It was three months into my final school year. I had turned eighteen a few weeks earlier than most and wondered why I was sticking it out at all. I'd had enough of study and girls were all too much aggravation to work out. They seemed to bring a bag of mixed emotions, petty quibbles and capriciousness. I loved their gossip, I loved admiring their looks but I didn't want the hassle.
Besides, at the beginning of the year our school had procured four hot new female teachers that were the buzz among teenage boys. Mrs. Bright was one of them. She was foreign, maybe hispanic or Portuguese. I'd made every effort to hang back after class to make small talk. Funny, I'd never imagined she'd be interested in the phantasmagorical: dark fantasy books, gargoyles and books on crypto-zoology.
It was Thursday, sport day, that basically meant two hours of time wasting down a bowling alley or on a golf course as part of physical training. Mostly it was an opportunity to skip class altogether.
My last class before sport was Mrs. Bright's English class. She took English and Art classes. The class ended and everyone except myself had scarpered, probably to wag sport. I stood next to her desk as she put articles in her handbag and discussed folklore and the yowees.
"If you're interested, I have some books about yowees, bunyips and black cats of the Australian outback." she chimed.
"Sure, I'm interested."
"Okay, I'll be going home as this is my last class, pop by this address in half an hour."
She wrote her address down on a sheet of paper and smiled handing it to me. I looked at it and google mapped the address on my phone.
"I've got sport next."
"We all know that isn't going to happen." she smirked.
She picked up her bag and passing me to the door patted me gently on the chest twice, "See you in thirty." she smiled.
I'm sure it was just a friendly gesture but my temperature had raised 10 notches.
I made my way over to her place within twenty minutes and spotted her red Peugeot 207 in the driveway. The house was a Californian style weatherboard painted white with yellow trim and a white picket fence. The front yard was full of large daisies, rambling roses and a magnolia tree. I made my way up onto the verandah and the front door opened.
"Hi, come in." Mrs. Bright stood aside waving me through.
I stepped into the hallway and she closed the door. The noise from the street dimmed to a low mumble. Sensing no further movement behind me I turned and fleetingly caught her standing there looking at me in a curious manner. She wore her mousy blonde hair in a pixie cut blow dried into a understated spike bristling to the left. She had forest green eyes and smokey eye shadow accentuating her smouldering looks. To add to her appeal she wore a brown lurex mini dress hugging her stunning figure and she had adorned her right arm with a couple of bangles, one zebra striped and the other with a leopard pattern both edged in gold. Her brown suede high heels elevated her height to my shoulder.
"Come on through." she invited, briskly brushing passed me in the tight hallway as she strutted towards the back of the house leading into an open plan kitchen. I stepped into the light airy space of the kitchen cum dining room from the darkish hallway. On a dining table lay two piles of handwritten essays.
"Ha, mine in there?" I enquired.
She regarded me whilst straightening a tea towel on the kitchen bench.
"No! Do you want it to be?" raising her eyebrows in a mock threat.
I took note of all the red ink corrections scribbled over them.
"Not really." and we both laughed.
"Nice place." I commented with what I felt was an obligatory phrase dictated by adult social convention.
"You've only seen the kitchen!" she replied raising her arms with palms out in astonishment. "Nice kitchen then."
She laughed, "I'll show you around."
We toured the house flitting from one room to another whilst she described her choice of colours, various interior design decisions and brand names of bed coverings. I just kind of smiled and offered the odd "Hmm hmm." and "Cool." She paid particular attention to the softness of the pillows and the size of the bed, but I wasn't looking at either. I'd noticed a large framed photograph above the headboard of Mrs. Bright seductively laying on a couch and wearing a plain black body stocking with not a bump out of place. My friends and I had swapped stories of what we would like to do to her in stockings and lacey undies but this picture was hotter than anything I would have imagined. Espying my voyeuristic interest she joined me in quiet contemplation of it before silence prevailed that we swap glances, at which point she smiled, then continued her tour by describing a figurine on the right bedside table.
"This is Nohpyttecha, she is a South American Goddess of lust and witchcraft." gesturing at its iconic attributes whilst demystifying the diabolical figurine, cupping its own breasts with a snake wrapped around its arms and sporting a necklace of tiny skulls.
I quickly interjected pointing out a picture face down on to the left of Nohpyttecha in the hope of feigning disinterest in the hot photograph of her, though my inability to feign a lack of embarrassment at being caught probably betrayed me.
"Your picture's fallen over."
"No dear, that's a picture of my husband and I on holiday in Peru."
"Oh!"
"Yes, every other time he's been overseas it's been on a business trip taking his pretty young secretary with him." she snarled, vehement anger flowing from her eyes towards the picture like a heat wave.
"Anyhow," resuming her sunny demeanour and briefly giving me the once-over, "back to those books I was going to lend you."
"Uh, yeah sure."
