Unspoken

(unknown)

Maybe it is just me.

* * * * *

"JR is working," she said. "I'm just baking some bread."

I didn't have much experience with places that had been purposely decorated. My family bought furniture and carpet and lamps. A big faux-leather recliner might be the one thoughtfully placed piece in a room. But Sandy had transformed the inside of the little "modular unit" with batik wall hangings and candles and and objects of all kinds. The smell of the baking bread went straight to my blood.

Sandy and JR were living like adults. They were staying in town for Christmas, just the two of them, rather than going home. JR worked in a lumber yard part time while he went to school. I don't think he had to. His father had plenty of money, and his family lived in one of the nicest homes in our part of town. JR's father was a big man with a thick southern accent that sounded to me like Big Daddy or Foghorn Leghorn, a caricature of a southern boss. His posture, too, accentuated his size, shoulders thrown back, head raised so that you had to look up to really see him. By contrast, JR was smallish, of medium height and and a less-than-robust frame. He was a great basketball player, a slow but clever guard who could shoot the lights out, but he wouldn't do in a fight. JR was seeking some independence, I thought, from his father and his background, but he had some of his father's worst attributes--the haughty southern voice, the piercing, dark eyes that stared into you when he talked, head tilted like his father's.

Sandy, on the other hand, defined a certain femininity for me. She was soft and blonde and had a voice like honey. She was smallish, but not small, with a rounded figure that was not round but shapely, a sort of fertility goddess on a small scale. She had fair, smooth skin like a child's that made you want to rub it. But it was her eyes that undid me, dark brown eyes with blonde hair. I don't know what she did or how she did it, but it seemed to me that I was holding my breath waiting for them to turn to me again. Her glance was intimate. It felt like sex.

JR wouldn't be home until five, she said as she put on some music. Would we like something to drink? I don't remember if we said yes or no, but we sat down and chatted for a bit. We couldn't wait for JR, we said. We were driving back.

In the car, Mike and I just looked at each other. I guess he felt it, too. Neither of us would say it, but something seemed to float in the air, the smell of the bread, the batik wall hangings, the candles, and . . . her.

"JR's working, huh?" I said.

"I guess so."

"That bread sure smelled good."

"Sure did."

It had been a day. We had a new place to live now. We'd bring our stuff with us when we returned after New Year. We sat back and watched the country drift by the windows listening to the engine of the VW bug. Neither of us said anything. Mike and me. We were roommates.