Lexie's Affair

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I come to you.
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Lexie hesitated, staring up at the huge building. She didn't know there were apartments in this building. Her heart raced. She looked around, feeling conspicuous standing still like that. She rubbed a palm down her thigh, feeling the smooth velvet of her green dress. It was tight, clinging to her body, hugging her but for once, she felt good in it. She looked around and found a bench in the city square that was unoccupied and sat there. She was trembling.

"I'm excited. It's nerves. Adrenaline." She spoke softly, aloud, then glanced around to see if any one could hear. No one paid her any mind, well, except for the guy staring at her, at her chest, she thought and unconsciously arched her back. He looked away. She smiled to herself. Then the enormity of what she was about to do bubbled up inside her again.

Walton Chambers, Walt to his friends, had met her in the rain, at a grocery store of all things. She'd decided to carry the groceries to the car, thinking it would be faster but disaster rained on that decision. First, she dropped her keys, then one of the sacks broke and cans of corn and green beans rolled under her car. She got flustered and dropped her purse, bent to pick that up and dropped another sack.

It was just too much. She leaned against the car and wept, tears mixing with the rain as it soaked through her green dress, making it cling to her, then, in places, turning invisible. She didn't become aware until his voice fluttered through the pelting rain.

"Excuse me, Miss, having troubles? Let me help."

Lexie lifted her eyes, looked around and found the most gorgeous man she'd ever set eyes on. Well, not the most gorgeous, no he was the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen standing before her, in the flesh. It wasn't her usual taste, either. He was older, dressed in an dark but brilliant shade of blue suit, with short cropped gray hair and a tanned face with lines in it, like fault lines in a granite cliff. His blue eyes twinkled with interest and his brow knit; he seemed unaware that he was getting soaked, unconcerned about his expensive suit. He was utterly soaked and had surrendered to the rain, seeming to blend with it so the water on his face didn't detract from his expression or affect it.

"Oh no, please, you're getting soaked. I'm just, I just..." Lexie felt the surge of emotion clog her throat again. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to turn away. She felt him move, didn't see him but then she felt his hand on her elbow, stopping her turn away from him.

"No, please. Get in the car, I'll gather up your groceries and then sit with you for a while. It hurts so much more to cry alone and if you let someone listen, it heals instead of remaining raw inside you."

When he smiled, Lexie's heart fluttered in her chest. Her mind wasn't working but her body was.

"I, thank you, kind sir, but you really, you're getting soaked."

"I am soaked. Soaked is soaked, more water won't matter now. Besides, you don't even have a coat. Get in. Let me do this for you." He smiled again.

His eyes glittered, seeming to twinkle in the midday gloom under the lowered, weeping clouds. Suddenly, a bit of sunlight escaped the clouds and all the colors around her lit up, like they were incandescent or suffused with some magical, inner light. Then the sun vanished and the rain pelted on.

"Yes, okay." She said.

She climbed into the car. After closing the door, she realized her purse was still on the ground. As if he read her mind, the man opened her door and handed it to her.

"Your purse. You'll need that." He said and closed the door. She wanted to twist but used the side mirror but then he disappeared out of her vision. She turned around to the left and peered down for him. He was lying flat on his chest, reaching under her car, straining, and wriggling on the asphalt. She noticed something funny. He had on expensive shoes but his socks were white, visible on one leg where his pants pulled up.

Lexie twisted around, a little horrified but something else, too, something she didn't name until later, thinking about it. She turned back to stare out the windshield, her neck tickling with his presence, even outside the car. He opened the back door of her sedan and put the groceries on her back seat. Later, she called that feeling skittering along the skin of her body, being charmed. Maybe it was what the old use referred to when it was the stock and trade of witches and mystics. Now it was the savoir faire of the modern world, displayed without arrogance. Her mind had wandered so when her door opened and he climbed into the passenger seat beside her, it startled her. His pants were pulled up his legs so both white socks glowed in the footboards of her car. It was ridiculous but it seemed like they shone, with actual light.

He adjusted his pant legs, pulling them down and the light went out. When he was comfortable and the fidget was gone from his fit, angular body, he turned to her and extended a hand.

