Which man first saw the other? Ransome Farrell peering up through the security sluice or Ian Abercrombie looking down into the air terminal's public concourse?
If either man shared a single thought, it was each preferred airports before this recent mania for hysterical safety measures. Until wanton unimaginable murder became real and media puffed ragtag terrorists into lethal celebrities, flying, most of what it entailed, bore little resemblance to steeple chases.
Why, both remembered occasions when family or friends could escort or meet passengers at the gates without being regarded as likely perpetrators. And justifiably so.
Tonight was Farrell's first time at the reconfigured T-town airport. Its enhancements precluded any involved greetings. That would occur in a bar somewhere in town.
Back when they were undergraduates dormmates loved turning out en mass to welcome returning Easterners. Only years later did Abercrombie wonder how that mob intimidated others waiting at the gates. These days, there were certainly far fewer beer cans littering the parking lots and the smell of urine less pervasive.
Just once did Abercrombie's ritual deviate. In the intervening decades Abercrombie had scant reason to recall Eileen. They'd met by chance and parted after disinterest accumulated. Between those two fuzzy posts they enjoyed sex. No, attuned as the pair was, they wallowed in sex. Few other topics preoccupied them. Not even accidentally.
If it weren't for their frequent carnal grinding, each likely would've viewed the other as human wallpaper. Decorative and nothing else. Yet there was sex.
The first session of an afternoon class during spring semester the sophomores intersected. By that January night the two fucked.
When he reflected, his sight sharpened through years, Abercrombie ascribed their random coupling to primal identification. Both recognized the other's promiscuity. Attraction gratefully bypassed every social minuet imposed before intimate relations. Nor did it hurt that both existed at respective physical peaks.
Eileen collected her fellow junior at the gate. She'd cut her hair severely over the summer. She'd cropped the black bangs sported in May. Now late August Eileen sprouted a punk-suitable fringe. A sundress draped the sculpted form beneath. Summer had burnished her delectable face, bare shoulders and arms.
Flushed cheeks and moist parted lips implied anticipation. Good indecent mischief brightened Eileen's hazel eyes.
His shortened hair momentarily soured Eileen. When they parted in May thick black tumbled around his face. Now a crew cut squared Farrell's head.
After nearly three months of fitful letter writing and squeezing his memory about how Eileen felt, tasted and sounded, now waited the reality. Unlike too many girls back East, even those Easterners who had matriculated west, Eileen gazed with undemanding sweetness. Hers was genuine, not any labored disguise hiding true neurosis.
Abercrombie had missed their crushing embraces. Ones of base yearning, desperation and hunger. Eileen was the first girl, woman, he'd met, kissed, with pillow lips. Their most casual pecks became intricate oral immersions. Succumbing was easy.
Passersby that night must've envied what seemed resumption of delayed abiding devotion. By the end of their meld his luggage circled the baggage carousel.
Bag gripped in left hand, hers clutched in his right, Abercrombie and Eileen stepped airily into the radiating parking lot. Thirty years ago he breezed through Arizona's abrupt heat. In fact before jet ways all aircraft received and discharged passengers on the tarmac.
Immediately resuming roles, she let Abercrombie drive her car. A large American late 60s vintage sedan, its front bench permitted Eileen to crowd him. On the ride his free hand snaked under Eileen's dress into the cotton trifle gauzing her sex. His gentle finger pressure elicited sighs heating his neck and ear.
They swept by his dorm. Abercrombie's arrival a week before fall semester started abbreviated any celebration with the gang. Except for the desk man, a few useless, know-nothing freshmen scrambled around the building. Upperclassmen, his peers, were either somewhere getting their bags on, out pounding their own last semester's Betty, or yet vacationed.
Room assigned, keys snatched, bag stashed, Abercrombie and Eileen again cruised off into night. T-town lights receded then blackened in the rearview mirror. Pavement ended and gravel became a dirt track which ceased at the Tubs.
He lamented his late landing. The hour meant liquor stores were already closed. Fortunately, Eileen shared his mind. Although never suggested, she knew the Tubs their ultimate destination. Before collecting Abercrombie, she stopped by the "packy" (an Eastern locution learned from him) and bought two bottles of their favorite heat-beating, sex-easing adult beverage: cold duck. Those smoked bottles chilled in an ice-jammed plastic bucket wedged on the rear floorboard.
Incongruous jazz played softly in the Tubs' management shack. Behind the counter a woman kept the clerk company. By appearances and manner she filled his girlfriend role. When it came to concealing curiosity about the clientele, she failed miserably.
Fee paid, towels distributed, tub allocated, bucket grasped, Abercrombie and Eileen (she carried the cups) left that shack and followed ankle-high lighted paths towards one of eight secluded Jacuzzis. Their cauldron already bubbled. Desirous as each was for the other, they disrobed without frenzy. Naked, low lamps forming the perimeter issued sufficient wattage for their young eyes.
Eileen stood a healthy 5-foot-7. Except for a pale strip encompassing her sex, topless sunbathing painted her from brow to insole. She was a girl with womanly curves. Broad shoulders accentuated her waist and hips. Sienna-brown half-dollar nipples rode on small breasts floating above one unmarred midriff. Her torso descended into a sparse pubic triangle. Eileen shifted on strong well-turned legs. By their sheen Abercrombie saw she'd recently shaven them.
Five inches taller than Eileen, the then 20-year-old Abercrombie could've been appraised as quite a specimen. Spanning his chest, two carving boards served as pectorals. Muscles bounded and multiplied off squared shoulders. Arms and legs bulging, his back cut a thick "V" that seemingly sprang from his hard rounded ass.
Finger snagging curls darkened Abercrombie's chest then trickled into a copse between his legs. Women, okay, girls mostly, admired his member's heft. Flaccid at least. Rampant it occasionally fomented incidents demanding all his underdeveloped powers of calming persuasion.
It didn't bother Eileen. The angrier, the more imposing, the better her fulfillment.
She climbed into the bubbling aboveground redwood tank first. Abercrombie's splayed fingers accompanied her firm buttocks until boiling water claimed them. After placing the bucket alongside their cups on an outside shelf, he joined Eileen in the tumult.
As their habit neither spoke. Even if they'd bothered the Jacuzzi's roar made comprehension difficult.
