Chapter 9

Abby exhausted herself right into a deep sleep, where I joined her after cleaning us both up and straightening the bed. The night passed without incident. Other than a trip to the bathroom, we slept until morning when the general hotel noise woke us both.

Showers and breakfast were done in short order, because we had shopping to do. There was a large indoor mall near Mark’s apartment and we headed there in time for their ten AM opening and went straight to work to repair Abby’s wardrobe. It took several hours, but she had a blast shopping without fear of the disapproval from an angry husband, limited funds, or having to decide between clothes and food. By the time we finished it was noon, so we stopped to feast on food court pizza.

Since it was nearly Christmas the mall was packed and Abby seemed to love walking amid the decorations, Christmas carols, and general holiday cheer. Whenever she saw something she liked, I insisted the clerk bring us Abby’s size and bought it for her. When she needed to use the changing room she insisted I join her and give her my unbiased opinion of her choices.

Before we left, I slipped away from Abby in Macy’s, saying I had to use the restroom. Macys had a wonderful jewelry department. I purchase Abby a lively Wittnauer watch with seventeen jewels, and a more basic one for everyday use. To that I added a string of Majorca pearls, a matching gold necklace and earring set, and a pretty gold bracelet for dress up occasions. The clerk wrapped everything for me and added a sweet gift bag that she carefully hid inside of a big, paper, Macys bag to keep my secret.

When I got back, Abby was looking over coats, so I insisted she pick out at least two coats. One was clearly for dress-up and one for the rest of the time. Before we left the department, I saw a beautiful cashmere, ankle length coat and bought that for her, also.

We cruised to Mark’s home, found it to be as bland and impersonal as his life. Abby wandered around looking in things, commenting on this and that, and generally attempting to appear impressed with the living conditions of her former student.

Rather than avoid what was obvious, I said, “This place was never intended to be anything more than a place to crash after work. When I look at it and imagine it through your eyes, it looks even worse than I thought.”

Abby leaped to my defense, which was sweet. “Mark, men often overlook their bachelor pads. We can fix it up with just a little effort. You’ll see.” She was being far too kind.

“I have no intention of us living here, Abby,” I said, much to her surprise. “You have no way of knowing about me, but I have a pretty large nest egg, and quit my job a short time ago, intending to get rid of this place and go somewhere nice to start out my retirement. The reason I was in town was that I wanted to look up some of my old friends before I got rid of this place and moved away. It was a good thing, or we would have never reconnected, and that would have been a terrible shame. There is no way I would have wanted to miss this...” I hugged her again to make my point.

“If you are willing and would stick with me, I’d love to hear your thoughts on where we should go explore, that might please us both.”

Abby looked at me for a long moment, considering what I was really suggesting. Her brow was furrowed as she contemplated my invitation to live with me from now on. “You really want to invite me to live with you? Even though we’ve only been together three days and I bring absolutely nothing to a relationship but my presence? Do you feel that certain you could live with me ... Huhhh...” Her expression was so cute that I had to kiss her, so I did.

It was much later that we disengaged long enough to revisit the idea of moving somewhere we both might enjoy living. “I’ve always loved the mountains. I’d love to live somewhere away from the ocean, because I’m kind of afraid of hurricanes, and not near California, because earthquakes scare me.” Abby was being transparent about her hopes and fears, but ignoring the deeper question, which was whether she was willing to live with me permanently.

I thought that was good news.

“What if I call a local church and give all of this away,” I swept my arm around, indicating everything in the apartment, “and we head for the mountains near the Arkansas - Missouri border, find a really beautiful log cabin for sale, preferably on the shore of Table Rock Lake, and see how we like living there?

“It’s winter so the real estate market is totally dead down there. We can probably save some money and still buy a wonderful home. The Ozarks are lovely in the snow, but it never lasts, so better weather will be along shortly, and in the meantime the cold will give us lots of time to work on our ‘other’ skills...” Abby blushed when she realized I was talking about sex.

Abby decided to postpone talking about moving until after we’d eaten. She tore through the kitchen fixing us comfort food, which we ate in front of the fake fire, in front of the electric fireplace. It was cold outside, and neither of us wanted to dress and go out, so what that meant was a fake fire and comfort food were the order of the day.

The heat from the fake fire was so comforting that we fell asleep on the hide-a-bed, cuddled together like puppies. Abby held on all night, keeping her hands on me for security. In the morning we got busy separating things that I needed to keep, like birth certificates, insurance papers, and other necessities. Once they were boxed I called the big Baptist Church nearby and offered them everything else, as long as they took it away within a week. They were thrilled to have it all and sent someone over to get an idea of how many men they’d need to pack it all up. I gave the pastor a check for five hundred dollars to pay for packing boxes and a rental truck and he gave me a tax receipt. I left him with the key to the apartment and a letter stating they had my authorization to clean it all out.

Abby and I hopped in the car and headed to the leasing office where I paid the buyout to break the lease effective December thirty-first. Once that was settled, I called the utility people and arranged to have everything turned off on New Year’s Eve, giving them a debit card number to charge the final payment against. The buyout to break the lease effective December thirty-first and we were free to go.