"I'm Walton Chambers, but my friends call me Walt." That smile appeared again and the colors in her car seemed to get brighter, reminding her of something, something recent.

"I'm Lexie Harcourt," she whispered. She cleared her throat. "Let me try that again. I'm Lexie Harcourt." She said, her voice made stronger by sheer will and determination. Her eyes brushed over his rumpled suit, now fouled with the detritus of the parking lot and dark, ugly smudges of oil from the asphalt. "Oh mercy, your suit is ruined!"

"It was ruined already. My car broke down and I didn't want to be left there, so I walked and walked, and then the rain came."

"Do you want me to take you somewhere, or back to your car? Surely you don't want to leave it there?"

"No. My driver's taking care of that."

"Oh. Oh!" Lexie said, her voice revealing that she comprehended what he'd said and it's implications. "Your driver?"

"Wally." Chambers laughed. "That confuses people, me having a driver I call Wally. A girl friend of mine made that mistake once, before she knew me, before we...got together. She thought Oscar was me and when she found out, it was so embarrassing, so funny, I took to calling him Wally all the time. She called me that and it irritated her because she thought I was mocking her, calling Oscar that, but I was only trying to hold onto that lovely thrill from our first meeting." He bowed his head. "I'm talking too much." He looked sidelong at her, not unbowing his head but still able to look at her. He smiled a little again, and again shades and hues of colors shifted, brightened.

"Let's go have a cup of something? You drink coffee?"

She shook her head. "I'm a cocoa girl." Suddenly, her mouth watered at the thought of the taste of cocoa on her tongue but her body shivered, telling her it was cold. She realized she'd looked away so she looked at him, directly in the eyes. "That'd be nice. But you must let me buy. After all...." She gestured at his suit.

He looked down at his dishevelment and shrugged a little. "No worries. I have a dozen more where this one came from. I'm about ready for a new color so I'll ship them all off to the Goodwill pretty soon anyway."

"But the blue looks so good with your silver hair and catches your...." Her voice faltered as she realized what she was going to say and that somehow made it all worse. "...eyes." She said much too quietly, her sudden discomfort lurid in her tone. She had trouble getting breath and turned to look out at the blurred world through the windshield. Her mind went blank. If Walter hadn't spoken, she'd not have moved, perhaps ever.

"There's a neat little shop up here on the right, easy to get to, that has good coffee and I am sure they'll make you a sterling cup of cocoa." The smile came on again, like street lights during an eclipse, or in the rain.

"Direct me." Lexie said and the decision was made. She touched the fob and her car started. She drove and he directed her through the traffic, lumbering along like wet cattle, silent and careful in the rain.

The cafe was warm, not cheery but warm and the cocoa was rich and delicious. Walter sat across from her while she broke completely down. Her younger brother had been killed, she was getting food for the dinner after the funeral. She hadn't wept and it suddenly hit her that Gary wasn't coming home again. Talking to him, it came clear that she'd been blindsided by the grief. Her focus had been on her father and sister, their obvious devastation, their collapse, their inability to cope. She handled it all, all the arrangements required for a modern death, a costly and complicated process that was once as simple as planting a seed in your garden.

She clicked through the process, not once feeling a tear trickle down her cheek until she sat down for a cup with Walter Chambers. In that time with him, in that cafe, it was like something stalled inside her and in that inner silence, all she could feel was the grief. Her husband Gustave had been a great help but strangely, little comfort. He and Gary hadn't gotten along. It's hard when someone you dislike dies who is close to someone you love. Lexie could see the strain on her husband and had released him from as much of the responsibilities as she could. She felt his appreciation as relief and not from his words. He kept wanting to justify his dislike for her deceased brother and she wanted to scream at him that her brother was dead, gone and she'd never see him again and how could he care about his feelings about him in the face of her terrible grief, but that wasn't his fault. She'd sealed it away from all eyes so that no one saw it, felt it and eventually, she made it easy for them all to forget that she loved her brother and...he was gone. Not killed, he died, or worse, he killed himself.

