This is a sort of sequel to "Interesting Weekend," through the same male protagonist and some references, but it is not necessary to have read that. At one point they were the same story, but my thinking got complicated. "Parting Gesture" was also part of this originally.
* * * * *
This is not exactly about lightning striking in the same place twice, but it's close.
In the middle of November of the year after he met Mary Nelson, George Chitwood went past the Greyhound station after work on Friday. No, you haven't been here before, not exactly. He did this a couple of times a month for some years, especially on Fridays. Again he was asked about money for a meal by a young woman. Again, as seventeen months before, he made an offer to pay for the meal rather than give money, and offered the couch if it was needed. This coincidence started to get to him, so he rolled with it and they went to the same restaurant.
The woman's name was Elizabeth Cooper, and she was about twenty. She had been travelling from New Jersey down to her grandmother's place in North Carolina. She had a job lined up there starting on Monday morning, but she missed the connection to Asheville because the bus broke down on the Jersey turnpike. When she got into D.C., she found that her money was gone. It was either stolen outright, found on the floor by someone who kept it, or maybe left at State Roads somewhere. The driver helped her look for it, but without any luck.
She still had the ticket, so she could have survived until the next bus came on Saturday morning and through the eight-hour ride to Asheville, but she would have been awfully hungry when she got there. She figured that George had a kind face and she tried asking him for money.
Elizabeth said that he still had a kind face while he was stuffing it, so she took up his offer of the couch. Well, she was bolder than Mary Nelson started out to be, maybe from being older. Maybe it was as well that she was just passing through if there was any chance her, um, appetites were like Mary's, George thought. He started paying attention to the differences -- blond hair, thinner face, bigger boobs -- to avoid thinking that he was in some great grinding cycle without end.
She was more talkative than Mary, and quicker-witted (or maybe just more articulate) and George found himself liking her fairly well by the time the meal was over. If she were staying around... Well, that would be a different situation.
They walked to his apartment (still the same as the year earlier) and George made the comment that he had made to Mary those months before about sexual interest being reciprocated if it was there. She kissed him and said no. Oh, well. It was worth trying.
Elizabeth put on earphones and listened to the radio, then she got bored and read sections of the newspaper as George finished them. She was half-dozing when he said goodnight to her and went to bed a little early. It felt odd to have a woman sharing the apartment and not sharing his bed.
It felt even odder to his subconscious, it seemed, because his dreams that night were about undressing her and raising her knees and sliding slowly into her...
In the morning George moved carefully out of bed to avoid waking her and he went into the bathroom. He had not remembered the night before to leave his bathrobe right to hand (it was in fact in the bathroom, since he seldom used it) so he had to streak. But the sound of the shower, or maybe just the daylight, must have woken her. The shower stall door opened and Elizabeth was standing there stark naked. "Is there room for me? Do you mind if I join you?" she said.
This was the sort of request that George found it very difficult to refuse a naked woman with a great body. Not that many had ever asked, at least not as many as he might have liked.
Elizabeth stood in the falling water looking lean and young and beautiful. "I lay there last night thinking about the way you acted, and the way you looked, and being a few feet from you and I started getting horny. I wanted to masturbate, but I decided instead that if I felt the same way in the morning, I would go to you instead. I did, so here I am. That glimpse of you zipping by me was the final temptation.
"This might be the last chance I will have for a while to get any action, since I'll be moving in with my grandmother and I don't know anybody down there. You might say I don't know you, but I think I can pretty well judge you from what I've seen. I mean you don't have any diseases or anything, I'm sure."
"Certainly nothing I know of."
"And I'm on the pill. I've been thinking about this," she said, reaching between his legs. "Though there's more to it than I thought."
