index


Message-ID: <57208asstr$1201018201@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: parthenogenesis <parthenogenesis1@XXXyahoo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: {ASSM} A Winning Move 1/3 (MF rom)
Lines: 533
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:10:02 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

A Winning Move
by parthenogenesis


Chapter 1

The divorce ripped my guts out. As with an earthquake or a funnel
cloud that drops out of a clear blue sky, one moment everything was
just fine; the next, total devastation. One ordinary Sunday afternoon
in March, 1999, my wife of twenty years said, "I don't want to be
married any more."

"Is there someone else?" I choked out, predictably and tritely, even
though there had been no indication that there might be and our
marriage seemed untroubled otherwise.

"No," she said. "I just don't want to be responsible for another adult
any more."

I couldn't make sense of her answer--her reason for wanting a divorce.
I couldn't understand how she felt responsible for me. We both had
good jobs, we'd paid off the mortgage on the house, we had money set
aside for our sons' college educations, we had an egalitarian sort of
marriage, we were respectful of one another; I thought we loved each
other in the ways that people who have been married for twenty years
do. It seemed to me that we both were, if nothing else, responsible.

I thought about insisting on marriage counseling or psychotherapy,
resisting, trying to "fix" whatever she thought was wrong, but, after
some consideration, I decided that that would probably only create
anger and resentment of top of everything else and make our life
together worse rather than better. So I agreed to the divorce. She
continued to live in the house rent-free so that our sons, then 13 and
15, wouldn't have to be uprooted from their school and circle of
friends. In exchange for that consideration, I paid only a reasonable
amount of child support, but no alimony. Everything else just got
split down the middle.

The earthquake struck, the funnel cloud touched down. One day I had a
wife and a home and a family; the next, I was standing on the curb
with my suitcases in my hands. I hadn't just got a divorce; I'd lost
my sense of place. I didn't know where I fit in the world any more.

I gave brief thought to donning a hair shirt, to renting a scummy
little apartment to make her suffer. The thought was only brief
because it was patently ridiculous, and, I was glad I was able to
recognize so quickly, just a warped version of, "I'll show you."

I instead went to Vida Libre, a huge new apartment complex at North
First and Rio Robles, virtually right across the street from work.
Vida Libre was, according to its literature, not an apartment complex
but an "apartment village." It offered six "extraordinary apartment
communities plus village shops, including Starbucks," in addition to a
gym, a game room, and a swimming pool. I took a two-bedroom unit, then
scurried over to Levitz, where I got myself a queen bed, adequate
living room furniture, and a modest dinette set. I also got a pair of
bunk beds and two student desks for the second bedroom so that my sons
wouldn't have to toss sleeping bags on the floor and argue about
kitchen table space when they stayed with me.

I met my immediate neighbors during the first week in my new digs. On
one side was Bob, a hale-fellow-well-met, probably ex-football player
salesman. On the other were roommates Jacqui and Jeannine, neither of
whom was French. Jacqui, who looked to be about twenty-five, was a
full-figured, zaftig little thing, with breasts so big they swayed
rather than jiggling when she walked. She had short, curly, dark hair,
and eyes that seemed always to sparkle with a pure joy of living.
Jeannine, who was probably in her mid-thirties, was, in contrast to
Jacqui, tall, slender, and lithe, with dirty blond hair that she
typically wore in a pony tail that fell between her shoulderblades.
Jacqui was fun to look at, but I found Jeannine attractive. Very
attractive, as a matter of fact, but she did not look like a happy
lady.

After I got settled in, I spent some time checking out the community
social scene, a lot of which took place around the swimming pool. It
was obvious that the bodies soaking up sun on the deck were all lean
and tan. An objective assessment in front of my bathroom mirror
disclosed that I was considerably less than lean and fish-belly white,
to boot. I would have stuck out like a sort thumb poolside.

As time went on, life settled into a humdrum routine. I got up, went
to work, and came home again. The weekends the boys were with me, we
went out to dinner, to movies, or to Great America; otherwise, my
entertainment consisted mostly of reading or trips to Blockbuster. I'd
formed a nodding acquaintance with a number of people with whom I
crossed paths regularly, and, of course, greeted Jacqui and Jeannine
when I saw them.

I didn't consciously go on a diet or anything, but I found myself
shying away from fast food and taking the time to prepare meals that
were long on protein and fresh vegetables and short on carbohydrates
and fat. Having little else to do with my free time in the evening, I
started talking long walks after dinner, and, a while later, began
using the community gym for light workouts and calisthenic sets.

