. There was a long line of girls who'd worn that same expression when faced by my sense of humour, all the way back to Angela Fowler in primary school.

I shook my head. "Sorry, it's something my family do. We take parts of comedy routines and adlib them into situations. You have to be in on the joke to get it. If you were part of my family, you'd be rolling in the aisles by now."

"I can only imagine," she said dryly.

I sighed. "Okay, my name is Bryn Idris Lake, I was born in England, I'm divorced and I'm here for a business meeting in Wichita, with a little sight-seeing along the way."

"How's that working for you?" she asked, her expression neutral.

I knew she was talking about the sight-seeing, but I was still a little pissed at her. "The name is a pain in the arse -- my mother had some pretty Welsh names picked out for her little girl when she arrived, and when I disappointingly turned out to be a boy, she just stuck with the Celtic. I'm very happy being English, and very unhappy at having an ex-wife. The business meeting is a formality, and so far, all the sights I've seen have been related to wheat or corn in some way. There! Happy now?"

She digested that for a few minutes.

"You're divorced?"

"Oh no. I told you things about me. Your turn."

"My name is Charlotte Kennedy," she said grudgingly, watching me carefully as if to catch my reaction. The name meant nothing to me, so my reaction was self-limiting.

I waited. "That's it? That's all you're giving me?"

"I only asked you to tell me one thing," she said blithely. "You volunteered the rest. You don't look old enough to be married. Tell me about your ex-wife."

I sank down into my seat. "I'm almost twenty eight. I've known her since I was at school. We got together at university. She fell pregnant. I married her. She turned into the bitch from hell. I divorced her."

"You have a child?"

"No. She had a miscarriage. Except she didn't."

"That doesn't make sense."

"No, it didn't to me either. Where are you from?"

"California."

"North or South?"

"North. Sacramento."

"You're a long way from home," I said, trying to get a conversation going that included more than four words.

"I guess. What did you mean about the miscarriage?"

"She told me she was pregnant. Shortly after we were married -- when she was four months along and about to have ultrasound scans done, she told me she'd miscarried. A couple of years later, I found out that she'd never been pregnant. It had all been a lie."

She stared at me. "Wow! That must have really hurt, both when she told you and when you found out the truth."

"Yes."

There was another thoughtful pause.

"Why?"

"Why did she lie? I think it was economics. I do okay financially, and looking back, I think she just wanted an easy ride after she graduated university."

"You loved her?"

"Everybody loved Phoebe. Loving her was my mistake."

"So what happened?"

"We married and were happy as pigs in blankets, until a little piece of refuse disguised as a small, weedy, low-life human being came along and convinced her that she had a better future with him than with me. Think foul, but smaller."

"Shit."

"Ah, that's the word I was looking for. Thank you. He was a little shit, and he shat all over my life."

There was a long silence while she considered this.

"I need more detail than that."

I sighed.

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

Loose arrow, fly

Sight on sight

Let murder by

Into the night

Of war.

Hold back the Horde (B. Lake) 2008

¬¬¬*****¬¬¬

INTERLUDE

To understand why Phoebe did what she did, crushing my soul and leaving me barren of feelings, someone would have to understand a little more about me than I'm usually comfortable in revealing.

When I got my first laptop, I used to write songs in the woods behind the village. My song writing was my private thing, and I definitely didn't want that to get around, so it was better to do it far away from human earshot. I'd played something for my grandma once, and she'd said how proud she was that I had a nice little hobby; which was patronising, at best. I'd later heard my parents agreeing with her, and wishing that I could get interested in doing something useful -- something they could be proud of, which, I have to admit, hurt a lot.

None of my family was musical, and none of them really understood or took my ambitions seriously; not even Janie, my sister. If she ever heard me playing one of my own compositions, she'd memorise the words and then sing them back to me in front of other people, pulling faces and singing it wrong until everyone was laughing. She could be mean at times, could Janie. At least she didn't tell people I wrote the words and composed the tune. Her meanness only went so far.

Janie was the world's worst music critic. Well, she used to be. Now -- not so much. Not since...

As a twelve-year-old kid, I was the most miserable person in the world. I was huge. I was so huge that I had my own gravity system -- little kids getting pulled into orbit around me and circling endlessly until rescued by an adult. My belly appeared around corners before the rest of me, and my arse remained in view when the rest of me had already negotiated that corner.

I got hit a lot. Not hit on. Just hit -- especially on my gut or my arse. Oh, and my moobs were an especially favoured target for some of the nastier kids. Believe me, it's hard to impress a girl even enough to get them not to sneer at you when some kids half your size are grabbing at your man-boobs and comparing them to hers. No friends at all then; never mind dates. Not ever. My size seemed to bring out the bully in everyone -- even the nicer kids. It was as if my bulk alone offended them on some very basic level.

Even my own mother would look at me and tut, usually when I needed bigger clothes, and she was a large part of the problem.

Mum came from a really poor family, and I found out later -- when I was adult enough to have really honest conversations with her -- that they often went without food, usually when her dad had drunk his way through his wage packet as soon as he got it, and then pissed away the proceeds of that up against a wall in some alley. When she had me, she was more than determined that her first-born would never go hungry.

Right from the start, I was almost force fed. Even Italian families, who in my experience try to feed everyone who steps foot in their house with at least twice as much food as they need or want, would have been shocked by the amount of food she shovelled into me. And the food itself? Well, my mother seemed to consider anything in the salad family an invitation by the devil to starve her family to death, and any vegetable was treated with extreme suspicion. If it wasn't rich with butter and cream, fats and carbohydrates, then it wasn't worth the effort of eating it. Over-compensation of course - it was obvious to anyone who knew her history. Not a lot of people did.

It's astonishing that I didn't end up with at least one of the premier forms of diabetes. I mean, I'd heard her in full-on rows with the local doctor about my weight -- her trying to convince him about the size of my bones, he trying to convince her that I was becoming a danger to an orderly solar system -- and both of them ending up angry and frustrated. She'd whisk me back home and make a special lunch or dinner for me -- heavy with great tasting but wildly unhealthy food. If I ever said I wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat, she would turn on the water works. Let's face it; no boy wants to make his mother cry.

When I turned ten and was the size of a sixteen-year-old, Mum calmed down, mostly because my seven year old sister would very loudly and determinedly refuse to eat any more than she wanted -- and still remained alarmingly healthy, despite all Mum's fears. Her relaxing was partly because my dad did pretty well at work and none of us were ever in danger of going without, and partly because she finally learned from Janie's blithe disregard that it was okay not to stuff kids like they were geese and you fancied some really good pâté. She gave up on her mission objectives to give me the status of a moon, but it was too late for me by then. I had established patterns of eating, and seemed determined to hit the grave before I hit the legal driving age. Biscuits and crisps at bed time after a big pasta meal, hot salted chips with pizza for lunch, a chocolate bar or three for dessert after a rich breakfast, and a bag of sweets to nibble on throughout the day -- all with Mum's tacit and explicit approval.