Name of the Game - a short story

I penned Name of the Game years before I wrote my first novel. Like many of my short stories written during this period, it was autobiographical. I was a freshly divorced geologist working for myself in Oklahoma City and making more money than I'd ever thought possible. When I wasn't in the geologic library creating a new prospect, I was likely in a dark bar getting drunk. My friend Dave (also a geologist) and I were in a downtown bar called Over the Counter because the owner had begun his professional life as a stock broker. Two young women entered the bar. Kathy, one of the women, was my former neighbor. She was a geologic secretary for an oil company. Marsha, the woman with her, was her best friend. I invited them to join Dave and me, and they did.

Marsha was married; my first clue was the big diamond ring on her finger. We had several drinks. Before the night ended, I asked her to come to my apartment the following Saturday and make love. I know! Times were different in the late 70s, and downtown Oklahoma City was the hub of all things crazy. The start of our affair began when she knocked on my apartment door.

Our affair lasted less than a month, ending as abruptly as it had begun. More than once, Marsha asked me, "What's the name of the game?" I'd missed much of the early seventies trying to keep from getting killed in a dirty little war in Southeast Asia and then immersing myself in academia at the University of Arkansas while I completed my geology degree. Years later, I realized The Name of the Game was the title of a hit song by the Swedish rock group ABBA.

Oh, and Dave and Kathy hooked up that night, their relationship lasting several years.

 Name of the Game

 

Rita used to wait for me at the building door where she worked. I would park close to the curb and linger until she came outside. Until that day, our routine was always the same. When I drove up, I noticed a powder-blue Mercedes had taken my usual parking spot. The car's nervous driver, a prepped-out lawyer with gelled hair, turned halfway around in his bucket seat to watch Rita leave the office complex.

“Who was that?” I asked.

Rita leaned across the seat and planted a sultry kiss on my lips. “I didn't see anyone.”

The man in the Mercedes watched us with interest and continued staring at us as we pulled away from the curb.

“Today, I want it hot and fast,” she said, turning the rearview mirror and using it to touch up her lipstick.

“Whatever. How have you been?”

Rita crossed her legs, revealing more than a momentary glance at her shapely thighs.

“Beyond irritation,” she said. “Russell came home late after leaving me alone with Jessica. Try communicating with a good-looking teenage cheerleader with tits bigger than her mom's.”

My smile was all the answer she needed. “What happened when Russell got home?”

“Absolutely nothing. I even paraded around in my stretch-lace teddy to show him what he was missing.”

Talk of Rita's husband always made me uncomfortable. Sensing my discomfort, she leaned across the console and squeezed my leg. It was a beautiful clear-blue day in late autumn, and Rita’s grin was wicked when I braked hard to avoid a squirrel scurrying across the road.

We barely spoke during the short distance to my apartment. The parking lot was empty, everyone at work, and we soon found a spot near the stairs. Fast and discrete. Just the way Rita liked it. She had her arms around me almost before I could lock the apartment door behind us.

“Miss me?” she asked.

“You know I did.”

“And these?”

She unbuttoned her frock blouse to the waist and cupped her breasts. With my fingers, I traced a narrow path up her flat stomach, but Rita had none of it. Grabbing my wrist, she pulled me down the narrow hallway to the bedroom in the back.

Recently divorced, my apartment was small, one bedroom. The apartment was dark, with only hazy sunlight shining through an open window. Rita liked the dark, and I didn’t bother turning on the lights.

“Let's not waste it.” Releasing my hand beside the bed, she dropped her dress, slip, and bra in one practiced motion and fell onto the covers. “Now, I want it hard and fast.”

I’d left the air conditioner on high before leaving for work that morning, and the room was cold as it was dark. Rita was neither, her eyes flashing. She was already hot after having all the foreplay she’d needed during our lustful stroll from the front door. For the next five minutes, she clawed painful Xs in my back, yanked handfuls of hair from my head, moaned loudly, and squirmed like a woman possessed. When we finished, she rolled off the bed, went into the bathroom, and closed the door behind her. She returned shortly, still totally naked and carrying a can of hair spray.

“Hurry,” she said. I have a prospective employee to interview at one. Can’t be late.”

“But we just got here.”

“And did what we came for. Now, be a sweetie. You know my job is vital to me.”