Jeannine started showing a wide smile when she greeted me, and I
assumed that her life had improved. I'd recovered from the initial
jolt of divorce and living on my own again and was starting to have
occasional bouts of loneliness and thinking seriously about how I
might improve my social life. Whatever Jeannine had found, I wanted me
some, too.

It really was something of a surprise to see that, by September, I'd
lost thirty pounds of marriage comfort and was, in fact, in better
shape than I'd been in for fifteen years. At that point, I decided
that I could start working on a tan without embarrassing myself
completely.

As I looked more closely at the rest of the people around the pool, I
became aware that not only were they ten to fifteen years younger than
I was, they spoke a language I could hardly understand. They talked
about films, movie stars, and musical groups I'd never heard of, and a
lot of their night-time activity revolved around clubbing. On three
occasions--count 'em, three--I was approached by young women who had
an interested look on their face, but after we'd talked only briefly
and they'd noticed the crow's feet around my eyes and the grey
encroaching at my temples, their interest faded and they got on with
their days and their lives. These kids, most of whom worked for
Milpitas Systems, too, worked hard during the day, partied hearty at
night, and spent money with no regard for tomorrow. Forty-three
suddenly seemed very old.

At 10:30 one Friday night early in October, while I was entertaining
myself with the latest Dean Koontz spooker, I heard a soft knock on my
door. Nobody ever knocked on my door, except for the boys announcing
their arrival. It was with utter astonishment that I found Jeannine at
my doorstep, still dressed in her workaday business suit and towing
her computer case behind her.

"Hi," she said, with a weary smile. "Can I come in?"

"Of course," I said, stepping back and opening the door wider. "Is
something wrong?"

"Yes," she said. "No. Well. Sort of. I've had an absolute bitch of a
day, I'm exhausted, and I come home and find the fucking red scunci
hanging on the doorknob."

"What's a scunci?" I asked.

Jeannine looked at me blankly for a moment, then shook her head and
laughed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so tired that I'm not thinking
straight. Of course you don't know what I'm talking about. A scunci is
a fancy rubber band for holding your hair, like this ..." She turned
and pointed at the light brown scunci keeping her pony tail together.
"A red scunci over the doorknob is the convention Jacqui and I adopted
to let one another know when we, um, wanted privacy."

The light dawned. "Well," I said, gesturing toward the living room,
"would you like to sit down?"

Jeannine parked her computer case by the kitchen table, then took off
her suit coat and hung it on the back of a chair. As she walked toward
the sofa, she unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. She sat, kicked
off her black pumps, slumped, then sprawled. "God, it feels good to
get out of those shoes," she said, wiggling her toes.

You have a guest, I reminded myself. It had been so long ....

"Are you hungry? Would you like something to drink? Wine, coffee, tea,
soft drink?"

"I had some cafeteria food for dinner, thanks," she said, "but a cup
of tea would be heavenly right now."

In ninety seconds, I had a mug of tea on the coffee table in front of
Jeannine. Microwave ovens can be useful sometimes.

"I do apologize for just showing up at your door." Jeannine said. "I'm
kind of embarrassed, really. My brain just isn't working right. This
scunci business is starting to make me a little crazy."

I offered what I thought was an encouraging look.

"Jacqui and I work in the same department," Jeannine went on. "We
watched these apartments being built, and when we saw what they were,
you know, way up-scale and all, we thought it would be fun to rent
one. Neither of us could afford it on her own, so we decided to pool
our resources and share."

Jeannine picked up the mug, blew across the top of it, took a sip, and
winced. "Still too hot," she said. "Could I have a bit of milk,
please?"

I brought milk, spoon, and a saucer. Jeannine added milk to her
satisfaction, sipped again, then gulped a mouthful. "Ahhhhhhh," she
said.

"Anyway, we still couldn't make the rent on a one-bedroom apartment
even if we went halfsies, so we split the cost in proportion to our
salaries. I'm a product manager and she's an admin. I'm paying
two-thirds, and she's paying one-third. I'm okay with the rent split,
and Jacqui and I get along just fine, but it seems like she's using
about eighty percent of the apartment to my twenty percent. I swear
that every time she takes her bra off an old boyfriend falls out.

"Not that I make a whole lot of use of the red scunci," she added. "I
can't even remember when the last time was. But it would be nice to be
able just to kick back and relax in my own house sometimes."

With three more gulps, she finished the tea and flopped her head onto
the back of the sofa. Before I could even draw breath to speak, her
jaw went slack and she started snoring softly. Okay, I said to myself,
what do you do now? Toss a blanket over her and let her be? Get her
lying down on the sofa, and then toss a blanket over her? Wake her up
and send her home? Having an attractive woman who was not my wife
suddenly zonk out on my sofa was not a social situation for which I
had a learned behavior.

