By late November, after several years of living in a rental home, I had finally settled into a single story house in the outskirts of Tucson, located along the edge of a scenic saguaro-covered hillside. Several weeks earlier, Martin, a friend of mine from Ohio, called me to say that his cousin Kerry was coincidentally also moving to the Tucson area. He informed me that she was looking for a place to live and he asked me whether I'd be willing to help her find a place and if he could pass on my contact information to her. I agreed to show her around the area in order to give her some idea of what neighborhoods had both good and reasonably priced houses. A few days later, Kerry, who I had never met or even seen before, called me and we met at a diner down the road from my place. She seemed both stressed by the move to a state and excited by the opportunity to start a new life.
Kerry was in her late 20's, a few years younger than me, with a wide friendly smile and curly, dirty blonde hair. She had just gone through a messy divorce and was looking to get as far away from her ex-husband and her in-laws as possible, or at least that was her story. Kerry had joint custody of two young children, one in kindergarten, the other in the first grade, who would spend the school year in Cleveland and their summers with her in Tucson. According to Martin, Kerry was in the process getting her life back on track, not only after an ugly divorce, but after many years of heavy drinking and drug use. Thanks to selling a lot that she inherited upon her father's death a few years earlier, Kerry had enough money for a decent down-payment on a small house, and she had a stable job lined up as an administrative aide in a local law office. Apparently she found the job on account of yet another personal connection.
After the meet and greet following cups of black coffee and some pastries, I showed Kerry some promising neighborhoods on a map that I knew had houses for sale at prices that were a steal. She agreed to follow me in her own car as I drove to some of the locations we had marked on the map. She would stop, look around, take a flier or write down the numbers of the for sale places that clicked with her. Throughout this time, Kerry was friendly enough with me but not very talkative, so I assumed that when she drove back to her motel that would be the last I'd hear from her except indirectly from Martin.
A couple of weeks after I had shown her around, Kerry called me to thank me again and to say that she had found a house she that she liked. It was located on a street that I had shown to her, and she was on track in negotiations with the realtor. Somehow during our conversation, the fact that last week was my birthday came up, and Kerry suggested that we get together to celebrate as her way of saying thank you to me in person. I thought that she was kidding at first, but when it became clear that she wasn't, I agreed and told her to come over the following evening. My freezer was full of elk meat since my buddy Rob shot a young bull near Flagstaff a few months earlier, and I asked Kerry if she'd like to have some for dinner. She said that she had never tried elk, so elk backstrap it would be.
The next evening, Kerry came by around 7:00 while I was in the process of finishing the steaks on the skillet and roasting turnips in the oven. She brought a generic supermarket birthday cake for me, gaudily frosted and sprinkled, as well as small multitool pocket knife as a gift.
"Now Kerry, I certainly appreciate the gesture, but you didn't have to go through all this trouble, it was my pleasure to show you around and help you out. Martin was a good friend of mine who did a lot for me when I lived in Cleveland, so helping out his cousin is the least I could do..."
"It isn't any trouble for me, don't be silly, I wanted to do this for you, you know, it's been a while since anyone did anything so nice for me...plus I don't really know anyone around here except my boss and he's kind of a jackass."
Laughing, I asked Kerry what she wanted to drink, she asked for beer and a glass of water for now. The food was about ready and I set the table. Over dinner, I told her more about how I was planning on transitioning away from my job teaching stats classes at Tucson's community college in order to take a position as a data analyst for a biomedical device company. Kerry mentioned to me that while for the time being she was working as an administrative aide, her real passion since she was a girl was dogs, and that she would like to eventually get into pitbull breeding as a full-time job. I wasn't sure how she would manage that between the small lot and zoning laws, but I kept quiet about it, knowing not to ruin her sense that her life was moving forward. Mostly Kerry was happy to the point of being giddy over having found a place, and kept describing it to me even though I knew that neighborhood and had probably even pointed the house out to her to begin with.
As we talked, I was somewhat embarrassed by the fact that Kerry had worn a nice sweater and was made up for the occasion while I was wearing the rather ratty sweat pants and a white t-shirt, the sort that I would have worn for things like cleaning around the house or painting. Regardless of my appearance, Kerry seemed very pleased with the dinner and said that she really enjoyed having elk meat for the first time. In contrast, the birthday cake she bought for me was barely palatable, for one thing the frosting was almost fluorescent, but I forced a slice down with a smile to let it be known to her that I appreciate the thought.
"Happy Birthday, Mark," she said, raising her beer bottle, "even if it is a week late."
"Thank you...and cheers" (clicking bottles)
"Did you have a big shindig last week?"
"No, nothing like that, all low key, just went out for drinks with some friends and went home, also vaguely remember having my parents call and talk my ear off."
Kerry had moved her chair closer to mine while we spoke, and would sometimes put her hand on my side or on my shoulders as she spoke, which gave me license to move closer still until our legs were touching side by side below the dinner table.
It was only then that I really started to have any desire for and designs on Kerry. She was hardly one who would turn any heads at first glance - her nose was small and flat, her eyes were somewhat narrow and wide apart. On the other hand, thanks to her tight sweater and jeans I could tell that she had a nice figure, and more importantly, there was something strongly sexual about her manner even before she said or did anything overt.
Kerry's appearance and persona, with its combination of a plain, almost homely face compensated with a sensual body, reminded me of Judy, the first girl I had ever been with. The thought took me out of the present for just a moment, as fond memories from fifteen plus years ago drifted through my mind. They were memories of a wild, sweat-dripping, and dirty coupling by the muddy bank of a river, and an equally intense memory of a tryst later that summer when Judy was bent over a dilapidated park bench as I fucked her from behind. I looked towards Kerry furtively and wondered if she had similarly initiated some fortunate guy years ago in the same way.
