One Rule - No Rules

by Lawrence Ambrose

  He placed his hand flat on her stomach. The ridges of muscle quivered under his touch. He leaned forward and planted his lips on the quiver, which spread away from his lips in wavelets of vibrating flesh. Thalma gripped the back of his head and closed her eyes. A moan squeezed from her lips.

  "You look completely normal," said Louis. "Like a normal woman."

  "I'm retracted," she said. "Willy Pete is in hiding." Zebadiah had come up with that name.

  "Willy Pete?" He rocked back, frowning up at her. "You actually named it?"

  "It's named after an explosive – white phosphorous."

  "Oh. For a second there, I thought it was something weird." A smile struggled through his frown. "As long as it doesn't explode in me."

  Thalma eased him back on the bed, positioning herself over him.

  "That's going to be your job," she said.

  THALMA AWOKE to a pair of noisy blue jays outside their window. She stretched, feeling like the big cat Louis sometimes compared her to. Unlike with the half-headache hangover from the LSD 35, her body was now in a calm, near-blissful state, the vibrant aftershocks of pleasure a fond, persistent memory.

  She rolled on her side to watch Louis as he slept. He had the face of a child, she thought. Or maybe a saint. A hippie saint, with his long, golden-brown hair falling in tangles over his forehead. She brushed a lock from his brow, and he stirred. His eyes opened, glowing in the morning light the same color as his hair.

  "Hey," she said.

  "Um, hey." He covered his mouth. "How long have you been staring at me?"

  "Since the beginning of time."

  "Heavy."

  Louis touched her face. They stared into each other's eyes for many moments. He slid over and kissed her mouth. More kisses, and he was easing on top of and then inside her. She curled her legs around his waist, reminding herself not to squeeze too hard, and they found a wonderful rhythm. Orgasms seemed to be floating in the air around them, ripe for the plucking.

  "Wow," Louis gasped afterward, rolling off her. "That was..."

  "Incredible?"

  "Yup. And then some. I admit I haven't been with many women...but if it got any better than that I'd blow a brain fuse or something."

  "If I had a brain fuse, I'm sure we would've just flipped it."

  He turned to peer into her eyes. "Really?"

  "Really."

  "Of course all girls say that."

  "That you flip their brain fuses?"

  "Ha. You know what I mean."

  "I'm not all girls."

  Thalma's dark blue eyes met Louis's brown-eyed stare full-on. His skeptical smile slipped away.

  "True," he said. "You're definitely one of a kind."

  He flopped on his back, and joined Thalma in surveying the ceiling.

  "So we're harvesting today," he said.

  "Yes." The painstaking process of "trimming the trees" had always been her least favorite part of growing. "Total pain in the butt."

  Louis laughed. "It seems funny to think of someone who makes millions a year down on her knees with clippers like a common laborer."

  "If I thought I could hire out safely, believe me, I would do it."

  "I believe you. But now you have hired out – you have me. Just get me started, and I'll be happy to do it. You can focus on all your weighty accounting matters."

  "But I don't feel like focusing on them today," she sighed.

  After breakfast, they labored through the afternoon in the grow rooms. It wasn't so bad, Thalma thought, when you had someone to work with. She did enjoy sneaking peeks at Louis's ass when he bent over, and once or twice she thought she caught him returning the favor.

  It was his idea to drive to the nearby Oak Lakes for a late barbecue dinner and a swim. They were both surprised by the number of people at the public beach – but then it was Friday night, and most of them were young and probably college students, a mixed batch of loudmouthed guys and giggling girls. Louis and Thalma found a grill and table on a quiet end of the beach. Louis got the charcoal started, and they waded out into the murky water for a pre-dinner swim.

  Thalma had never learned to truly like swimming. For her, swimming was like dragging dead weights around in the water. She was strong enough to do it, but it had never felt natural.

