He stopped when he realized his hand was cramped. It was obvious to him that he didn't normally write longhand. His fingers didn't seem to be used to holding a pencil for so long. The memory of a computer screen flashed into his mind again.
He got up, put his coat on, picked up the key from the table where he'd laid it, and went out to see what kind of car Butch had loaned him.
* * *
Mitch walked up to the car and was amused to see who was driving it. The face turned towards him as the window rolled down.
"What now?" asked Kris, his voice level.
"I saw Butch's old heap," said Mitch. "I didn't even think it ran. The tags are about three years out of date."
"Oh," said Kris. "He loaned it to me and I never thought to look and see if the registration was current."
"Butch Flannery loaned you that car," said Mitch, obviously amazed.
"He and some preacher showed up at my place," said Kris. "He said something about helping strangers in need. I'm supposed to go to church Sunday."
Mitch laughed. "Well, if Reverend Hoskins gets his hooks in you, I won't have to worry about you. Tell you what, you tell Butch the car needs to be registered and I'll let you off."
"I'd be happy to," said Kris. "Except I have no idea where to find him."
"Try the diner in the morning," said Mitch. "There's a whole bunch of them that go in there all the time for coffee or breakfast."
Kris remembered the gaggle of men who had been in the diner that morning. He hadn't paid any attention to them, except to try to figure out who had been whispering things at him as Lou Anne took him out.
He drove away, looking in the rear view mirror. He knew the cop was interested in him. He wasn't really worried about that, exactly. The memory of hitting the man bothered him, but that obviously wasn't the accident that had put him in the hospital. And it might be something from his past that had already been dealt with. Still, he wondered if the cop was following him around. He decided he must not be, since he'd driven most of the way across town before he'd been stopped.
Kris, for whatever reason, had taken Lou Anne's offer to use her computer as permission to use it at her house, rather than take it to the rental. He was on his way to do that now, assuming it was okay with her. He had a little trouble finding the right road, because he hadn't been paying that much attention when Lou Anne had taken him to her house. Eventually he saw familiar things, though, and found her place. It was almost dark, and the lights inside were on inside. He parked behind her car and went to the door.
She was surprised when she opened it, and looked past him, at the car in the driveway.
"Somebody loaned me a car," he said.
"Really?" Her voice was high.
"A guy named Butch."
"Butch Flannery?" Her voice went up another notch.
"Yes, a minister was with him. He called you an angel of mercy."
Lou Anne giggled and looked at him with question in her eyes.
"I was wondering if I could use the computer," he said. "I started writing, but using a pencil is slow and my hand isn't used to it."
"Sure," she said and stood back. "It's still set up. Ambrose has been trying to play games on it."
Chapter Eleven
What had taken him hours to pen by hand, practically flew onto the screen of the computer. He had not forgotten how to type and he was good at it. Lou Anne was moving back and forth, just going about her daily routine, and stopped several times to watch.
"I must agree that you're an author," she said at one point. "Or a professional typist of some kind. You're as fast as I am."
"Umm," was his only response. He was intent on the screen. He never looked at his fingers.
Then, quite suddenly, the tapping of keys stopped. Lou Anne was giving Ambrose his evening snack, just before bedtime. She had him sleep before taking him to the sitter's, because that made it easier for him to go back to sleep when he got there. He was hard to wake up. She usually just dressed him in his flannel pajamas and put a coat on his sleepy form when she took him to Roslynn's.
When, as she came out of Ambrose's room, she still didn't hear the keyboard, she went to investigate. She found Kris sitting, slumped over, staring at the screen.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"That's all I can do," he said, sounding irritated.
"Why?"
"Because that's all I remember," he said. "My whole life ... or at least the parts I can remember ... fits on five pages."
"Make it up from there," suggested Lou Anne.
"No. This has the potential to be very interesting, but it needs to be accurate. This isn't the fictional account of some character. This is what actually happened to me and how it affected my life. I'll just have to wait and add to it as things happen."
"Kind of like a journal," said Lou Anne.
"No, not a journal," he said, shaking his head. "The past and present will all be intertwined, eventually. I can feel it."
"Okay, then," said Lou Anne. "Write something else that is fiction."
"Like what?" he asked, helplessly.
"We talked about a romance novel," she said.
"I can't write that kind of thing," said Kris.
"How do you know?"
"Because I can't think of anything romantic," he sighed.
"I could help."
He turned and looked at her. He couldn't get over how normal she sounded, and how normal she was in his mind when he thought about her, and how bizarre she looked in comparison to that.
"What turns you on?" she asked.
