Road Trip Pt. 06

As Craig opened the door and took in the sight, he froze in position; the door open behind him.

Julia told him in a little girl whiney tone, "Jim's all tired out for the present, and I need some serious lovin' before dinner time. I wondered if you'd like to ... well, you know, help a needy girl out of her troublesome predicament."

Craig allowed the door to swing shut behind him. He stuttered, "Yes, oh, most definitely yes," as he shed his coat and dropped it on the floor.

Julia held her arms out to him, and he came to her and they kissed. I was doing more emails in the living room, and enjoying the blatant seduction taking place only a few feet away. I'd been at it all day with Julia, so I didn't think I was missing anything that I hadn't already enjoyed to the fullest.

Julia put her legs down temporarily, and started to strip Craig. He scrambled to keep up with her. She helped him shed his shirt and then helped push down his pants. She grabbed a hold of his penis, a shaft that lengthened and hardened by the second. After a few strokes with her hands, she pulled her legs back up and thrust her pussy forward while still atop the credenza. Craig sank his cock into her body, and the pair began a rather energetic fuck that resulted in the credenza pounding against the wall and alerting every other person in the row of townhouses what was happening. They didn't care.

The pair made noises appropriate to their exquisite fuck that I wished I'd recorded so we could have enjoyed the soundtrack later. Julia was moaning and voicing her pleasure, even calling out 'harder and faster' instructions when she wasn't using 'dirty talk' to further excite Craig and me. Craig told her how she felt, and replied with his own brand of dirty talk as they fucked. I didn't think to time them; however, five minutes would have been a long time, but in those five they covered what a normal couple might take twenty minutes to do. Craig exploded into Julia's pussy, and she climaxed simultaneously, her wail of pleasure ending the pounding the credenza made against the wall. Still connected to each other, Craig picked up Julia and duck walked over to the sofa, his stride limited by the pants around his ankles. The pair sank to the sofa and made out for a while. I could see they really liked each other - an understatement at best.

* * * * *

When Craig and Julia finally separated, they went down the hall to his bedroom to shower before dinner. The entire townhouse smelled of sex, but then Julia and I had made significant contributions to the way the place smelled all day long.

Craig came out of his bedroom a few minutes later. He looked at me and shook his head: "Man, you know some really great women. If you want to leave this one behind, it'd be all right with me."

I laughed and pointed out that it was up to Julia. I also warned him that she had aspirations about acting in Hollywood, so he might want to be sure what he was getting into before she disappeared on him.

We bantered for a couple of minutes, and then a light bulb went behind Craig's eyes: "Oh, I have something to show you; I almost forgot with that wonderful welcome home. I stopped for more wine on the way home, and thought you like to see what I found in the checkout aisle." He rummaged in his briefcase, and then tossed me two magazines, just as Julia emerged from the bedroom looking quite chic for northern Idaho. I could tell even from the distance between us that the magazines were supermarket tabloids. The Weekly Star and the Nation's Entertainment News landed in my lap.

On the cover of both rags was a photograph of me riding on a horse next to Jesse Emerson, the pretty horsewoman who rescued me and my motorcycle from a snowstorm in Montana. We were talking, and surrounded by snow-covered trees. I knew instantly when the picture had been taken; we were riding the fence line. Seconds after the long lens had captured our looking tenderly at each other, I'd spotted the black car that Bart Kenesis, freelance paparazzo photographer, had been using and with binoculars had even seen him in it.

The headlines on one magazine read "Cheating on Crystal?" and on the other "Crystal Lee's Competition?" The headlines, smaller print, and the short stories inside the editions traded on sensationalism and scandal, and lacked any knowledge of what had really been going on - fortunately. In the first, I was guilty of breaking Crystal's heart. In the other magazine, Crystal and the 'mystery woman' were fighting for my affection and I was torn in the middle, hiding my affair on one hand yet longing for a more permanent relationship with Crystal who, factually, had been consoling herself on a few dates with Kenny Wilson. I laughed aloud at the fabrications.

