Chapter11 - Nellie's Story
A mid-morning ray of sunshine glided through a crack in her bedroom shades to find its destination in Rita's eyes causing her to rouse from a sound sleep. Completing a long body stretch she turned and looked at the bedside clock; it was nine thirty. Rolling onto her back she remained quiet, examining the ceiling in detail until her bladder beckoned to the bathroom.
A few minutes later Rita emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a bathrobe and bare-footed heading for the kitchen where she charged the coffee maker, brought in the morning paper and settled down to wait for the coffee to perc.
About eleven o'clock and almost awash in coffee, Rita was still engrossed in the morning paper when her concentration was interrupted by the doorbell; laying the paper aside Rita rose and paddle-footed to the front door. Pulling the door ajar, Rita found herself eyeball to eyeball with a somewhat bedraggled Julie staring back at her.
"Good God, Julie! You certainly fill the bill for looking like you've been ridden hard and put away wet." Rita exclaimed, opening the door and taking a step backward.
"You sure got that right," Julie bubbled crossing the threshold. "I may look trashed, but I sure don't feel that way. God, I haven't had a night like last night in many a moon. That guy Sam just flat-assed doesn't know when to stop and man ah' live! Is he ever hung. Right now I need to grow some new skin, get about twelve hours of sleep, followed by a dozen fresh oysters when I wake up. Goodnight, good morning or what the hell ever time of day it is because this old body is about to become horizontal, just allow me peace, this time it's spelled with an 'a' instead of an 'i' and quiet." Julie rattled, crossing the living room and heading for her bedroom.
Standing mute with her hand still gripping the inside door knob and mouth agape, Rita turned her head to visually track Julie's course across the living room until she disappeared down the hallway and heard her bedroom door open and close.
"Well, there's one down and one still to go," Rita muttered, shaking her head, as she closed the door and returned to her chair.
"With Julie accounted for, I wonder if Nellie will be faithful to her last's night promise to report in the afternoon,' Rita thought as she picked the unfinished morning paper.
The early-afternoon silence was broken by the chirping telephone. "Hello, this is Rita."
"Oh! Hi, Rita, this is Nellie. Is Julie around?"
"I'll have to give you an ambiguous answer. She's here, but in no condition to be awakened, at least for several hours in the future."
"That bad? Huh."
"That bad, she straggled in about eleven this morning looking like a charitable cat dropped her on the doorstep. I expect it'll take more than a short nap to get her back into fighting trim. She mumbled something about needing some new skin and fresh oysters on her way to bed. If you aren't too tied up, how about we meet someplace for coffee and something to eat? Our digs is like a tomb and I'm anxious to hear how you fared last night. Rita suggested.
"If Julie is goin' to be blanked out for the next day or two, I guess we may just as well. My calendar isn't over-booked. How about we settle-in down at the bowlin' alley coffee shop? It's just down the street from Cactus Gardens. Say in about thirty minutes?"
"I'll be there," Rita confirmed.
Entering the bowling alley and locating the coffee shop was no problem. Rita quickly spotted Nellie sitting at a back corner table, looking out a window with a coffee cup in front of her.
"Hi, Nellie, you look in a much better condition than the last I saw of Julie after your respective nights in close quarter amour." Greeted Rita, spoken with a cheerful tone in her voice.
"Could be it didn't take me all night to complete my business, as it apparently did Julie and thanks for the compliment," Nellie said, turning her head to face Rita as she sat down in an opposite chair.
"Are you eating or just having coffee?" Rita asked.
"Thought I'd sort of sneak up on a tad of solid nourishment with a bracin' cup of coffee. They serve a pretty good breakfast all day long, in case you've been runnin' on empty since gettin' out of bed. I'm workin' myself into the mood for a pair of wide-eyed eggs, toast and hash browns. How about you, or are you a toast and coffee type?"
"I'm hungry." Rita confessed, "But I need to go slow on intake at this time of day. I've got a hot date for dinner tonight, so I don't want to bust my calorie budget with a big breakfast."
The waitress arrived at their table and assumed the position with pad and pencil ready to take their orders.
"Two eggs lookin' at me, hash browns, wheat toast and a coffee refill for me." Nellie called out without looking at the waitress.
"I'd like a cup of blueberry yogurt, one slice of wheat toast, small orange juice, and coffee." Rita ordered, looking at the waitress.
With their breakfast orders taken, the women returned to their previous night's report.
"If memory serves me correctly, you promised an accurate and concise report of your last evening's activities." Rita said.