"You mean sexually?"
She giggled. "Well duh. What did you think I meant?"
He stared at her. "I can't just tell you that kind of stuff."
"Why not?"
"Because I'd get all embarrassed. You're a girl!"
"I'm a woman, big boy," she said, exaggerating the vampish voice she used. "I'm a woman who gets all wiggly when I read a good romance novel. Sometimes I have to rub, if it's really good."
"I can't believe you said that," he said weakly.
"We're both adults here. Sex isn't dirty." She stopped and tilted her head. "Well, some sex is a little dirty. Sometimes that's my favorite kind."
He started to speak, but cut it off.
Lou Anne smiled. "You were about to ask me what kind of slightly dirty sex I like ... weren't you." She made it a statement, rather than a question. "See? Sex is interesting. And if you think about it like that, I'm sure you can write something ... interesting." She tilted her head the other way and her hair moved, to expose bald scalp. "So ... do you want to know what turns me on?"
"I can't ask that," he moaned.
"I thought we already discussed this," she said. "Come on. I'll tell you something that gets me going, then you tell me something that gets you going."
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. His natural modesty was still holding him back.
"You're sure you want to do this?" he asked.
She ignored the question.
"I like what I call nipple love," she said. "My nipples are very sensitive, and I love it when a man sucks on them and plays with them."
His eyes just naturally dropped to where her breasts pushed against the T shirt she was wearing. They widened as he saw her nipples push the cloth out. It was like magic. She talked about them ... and they appeared. He jerked his eyes back up. She was watching him. She knew what he had just been looking at.
"Sorry," he said.
She smiled. "I was talking about them. I can't blame you for looking. Now you."
"I can't think of anything," he mumbled.
"Yes you can. Be right back. You think about it while I'm gone."
He watched her walk away and his eyes followed the rise and fall of her buttocks. She was barefoot, but her cheeks still lifted a couple of inches with each step she took. He realized she had a really nice ass.
The epiphany he had at that moment almost made him fall out of the chair. He looked d
own and saw the visual evidence of what he had felt. His dick was getting hard. Looking at her ass had made him start to get an erection. It had been just that easy to think of something that turned him on.
"I'm an ass man," he said, wonderingly, to himself.
"What?"
He looked up to see Lou Anne coming back into the room. He watched her breasts, which bounced just a little as she walked. She was carrying a magazine.
"I'm an ass man," he said again. It had just been an automatic response to her question and he wished he hadn't said it instantly.
"Really?" She smiled. "I have a nice ass."
"Yes you do," he said. He almost put his hand over his mouth. Where had that come from? He didn't talk to women that way ... did he?
"Well thank you!" she said, her voice rising.
"Wait a minute," he said, holding his hand up. "That didn't make you mad, did it?"
"Nope."
"Why not?" He frowned. "I don't have any specific memories of it, but I know you're not supposed to talk to women like that."
"Well, if it hadn't been the right man, I might have gotten irritated," she admitted.
"Why am I the right man?"
"'Cause I like you."
"Why? All I've been is a pain in the ass to you."
"I don't know." She shrugged her shoulders. "I suppose you have been a bit of a bother. But at the same time you really broke up the routine ... the monotony. You're a nice guy. You're certainly not pushy. Why wouldn't I like you?"
"I thought you were afraid I was a gangster."
"Not anymore. I've spent some time with you now. I can tell you're no criminal."
His mind went back to hitting that man and then driving off. He wished, suddenly, that he knew whether or not he'd been punished for doing that. If he had been ... fine. It was over and he couldn't remember the punishment. If not, though ... he felt bad. It then occurred to him that if he was a criminal type ... he probably wouldn't feel bad. He looked at her again. She was just standing there, like she was waiting for him to say something.
"Okay. I'm not a criminal. And I get to say I like your ass ... right?"
"Under the right circumstances," she said.
"What does that mean?" he moaned. "I think I need some kind of rules here."
She put a finger to her lips. In a flash that made him sway, Kris remembered other lips ... lips that he'd kissed. The name "Lola" popped into his mind, but nothing else. No face ... no body ... only Lola's lips. Then, just as quickly, that image vanished from his mind and he was staring at Lou Anne's lips again. They were full and looked very kissable.
"Well, for instance, I wouldn't want you to comment on my ass in front of Ambrose," she said.
"Of course not!" He sounded horrified.
"But you could write about it ... in your book."
"You want me to write about your ass in a romance novel."
The corners of his lips turned up. He was quite sure he'd never met a woman like this before. He couldn't possibly forget a woman like this.