Presently, the solution occurred to me: I'd let her sleep for a half
hour or hour, during which time Jacqui would likely retrieve the red
scunci, and then she could go home. Quite satisfied with myself, I
returned to my book.

And, about an hour later, shook Jeannine's shoulder gently. She looked
at me though barely open eyes. "Umph," she said.

"You must really be tired," I said. It's going on midnight now--maybe
Jacqui will let you back into your apartment."

Jeannine blinked a couple of times, then said, "Umph." She levered
herself upright and off the couch, went to the door, and looked out
toward her apartment. Then she closed the door and turned to look at
me.

"The fucking scunci's still there, " she said, "and I think I'm dying.
I was a Good Company Girl today and stayed late to finish a report
that my boss needs first thing Monday morning, and I just don't have
the energy to deal with Jacqui right now. Would it be okay if I just
spent the night here?"

"Not a problem," I said. "You can even have your choice of upper or
lower."

Jeannine gave me a look of utter incomprehension.

"Sorry," I said. "Bad time to be a smart-ass." I showed her the
bedroom with the bunk beds in it. "There are clean sheets on both of
them," I said. "You can take your pick." Jeannine gave me a look I
couldn't decode.

She plucked the front of her blouse away from her skin, then flapped
it in and out a couple of times. "In for a dime, in for a dollar," she
muttered. "Would you mind if I took a quick shower before I go to bed?
I'm a little ... stale."

"Not a problem," I said. I got her a towel and washcloth, and a
toothbrush. "There you go."

She disappeared into the bathroom, and I returned to my book. After a
bit, the water stopped, and a couple of minutes later I heard her
call, "Mike, do you have a tee-shirt I could borrow?"

I pulled a tee-shirt out of my underwear drawer. Jeannine was peering
sideways through a crack in the bathroom door. Her arm snaked out and
took the shirt. Then she opened the door and stepped out in a waft of
steam.

Her hair was loose about her shoulders, and her face was clean of
make-up. Because Jeannine is almost as tall as I am, my tee-shirt just
barely covered her essentials; her nipples made little points on the
front of it. But what got to me even more than her appearance was the
knowledge that all that separated me from a lovely, naked woman was an
arm's length and a thin layer of cotton cloth. I had not so much as
touched a woman since I kissed my wife a chaste farewell when I left
our house for the last time. Six months' worth of loneliness hit me
with a force that nearly left me reeling, and I came very close to
losing my cool, detached demeanor entirely.

I really hadn't intended to say anything, but, despite myself, I
croaked, "You're beautiful," through a suddenly tight throat. I wanted
to take her into my arms and just hold her, just feel her closeness so
badly it hurt.

Jeannine leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. "Thank you," she
said. "Good-night." And she went into the boys' bedroom.

I sat back down in the living room and tried to read my book. After
staring at the same page for half an hour, I gave it up and went to
bed. My light had been off for maybe five minutes when Jeannine padded
into the bedroom.

"Don' wanna sleep in a fuckin' bunk bed," she muttered, as she lifted
the covers and climbed in with me. She turned on her side, tucked her
back against my front, grabbed my hand and pulled it over her to her
breast, and wiggled her bottom. I sleep nude. Jeannine had lost the
tee-shirt somewhere between the bunk bed and mine. I responded to her
wiggle. "Mmmmmm," she said, pushing against me harder and wiggling her
bottom again. I kissed her on the back of the neck, and that was all
it took.

Like a starving man sustained too long on bread and water suddenly
brought to table, I devoured the feast that was Jeannine. I don't
think a square inch of her body escaped my touch and taste.

Later, we learned that we fit together like two mating pieces of a
puzzle, and I learned that my improved physical condition was good for
more than mere looks and walking around the block.

Still later, I buried myself deep, stayed tight, and poured into
Jeannine all the loneliness and need I'd been feeling for months. "OH.
GOD. MIKE. WOUWF!" Jeannine bellowed, thrusting against me.

In the morning, Jeannine was waiting at the bathroom door when I came
out of it. While I was still standing in the kitchen, trying to make
up my mind whether or not to get coffee started, she wrapped her arms
around my neck, pressed her body full against mine, and murmured
warmly into my ear, "It's Saturday. We don't have to get up. Let's go
back to bed."

When I was firmly seated after a delightfully long and luxurious
session of kissing and touching, I kissed Jeannine on the nose, raised
myself up on my hands, and said, as I flexed inside of her, "I'm
perishing of curiosity. Tell me the truth, was that whole business
with the red scuncii last night a set-up?"