"Ya, guess I did," Nellie confirmed, looking out the window. "When I told you gals last night Buck was little better than a cold shower, I was recallin' an experience we had some time ago when Buck had too much booze in him. We were out at Rattlesnake Flats and wound up in a rattletrap motel room. I had to help him get into bed and when his head hit the pillow he was out for the count. So there I laid, all ready for action and there laid Ol'Buck snoring away. As it ended, nobody got laid.
Happily last night was a whole different ballgame. Buck was close on to bein' sober and he redeemed himself. After leaving the dance we got ourselves a jug of Jack Daniels and a nice room at the Sands Motel where we hit the sack and Ol' Buck came through like a thoroughbred stud. It wasn't like one of those Harold Robbins sex manual tellin' about a lot of kinky business gettin' started. He came out of the shoot and from then on it was just plain old ruttin'. Buck's not one for pillow talk before or after.
He hardly got done breathin' hard when he started askin' questions about where I came from and if rumors were true about me ownin' property. I told him it was none of his damn business. Somehow he got the idea I may have something and began the old line of bullshit about bein' his kind of woman and together we could cut some big land deals, that sort of yack. I've run into his kind before and knew exactly the kind of game he was wantin' to play.
They work at getting into a woman's pants and from there into her bank account. I told him for his information I could manage both my ass and my money without any help from him. Thank you! So I just got up and left him layin' in bed with a glass of bourbon in his fist."
Their breakfast arrived as Nellie finished recounting her Buck experience.
"I would venture to say your last night's experience fits one of those rabbit stories we've all heard. 'Slam bam thank you ma'am'." Rita said with a smile. "I presume this guy, Buck, is a long term bachelor who hasn't heard about women being able to think and take care of themselves."
The conversation was put on hold while Rita drank her orange juice and Nellie prepared her hash browns. Rita continued, "I know very little about you other than from general conversations with Julie and a smidgen of your relationship with this Buck character. When it comes to the men in my life, most of them have been shit-for-brains managers and an assortment of other qualified assholes, mostly discovered during my working career.
With little excitement in my retired life, I'm looking for some amusement. I'm looking for an opportunity to work off years of frustrations on some prick. From the way you talk about this guy, Buck, he demonstrates outstanding qualifications as a prime prospect to either hit him in his bank account or ego and hopefully both. You seem to be in the know around here and have probably had similar experiences. So, if you'd like to participate in a macho baiting project designed to ring a prime prospect's balls and grab him where it hurts the worst, especially by a woman, in his checkbook."
Nellie finished putting away her eggs
and hash browns while Rita was talking. She looked up and spent extra time attending to her mouth with a napkin before talking.
"To start off with, you may as well make sure your cup is full for this is going to take awhile, O.K.?"
Rita nodded her approval as she lifted her cup signaling the waitress for a refill. Nellie began her story.
"Rita, I don't know much about you either, other than from off and on again conversations with Julie over the years, so we're pretty well even. As for me bein' in the know around C .J., I guess you could say I am. I have the gut feelin' you can keep your mouth shut, plus you've got some business smarts so I'm going to tell you things I've never told anyone before. All I ask is you not repeat any of it, even to Julie nor anyone else for that matter.
Again Rita nodded yes, while taking a sip of coffee.
"All right here we go," informed Nellie.
"Years ago, while in my salad days, I married a San Francisco investor several years older than me by the name of Harry. He came with a half-civilized friend by the name of Billy who skipped fully growing up. Billy and Harry bumbled around most of the gold strikes in a half dozen states and later rough necked in oil hot spots tryin' to pickup whatever easy money they could find. After several years of near misses they managed to come up with some oil rights in Kern County, California, which turned out to have tons of oil under the surface.
They were able to cash in on the oil rights and became rich men for their time. Harry had enough smarts to realize it was possible to make more money wearin' a suit than overalls, so when the big money came in he and Billy split their windfall and parted company. Billy continued chasin' rainbows lookin' for another strike while Harry headed to San Francisco where he became an independent investor. Over the years Harry made and lost gobs of money. When I met him he was on an up swing with lots of bucks layin' around.
At the time I was what you might call, 'a woman of fortune'. I had a fetchin' body, good looks and enough rough edges to remind Harry of women he knew durin' his wanderin' days, so he up and asked me to marry him, which I did, without so much as battin' an eye". Pausing for a drink of coffee, Nellie continued.
"All went well for about ten years until he reached the age where men sometimes need a succession of strange stuff to get it up. About this time Harry got a call from Wanderin' Billy askin' Harry to visit him in a jerk-water wide-place in the road call Cactus Junction, Arizona.
