All Adither: A forbidden green

You can find the first part of this story, Greener Grass, in my right sidebar, under I Like To Write.

*****

Megan showed up twenty minutes late the next morning.

"Sorry," she said, dropping her bag to the floor. "I had to wait for my dad to get home from work before I could leave." Her dad worked nights at a Harley-Davidson powertrain plant out in Wauwatosa.

Dave drained the last of his coffee, set his cup on the counter a little harder than he meant to and said, "You know, I count on you to get here in a timely manner. I have a meeting."

She looked at him, stricken. "I'm sorry," she said again. Her eyes moistened. "I tried to call you on the way but then my phone died."

The kids were all watching Nick Jr. in the family room. They talked to the TV screen and sometimes screeched when one encroached onto another's section of rug or couch.

Dave said, "It's okay, just...Maybe I need to schedule stuff for later in the day."

Megan nodded and busied herself with tying her long, shiny hair into a rubberband. Even from the side, he could see the sheen in her brown eyes.

He stepped closer to her. "Megan. Apologies for being a jerk, okay? I'm a little stressed about this whole...situation."

She nodded again.

He could smell her shampoo. Something flowery that brought to mind a room full of lilacs in vases. A bedroom, with a mirror whose edges were rimmed in photos: of friends, a dog, a prom. It brought to mind short skirts and jangly bracelets and round teenage asses and Mike's hard Lemonade.

Dave moved away. He inhaled hard through his nose. He said, in what he thought was an amazingly controlled tone, "The kids are watching the tube. Help yourself to cereal or coffee or whatever. Do people your age even drink coffee?"

She laughed and quietly said, "Of course." She moved toward the Chemex pot on the stove, found the filters and started scooping grounds. "Thanks."

He watched her smooth, unfreckled arms as she worked. The stretch of her thin torso as she reached to put the coffee back in the cupboard. The set of her shoulders as she filled the kettle with water. "You've been a big help to me, Megan," he said.

Turning her head halfway and glancing up without really seeing him, she said, "Oh. Good."

"I, uh, just wanted you to know I appreciate it."

He imagined her pivoting and saying Did you tell your wife that? Ever? Enough?

But of course she wouldn't. She was a teenager. And a fairly timid teenager at that.

Dave had to get out of there.

Abruptly, he grabbed his briefcase and keys and strode out to the driveway where he'd left the car overnight so he and Joshua could use the garage to build a soapbox derby car for Cub Scouts. The leather was already hot, the interior stuffy as hell. He rolled down the windows and blasted the air conditioning.

He laid his forehead on the steering wheel, willing himself to stop thinking about Megan's arms and torso and shoulders and ass.

"She's only ten years older than my oldest kid," he muttered to himself. He was a thirty-seven-year-old man. What would his over interest do to her? Psychologically?

But what was she starting to do to him physically? Fuck. And where was his wife? And would his life ever be normal again? And didn't he deserve to feel a little arousal? Even if it never led to anything. Just the thought of it...just the thought of it.

He groaned and backed out of the driveway, got safely out onto the highway so he could insert himself safely into his office, surrounded, safely, by binders and monitors and illuminated by fluorescent lights.

When he got to work, he poured himself some shitty Costco coffee, checked his email and chatted with his secretary, Theresa: a heavy-set fifty-something woman with the same shiny hair as her daughter's and who wasn't as efficient as she was personable. She commented on Dave's general pallor, as she liked to do. "Ruddy," she said. "Ruddy-ish. You look healthy, today."

She was frequently wrong. Or was just trying to bolster him. He wasn't sure.

"How's Megan doing?" Theresa asked. "She really enjoys those kids of yours."

"She's fantastic," Dave said. "I don't know how I'd do this without her."

He wasn't sure how much Theresa knew about what was going on at his house. He assumed Megan had told her mother what she knew, which was that Tamara was on an extended vacation. Alone. But as far as he could tell, Theresa hadn't spread any gossip around the office. Yet.

Then he went to a meeting where he met with other engineers about the pump station. The wretched pump station.

In the beginning, he'd been excited about being head of the project, about all the logistics, the legal hoops, the team he was working with.

Now, though, it seemed so dry. So dumb. They were putting all this work into a pump station, for christ's sake. Necessary for Milwaukee, yes. But, ultimately, it would be a nondescript building that people walked and drove by without seeing. Or, if they did notice it, would view it as an eyesore. Maybe a few artistic types would take photos of it on sunny days, and some of those shots would appear on walls of coffee shops and Dave would come across one and say, Would you look at that. It's the west corner of the pump station's roofline and someone has turned into this pictorialization. Crazy bastard.

Blaring from the speaker in the center of the conference table was the voice of Barbara Aster, the pump station's architect. Dave wondered how she felt about designing pump stations. He'd worked with her on a park renovation project once too. Not a glamourous gig either. But at least a place people could enjoy. Tamara had taken the kids there when it was first finished, had shown them what he'd done and they'd played on the new slides and swingsets and charged across the little wooden bridge that arched over a drainage ditch.

He tried to focus on Barbara's voice filling the room. She pronounced her R's much the way Eli did. With a hint of "W". Despite her speech impediment, she had nice intonation: soft, grateful and commanding at the same time. Her voice made you want to go the extra mile for her, if she asked you to. Which she often did.

Thinking about her was way more PC than thinking about Megan, so he imagined Barbara's drapey rayon blouses (Tamara hated it when he used the word Blouse. Or Slacks. Or Panties.), her skirts that were on the short side, the black yoga pants she wore when they had to work weekends.

But no. His mind would not stay with Barbara. It would wander after a few seconds. She just...she was Barbara. She wasn't Megan. She wasn't Tamara. She wasn't even the mysterious Angel Telkowsky.

In the end, he found it easiest to just participate in the meeting. To sip his burned coffee and go through the rote, safe motions of what it took to construct a pump station.