Amy Frazier - Independence Day

Nick draped his arm over Chessie’s shoulder, then lay back in the hammock, pulling her with him. “Nice perfume,” he murmured.

Perfume? She never wore perfume. Oh, yeah, the bug lotion. If this was all the romance today’s demonstration had gotten her, she needed to up the ante. Might even have to implement Plan B…

“This is nice,” he added. His muffled words told her he’d be asleep before the fireworks started.

Plan B it was.

“Yes, this is nice,” she agreed. “Emerging starlight. The scent of flowers. A cricket serenade. The closeness of two bodies.” She stroked his thigh. “It’s quite romantic.”

“Couldn’t agree more.” He was fading fast.

“We need more romance in our marriage.”

“Anything…you…say.” He held to consciousness by a tenuous thread.

“And I have a plan.” She walked her fingers up his chest. “I read in your Sports Illustrated that athletes try to imprint positive behavior. Good golf swing. Great slap shot. Terrific slam dunk.”

“Soun’s great.”

“They try to memorize how the positive feels and then block out the negative or the extraneous, both mentally and physically.” She stroked the stubble along his jaw.

“Mmmm…”

“So I thought, since we both agree this romantic feeling is nice, we could work on replicating it. Kind of like the athletes. We’d be in training, so to speak, in our relationship.” She laid her cheek on his shoulder with her mouth close to his ear. “More romance. It could become our mantra.”

His deep intake of breath sounded suspiciously like a snore.

“We need to recognize the difference between real romance and a convenient physical release.” She ran her tongue along the rim of his ear. “Nick, while we’re concentrating on the romance, I think we’re going to have to can the sex.”

On the verge of sleep or not, he sat bolt upright in the hammock. “No sex?” With the wild look of someone with one foot in dreams and the other in reality, he spotted his daughter lost in her music and lowered his voice. “Are you out of your mind?”

She seemed to have his attention now.

“Just till we’re back on track as a couple, hon.” She massaged the tense muscles of his back. “Sex can cloud the issue.”

“Dammit, we’re married.”

“I’m well aware of that. But I’d like to feel as if we were courting. And I, for one, am embracing celibacy until that hearts-and-flowers feeling returns.”

“What are you trying to do to me, Chess?”

“Us, Nick. Us. And I’m trying to make us better.”

Angry, he stood up. “Well, it sure feels as if it’s all about me. And none of it feels good.” He stormed off the terrace, past Isabel, who appeared oblivious to her father’s distress.

Chessie slumped back in the hammock as the first of the fireworks exploded overhead with a tremendous boom and a dizzying display of color.

TEN HOURS LATER Nick still fumed.

Last night, afraid he might say something he’d regret in the morning, he’d left Chessie on the terrace without discussing her ridiculous challenge. He’d been too frustrated to debate what he didn’t understand. Besides, pure physical exhaustion had caught up with him. He’d headed to bed.

He hadn’t slept, however, and his wife hadn’t joined him in their bedroom.

Morning had dawned with confusion dogging his sleep-deprived brain. Even now, after all the words exchanged yesterday, he didn’t see why she’d become dissatisfied with their marriage. And celibacy after eighteen years together? What a crock. He felt manipulated and hoped the old sofa in her studio, where she’d more than likely spent the night, had been lumpy.

He’d looked forward to reading the morning paper to see if he was still in the same universe he’d been in before the Fourth, but the new paper carrier had tossed it in the birdbath.

Aggravated before the work day had begun, he pounded the steering wheel of his old and cranky Volvo as he prepared to head to school. He empathized with cranky, wincing at the grinding sound the car’s transmission made when he pulled out of the driveway. Not unlike the discordant, grating gears of his once well-oiled life.

He’d stop at Tindall’s Service Center on the way to school and leave the car to be checked. John would give him a ride to work.

His thoughts crowded, Nick scratched the back of his neck in irritation. The mosquitoes had feasted on him last night, and now the nonstop itching was driving him nuts. At least something had been hungry for his body, he thought sourly.

Using extreme caution, he drove the short distance to the service center. As he pulled into the lot, he experienced a pang of envy for the automotive work of John Tindall, his former classmate. With machines, when something went wrong, the problem was real, physical and, for the most part, observable.

Unlike relationships.

As he stepped out of the car, Nick wished he could raise Chessie on a lift, hook her up to a diagnostic machine.

“Nick.” John hailed him from the gas pumps where he was putting out pails of water and windshield cleaning squeegees. “How’s it going?”

Nick shook his head. John didn’t really want to know. “If I leave my car here, could you look at my transmission sometime today? I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

“What I’m hearing,” John replied with a grin, “is that Chessie’s set to reform you.”

Just what Nick needed as he went about the delicate business of hiring new teachers, some new to the area. What if this gossip filtered through his staff to the recruits? How would it affect his image as a professional and a leader?

He spied Abigail, John’s wife and bookkeeper, peeking out from behind curtains in the office window, an unmistakable smile on her pretty face. Nick sighed heavily. “You know Chessie, John. Just some Fourth-of-July hijinks.”

“If you say so.” The mechanic wiped his hands on a rag.

“Oh, hell!” Nick ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you know what women really want?”

John snorted. “Abigail says all she wants is a little bit more than she’s ever going to get.”

“But what exactly is that little bit more?”

“In Abigail’s case, money.”

Nick shook his head. That wasn’t the case with Chessie. Or was it? She’d said she wanted to be romanced. Did that mean expensive jewelry and exotic bouquets? Those things hadn’t mattered to her in the past. But, as far as he’d been concerned, Chessie had seemed content, and look at how wrong he’d been on that score.

“What about romance?” he asked.

“Frankly, Abigail seems to get her kicks from a ledger in the black. But what do I know?”

“You’re saying you haven’t a clue.”

“Not a one.” John raised his hat, repositioned it, then set it back on his head in the age-old male gesture that begged to change the subject. “So, you want a ride to work?”

“Yeah. I hope you’re better at figuring out transmissions than you are at figuring out women.”

At the high school, Hattie St. Regis, his administrative assistant, met him with a fresh pot of coffee and a double-parked agenda. “Restful holiday?” she asked, her eyes betraying no sign of gossip-induced interest.

“Yes,” he lied, trying to focus on the day planner on his desk, obscured with new paperwork.

“Good. We have quite a schedule today.” She poured them each a cup of coffee. “I’m thinking of getting an espresso machine in this place. Regular coffee just doesn’t spark my plugs any more.”

What did spark women’s plugs these days? He didn’t dare ask Hattie’s advice. For the past year the two of them had maintained a strictly professional relationship.