I picked up the cell phone and called Crystal. Fortunately, I got her on her cell just as she was heading out to dinner with Ellen. I read her the relevant parts of both magazines, and suggested that there might be other magazines and maybe video of the horseback ride. I thanked my lucky stars that Jesse and I hadn't done 'anything' outdoors, although we'd both surely had been inclined that way. Crystal rang off to call Terry, and get his counsel on how to respond when someone pushed a microphone in front of her and quoted these scandal sheets seeking validation.

Next, I called Jesse. Josie, the youngest of the daughters answered the phone, and we had a brief conversation. I think she was a little miffed that I needed to talk to her older sister, but I assured her than Jesse would explain all to her in good time. Jesse came on, and I explained about the paparazzi, scandal sheets, and that she and I were on the covers of two of them.

On the other end of the phone line, I heard a little, "Wow! Really? I'm on the cover of a magazine?"

I read Jesse the headlines and articles, and suggested she rehearse a set of benign statements she could make to the press that would deflate their sails, tell the truth, and, in a few days, give her back her privacy: statements like, "Yes, Mr. Mellon and I are friends, and my family and I enjoyed his visit at our ranch as well as the trail ride we took the morning of the photographs when we were checking the fences. The stories in the tabloids portray a nonexistent relationship; in fact, we talked at length about his relationship with Crystal. So, I'm afraid I can't corroborate even a single sentence of what was written in either the Weekly Star or the Nation's Entertainment News. From what I can see, the stories are trash, lies, and outrageous innuendo. You can verify this with Mr. Mellon or Miss Lee. No further comment is needed."

I asked for Jesse to keep in touch, at a minimum emailing or texting me the name and company of anyone who contacted her later and how aggressive they'd been in trying to get 'her story.' I explained that they'd offer some 'big bucks' to sell her exclusive story to them - fact or fiction, assuring her it would end up as mostly fiction. I could tell she found that idea revolting. I thanked her again for the days I spent with them, asking her to give my love to everyone.

As I'd been on the phone, Julia and Craig had been passing the magazines back and forth when I wasn't using one of them in my conversations.

"Wow," Julia said, "They really trashed you. Was this the doings of the photographer you told me about?"

"I'm certain of it, at least for the photograph. He may have also fed the editors some possible storylines, and they took it from there. I'm rapidly developing some thick skin about this kind of stuff. I never realized how badly the tabloids could do in someone."

* * * * *

The next day was Friday, and Julia and I hung around Craig's townhouse getting to know each other better. I doubt there was a square inch of her skin that I didn't massage, lick, and have sex with, and Julia could have made the same statement about me.

Craig made up for lost time when he got home on Friday afternoon. Julia told us she really loved having sex with two men. We discussed the ability of men and women to have multiple simultaneous partners in sex during one of our breaks. Julia rightfully pointed out that women were made to have sex with more than one man at a time. To summarize her comments, she said women have multiple orifices that enable them to pleasure at least three men, they can have orgasm after orgasm without a recovery time between, and they understand how to share themselves with others without getting their nose bent out of shape. Craig and I conceded the point.

Craig and I got some time to talk starting in the late morning on Saturday. The weather had changed to rain, so staying indoors proved to be a good idea. The two of us had worn Julia out, and she'd fallen asleep in the middle of his bed with a smile on her face. We caught up some more, visited old times, and renewed our commitment to always be there for each other. We also talked about some ideas to resolve the Kenesis problem. Based on timing and my travels, it looked like an ideal time to face Kenesis would be when Crystal and I would be in Reno with Julia's mother doing a telethon.

Sunday morning, I packed up my motorcycle with the help of Craig and Julia. Julia had decided to hang around a few more days with Craig, a decision that made Craig beam from ear to ear. I hoped he'd survive being alone with her for an entire day. He already planned to take Monday and Tuesday off work.

Julia gave me a long simmering kiss to say goodbye. I promised I'd keep in touch and that I'd do something about her wish to get her into films once I got to southern California. I also urged her to come to Reno when we'd be at the Children's Fund Telethon with her mother.

I rode out of Coeur d'Alene on back roads, keeping as close to the Spokane River as I could. The rain had left, leaving a crystal clear day. Crystal clear. I thought of Crystal a lot and wondered what our future together would be like.

