Oliver Smith
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Mistake
Top of Page Randy flipped the car keys from over his back. Their clatter struck the night and died as he snagged them from the predawn air. "Damn, I feel good!" he boasted in his brain as Spring stooped in the mist. Apple blossoms flailed their lust upon the breeze while his footsteps spiked the peace. His car received him with the sigh of a seasoned whore and coughed as he turned the key. Pulling from the house, he slid into the flow of streets and lights that slither by in the darkness of suburban night. It was his birthday and his age filled his thoughts, pounding in his blood, forty-five, forty-five, forty-five. His grip tightened on the steering wheel as he watched the St. Paul skyline expand in his windshield. "Forty-five," he thought. The number didn't seem to fit him. It was a distant figure that sounded old when applied to someone else and felt contrived when applied to him. He just didn't feel like the number. Working his way through the braids of traffic on the freeway that passed through St. Paul, Randy stared at the office towers that were home during the day. They stood there, firm, pulsing with the energy of life, awaiting the humanity that would course their veins within the next few hours. "See ya later," he whispered as he shifted lanes and headed south, watching the skyline melt in the mirror looking back. It was Cindy who thought it would be fun to stage the morning encounters. She had been coming on to him for months, but he ignored her until they sat next to each other during a seminar held in their office building. Several projects were outlined by the instructor with the intent that the students would break up into teams and move off to isolated parts of the room. Cindy, as the training coordinator, manipulated the classroom arrangement to insure the two of them worked on each project together with no one else. As they leaned over the pages, discussing the project, she would move her legs against his and allow her breasts to push forward in a plume of cleavage, occasionally brushing against him in the process. He was fascinated with her success at not being noticed as she proceeded with her actions. She planted the seeds of lust with each project, cultivating them, leaving them in full bloom. As the seminar came to a close, Cindy made it known that she had a plan for getting together, undetected. She was a single woman with no patience for long term relationships, she wanted to keep Randy's home life intact since discovery would complicate his life and ruin the convenient arrangement she was counting on. It was Cindy's idea to take advantage of the fact that Randy got up early every morning and left before his wife was awake and arrived at work before anyone else in the company. It was easy to exploit the window of time between the time he left home and arrived at work. This was a dead time in his life, a time that no one else took an accounting of. The fact that they never had professional reasons to come in contact with each other since they worked on different floors and worked in different departments made it easier for Cindy. This would allow them to fall outside the circle of suspicion that normally traps two people involved in clandestine affairs. It also helped that they lived in third-tier suburbs on the opposite sides of St. Paul. In her mind, the plan was flawless and Randy was easily seduced. Randy was lost a world of high school erotic imagery, a world that flamed in the presence of cleavage, legs and butts. He was glad to be at a point in his career where he could coast, where everything was mechanical, because substantive thought was beyond him for the time being. His company's computer network supports electronic mail and Cindy took pleasure in incorporating the company e-mail in her plan to use it to carry out her activities. She devised a code that was to be embedded within the e-mail header and would allow her to give meeting times to Randy whenever she broadcast a message to the entire company. She dropped the header decoding information on his desk while he was out on break, which he promptly studied when he returned and then filed away. The next corporate-wide E-mail from Cindy stretched across his workstation monitor as Randy clutched Cindy's instructions in his fingers. Several minutes passed as he shifted his eyes between screen and paper. A smile crept upon his face as he decoded the message, "Thursday morning." He copied the message into an electronic folder and logged off the system, preparing to head home. "And on my birthday, too," he mused, "this is great." Randy tapped his brakes and pressed on the horn as a truck crossed four lanes in front of him to get onto an exit ramp. He stared at the pickup as he passed the ramp, heading south to the suburb where Cindy lives. Occasionally, he wishes that Cindy's apartment were closer, but he is fully aware of the advantages present with the distance. He steered to the right lane as Cindy's exit approached. The suburbs south of St. Paul spread across the horizon with houses standing in the dark. Thousands of homes stood silent, shielding bodies pampered by machines that treat the air and keep the time in sync. Within an hour, alarm clocks will clamor for attention and bodies will unravel from blankets and sleep. Lights will flicker on and melt into the morning sun. As he approached the end of the freeway ramp, a traffic signal burned red in the morning glow. The empty street faded into the dim light as he waited for a green light, he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of music that poured from the radio. He wasn't all that aware of what was playing but some part of his brain was interested in keeping time. Pressing lightly on the pedal as the cross traffic light turned yellow, he pulled left into the intersection as the green appeared. Traffic lights would dominate the remainder of the trip. But the lights were programmed for the speed limit so he settled into a nice pace to catch each green light and slip on through to Cindy's apartment building. The strategy worked until a small stream of cars turned into the street in front of him and slowed the pace. "Oh, Shit!", he gasped as the light turned red at the next intersection. A ripple of brake lights rolled toward him as he slowed to a halt and squeezed the steering wheel in frustration. Gazing at the red light, his thoughts wandered to Cindy's apartment. In his mind, he searched the door to Cindy's apartment, looking at the upper left-hand corner. That is where Cindy puts a small note, informing him of some change in the plan, her fail-safe for dealing with complications that come up after she sends the E-mail informing him of the meeting time the next morning. Cindy wants to make sure that he doesn't use his key to gain entry into her apartment if some relatives or old school friends drop in unexpectedly. If