As I exited the bed and pulled on my pants, Rita returned to the bathroom to brush her hair. This time, she emerged, looking ready for an urgent business meeting. Seeing I wasn’t prepared, she tapped her shoe, waiting as I knotted my tie. Grasping my hand when I finished, she squeezed it and hurried me to the car.

Because of lunch-hour traffic, we found the return trip to her job much slower. Rita remained silent most of the way, although she was miffed. She didn’t talk until we were almost there.

“I have a question, and I need an answer.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Does there have to be?”

“It's your voice. You sound. . .”

Rita ignored my psychoanalysis, folded her arms, and turned her knees toward the door.

“Tell me. What's the name of the game?”

“Game? I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

“The one we're playing.”

I didn’t understand the issue and paused before answering.

“Infidelity, maybe?”

Rita closed her eyes. “This isn't a joke. I need a serious answer.”

A blaring horn distracted me from the unexpected course our conversation had taken. “Have I done something wrong?”

“You've done everything right, and I've enjoyed every minute. Cool drinks in smoky bars, peanut butter picnics in vacant lots, and steamy sex in all the ways I love. That’s what our relationship has meant to me. I just want to know what it means to you. Anything?”

“Something exciting and truly memorable. I can't remember having so much fun since I went skinny dipping with the homecoming queen in the principal's pool on graduation night.”

Rita's strained smile flickered briefly. “Now what? It's almost winter. The pool is empty.”

“You're shooting over my head. Is this about Russell? Are you thinking of divorce?”

“Russell's not the problem.”

“But isn't Russell part of the equation? And Jessica?”

“That's not what we're discussing here,” Rita said, her voice rising.

“Then please tell me what we are discussing.”

By now, her demeanor had diminished from silent composure to barely suppressed rage, and I still was unsure why.

“Just let me off in front of the building,” she said.

I coasted into the slow lane and allowed some angry motorists to surge past on the left. “First, explain why you're angry with me.”

She had neither a frown nor a smile, only an empty expression of quiet frustration as she pointed at the curb in front of her building.

“Pull in and let me out. I never play the game with someone who doesn't follow the rules. You don't even know we're playing.”

She hurried across the busy street without a backward glance. When I phoned to apologize, she didn’t take my call.

Three days passed, then a week, without a word from Rita. Finally, unable to control my curiosity and hurt feelings, I parked at the curb at our old meeting place by her office. From there, I watched, aware of a sudden rush of déjà vu as she walked out the door at exactly our usual time. I quickly realized why.

Even though she recognized my car as she hurried across the sidewalk, she didn’t look my way or acknowledge my presence. Instead, she focused her smiling attention on a young man in a black BMW as he opened the passenger door to let her in. Once inside, she wrapped herself around him and kissed him. She knew I was looking, and I wondered if her lustful actions had been for my benefit. I never found out.

As the car disappeared down the street, I watched the young man cast a curious glance in his rear-view mirror.

 ####

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You might also like checking out his Facebook page.

Old Bones - a short story

 It’s a gray day here in Oklahoma, my two kitties, Buster and Buttercup, searching for even a scant patch of sunlight in which to bask. The gloom reminds me of a search I made many years ago that resulted in an eerie discovery.

A chill weekend in November found Gail, my ex, and me deep in a pine forest in southwest Arkansas. A graduate student in geology, my thesis concerned long-forgotten mineral deposits in a sparsely populated corner of the universe. Years before the invention of GPS tracking devices, we relied on a very old Brunton compass to navigate through the stark loneliness of the southern Ouachita Mountains.

Tall trees, mostly pines, covered the rolling terrain. While the Ouachitas aren’t high, rapid elevation changes of several hundred feet are common. We were moving slowly, picking our way through the undergrowth as we traversed an east-west trending ridgeline, looking for an old lead mine hidden deep in the forest.

Gail was short, had green eyes, dark hair and an olive complexion inherited from her French-Acadian parents. Though raised in the New Orleans’ metro area, her athletic legs carried her through the forest as smoothly as if she’d been born there. She was walking ahead of me, and I bumped into her when she halted abruptly.

“How do you know where we’re going?” she asked. “There’s no trail. I think we’re lost.”

I was holding an old topo map in one hand and the Brunton compass in the other. “We’re following an azimuth. The mine should be just up ahead.”