"Nope," she said, clenching back. "That was absolutely straight--but
I'm not a bit sorry that it worked out as it did. I've been trying for
months to get you to ask me out."

"You have?" I said, making one slow stroke.

"You didn't notice how I smiled at you every time we crossed paths? My
posture when we chatted on the walkway? That I touched you every
chance I got? Everything I did said, 'I'm interested? Please, please,
please respond?'" she said, rocking her hips.

"No," I said, leaning forward to nibble her earlobe and kiss down the
side of her neck.

"Are all men so clueless? Why didn't you do anything at all?" she
said, trickling her fingers down my spine.

"I, um, didn't know what to do," I said, smoothing back her hair and
kissing her on the forehead. "I haven't asked a woman for a date for
more than twenty years."

"It's simple," she said, grabbing my hips and pulling. "All you have
to do is ask."

"Well, then," I said, slowly pulling out almost all the way and then
plunging back in quickly, "would you like to go clubbing tonight?"

Jeannine recoiled. "I detest clubbing," she said.

"Thank God," I said, nibbling around her eyes. "How about dinner,
then?"

"That's better," she said, clenching and rotating her hips. "That
wasn't so hard, was it? Most guys do dinner before bed, but I guess
I'll have to take what I can get."

"Pffft," I said, starting to stroke rhythmically. "You got into my
bed, remember?"

Jeannine just smiled.

After another long while, we came, with a deep kiss and a sigh rather
than a roar.

And that pretty well solved the problem of the red scuncii. Any time
Jacqui needed privacy, Jeannine spent the night with me. She spent
lots of other nights with me, too. In between, we went to dinners, to
movies, to concerts, to the mountains, and to the beach; we rented
movies from Blockbuster and made microwave popcorn at home. Jeannine
and I had our moments of lust and passion to be sure, but it could
reasonably be said that we settled into a comfortable relationship in
the most literal sense of the word: we gave comfort to each other. I
knew why I needed comfort, of course, and it was obvious that Jeannine
did too, but she chose not to say anything about it. The L-word didn't
pass beween us. It was not, perhaps, that either of us didn't have
some deep feeling for the other; the subject just didn't come up, and
neither of us insisted. I think the fact that it didn't come up told
its own story.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I took Jeannine and the boys out to
dinner. The boys had had a traditional Thanksgiving with their mother
and their maternal grandparents. I think we all felt that our dinner
out was a kind of second best, which put something of a damper on it.
The boys regarded Jeannine warily, but not unkindly. Mostly, they
didn't know quite what to make of her or our relationship.

At Christmas, Jeannine went home. Home for her was a little town in
southwestern Illinois. The most frequent subject for discussion among
high school students there, she told me, was how much they hated small
town life and the limited opportunities it offered. They'd seen the
big, wide, world on television and they wanted their piece of it;
their primary goal after graduation was to get out of town. Jeannine
was one of the very few who had actually made the escape. Her family
and old friends remained, and she still visited twice a year, once as
part of a summer vacation and again at Christmas.

Had it not been for the boys, I wouldn't have put up a tree. They
celebrated Christmas eve with their mother, and came to see me on
Christmas day. We exchanged gifts, then sat down to a turkey dinner
I'd prepared--mashed potatoes and gravy, yams, green bean and onion
ring casserole--the whole works. It was a lonely affair, and I think
that, for the boys, two half-Christmases did not a whole Christmas
make. Suffice it to say that the holidays were uncomfortable, and I
was not sorry to see them pass.

I picked Jeannine up at the airport when she returned to town, and we
spent the night together, but things were not immediately the same as
they'd been before she left.

When we got back to Vida Libre, she dumped her bags in her apartment
and came over to mine. "I missed you," I said, folding her into a hug.
"How was your Christmas?"

"It was ... hard," she said. "I really don't want to talk about it, if
you don't mind."

In bed, after a couple of kisses, Jeannine said, "I'm really pooped
from traveling. I think I'd just like to cuddle tonight," and rolled
over and was asleep in minutes.

It took us a the better part of a week to recover from the
disjointedness of the holidays, but we did settle back into our
routine.

Life was looking good as 2000 rolled through its first quarter. I was
over the initial pain of my divorce, I was living in a nice place, I
had a lover for whom I cared a great deal, and Silicon Valley was
smokin'. The dot-coms were going strong and their need for more
network hardware was doing wonders for Milpitas Systems. In May of
1999, its stock had split two for one from 122 to 61; on February 22,
2000, it split two for one yet again, from 144 to 72, and by the first
of march March, it was had already climbed back up to 86. I'd been
participating in the employee stock purchase program all during my
seven years with the company, and my portfolio was looking so good
that I started giving serious consideration to cashing in my chips and
retiring to .... Well, retiring to somewhere. Maybe to the mountains,
away from the nerve-jangling pace of Silicon Valley and its smog,
anyway.