  Louis, on the other hand, took to the water like a seal – diving and surfacing and undulating around as if he'd been born in a lake. Thalma had to laugh, watching him. But the best part was when he wrapped his arms around her and pressed himself against her so tightly that their flesh seemed to fuse. His beard tickled her face, and the droplets of water in his hair glistened like diamonds in the glowing summer evening.

  The college kids had started a game of beach volleyball by the time they returned to shore. Thalma caught Louis's longing look in their direction.

  "Do you miss it?" she asked. "College, I mean."

  Louis shrugged his slim shoulders. "I miss the structure, the sense of having no responsibility. Being around young people every day. When you're a working stiff you're cut off from all that. Sometimes, I feel like an old man now."

  "Especially when you're with someone fifteen years older than you."

  "Nah," Louis laughed. "If anything, you make me feel like a kid. It's just the sense of being cut off from that world, you know?"

  "I know what it feels like to be cut off from the world."

  "You better than anyone. Anyhow, I don't mean to whine. You're the best thing that ever happened to me, Thal. I'm a happy man – even more so, after last night, believe me! - even if I do feel like I'm out of my depth here."

  "I understand," said Thalma. "Maybe you'd feel better if you went back to school. You could do that, you know?"

  "Could I? You'd support that?"

  "Yes, of course. I want you to be happy."

  Louis stared at her with his luminous eyes. She reached out and entwined her fingers in the curls running down the side of his neck. He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. She closed her eyes to hold back the tide of emotions. Louis cleared his throat.

  "That's very nice of you," he said. "To be honest, I always figured I would go back to school someday – but when I was ready, and on my own terms, not my parents'."

  "You could do that now."

  "What about helping you? Wasn't that supposed to be the idea when you hired me on?"

  "We could work something out."

  Louis dropped some steaks on the now fire-hot grill, smiling to himself.

  "Did you ever go to college?" he asked.

  "I dropped out of high school with a GED. That's as far as my general education went. But I did graduate numerous military courses, including WASP."

  "Talk about the school of hard knocks," he laughed.

  "And I've never stopped educating myself." She heard a hint of defensiveness creeping into her voice, and stifled it.

  "I noticed. You could probably teach a graduate level course in underground economics."

  They were just finishing their steaks when a young, bikini-clad woman from the college group jogged over to them.

  "Hi," she greeted them with a bright smile. "We're short one person in our volleyball game. Either of you guys be willing to fill in?"

  Thalma and Louis exchanged a look. Thalma noted the flash of longing in his eyes again.

  "I don't think so," he said.

  "Why don't you go ahead," said Thalma. "Have some fun."

  "You sure?"

  "Absolutely. I'll be your cheerleader."

  She watched him walk off with the blond girl at his side who actually looked like a cheerleader, and was surprised by a flash of jealousy when the girl gave his shoulder a light touch and the tinkle of her carefree laughter carried back to her. Maybe I should've worn a bikini? Thalma looked down at her body, clothed demurely in a loose-fitting full body suit that diminished but didn't hide the hard curves of her body. She shook her head.

  At the other end of the beach, girls waved at Louis as he was introd
uced, and a couple of guys shook his hand. She could tell that the girls liked him from all their laughing and hair-playing and glancing at him when he wasn't looking. The fact that she could break any of them in two didn't do much for Thalma's insecurity. That wasn't the field of competition. They could offer Louis innocence, softness, and the eternal optimism of youth. In their minds, the world was a beautiful, shiny place where the ruling parties cared deeply about them, corruption and power lust were the exception and not the rule, and the future belonged to them. Thalma knew better. She could never match their unbridled optimism. Nor could she ever be as soft and pliant as those girls, no matter how hard she tried. She could never change the fact that she had taken human lives.

  Thalma broke out a beer from the cooler, and made herself take long, calming sips as she watched the volleyball game. Louis wasn't as tall or athletic as some of the other boys, but seemed to be holding his own for an ex-mechanical engineer geek.

