Ann Crouse - Runaround Stews

"He's had an accident. His two-engine plane took off from the runway but one of the engines failed…"

"Is he all right?" Ann anxiously screamed into the phone.

"Afraid not. Plane went up in flames. No survivors."

The receiver dangled by its curly cord for three hours before anyone from the hotel thought it worth inspecting. Delivering the ordered luncheon of cheese plates, cold cuts and cantaloupe, the bell hop knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked louder and waited. Still no response. "Goddamn it!" he muttered. "Are they still in there making love? Never seen anything like it." He fumbled for a key thinking that if anyone was in there they certainly wouldn't allow their happiness of bedtime pleasures to be interrupted for the questionable delight of dried up contents under the silver dish on his cart. He stuck the key in the lock. Still no response. With a brisk movement the door was opened and, backing in, the bell hop pivoted with the cart, his back still to the bed purposely.

"Miss!" he screamed. Christi Hope this isn't another suicide, he thought as he lifted the head of the blonde woman whose wan face clearly showed an expression of grief even in her helplessly unconscious condition. With a splash of ice water from his cart, Ann was brought back to life once more but against her will.

Straining, she rose on one elbow, then, with the bell hop inches away the stark reality of her miserable life hit her like a gust of Arctic wind. "Ohhhh, God, help me," she repeated with blankly staring eyes. "He's dead… Paul… is dead… dead…"

It was over. Her happy life as wife and lover to her Irish darling was over. It was like a dream, a six day dream. He was gone and there was no sign of him as she scanned the room for affirmation of her past husband's existence. Yellow walls lined with Picasso paintings and Dali sketches smiled back at her mockingly.

How she managed to leave the empty cell of that room was an unsolved mystery to her, even a year later. An even greater enigma to the pale figure of the blonde stewardess, thin and visibly ailing from the shock of her loss, was how she returned to her routine of `thank you for flying with us' `here is your coat, sir', and the endless stream of meaningless innuendoes that cramp the life of an airline stewardess.

Trudy, a true swinger who used to laugh and giggle incessantly at the lewd behavior of the drunken first class passengers as they slithered their hungry fingers up her tapered legs to the top of her slim thighs, convinced her to get out of the four walls of their shared Boston apartment and start acting like the young and beautiful woman she truly was.

Reluctantly, Ann followed her roommate to singles bars, where they would sit conspicuously alone sharing bottles of fine French wines and packs of femininely slim cigarettes, ogling the steady line of blurry-eyed drunken males stumbling as they sought the acquaintance of the two lovely women. But it was a bore, and Ann returned to her library of Hesse and Jung, seeking an inner truth that she was convinced lay hidden in the wisdom of their words. But words couldn't fill her vacuum of dead love and Ann searched the extreme for something to plug up that hole of loneliness that ate away at her heart like a growing seed of destitution.

Trudy, her savior during this most horrid of times, took her recalcitrant roommate along to parties, sailing in the Boston Harbor, even for drives to up-state New York in hopes of bringing her back to life. Finally, even Ann could not tolerate her apathy for life and forcing her self into submission, began accompanying her brown-haired, brown-eyed friend to parties, risquй parties. There is no one more jet-set in their mentality than those who work for airlines, and Ann was soon to find this truth for herself.

"Comin' along to the party tomorrow, aren't you?" Trudy asked, pressing her black spaghetti strapped crepe dress. Ann raised her head from the newspaper she was reading and studied her friend for a brief moment, thinking I wish I could be more like Trudy, so free and aggressive, downright sexy in her provocative approach to the opposite sex. But there had been some suspicious occurrences lately in their Boston apartment, a few too many phone calls demanding arrangements for exact times and exact meeting places – all too formal and carefully planned for casual affairs. One evening not too long before Trudy had snuck in the house unaware that Ann was still awake after a trying flight from San Diego where a thunder storm had delayed their flight twelve hours. Carefully Trudy had unlocked the door and, with her back to her roommate, tip-toed unseeingly into the bathroom. There was something strangely unnerving about Trudy's behavior and Ann put down her book and strolled into the bathroom where Trudy was running ice cold water over a washcloth for her eye – her black eye, as Ann soon discovered. The secret was out.

"Well, maybe I just might. Where is this one? Chicago?"

"God, no!" Trudy laughed vivaciously. "San Francisco. One of the pilots, he's a real swinger, they tell me. Ann, I mean really," she set down her iron to remove a roller pick that stuck mercilessly into her tender scalp. "He used to be a mechanic and he's got some tricks you wouldn't believe! Anyway, that's what Sharon tells me, remember her?" Trudy's eyes rolled back in her head in reverie. "Anyway, we'll be going for a cruise in his yacht – under the Golden Gate Bridge and everything! Oh, Ann, you have to come!"

"Mmmmm, maybe. I'll see how…" She reconsidered. "Yes, that sounds just like what the doctor ordered."

It was that evening in San Francisco that Ann was to meet the man who would change the direction of her life from a soul-searching existence to one of unequaled debauchery. His name was Mike Boston.

Ann's dreams were broken now by Professor Jacobs, busily, clawing through a card catalog a few feet away, his eyes burning a hole in the back of her head. God, I wish he would leave me alone, she thought silently, scratching down call numbers in her notebook with a dull pencil.

"Mike Boston," she whispered aloud. Heads turned. Her thoughts returned once more to a yacht party in San Francisco two years ago.

It had been a pleasant evening, a bit too cool to her liking, but Mike had conviently stashed an armful of fur coats on board just in case any of the carefully selected females felt a chill. Mike was a pleasant man, not at all like an airplane impression of the handsome forty-ish trickster. Somehow it didn't follow that anyone with a meager job such as his could make enough money to throw lavish parties even one night a year, let alone once a month.

But she was soon to realize his evil depravities: true, he did work for the airlines, but he had been a pilot who had lost his license for smuggling diamonds in from Australia, and it was from the sale of illicit goods that he could afford any high class call girl who struck his fancy. Trudy was one such who now occupied that dubious distinction.

Ann had drunk too much that night, and the vertigo of the rocking motion of the boat combined with the wine, left her a helpless mass of putty. But what did it matter? Who cared what she did? Her drinking increased with intensity and before she could grasp for support, darkness overcame her. When she awoke she was in an apartment, alone except for the moaning and groaning of provocative lovemaking a few feet away on the bed. Must be Trudy, she reasoned, up to her tricks again.

Oh, my head, she moaned silently. God! what have I done to myself? Ann's feeble hand was pressed to her aching forehead when she felt a strange pressure on her arm. Opening her eyes, her vision grossly distorted from the alcohol coursing through her veins, she barely focused on the image of a dark haired man with a high forehead and close-set eyes framed by heavy bushy eyebrows. His straight nose ended in a small bulb, very attractive, she noticed in her state of acceptance. His heavy dark hair ended at his ears where scrubby looking grey sideburns took over, leading to his cleft chin. His full and sensuous mouth formed words she could not understand, and, recognizing the depravity of her state, he motioned with a crooked finger for her to follow.