"Maaaaybe," she said in a singsong voice. "I mean, I don't want you to call the character Lou Anne Rowan, but she can have my ass."
"Rowan," he sighed. "Your last name is Rowan."
"You didn't know?" She giggled.
"I don't know anything," he said. He squinted his eyes and took a chance. "Can I also give her your nipples?"
Lou Anne looked at him through hair that was falling across her face. She took a deep breath and his eyes flicked to the points pushing through her shirt. He jerked his eyes back up to find a smile on her lips.
"Yes," she said.
* * *
She had exhibited no signs of angst or displeasure at his intimate question, but he felt like he had pushed the envelope. So he turned to the computer and, without looking at her, engaged her in coming up with a plot for a romance novel.
They decided upon a gentleman pirate, named Sir Roger Quigley. His knighthood had been revoked, based upon the shenanigans of his enemies, and he had been forced to flee his lands. His grandfather and father had made their fortunes in the shipping business, so he'd posed as a common seaman and disappeared into the merchant fleet.
It was there that he saw the oppression of the crown and the deceit and corruption of the officials who oversaw shipping and the ports. Bribery was rife and theft, poorly disguised as impoundment, was common. The big ship owners paid officials to prey on the little man, so that he could never get ahead or compete.
For that reason, he befriended a scalawag captain and, together, they set about righting the wrongs that they both perceived. He was sort of a Robin Hood on the sea, taking from the rich and distributing the spoils to those less fortunate. There was a price on his head, but he had more friends than enemies, because there were vastly more common people than nobles and officials.
Where the romance came in ... or the sex at least ... was that in capturing a vessel, he sometimes captured female passengers as well. They might be matrons traveling with their husbands. They might have daughters ... young, nubile daughters.
It wasn't necessarily historically correct, but then it was fiction.
And, of course, he was duty bound to ensure the women's safety. While he might put the men to sea in a dory, with food, water and oars to get them to land, he could not, of course, inflict such danger on the women. As such, the women were his captives until they happened to reach land, which sometimes took months.
He was a dashing figure, and handsome. He worked at sword practice un-shirted, on the deck, where the women might be taking their ease. He checked on each woman at night ... only to ensure that she was well and comfortable ... as comfortable as could be expected. He checked on them to make sure no one was molesting them.
No one but him, anyway.
* * *
"Mmmmm, I love it already," sighed Lou Anne, when the final paragraph of the outline was completed. "It makes me want to rub and you haven't even written it yet."
He looked at her. His prick was stiff in his pants. The images she had suggested, and the scenes in his mind, appealed to him in a way that seemed strange and erotic. He thought he should feel ashamed at the visions of sixteen and seventeen year old virgins, straining up against Sir Quigley as he taught them the joys of sex.
But he didn't. He just got horny.
He looked at Lou Anne. She was apparently horny too. Her face was flushed and her lips were even more full. Her nipples stuck out even more than before and he felt the strong urge to reach out and touch one. He knew he couldn't.
"I'll give Duchess Clayworth your ass," he said, impulsively.
"The twenty-one year old?" asked Lou Anne. "The one married to the fat old merchant with the smelly breath?"
"The very one," he said. "She'll have your ass, and your nipples, and your cheekbones, and your skin. I'll even make her twenty-four, instead of twenty-one. She will be you." His eyebrows rose and fell. "Except for the hair ... and the tattoos. She can't have tattoos." He looked hopeful. "But she'll be the rest of you."
"Mmm goody," said Lou Anne, her voice breathy. "Are you going to ravish me most thoroughly?"
"Me?" He looked surprised. "Ravish you?"
"Of course you. You're Quigley. That's obvious. And if I'm Duchess Clayworth, then you'll be ravishing me."
"In the book." He seemed dazed.
"Of course in the book, silly. That's what we're doing here!"
"Yes!" he said, putting his hand over the lump in his lap. "That's what I meant."
"Oooo I just know I'm going to love this book," sighed Lou Anne. "Now. Start writing. I have to go get ready for work."
"Right!" he said.
She started away and he couldn't help but watch her ass again. He was doing that when she stopped and turned. She didn't seem at all surprised that he was looking at her.
"Did women shave down there back then?" she asked.
He blinked. "I have no idea," he said.
"Well we need to find out, becaus
e if Duchess Clayworth is going to be me, she has to be shaved down there."
She smiled brilliantly, as if she'd only said something routine, like, "See you in a few," and left the room.
Kris sat, staring at where she'd disappeared. He was rock hard. He felt the urge to just stand up, unzip, and beat off like a crazed monkey.
For Want of a Memory Page 14