  She'd been tempted to push him a little into some strength conditioning, mainly because she feared that if he ever had to fight or perform some difficult physical labor – always a possibility in her line of work – that his lack of strength could endanger his survival. Still, she hadn't been able to work up much enthusiasm for pressing him on that. She knew that would probably make him feel she thought less of him – he was already self-conscious enough about their difference in physical strength – and in truth she liked him just the way he was. Muscle-bound men had never been her thing.

  Louis turned suddenly and waved to her. She forced a smile and waved back. Then she realized he wasn't just waving at her – he was waving for her to come over. And several of the others were waving for her to come, too. One guy even half-bowed and cupped his hands in supplication. She held up her hand in polite refusal.

  She'd learned early on that sports and her didn't match. Wrestling matches and horsing around ended in kids running home crying and clutching sprained or even broken appendages. It didn't charm her classmates or even her teachers when she jumped up and hung on a regulation height basketball rim at seven. Rather than being pleased or impressed, they shook their heads and whispered "freak." The same thing would happen if she went over there now and joined the game. Or she could just pretend to play. But there was no joy in that.

  Louis jogged over, semi-breathless. "Hey, one of the girls got a Charlie horse in her leg. They're wondering if you'd be willing to help out."

  "That's not a good idea. When I play with other people, bad things happen."

  "Jeez, we're not talking full-contact football or something. There I'd agree with you. This is beach volleyball. What can you do, break someone's face with a volleyball?"

  "You might be surprised."

  "You could always just stand there and look pretty."

  She glared at him, but he didn't back down. Finally, she sighed. "You really want me to do this?"

  "I'm not trying to pressure you into something you don't want to do, Thal. But the game will definitely stop if they don't get a sub."

  "And you don't want it to stop?"

  He gave her an awkward smile and shrugged.

  "Okay," she said. "For you, I'll do it."

  Suppressing another sigh, she followed him over to the college students. I'm no longer a little girl, she told herself. Now I know what to do and not do.

  "This is Thalma," he said.

  They smiled and looked friendly, but Thalma saw the question in their eyes as they noted her legs and arms and checked out the harder lines of her face. They wouldn't know she was thirty-seven, but they definitely could see she was older than Louis.

  "I really don't know anything about playing volleyball," she said to the group.

  "Then you ought to fit in just fine," said a tall, muscular young man with a pearly toothed grin.

  She started out near the back on the opposite side of Louis. At first, she thought that might work out fine, but after a few plays the ball flew toward her waist and her attempt to scoop it back over the net launched it into the nearby trees.

  "Take it easy, girl," one of her teammates counseled. "You almost sent the ball into orbit!"

  As she shuffled along with her five teammates toward the front, Thalma improved her understanding of the game, until she was standing at the net beside the tall, athletic guy. He caught the serve and propelled the ball neatly into the air, beckoning for Thalma to go get it. Careful, she cautioned herself. She stretched her arms toward the ball, not even bending her legs, and jumped only using her calves. Still, her head cleared the eight-foot net, and she had time to stare down at her opponents below – while they had time to look startled – before lightly tapping the ball toward an untended patch of sand. Of course, the ball rocketed down and sent sand spraying over people's feet.

  "Woo-woo!" a pair of girls hooted.

  "Looks like you brought a ringer into our midst," someone accused Louis, who shot a guilty look at Thalma before shrugging his innocence.

  "I swear she didn't even jump," said the athletic guy playing next to her. "She just kind of levitated."

  Thalma shrugged and managed a strained smile, but she couldn't stop herself from feeling a small surge of pride. Of course, if she'd really jumped - high enough that her knees struck the stop of the net – there would've been neither accolades nor jokes. Someone might even have called the police.

  But her evening's entertainment wasn't quite done. Shuffled to the other end of the net, the ball flew toward her a couple of feet over the cord, and she couldn't stop herself from another constrained hop to intercept.

  "And we have liftoff!" the tall guy announced as she hovered long enough to block the ball downward at the opposing players' feet.