On Friday, March 10, 2000, the Nasdaq Composite Index peaked at
5,048.62, more than double its value the year before, and then dropped
almost vertically. Virtually overnight, the world realized that you
couldn't make money from nothing, and the dot-com bubble burst.
Although Milpitas Systems sold hardware and was sitting on a huge
bundle of cash, also gone overnight was the public's faith in all
get-rich-quick high tech stocks, and by March 27, the value of the
company's stock had plummeted from 86 to 16--less than the strike
price of most of my options. I was no longer a paper millionaire, and
I could no longer dream of an early retirement.

In a company-wide broadcast to employees, the CEO vowed to avoid mass
layoffs if he could, and, in a dramatic move, announced that he was
cutting his salary to $1 per year until the company was back on its
feet again.

I was down, but not out. I did have a reserve in the bank, and I still
had a job. The CEO, who was a more honest and ethical man than any
other in a comparable position, held to his promise about layoffs.
What happened instead, after a while, was that whole product and
research lines were dropped or canceled--and all the people who'd been
working on those projects became superfluous. Everybody in Milpitas
Systems hunkered down and hoped for the best. Morale was lower than
the stock price, and if somebody dropped a book, the whole office
jumped.

On May 31, I'd no sooner turned the key in my apartment door when
Jeannine rushed up, looking absolutely pole-axed. "Jacqui and I got
laid off today," she said, throwing her arms around my neck and
bursting into tears. I let her in and just held her and patted her
back until she quit crying. I poured us both a glass of chardonnay and
set about whipping up a spinach and mushroom omelette for dinner.

When we finished eating, we retired to the living room, and I ventured
to ask, "Do know what you're going to do?"

"They gave me two weeks' severance, and I had a few days of unused
vacation time. I have a little money in savings, but not enough to
live on for long. Our rent is paid through the end of June." She
fidgeted with the buttons on her blouse. "Jacqui's in even worse shape
than I am--any money she had over the essentials went straight to
clothes and partying."

"Sounds like you don't have a whole lot of leeway," I said.

"I don't. No job, no apartment. I have to look for another job, but
...."

We both knew there weren't any jobs. Although Milpitas Systems was
laying people off a relative few at a time, whole companies had ceased
to exist almost as quickly as the bubble burst, and there were 10,000
people suddenly unemployed. The the ads for high-tech jobs in the San
Jose Mercury News all but disappeared; the job boards on the web were
empty as well.

I didn't know what the loss of her job really meant to Jeannine, other
than the obvious. We hadn't talked about futures, and I realized,
rather stupidly, that I had no idea whether she was looking for home
and family, an ultimate position as VP of marketing for some company
somewhere along the line, a big house on a hill, or what. Jeannine
looked for another job, but without much enthusiasm, and, during the
next couple of weeks, she and turned more and more inward.

Then, after dinner one night, she sat on the couch with her hands
folded in her lap and tears running down her cheeks, and said, "I've
had it, Mike. I'm going back home."

My heart fell--but, at the same time, I understood that, although
Jeannine had been living in California for ten years, home was still
back there. Here was--had been--something else. An adventure, maybe,
and the adventure was over. There was virtually nothing more to be
said.

Jeannine sold her car--at way less than Blue Book--and Jacqui, who had
found a friend who would put her up, at least for a while, took most
of their apartment's furnishings. Ultimately, we had to lug a couch
and two end tables to the dumpster. So many people were moving
out--everywhere, not just from Vida Libre--that you literally couldn't
give furniture away. Jeannine ended up spending a week with me after
Jacqui's and her beds went.

We were both big kids, and we knew better than to make ourselves more
miserable by whining and complaining about how awful things were, how
unfair life was, or how lousy we felt. I went to work during the day,
and we gave each other comfort in the dark. The night before her
departure, we made love, slowly and tenderly, but with no words of
loss or consideration for the future. The next morning, I took
Jeannine to the airport, and she was gone.

Yes, I missed Jeannine. I missed her company. I missed her comfort,
and I missed giving comfort to her. But I didn't feel that aching
sense of loss that the divorce had caused me. I adjusted my daily
routine around her absence and kept putting one foot dully in front of
the other.


parthenogenesis1@XXXyahoo.com

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ------ send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com>|
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html> Moderators: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|ASSM Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org>   Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org> |
|Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d; look for subject {ASSD}|
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+