My Redacted Life: Chapter 17

 Back to work on Monday, now just past the middle of May in 1972. I was working on the final budget figures for the Hope project. It was a monumental affair, the application was. When we eventually finished, it would comprise nearly two inches of legal-size paper set in a flip-over binder. I was now working on the budget.

Theoretically, I assume, I was supposed to research costs, verify them, and add them all into subtotals by category and a final total for the entire project.

I thought of a better way.

We knew, see, what the maximum amount of the final budget would be. Why on earth go to the trouble of assembling cost figures that would add up to more than the budget would allow?

Hell, I just worked backwards. Thank goodness for algebra. It, and deceit, would get me through “many dangers, toils, and snares” over a colorful career and a miscreant life.

That evening, I skipped the “happy-hour” movie and went home directly after work. I entertained no thoughts of seeing my mysterious redhead. She taught school some 20 miles away and only stayed with her old college friend on weekends. I would have to wait three more days at least. That morning, I had seen my next-door neighbor leaving for work and we had exchanged pleasantries. I had been pleased to see that she was fully dressed. I gathered that the prospect of going to her job tended to focus her mind.

As we expressed mutual disdain for Mondays, I had resisted the temptation to ask directly about her sister. She was a bright, intelligent woman and would have recognized that as a disguised ploy to seek additional information on her sister’s friend.

Did I mention that I was learning to be deceitful in the assembling of information? When Rita asked if I had a pleasant evening, I lied.

“Oh, spent most of it talking to a woman I’ve been dating,” I said. “We were talking about making a trip up to Fayetteville some weekend.”

She ignored me. As I say, she was bright and intelligent and would remain a dear friend for life. She sure wasn’t about to buy into any fiction that I was Little Rock’s answer to Paul Newman. She gave me that wink she employed so well. The one that said, simultaneously, “Give it your best shot,” and “bullshit artist,” and “lots of luck.” Then she was off to Downtown and her job.

I trudged off to mine, and now I had returned. I changed clothes, had a beer, and listened to Isaac Hayes do his 19-minute version of By the Time I Get To Phoenix. Then it was off to the stores. On Mondays there were few, if any public meetings, so I reserved it for stocking up on food and liquor.

That was as close to an ordered life as I was ever to achieve.

Back from the mission, I had retrieved a sack of wine from the back seat and turned toward the apartment when they were right on me, less that ten yards away. Yep, it was the redhead and her friend. They wore simple T-shirts with no written messages, but that screamed out “Lookee here.” They each wore short skirts, more aptly described as six-inch strips of material with pockets.

I gasped, panicked, and nodded, nearly slamming the car door on my hand. They giggled, arched their eyebrows, and sashayed on by as if I had been nothing more than a cop standing on a street corner in Palookaville. I turned and watched them heading for a red-tinted late-model Chevrolet Impala. It was the same color as the long hair that swayed to and fro over hips that would have made a preacher want to dance the Tango. The long hair rocked and mocked me with a whispery voice that seemed to say, “What the hell are you looking at?”

It got worse. My neighbor was standing in her doorway watching as I arrived at the apartment building. She had, evidently, started undressing when movement in the parking lot caught her eye. She still wore her business dress. She wore nothing else but but hosiery and a cream-colored bra of fine weave and dotted with bright pink rosettes. A dainty band of lace ringed the cups. A small bow tie below, and between the cups, covered a clasp that seemed barely able to achieve its assigned task.

But I didn’t notice. Instead, I nodded toward the parking lot. “I thought she taught school and only came here on weekends,” I said.

That wink again. “School’s out sport,” she said. “Ain’t you the lucky one?”

Were you talking to me?