“That’s what you said thirty minutes ago,” she said.

“It’s hard staying in a straight line with so many trees and boulders in the way.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Let’s keep walking,” I said. “We’ll find it.”

I was about to give up when we reached a slight clearing that led down the slope to a roaring stream. There was something anomalous about the rounded pile of dirt located in a bend.

“That has to be it,” I said.

“That pile of dirt?” she said.

“Someone dug that dirt out of the ground and put it there. I think it’s the mine we’re looking for.”

“Doesn’t look like a mine to me,” Gail said.

“Quit bitching and let’s investigate. Even if it’s not the Davis Mine, we can at least take a break.”

Gail had endless energy and rarely ever took a break. As I sat on a fallen log and tossed pebbles into the roaring water of the creek, she climbed up on the pile of dirt and began exploring it.

“This hill’s bigger than it looks,” she said. “It follows the river for at least fifty yards.”

“I’m sure it was built by humans,” I said.

“Hell yeah,” she said. “Look at this.”

Glancing up the hill, I could see Gail had something in her hand.

“What is it?” I asked.

“An old bottle.”

“How old?”

“Real old,” she said. “Looks like something from a museum.”

I left my perch on the stump and followed her up the hill. The bottle was faded green and crusted with dirt. I was still examining it when Gail called again.

“Check this out,” she said, holding up something for me to see.

“What is it?”

“What’s left of a Confederate soldier’s shirt.”

“How do you know that?”

“There’s a brass button still attached with the letters C.S.A.,” she said.

The weathered hill was the talus pile of an old mine. A scar, roughly a half-acre in size, was all that remained of the old mining operation. Vertical shafts had collapsed or were filled with standing water. We soon began digging beautiful ore specimens out of the talus pile strewn with old bottles, broken timbers and a few faded signs of the men that had worked it.

“How did anyone ever find this place?” Gail asked when she finally stopped for a break.

“Prospectors searching for silver in the 1830s found lead and antimony instead,” I said. “This particular mine used horses and slave labor to mine lead for the Confederacy.”

“The old man at the truck stop told us we’d never find this place, and that it’s haunted,” Gail said.

“Well, we did find it. Don’t know about any ghosts, though the accounts of operations at the Davis Mine refer to abuse, torture and even murder of Union prisoners of war conscripted to work here.”

“Then maybe it is haunted.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “The shadows and silence are starting to creep me out.”

“Me too,” Gail said. “I keep looking around, thinking someone’s behind me.”

It was already past noon when we found the old mine, days short and our time limited before we needed to start back to the truck. We took photos and collected specimens, all the while feeling as if there was something present other than ourselves, even if it was only fleeting shadows. The distinct sensation that we were disturbing a place where something terrible had happened was unmistakable. I felt it, and so did Gail.

I jumped when she said, “Oh, shit!”

“What is it?”

“You better come see. I’m not touching this thing.”

She was standing on the top of the pile, nudging something with the toe of her boot. Though mostly covered with dirt, it looked for all the world like a human skull.

“Shit is right,” I said, digging the skull out of the earth with my pick hammer.

“Is that a bullet hole?” Gail asked as I held the skull in my hand.

“Looks like it to me,” I said. “But hell if I know for sure.”

“What are we going to do with it?” Gail asked.

I tossed it into the creek, staring at the rapidly rushing water a moment before answering.

“Forget we found it,” I said.

“Can we do that?” Gail asked.

“I have a thesis to write and no time to participate in a murder investigation. I don’t intend to ever return to this place except maybe in my nightmares.”

“I hear that,” Gail said. “Let’s get the hell out of here before it gets dark.”

Twilight draped the forest when we finally made it back to our old faded green Ford truck, waiting for us on a muddy dirt road. When we returned to Fayetteville, I sent some of the ore samples to the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver for analysis. The results surprised me as I’m sure they would have the prospectors that discovered the Davis Mine. The ore wasn’t just lead and antimony; there was silver present, and it was richer even than ore from the Comstock Lode.

Many years have passed since Gail, and I felt the presence of ghosts at the remote Davis Mine, hidden deep in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. Today, as an overhead cloud cast a shadow on my kittens, sleeping on the hood of my car, I remembered in vivid detail.

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page.