Gary died of a drug overdose. Everyone knew it but no one mentioned it. He'd suffered the curse and it had haunted him and finally consumed his life completely. Her father, Terrance Harcourt and her sister Sophia, Sophi had feared this day would come and tensed against it from the horrible beginning of his addiction so when it arrived, it shattered them both equally, equally but not the same.

All this spilled out into Walter Chambers' lap after he asked why she was crying. The question released all of that pent up emotion, and Lexie talked and wept through three refills and finally a piece of hot apple pie with the best vanilla bean ice cream she'd ever tasted. Through it all, Chambers listened and nodded and murmured small words that eased her into the next paragraph, the next subject, the next jag of tears.

He made no motion to leave, evincing no hint of impatience or distraction. Later, when she understood the magnitude of the man, it amazed her that a man whose time was so valuable had spent it with her, to say nothing of destroying a $3,000 suit for a can of green beans that cost sixty-nine cents.

When she finally ask him about it, over the dinner when he finally admitted he was trying to seduce her, he shrugged and looked her in the eyes.

"I was in love with you the moment I saw you, beautiful in the rain, your dress clinging to every gorgeous line of you, your long, beautiful hair sticking to you like spilled ink. When you turned your face to me, it was like your lips glowed in the gloom and I wanted to kiss them. Then, and for ever after, until now. I want to kiss them now."

He did, but not then, that came later.

The end of the time in the diner came when his phone rang, and he told them he'd call them back. It broke her grief trance and she felt like she could staunch the flow of raw emotions gushing out of her.

"My goodness, I'm so sorry." She said. "I should go. I imagine you should go. Can I drive you some where? Your suit may be ruined but no need to catch pneumonia walking in the rain."

"I like walking in the rain. Look what happened? I met you."

That was the first inkling Lexie had that the man was flirting with her. She'd been so inundated with her own feelings, she hadn't noticed him, except to warm in the glow of his comfort and relax in the racking sobs he'd watch roll over her.

She did drive him home. It was out of her way and the rain continued but she did it any way. The clean feeling made her a little giddy, the rain-washed feel after a good cry was petrified and amplified by his quiet presence beside her in the car so it remained with her then, and for the difficult days she faced in the near future. That ease and calm fluttered when her mind registered, finally, his name as she stopped under the canopy of Champers Estates, the condo and apartment building that Walter Chambers owned.

Lexie gasped, her mind whirling. "My god, your that Chambers?"

Walter turned to her and that smile made her vision opalescent for a moment, spangling like a camera flash had dazzled the irises.

"If by that Chambers you mean do I own this building, the answer is yes. I live in the penthouse on the top floors, well, I have guest rooms I can use on the floor below." The man bent his head but then looked up at her. He put his hand out and touched her skin for the second time but this time she wasn't swathed in the dark folds of her own sadness. The contact of his fingers on her arm sent chills up her arm and down her spine. "Lexie, my dear Lexie, let me have your phone, will you?"

She goggled at him for a moment, still in shock from the realization of who sat with her in her car. Her mind canted and twitched until she found something to say, something to distract her from the whole, entirely new riot of emotions swelling in her body.

"Should I move the car? I'm blocking the way." She asked looking past him at the towering figure dressed as the doorman.

Chamber chuckled, looked out his side window and waved. "I own the building, I don't think anyone is going to tell the beautiful woman I'm with to move her car. May I have your phone?"

She handed it to him, automatically, without thought.

He took it, tapped at it for a few moments and then his phone rang.

"Now I have your number. You won't be able to call that number without a security code. I'll give that you...later. Maybe. If you want it, if you decide that calling me is what you want." He smiled but this time it was pastel and rueful. "I want to be able to call you. You understand that, right? I want to call you and invite you to dinner with me from time to time. I appreciate your company and for me, well, you can imagine what I deal with every day."

Lexie shook her head, a little too vigorously.

"No, no I cant." She whispered, her body still glowing from his slightest touch. Until the first time he kissed her, she could have walked away and not looked back, and deep down, she knew that and likely Walter knew it too but he chose to wait and wait and wait to kiss her until finally, when he did, when he placed a light finger under her chin and tipped her head up and touched his lips to hers, she responded so fully, so completely the moment ghosted her forever after. It never went away, that first, gentle, soft, oh so lovely kiss!

