Let's Make a Deal Pt. 18- Epilogue

Author's note:

This is part of a long story. No part of it is intended to stand alone. I suggest starting with Part 1

In revising the whole story, I've corrected errors, but also filled in a lot. This has inevitably made it all even longer. My apologies to anyone who read it in the original form and now finds it changed for the worse.

If you're looking mostly for explicit sex, this probably is not the story for you, so why don't you just go on to something else? There is explicit sex in some parts, but even there it's not the focus.

Also, some parts contain religious discussions which will offend some people and bore others. If you're one of those people, again, why not go on to something else?

83. Tears and fears and feeling proud, To say "I love you" right out loud

They arrived at the hotel and checked in. Their suite was far more luxurious than either of them would have chosen. Brian and Lynda had come to them, together, offering to pay for an upgrade. Scott had turned them down, with thanks, but on reflection went ahead with the upgrade himself. He had pointed to the line on the invitations asking people not to bring presents, and reminded them how much the two of them were already doing. They were, of course, not the only ones who ignored that line on the invitations. One of Lynda's jobs after the wedding had been to get a tableful of gifts home where Martha and Scott could deal with them on their return.

This was way beyond their normal spending habits. Both of them tended to be frugal almost to the point of being stingy most of the time—at least, when spending on themselves. This had come out in more than one of the many discussions they'd had before they got married, or even engaged, and again in talking with Pastor Bob. But a few weeks before the wedding, one of the things they'd done was to audit their own finances, together. For a week, they actually could afford a lot more with no problem. But it had taken Brian and Lynda's offer to make them consider such luxurious accommodations. They just never would have thought of it.

When they got in the door, they dropped everything for a long, long hug and kiss. After a couple of minutes, Scott broke off and tucked his mandolin case back under his arm and picked up the suitcases. Martha left a couple of smaller bags, until she had put the dinner leftovers into the small refrigerator. She wandered through the other rooms and into the bedroom, where Scott was unpacking into drawers and the closet space. Looking out the window at the lakefront, she said, "That's a beautiful view."

Scott came over and gave her a brief kiss, but didn't let go of her. "It is. Do you want to go for a walk? Or something else first?"

"A walk sounds wonderful. It may surprise you, but once we get into that bed I'm not going to want to get up and do anything else, so . . . it's not that I don't want you, right now, you understand."

"I feel just the same. I want you so much, but I'd rather wait. This time around. We've lasted this long, after all."

She nestled closer against him. "Scott. Just in case you think to worry about it—I know you!—don't hold back for fear of asking me for more sex than I want. There may be specific times I don't want it, but I'm pretty sure you can't give me as much as I want. I mean, this week. I can't speak for next month or next year or further on. I'm a little afraid of being like what you said about Chris, further down the line, but I think I can guarantee that it won't happen right away. Neither of us wants to do nothing this whole week but stay in bed and make love as much as we can, but I really do think I can outlast your staying power for a few days.

"But—I'm still committed do doing what you want. Period. If you want something I'm not giving you, tell me." He hugged her tight, and they kissed for a long time.

Scott told her, "I was kind of surprised that you let me register us. I thought you might want to show off how much you've practiced." Martha looked a little puzzled. "You know. 'Mrs. Scott Davidson', in your most elegant handwriting."

She just laughed and said, "You!"

They went for a walk by the lake. They wandered down by the golf course and watched people—mostly men—roaming, playing from hole to hole. They talked idly about what they were seeing, but also about things at home. At one point, Scott said, "I was surprised when Lynda said how many requests she was getting for dates—starting the day we announced our engagement. I can understand any guy's asking her out. I mean, what I don't understand is why we apparently opened the floodgates by getting engaged."

Martha laughed. "Are you being dense on purpose, Scott? We showed up at church, clearly along with you, and you treated us both the same, in the most gentlemanly way imaginable—when we were on display! And all the time, a little later, of course. They all thought maybe you were interested in her, silly. It's incredibly flattering to think you chose me over her, you know! Every guy looks at her and thinks right off how beautiful she is. They thought you were after her, and that I was along just as her friend."

