The Accidental Philanderer

She looked at her nearly empty glass and smiled, revealing a missing canine giving her a backwoods look. “That’d be great, let’s sit out here.” Niels noted a slight twang in her voice that he sensed she was trying to suppress.

At a small round table in a corner of the deck, Niels said, “Allow me to introduce myself, Niels Pettigrew here.”

A look came over her as if she approved of the type man she was sharing a table with, but mingled with it was a fixed slant to her gaze that indicated a difficult life of living paycheck to paycheck. “Bobbie Jo Caulfield,” she said as she subconsciously rubbed a ring where a wedding band goes. It was an inexpensive copper band with a cheap green stone in the middle.

“You’re not from here, are you?”

“Philadelphia.”

“I thought you were a big city guy,” she said. “What brings you to Tampa?”

“Business trip.” Niels shrugged his shoulders and made a face to indicate enough said. He took a long swallow of his Black and Tan.

Bobbie Jo took a sip of her drink and nodded her head as though to say, no problem. She looked out to the bay as the top of the sun sunk below the horizon all the while fidgeting with her ring.

Divorced, Niels thought, she felt a failure from it. “Are you local?”

“I’m originally from Arkansas, been here for going on twenty years.” Her tone said, it hasn’t been easy.

Niels mind was working how to get her from here to his hotel, not discussing the difficulties of her life. “I see.” But if she wanted to open up he would listen.

And listen he did, by her third drink, Bobbie Jo’s accent thickened bringing to mind molasses flowing down the Ozarks. She told Niels her life story from marriage at eighteen in Arkansas, moving to Tampa where her abusive husband worked on a fishing trawler, pregnant at twenty divorced at twenty two, and then scrambling through an assortment of odd jobs before finding employment as a tour guide on a sightseeing boat. “My best job.” She shrugged with a woe-is-me expression.

Feeling obligated to not yet abandon the conversation at hand, Niels asked about her child.

“He’s serving seven to ten for grand theft auto.” Bobbie Jo shook her head and looked away. “My life would make a good country western song.” She looked at Niels and in her eyes he saw that a tacit understanding had been reached that they were from different classes, different worlds.

Niels had trouble listening to her prattled on about her favorite celebrities—she seemed to have total recall of every movie they had ever been in—or some reality TV show that he knew nothing about.

But at the same time he found her a fascinating subject. “May I be so bold as to suggest to you, Bobbie Jo, that we go back to my place.”

A glimmer of hurt flickered in her eyes, a look that said, Do you think I’m that easy?

Niels was upset with his impatience, this woman was poor and this was an opportunity for her that didn’t come along very often, spent some time and money on her and you will be rewarded in the end. “What say,” Niels said, “we go inside and I buy you dinner and we go from there.”

Her twist of uncertainty vanished. “I would like that.” A wide, country girl smile split her face, but even that couldn’t erase her air of hardness that seemed ingrained.

Niels had sea bass and Bobbie Jo a steak. Both were excellent and Bobbie Jo had lemon meringue pie for dessert. She left nothing on her plates, other than a t-bone and potato skin.

“I would like to have a latte outside on the deck.” She looked across the table, her gaze that of a negotiator.

Niels felt as if he was buying sex, not that he minded. “Of course.”

Niels’s hotel room had a king size bed and he imagined they would use all of it. Once inside, she pulled Niels polo shirt out from his trousers and lifted it up, stopping at his shoulders. “Whoa, nice body,” she said as Niels completed the removal. She reached up and tousled his ever growing thicket atop his head. “And nice hair, too.” She slipped out of her tee shirt and adeptly undid her bra. Her breasts were all that he had imagined. She dropped her shorts and underwear and to Niels surprise there was a green tattoo of a lizard below her belly button with an extended blue tongue above a wiry sprout of pubic hairs. Niels felt a twitch of uncertainty, if she could put a tattoo there, what else could she do? But his avarice sexual desire vanquished the thought as he told himself she would probably do just about anything he wanted in bed.

After Niels completed undressing, Bobbie Jo’s mouth hung open as she admired Niels’s member. “God almighty,” she hooted, “that’s one helluva of a stump-daddy you got there.” She shoved Niels playfully toward the bed. “Me and Lenny wanted to fuck you the moment I saw those big shoulders out on the deck.”

“Lenny?”

She pointed to the lizard on her stomach. “Lenny the lizard, he’s what you call my voyager.”

Niels wanted to ask if she meant voyeur. Say nothing he told himself as he turned to the bed and pulled back the covers.

“Lie on your back big boy,” Bobbie Jo said as she swept her hand toward the bed, “and spread your legs good and wide.”

Without hesitating, Niels obeyed.