"When," Chambers hesitated then looked at the doorman and waved to the big guy with iron gray hair and a huge handle bar mustache to go with the scarlet livery of his position. The big man waved back with a somber nod of his head.

"When is the funeral?" Chambers asked softly. "I'm sorry. I..." He looked away, whatever he'd been about to say, some sense of propriety stopped him. Had he spoken, perhaps Lexie wouldn't have ended up sitting outside his building, his building, about to invite herself up to his penthouse fifty stories up in the sky. She knew, now, why he wanted her there...that phrase held the truth interwoven into it. He wanted her. That was not the marvel, having had her, he wanted her again.

Oh my god, she thought staring up at his modern castle. He wants me! He still wants me!

The week after the funeral, he called her for lunch. When he offered to have Wally pick her up, she declined and drove herself. All the way, she felt the weight of her marriage and the guilt of the desire to see the man again settling onto her shoulders. When they were seated in the white table cloth restaurant, The Pearl Pinnacle, she didn't give him a chance to say "hello" but launched into a somewhat breathless monologue that could have been summarized in two words "I'm married". She used many, many more words, ringlets of unrimed sentences that all circled around the same thing, forming a single braid, the same meaning: "I can't."

He listened with the intense attention that eventually halted her caterwauling explanation of why she was sitting there with him. She stumbled to a silent halt and stared at him, slightly aghast at the very sound of her voice but also at the sudden horror of what she'd done and the dirty implication, that she might not ever sit with him like this again. She gasped and touched her lips with her fingers. Walter reached over and touched just the very tip of his index finger to the back of her other hand where it lay on the table.

"Mrs. Harcourt, of course I know you're married. I know what that means to me but not what it means to you. I know why you're here. The same reason I am."

"Why is that, my darling?" She asked, the term rolling off her tongue with him as naturally as if she'd been speaking to Gus. It shocked her and she saw it unnerved him. His face twitched, like he felt a pain but struggled to disguise it from a rival.

"Because you can't stop thinking about me? I can't stop thinking about you. I must have a reason to see you."

They ordered then, steak tartar for him and a poached salmon for her. This time, he talked. He spoke in raw tones about his five marriages, each more meaningless than the last, each more of a financial contract, negotiated before any intimacy was allowed, by him, which ultimately doused any hope of a lasting flame between them. When he had told her not only of his succession of five either famous or famously beautiful wives, he looked at her and said it, the words that touched her heart, lodging in her chest like Cupid's arrow.

"I never, not once felt this way about any of them."

Lexie bowed her head. "None of them looked like me, either." She looked up into his blue eyes. "Look at me. I'm..." she stumbled to a stop because he reached across the table, lifting and extending his hand. He carefully touched a finger to her lips.

"A woman shouldn't describe herself, except in plain, uninflected terms. No abstracts. To do so must either be conceited or unfair because no woman can or should be able to do justice to her own appearance." He smiled. "Your purpose is to be, our purpose is to see you and feast our hungry eyes on you."

She wasn't immune to that smile but she looked away from his eyes just the same. "I'm..." she hesitated, deciding very consciously to take his words seriously. "I have an hourglass figure. I'm all curves." She stopped, not sure how to proceed. "I have beautiful eyes, though and I am proud of my breasts." The blush raced up her cheeks and she touched her hand to them, as though to see if they felt as hot to her finger as they did otherwise. "I'm well rounded..." She stopped again, having lost the thread of what she was saying.

"Lexie, don't. Let me tell you something that may sound, well, stupid but it has become a true thing to me. I haven't been married in ten years. Between the time I was 24 and 45 I had five wives, which works out to around four years each. At 45, I swore off marriage and only took lovers and soon discovered they all wanted to marry me and no one wanted to have sex with me for its own sake." They were done eating. Chambers drained the last of the deliciously sweet white wine from his goblet and waved away the attentive waiter in the tuxedo.

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