"You don't need to fish for compliments, woman! She's twenty-five years younger than I am—plenty young enough to be my daughter! Even to be the youngest of maybe three, or five if I started early!—she's around fourteen inches shorter, she loves music I hate and finds music I love kind of boring, and she prefers TV or movies to reading. I could go on. She's also very sweet, and yes, a knockout to look at, with many other sterling qualities, and you know we love each other enough that we probably could have a happy life together somehow in spite of all that.

"You, on the other hand, are at least as sweet, share a lot of my musical loves, like my kind of books and know a lot of them, are even willing to laugh at my attempts to be funny, and have your own physical charms, I assure you. I'll refrain—for now—from admiring them with my hands as well as my eyes, but I love them. And don't tell her—I really mean that—but I know she'll recover pretty quickly. She understands all the ways you were made for me, and there will be plenty of men eager to distract her. I give her no more than a year before she's happily married, or at least preparing for it. Don't get the idea that I married you out of pity, you know better, but the number of unattached men of an age to go after you is a lot smaller, and for that reason I'm glad you were my clear choice anyway. And if fewer men recognize how beautiful you are, that's their problem. And my gain."

She flounced a little, miming indignation, but then put her arms around him and kissed him. "How generous of you to go for the booby prize!"

He struck a pose and sang:

"Oh, is there not one maiden here
Whose homely face and bad complexion
Have caused all hope to disappear
Of ever winning man's affection?
Of such a one, if such there be,
I swear by Heaven's arch above you,
If you will cast your eyes on me,
However plain you be, I'll love you,"

She just laughed at him. But after a moment, she said, "Two can play at that game! Even from the same place!" She struck a pose of her own and sang:

"Poor wand'ring one!
Though thou hast surely strayed,
Take heart of grace,
Thy steps retrace,
Poor wand'ring one!
Poor wand'ring one!
If such poor love as mine
Can help thee find
True peace of mind-
Why, take it, it is thine!"

He answered, in recitative:

"The question is, had he not been
A thing of beauty,
Would she be swayed by quite as keen
A sense of duty?"

Then he stuck his tongue out at her, crossed his eyes, and wiggled his ears. She laughed again.

He said, "You remember when you first came to beg for your job back, and you said that if it took moving in with me and doing my cooking and cleaning and laundry and having sex with me every night, you were ready? Think about it for a moment. You have your job back, and what do you have to look forward to now?"

She just laughed again. Then she put her arms around him and said, "But you're moving in with me! And I know you! I expect you'll let me help you with all those things—if I remind you firmly enough that you've promised not to insist on doing everything yourself!"

"Yes, I'm moving in with you. So you'd better not expect to be carried over the threshold, when we do get home! And don't even think about—about what I know you were ready to say! You're reasonably strong, but you couldn't possibly carry me even a foot or two, if you could pick me up at all."

An older couple passed them on the walkway, smiling in apparent amusement at them. Martha waited until they were out of earshot, then moved a bit closer to him as they walked on. "Scott, I know you enjoyed our deal, while it lasted. A lot. You said so, but besides that, anyone could see it. But you do understand that I'm the one who profited most, don't you? I got my job back, and working with the man I love—not just the man I love, the man of my dreams!—in addition to all the sheer pleasure of it. But then I get to marry you and be with you for good! I don't think you can imagine how much it's all meant to me."

All the while they walked, hand in hand, Martha was to Scott's eyes heartbreakingly beautiful, luminously happy as she was. At one point she stopped and took him in her arms and kissed him at length. She said, "I know there will be a lot more ahead, but for now and a while longer, you know what the most wonderful thing about being married to you is?" When he didn't answer, she went on. "Well, a little of it has been ever since we were engaged, but not this much. We can hold hands, I can tell you I love you, I can stand holding you like this, I can kiss you like we just did, without thinking first whether we're where anyone can see and hear us. And now I get to keep you!" She kissed him, at length, pretty amorously.