Harry was gettin' a case of itchy feet anyway so we took off for Arizona. At the time Cactus Junction had a population of about two hundred, includin' prospectors and their burros. Billy talked Harry into buyin' up ten sections of land, around C. J. By taken the whole block of ground in one gulp Harry got it for about four-bits an acre. Like I said, Harry was flush at the time so a few thousand amounted to mere chicken feed and he bought the land more as a favor to Billy than as a future investment and soon forgot about buyin' half the damn desert as Harry called it." Nellie took time out for another drink of coffee.
"By the time we got home I was pretty sure the trip had set Harry to thinkin' it was time to turn me in for a new model. It wasn't long before a hot young number drifted across his path with a new twist on how to play his equipment longer than a one-night stand. He put her up in a nice Nob Hill apartment and not long afterwards Harry suffered a heart attack while giving her the kind of enjoyment he hadn't given me in a long time.
The first call I made after findin' out Harry died was to a smart lawyer I was feedin' a few buck to ever so often, just in case I needed quick legal help. The lawyer already had a file on Harry's financial dealing so he was able to put a quick lock on everything Harry owned.
I gave Harry a quick funeral and caught the next train headin east. I traveled some while my lawyer was settin up a bunch of blind corporations around the country to handle the money Harry left me. The lawyer rigged it to look like the Harry's leavin's was owned by different companies. When I got tired of the good life, I came here and settled down. To save you askin', I choose to act and talk like a hayseed as part of my cover, because I had my fill of the tea and cocktail crowd while married to Harry and durin' my travels.
When I settled down here, I threw away all my fancy clothes and became a nobody. I like keepin' life simple. People don't think I have anything and I don't give them any reason to think otherwise. I get a lot of enjoyment from jerkin' the chain on the high and mighty when they try to cut a cute deal I don't think is quite right, without them ever knowin' who did them in." After another drink of coffee, Nellie continued.
"In answer to your question, yes, I'm pretty well in the know about business deals going on around this part of the country. My corporations own almost every foot of the ground this burg sets on and they keep my name from being spread about. There's an assortment of people around fronting for me and they run the show for me most of the time; but I can pull a chain whenever I need or want to.
As for Buck, he's been around cows all his life and thinks he's the top bull of the herd in so far as women are concerned. And, as you put it, 'he's a qualified asshole'. He still has the southern religious idea of women bein' brainless and put on earth to wait on men and be the depository for the thing they carry between their legs whenever they take a notion." As she talked, Nellie pushed her coffee cup around making doodles on the tabletop before going on.
"Now don't get me wrong about men, as I said last night, I sometimes get the need for their services to cure my hornyness. But damn it to hell, they don't have to act so friggin' superior by tryin' to take me over and grab the things I own as part of their compensation. When it comes to pullin Ol' Buck's short hairs, I can see some sport in givin' him a touch of anxiety and causin' him to eat crow from a woman's hand. Rita, do you have anything particular in mind to rein him in?"
Rita was finished with her breakfast and slowly sipping her coffee when Nellie concluded.
"You have a story and a half." Rita nodded with a smile. "I've never met anyone with a history of having lived such an eclectic life, bar none. Yes, you can rest assured I'll keep your secret. I'm honored you chose me to share your story. Especially of your private life and the domain you control.
I think it's also fair to tell you I accumulated a substantial nest egg during my working tenure, along with a pension from Civil Service. My main pile of money came from an inheritance a friend left me several years ago, leaving me with no fear of being sent to the poor house. I in no way covet the wealth you have. From this time forward or until you tell me otherwise, you will remain Nellie, the hayseed to me.
As for Buck, I don't have a detailed plan at the moment. I'll wait until the right situation presents itself. If you're game, let's get together in a couple of days and see if we can come up with something to amuse ourselves at Buck's expense." Rita checked her watch before speaking.
"I'm sorry to postpone this fascinating conversation, but I'm about out of time. As I mentioned earlier, I have a dinner date tonight with a guy named John Henry Mills. I met him at the dance last night. Have you possibly heard of him?" Rita asked, picking up the check.
"Can't say I have. I'm glad to hear last night wasn't a total loss for you. With both me and Julie makin' a night of it, I was beginnin' to feel a little sorry for you. Guess there's little need for me to worry, knowin you can take care of yourself without the rest of us havin' to fret about you. I'll give your offer to twist Ol' Buck's tail some thought.
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