the door is empty of notes, then the way is clear for him to enter. A horn blowing behind him trashed the image that he had created and snapped his attention back to the task of driving. The light was green and the line of cars was quickly pulling away. In his rear view mirror, the headlights of the car behind him kept pace as he accelerated. As he switched gears, he noticed the time on his watch when a street light illuminated the face. It was only 4:30. He was still on schedule to spend an hour with Cindy and return to work by 6:30. As the intersection receded in his rear view mirror, he looked up through the windshield and was struck by the brilliance of the stars that were bright enough to fight of the rising sun in the cloudless sky. By all of his personal standards, this was a beautiful birthday. The city limits for Cindy's suburb were marked by the usual, outdated, population count that reflects the size of the city at a time when there was more money to maintain signs and fewer people to service. Just ten years before, the city was a country town, fiercely independent of the urban sprawl that flowed from Minneapolis and St. Paul. But now it's just another suburb that provides a home for employees of companies locked in the metropolitan maze. He made his way down the street that once was the only street in town and watched Cindy's apartment building, beckoned from within the glow of a nearby street light. Moving to the turning lane on the left, he came to a stop, waiting for several oncoming cars to pass before making his way to a frontage road leading to a parking lot in front of the apartment complex. Even though he didn't know anyone in the building besides Cindy, the cars in the parking lot had become familiar. Each one parked in the same space, displaying the same rust spots and dents. An open parking slot, right next to the main entrance, revealed cracked and broken parking blocks as his car lights added to the morning light. The door at the main entrance was weathered, with a couple of holes that were kicked in during the frequent fights that Cindy has talked about. He often wondered why Cindy, a well-paid professional would occupy an apartment in this building. But he was familiar with her desire to live as far away from the cities as she could without actually living in a small town. She feels that small towns are not receptive to single women. He could never quite get over the sleazy feeling that he had as he got out of the car and headed to the door of the apartment building. Even though the building was filled with total strangers, he dreaded the thought of someone coming out an apartment and seeing him. The thought struck him as illogical, holding no risk, but his uneasy feeling tempted him to make a run for Cindy's door. As he stepped from his car, his fingers sifted through the keys tied together by a simple metal ring, looking for the key to Cindy's door. He wanted to avoid the clatter created by searching for the key in the hallway. Even the slightest metallic sound became quite pronounced in the hallway. Holding Cindy's key securely between the thumb and pointer finger of his right hand, he headed toward the entrance. As he opened the door, the familiar, harsh smell stung his nostrils. It was the smell of urine, cleaning solvent and disinfectant blended. Just inside the entrance, a landing lead to two flights of steps. One went down to the first level and the other rose to the second floor where Cindy lived. Randy quickly made his way to the second floor and flinched as he heard the door of the apartment at the top of the stairs open. A young man stepped into the hallway and moved on down the stairs after briefly locking eyes with Randy. The man was barefoot, wearing faded jeans and a threadbare western shirt with the arms ripped out. It was apparent that he was just stepping outside to get something out of the car or the garage. Randy resisted the temptation to watch him go down the stairs, moving quickly down the hall to Cindy's door. Scanning the upper right corner of the door, he did not see any note so he placed Cindy's key into the lock and turned it. He stepped into the foyer of Cindy's apartment, carefully closed the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The kitchen was to the left and didn't look any different from what he had seen previously. Looking into the living room, straight ahead, he studied the couch which lay just inside the doorway. There was a pile of blankets on the couch, leading him to conclude that Cindy had just pulled some blankets out of the dryer and left them there when he noticed a slight rhythmic rise and fall within the pile. A closer look revealed that someone was sleeping there. He tried to convince himself that the dim light and shadows were playing tricks, but he was convinced that there was some kind of mixup in Cindy's plans. Cindy's bedroom was directly to the right, next to the bathroom, which was at the end of the hall. Looking into Cindy's bedroom his lips creased into a smile as he saw Cindy lying in her bed asleep. She was always asleep when he arrived and he would normally crawl under the covers beside her and start caressing her legs and breasts. She would become aroused at his touch and would wake up full of passion. He never quite figured out if she were really asleep or if this was a game she was playing. It didn't matter, he enjoyed it. Staring at the still form of Cindy's body, partially exposed, he enjoyed the sight of her lying on her back, her right leg spread out, erotically exposed, from beneath the blanket. Her breasts bulged slightly from beneath her left arm. The fingers of her left hand were draped softly on the base of her right breast. A couple of her ribs glowed from a street light that formed shadow shapes from the curtains on her pale flesh. It was a pleasing sight, making it more painful to realize that he would have to leave in order to avoid creating a scene if her visitors were to awaken while he was there. Turning away from Cindy's room, he stepped to the door of the apartment and opened it. The hallway light crept along the floor as the doorway spread out and Randy noticed something lying on the floor at the base of the door. It was the note that he was supposed to see prior to going in. He didn't think to look on the floor. Reaching down to pick it up, he crumpled it savagely in the palm of his hand and stepped through the door, closing it quietly. Reaching the stairs leading to the entrance, the young man that came out of his apartment when Randy arrived was coming up the stairs, watching him intently. Randy moved aside and let him pass as he headed down the stairs. The man's apartment door slammed shut as he left the building and headed toward the car. He opened the door to the car and positioned himself behind the steering wheel. "Damn, this is a lousy birthday!", he said as he placed the keys into the ignition and started the car. |