Just for the sheer pleasure of hearing her laugh again, he said sternly, "Now, tone it down, woman! If we keep on that way, they'll think we're not married. They might not even let us keep the honeymoon suite!"

She did laugh. As they walked on, she said, "No chance of that, anyway, love. As much as that suite costs, they must be glad to have anyone at all wanting to stay in it. But most of the time they probably can't find anyone wanting it enough to pay for it. You didn't have any trouble making reservations for it, did you?"

After a few moments, she stopped and looked at him. She said, "I just thought of something! She might as well have been writing about you, when you get going! 'If anybody ever marries you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle.' You know, that isn't really why I married you, but I do indeed take pleasure in it. Or how about this, from a different book? 'You and your uncle should be set to turn phrases for a living.'"

"'Well, ain't that just me?' said the Bee Boy," Scott said. "Besides, you'd have to make it 'you and your wife', I think," Scott said. She laughed again. His heart was just filled with bliss at the sound of her happy laughter, and he was overwhelmed for a moment with love for her. He held her and bent his head down to her shoulder, trying to keep from crying. He did manage to say, "I love you."

After a while, they wandered back into the hotel and briefly looked through what the advertising described as "amenities". Scott thought he might find time during the week to use the exercise room, if Martha would come along. And she probably would. He asked her if she wanted to swim in the pool.

"It never occurred to me to bring a swimsuit."

He grinned at her. "Me either. We'll go shopping tomorrow. I'll enjoy the chance to have you model a few possibilities. Unless you really don't want to swim. In which case you can model lacy underwear instead."

"Scott! Behave yourself!" A few moments later, she added, "Anyway, after those showers, I can do that all week. You can pay attention tonight to what you're taking off me, and I'll make sure to show you what I put on in the morning."

"You can be sure that I'll enjoy it. But you do know you don't need any special clothes to be beautiful and sexy enough for me, don't you?"

He waited a moment and added, "I didn't bring anything special for working out, but I have more than one pair of jeans and some tees. Do you have anything along suitable for that exercise room? If not, we'll look for those tomorrow, too. I really do think I'd like to swim some this week, so I'll need a suit."

"That would actually be nice. I saw mention of the pool and workout room, even glanced at the photos, and never even thought, but I'd be glad to spend some time there, most days anyway. And workout clothes I'll eventually use at home, anyway—if you don't insist on things I'd be ashamed to wear in public." He gave her an exaggerated leer, and she laughed and said, "Behave yourself!".

They went back to their room. Martha said, "I think maybe one reason I didn't really consider the pool and exercise room, when we were looking at the publicity, was actually the photographs. First off, they showed them kind of full of people—obviously having fun, of course—and they all, especially the women, were hot young models, not homely, middle-aged people like me." There had been three or four people in the pool—at least one homely and middle-aged, at that—but the exercise room had been deserted.

Scott took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "Martha, look at me." She looked him in the face, a little questioningly. "Martha, repeat after me. 'My husband says I am beautiful.'"

She hesitated. He said, "I mean it." She said, "My husband says I am beautiful."

"My husband, who doesn't lie to me, says I'm beautiful."

Looking even more hesitant, she said, "My husband, who doesn't lie to me, says I'm beautiful."

"So I am beautiful."

"So I am beautiful. But Scott—"

He cut off whatever she was starting to say. "Not another word! Martha, I don't know who told you that you're not attractive, and we'll talk about that some other time." She was starting to cry again, as she had the last time this subject had come up. He continued to look her straight in the face. "I know you don't feel like that's true, what you just repeated. But I really mean it. If I thought it would help, I'd make you spend all day tomorrow writing it a thousand times. I really do wish I knew what I could do that would get through to you, or how to make you see what you really look like. And for that matter, you're not middle-aged, by any reasonable definition. I may be, by some people's definition, but you're not." He let go of her shoulders, put his arms around her, and drew her to him, as tears continued to drip down her face. She laid her face against his shoulder as she cried. They stood like that without speaking, until she ran down and a while longer.