  Afterward, while Louis was shaking hands and hobnobbing with his teammates, the athletic guy who'd been playing beside Thalma the whole time moved closer to her, his back turned to the net, and handed her a business card from his shorts.

  "Just thought you might want to hang out sometime," he said.

  "Thanks." Thalma tore up the card and deposited its pieces back in his hand.

  "Or not," the guy said with a feeble chuckle.

  Louis joined her, and they walked back, arms around each other's waists toward their picnic spot.

  "Did he hit on you?" Louis nodded back to the group. "It looked like he tried to give you his phone number or something and you ripped it up."

  "That's what happened."

  Louis grunted and shook his head. "What a jerk."

  They arrived back at their spot. They collected the garbage and dropped it in a nearby trash bin.

  "You know," he said, "when I talked about feeling old, I didn't mention that I've kind of always felt that way. I might miss being around people that age sometimes, but I don't miss their lack of seriousness, the way they don't value some things, like loyalty. I never understood how you could love someone and then just shrug and walk away."

  "I never have understood that, either."

  Their gazes met. Louis's eyes glistened.

  "I guess there are more important things than age," he said.

  Instead of going home right away, they drove around the lake and watched the sunset from a hill, holding hands as they sat in the grass. For Louis it felt like a defining moment – maybe the defining moment – in his life. For the first time he felt settled, as if he'd arrived home after a long and mostly fruitless journey. Granted, a home that was sometimes scary as hell, but home nonetheless. He and Thalma were now connected, and only something unnatural – a force from the outside like a nuclear blast – could ever separate them. Yet he couldn't imagine any external force defeating this woman. She was an elemental force herself – like a goddess.

  A goddess that needed him.

  Chapter 7

  THE DAY OF DOOM had arrived. At least that was the way it felt to Thalma as she drove Louis to the Breton County Jail for his scheduled one-week stay. Her hearts were beating in her throat as they pulled up in front of the dull beige building
. Part of her wanted to level it with some high explosive, while the other part wanted to turn around and drive him and her to a new life with new identities, never looking back.

  Louis's face roughly matched the grey pallor of the county jail building. He was trying to put on a brave front, she knew, but in this penultimate moment that façade fell away, and there was just a twenty-two year old man, still a kid in many ways, facing a week in barbaric circumstances alongside at least a few hardened criminals. She yearned to stay with him, to protect him. If any of those creeps even laid so much as a finger on him –

  "Hey," said Louis, regarding her with big, concerned eyes. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes." Thalma stopped clenching her fists and forced a smile. She had to be strong for him now. "I'm just going to miss you."

  "Tell me about it." He stroked the side of her face. "Just keep busy, and it will be over soon."

  "I know."

  Thalma smiled, and then looked away out her window, blinking back tears she did not want him to see.

  "I'll be fine," he said. "Though I may need a long back massage when I get out."

  "No problem," she said.

  "Well, okay. See you soon."

  Thalma whipped around and buried her head in his shoulder. Be strong. She clenched her jaw hard enough to make her molars ache. Too soon, Louis leaned back and kissed her forehead.

  "I'll be okay, Thal," he said. "I'll be back before you know it."

  "I know."

  They kissed twice – long, desperate kisses – and he pulled out of her embrace.

  "I should go," he said in a choking voice. "Don't want to be late for my own incarceration."

  BACK HOME, Thalma kept herself busy bagging the harvest, wading through all her accounts and businesses, and checking back with her talented Ph.D. chemist, Sandra Walken, about her progress on synthesizing a batch of LSD 35. That had been her preferred solution to the problem of Mr. Murphy, who'd informed her that they'd lost forty-nine ounces. She'd expected him to shoot down her suggestion that she replace the product rather than pay his staggering five million dollar alleged wholesale price, but he'd seemed fine with it. In fact, he waxed enthusiastic over the idea of having an "alternate supplier." He asked only that she add two ounces to the total as a penalty.