5
When the phone call came, Tom didn’t hear it. He was too busy quite literally rolling in the hay with the farmer’s daughter. To be sure, the farmer in question was ninety-two years old, half-deaf and asleep at the time, but life had taught Tom Piper that sometimes it was best to ignore the salient details in favor of sauciness. He (age fifty-eight) and Penelope Sue Fuller (age sixty-one) groped, fondled, licked, lapped, nuzzled, squeezed, bucked, sucked and thrust against each other in the pine loft of the Fullers’ stables, several hay bales acting as their makeshift mattress. The hay was itchy, and poked a bit, but that just caused Tom and Penelope Sue to act upon each other with increased, well, assertiveness.
Through it all, Tom’s heart maintained a steady, calm rhythm. Th-thump. Th-thump. Th-thump. Damn pacemaker. It really took some of the fun out of primal, no-holds-barred sex. The pacemaker was his souvenir from Galileo. The fucker had shot him in the chest. Only emergency surgery on Long Island—and the installation of his very own personal timekeeper—saved Tom’s life. Now, six months later, his doctors here in Kentucky were impressed with his recovery. Tom was less than impressed. It was moments like this, moments with Penelope Sue, that he was reminded just how comprehensively Galileo had robbed him, because here, with a beautiful redhead and in an idyllic setting straight out of a dirty limerick, as they went at each other like a pair of id-addled bunny rabbits, Tom was having trouble maintaining his erection.
He tried everything. He concentrated on Penelope Sue, her full breasts, her perfume (peaches…oh, my!), how much she wanted him, how much he desired her. When that didn’t work, he flipped through the Rolodex of memories. Other women he’d been with, other women he’d craved, high school sweethearts, coworkers, that bubbly clerk he once chatted with in Toronto and the way he wanted to bury himself in her dimples. He had more than four decades of memories to choose from, and yet he could feel himself deflate, deflate, deflate….
Finally, between gasps, Penelope Sue asked him if everything was okay, and the sound of honest concern in her voice, of pity, was like a bucket of ice. He sighed, lay beside her and gazed up through the roof slats at the plump, indifferent moon.
She ran a hand across his long gray ponytail. “It’s all right,” she said. “We can just lie here,” she said. “This is nice, too,” she said.
“Mmm-hmm,” he replied, not meaning a syllable of it.
Soon, though, the night air made them chilly, and it was time to get dressed. They did so in heavy silence and walked back to her farmhouse, shivering. Penelope Sue made some tea.
Tom envisioned their upcoming conversation. He’d seen variations of it in every Viagra, Cialis and Levitra commercial. She’d pull out a brochure. They’d go to the doctor. Next shot: they’d be walking hand in hand on the beach and grinning ear to ear as the waves cascaded in the background. Except he couldn’t go the medicinal route even if he wanted to, not with his bad heart.
Which left them where and with what? He wanted to grow old with this woman, but he wanted her to be happy, and her sexual appetite was as gleefully voracious as his. As his was until six months ago.
She handed him his tea. Spice orange. Herbal. No caffeine for him. Hers was a special blend she bought at the farmer’s market. She cuddled beside him on the living room couch.
Commercial time, he thought. Cue the music.
“Tom,” she said, “this is why the good Lord invented vibrators.”
She winked at him lasciviously and sipped her hot tea.
God, he loved this woman.
That’s when he noticed his cell phone, which he’d left on her star-shaped coffee table, glowing on and off. He had a message.
“I should check on Mama in a bit,” said Penelope Sue. “See if she needs her sheets changed.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I’d like that. Mama wouldn’t, but that’s her problem now, isn’t it?”
She spoke with that sugary Kentucky accent that lent itself so sweetly to bourbon and bluegrass. Tom knew it well. He grew up not fifty miles from here. Hearing her speak was like hearing his past call him home. When Tom returned to Kentucky to recuperate, the hospital assigned him a certain physical therapist with long red hair that smelled of peaches and, well, here he was, in puppy love at age fifty-eight.
“It’s past time to turn the farm over for the winter,” said Penelope Sue. “Got to recaulk the windows and get the pumps double-checked.”
“I can do that this weekend.”
Penelope Sue nodded. Weekends were her busiest times at the hospital. Tom worked a desk at the FBI’s Louisville division, but not on Saturdays and Sundays. His nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday life couldn’t have been more different from his schedule on the national task force, but that just made it all the better. Tom Piper had turned a corner. The pilgrim had finally settled down.
Was it the change in his health? Was it the influence of Penelope Sue? Maybe. But the greater cause, Tom knew, belonged to Galileo. Near-death experiences put life in perspective. It was a simple truism, almost trite, but accurate as a bull’s-eye. And Tom wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Ready for more?” she asked.
Tom knew she wasn’t referring to the tea or (mercifully) sex. She was referring to the room’s thirty-six-inch plasma TV and to the DVD player attached to it and the disc inside. He acquiesced, and she giddily reached for the remote control.
Two minutes later: “Space…the final frontier…”
Yes, oh, yes, the love of his life was a Trekkie.
They were in the middle of an original-series marathon, her adorable attempt to convert him to the cult of Trek. She had a uniform hanging in a bag in her closet. Her bedroom contained signed photographs. And when she’d revealed this part of herself to him, there hadn’t been one ounce of hesitation. There never was, with Penelope Sue. And so he snuggled with her and watched hour after hour, and maybe through her infectious enjoyment he actually began to like this thing. Science fiction was far removed from his own interests, but Penelope Sue simply had a way about her that opened doors.
Around 10:00 p.m., he collected their mugs and washed them out in the ceramic sink. They had three more episodes to go, and it was time for a break. Besides, by now her mother upstairs was undoubtedly in need of a visit.
“It was Esme,” said Penelope Sue, trotting into the kitchen. Tom put the mugs down. “She’s the one who called.”
Penelope Sue handed him his phone.
Tom clicked on the voice mail. He put it on speaker phone.
They listened to Esme’s message.
“I’ll go take care of Mama,” said Penelope Sue, and without waiting for him to object, she walked away. So be it.
He dialed the number. He knew it by rote.
“Hello, Esmeralda,” he said. He was the only one who called her by her full name. He’d done so for almost fifteen years. It was a sign of affection, and they never, ever talked about it. “It sounds like you’ve got yourself a case.”
“I’d love to hear your take on it.”
He sat down at the kitchen table. “I’d love to hear yours first.” No matter how much his life had changed in the past six months, he would never stop being her Socratic mentor.
“The removal of the hands suggests a trophy. The fire could be some kind of funeral pyre.”
“Or you could be giving more meaning to his actions than he is,” he said.
“Everything has meaning, whether it’s intended or not. All accidents have explanations. We can’t help ourselves.”
Tom glanced out the window at the barn in the distance. “No. We can’t.”