He finally said, "Maybe we need to get us each two sets of workout clothes. One of the selling points for this 'honeymoon suite' was that it included 'basic laundry service'. That must mean that they find excuses to charge you for lots of things, probably anything that can't just be dumped in a washer and a dryer and then folded. I'd better ask what's included, just to make sure. But if we time things right, we should always be able to be starting out with a fresh set. Of course, if we do use their laundry service, we need to make sure we tip whoever is actually doing the work, at the end of the week."

Martha finally straightened up and put her arms around Scott. She looked him in the face again. "Oh, Scott, I'm sorry. I'll try to remember what you were saying. I love you, and I know you're not lying to me. You may be prejudiced, but I'll try to feel like what you see." She kissed him, somewhat sloppily since her nose was dripping. He grabbed a kleenex, and after she wiped her face and blew her nose, he kissed her more thoroughly. She laid her head against his shoulder again, and they stood like that for quite a while.

"Do you want to go out to dinner?" Scott eventually asked. It was still a little early for that, really, but he was interested in getting to bed early.

"How can you even think of eating? Everyone conspired to make sure I was stuffed! And it really wasn't that long ago."

"I didn't say I was hungry, though it sounds like I'm not as stuffed as you are. Maybe we'll snack a bit before bed, in a little while."

They wound up cuddling on the couch. Scott had brought a book, one he knew Martha hadn't read. He wasn't surprised at that, even though their tastes in books overlapped a lot. It was a collection of newspaper columns, from the Santa Fe New Mexican, spanning more than ten years in the middle of the twentieth century, by Oliver La Farge. "Where do you come up with these things?" she asked him.

"Well, in this case, I encountered a short story of his that I really liked. I'll introduce you to it sometime. But that started me reading other things by La Farge, some of which I liked, some of which not so much. This book—Chris had met it in a class, and it was in the university library, so we checked it out, and I loved it. I found a bookstore in Santa Fe, specializing in local things if I recall, that had a copy. This was in the days before the internet, you understand. I looked in the Santa Fe yellow pages—which were also available in the library—to find a store, and mailed back and forth, and sent them a check. (Remember checks?) I could have called, but I thought they'd have to go off and look for it in their stock, and long distance cost a lot then. You remember. I think it may even be available in paperback, today, but it was hard to come by back when I got it. And I think the paperback may list for almost what I paid for this used copy, all those years ago.

"A lot of the columns involve local politics and references to things I don't know anything at all about. Some of those are still very enjoyable. But I thought I'd just read you a few that especially tickle me." He had gone through it ahead of time, leaving sticky note papers marking places. He read her "Hearing from the Public", commenting on readers who asked him to provide them with information, mostly readily available, for them to use and take credit for without actually having to do any work themselves. A couple featuring La Farge's conversations with the Man with the Calabash Pipe tickled her sense of humor as well. He finished with one purporting to be by another of La Farge's fictional alter egos, "Horned Husband Kachina Chief, Pillar of the Press", his own favorite from the book.

"I'll have to read the whole thing myself! You know I don't love you just for your book collection, but it's going to take me years to get really acquainted with it, and I'm looking forward to that. Whenever dinner's not ready on time because I'm reading, you'll know who's to blame." She kissed him very thoroughly indeed.

He said, "You'd better not let it make you late for bed, that's all." Then he had a thought. "Um. Dinner. I still don't think I want a real meal. Did they give us any bread? I know they sent some of the ham with us. Or we could just have some cake and go to bed."

"There are some rolls. But I think a small piece of cake will keep me fine until morning, honestly. If you want something else, help yourself. But they gave us an awful lot of cake, and I am absolutely not going to take any home to freeze for our first anniversary. And if Lynda froze a piece for us with that in mind, we'll just have to get it out and eat it before it turns to cardboard!"