To be continued

Chapter 28

Washington-Oregon

Time stopped. I watched in horror as a maroon sedan in front of me drifted onto the shoulder of the highway, suddenly and violently dug the right front tire into the soft dirt, and abruptly slewed the back end of the car around until the car was broadside to the road. I could see a blonde female inside frantically trying to regain control over the careening vehicle, but I knew it was too late. At seventy-five or eighty miles per hour, the car started to roll over onto the passenger side, and then the car flew through the air.

The woman disappeared, carried upward as the entire car left the ground after a quarter-turn in the roll. In that flash of time, I could see that the car's roof didn't even make contact with the ground as the car flipped over, angling off the road into a fallow field. After hitting the ground again and kicking up a shower of dirt, the car barely brushed the ground as the car completed its first complete rollover, and kept rolling.

On the car's second roll, the rear of the car dug into the potato field ensuring that the car would rotate again. This time the roof of the car slammed into the ground obliterating the passenger side roof of the vehicle. The right front tire tore away from the car and adopted its own strange trajectory up and away from the car. The windshield shattered into a thousand pieces of glass as if someone threw a shower of glistening raindrops into the air.

On the third and fourth rolls, the front of the car rose in the air in a complex twist, left the ground again, plunging back to earth on the nose as the wheels spun eerily without anything to touch other than air. In the fifth roll; the remaining kinetic energy dissipated as the car slid two hundred feet backwards on the crushed roof before rocking to a stop well off the roadway.

I pulled onto the shoulder opposite the vehicle, parked in a millisecond, and raced to see whether the driver had survived the horrendous crash. I shed my helmet as I ran, and tossed it aside. Other cars had stopped behind me, and other people were running to the disabled car. The three wheels on the car were still spinning when I reached the car. I could smell gasoline. I threw myself onto the ground and peered into the upside down car through the shattered driver's side window. An unconscious woman hung suspended in her seatbelt. Her head rested against the crushed in roof, but I saw no blood.

Instincts drilled into me as a Green Beret came back - training I'd had as a backup medic: assess for life, assess for injury, assess for extraction, assess for transport, and so forth. I wiggled partway into the car on my back so I could look up at the woman, thankful that I wore a thick leather jacket so the ragged glass edges didn't injure me. I found a pulse on the woman at her carotid artery. Only the seat belt held her body. Amazingly, the empty passenger compartment had taken the brunt of the various impacts as the car flipped; had anyone been there, they would be dead.

I ran my hands down the woman's arms; one caught in the seatbelt and the other limply hanging to the roof of the upside down car. I used both hands and carefully moved her head around feeling for a neck injury. I ran a hand down her spine, not an easy task given the angle of the vehicle and her seat. I felt ribs and chest, ignoring the intimacy that might have been implied. I felt thighs and lower legs as they angled out from under the shattered dashboard.

She seemed whole and unbroken, but I wrapped a jacket that was lying beside her head around her neck to immobilize it in case she had suffered neck injuries. I couldn't imagine how she could have escaped injury. I released the seatbelt with one hand and cushioned her drop with my own body. The smell of gasoline became stronger. I backed myself out of the car, maneuvering the woman with me. Another pair of hands tried to reach in to help pull her out.

As I got myself nearly clear of the car, I heard a 'wooft' from under the car's hood. Fire! I rolled onto my stomach, reached inside the car, and hooked my hands under the woman's armpits and pulled, making sure her head and body didn't drag across the jagged glass where the side window had broken. Other rescuers had vanished when the engine fire erupted. The heat from the fire singed one side of my face. A quick glance confirmed we were in grave danger. I doubted the gas tank had remained undamaged and the odor of gasoline still filled the air.

I looked for other help, but there was none nearby. Just as the blonde's body cleared the car, flames erupted inside the car, consuming the interior in seconds. Blinded from the acrid smoke, I picked up the woman's body and ran, tripping over the uneven ground but not falling.

Two men intercepted my path and helped me lay the woman on the ground on a blanket a safe distance from the vehicle that had rapidly become completely engulfed in flames. A thunderous 'whoompf' made us all duck momentarily; fire had breached the gasoline tank. An immense orange ball of flame rose skyward amid the existing plume of black smoke. The heat from the explosion touched everyone.

Voices yelled from a vehicle on the road that 911 had been called. I took off my chaps, rolled then up into a makeshift pillow, and put them behind the woman's head. I removed my leather jacket and wrapped her upper body under the fleece lining. I felt the blonde's pulse race as her body dealt with shock and the surges of adrenalin discharged into her system. I did another brief external examination, seeking broken bones, blood, bruises, and other signs of trauma. All I found was an enlarging lump on her head and a superficial scratch.

A gray-haired woman knelt by the head of my unconscious ward. She stroked the young woman's forehead as only a grandmother could. I had learned in my medical training that unconscious people, even people in a coma, can 'hear' what's going on around them. They processed these 'subliminal' messages, sometimes evaluating whether to die or live. I leaned in close and talked calmly to the pretty woman, assuring her that she was in good hands, in the arms of people that would protect her and take care of her, and who would let no further harm come to her. The grandmother-type also talked to her in positive words too. I explained to the unconscious girl that she was healthy and fit with no signs of serious injury.

I talked in low, soothing tones to her for five minutes before she stirred slightly, her body shuddering once as the first signs of consciousness reappeared. A gasp of relief went through the small crowd that had now gathered. I glanced up to see the highway lined for a great distance in either direction with stopped cars and trucks. Flames and acrid smoke still leapt skyward from her car. The woman's eyes flew open, and I saw at once the fear she felt. Grandmother and I both kept speaking words of calm. She gasped in a panicked voice, "What happened? Where ... Oh ... my car ... couldn't steer."

I said calmly, "You've had an accident, and I think you're all right - a little shaken up, but OK. You've got a bump on your head that probably put you 'out' for a few minutes. Help is on the way." I could see her trying to focus on my face as I talked. She tried to sit up, but I urged her to just lie still until her body had a chance to recover from the stress of the accident. I gently pushed her shoulders back to the blanket.

"How did I get out of the car?" she asked in a worried voice.

Grandmother spoke nodding in my direction, "This young man pulled you out of your car. You are lucky you found a hero like him. He saved your life."

The blonde digested that information.

I asked gently, "Is there someone close to you that we should call - that you'd like to have know about your accident and where you are?"

She shook her head slightly, and then spoke, "No. No one near here. No one now." After a long pause, she added, "I'm from Oregon. I was heading home from a bad experience."

"What's your name?"

"I'm Elizabeth Catriona, and everyone calls me Liz." I introduced myself to her as 'Jim' now that she was conscious. I got a polite smile from her.

In the distance I could hear the wailing of the emergency sirens heading in our direction, probably from Pasco. I held Liz's hand, and told her help was seconds away. In a pleading voice, she locked eyes with me and said in a near state of panic, "Please don't leave me. Stay with me - hold my hand - even when they take me to the hospital." This wasn't a question; it was a plea I couldn't turn down. When a pretty woman in trouble begs, I give in.

A fire truck pulled up opposite the burning car, still aflame with dark smoke pouring from the hulk. A large ambulance arrived nearby. Two EMTs rushed to Liz's side with their gear. On the highway, two highway patrol cars screamed onto the scene with sirens and lights flashing; one officer came to work the gathering crowd around us, and the other took control of the traffic.

One EMT examined Liz carefully, checking her neck, throat, eyes, nose, and ears. As he worked, I introduced myself and explained getting her from the car and my initial check of her health. The EMT asked who had wrapped Liz's neck and I told him that I had incase she had a neck injury. The EMT praised my work. He wired Liz up and did an EKG, transmitting the information to a nearby hospital. Eventually, they retrieved a gurney, and with my help put Liz in the ambulance. I retrieved my helmet, chaps, and jacket, when an EMT shouted from beside the ambulance: "Jim, can you come see us for a moment."

I jogged over to the flashing ambulance. Inside I could hear Liz screaming. The EMT shook his head, "She's hysterical because you're not in the van with her. Can you leave you car ... err, your motorcycle, and come with us to County Medical? Talk to her. Calm her down. She's hysterical."