Dreams and Desires (2 page)

Kelly found it hard to maintain her resentment of the younger woman's presumption that she knew what she needed. Adele was a light hearted soufflé compared to her fried liver and beans. It was good to have a friend.

The professionally dressed woman released her frown and gave Adele a warm smile. “Thanks for you concern, Adele. I really appreciate it. But I just can't tonight. Call me over the weekend. Maybe we can have lunch on Sunday or something. That'd be nice."

Adele, seeing her efforts at bringing some excitement to her friend and boss's life were in vain, smiled back. “Okay little miss busy bee. I'll call you tomorrow some time. Or not, depending on how the night works out. I may be wrapped in the arms of a 6’ tall, broad shouldered, handsome, independently wealthy, Latin lover. And if I am, I'll be damned if I'll take a break from jumping his bones to call you!"

The women laughed. “Good luck, Adele,” Kelly said. “And if you find this guy, see if he has an older brother, okay?"

"Will do, boss,” Adele replied.

Soon afterwards, Kelly was alone in the lab. The three young female lab assistants had jumped ship immediately at the stroke of 5 o'clock. It was if they had been poised at a starting line, ready to pounce into their weekend at the very moment the minute hand hit the 12. She didn't blame them. They were all lively, pretty girls, less than a year out of high school.

Having a wholly female staff made Kelly's job easier. It wasn't that she felt men were less competent than the girls. Well, maybe they were, taken as a whole. The girls seemed less likely to call in sick, horse around or be distracted from their tasks. She had had several young men working for her at various times and for short periods over the last two years. Some of them were better than others. But it seemed they could not get past working for a young, desirable woman. Either they would melt into a little pool every time she called them into her office, or they would smile and smirk at her while she was giving them instructions. And if she leaned next to them, making any form of bodily contact while she peered over their shoulders to make a visual observation of some reaction or development, they would get flustered and start mumbling or stuttering. And they liked to look at her tits.

Kelly tried to dress conservatively, plain business suits, slacks and modest blouses, all worn under her lab coat when she was not at her desk. But she could not disguise her voluptuousness. She was not as well developed as Adele, but she was no slouch either. More than once, when she had called one of the young men into her office to discuss some protocol with them, some employee issue or anything at all, she would look up from her paperwork to find their gazes drawn to the soft, smooth mounds on her chest. They would blanch with embarrassment when she caught them, but their focus would continually shift up and down, up and down, from her eyes to her tits and back again as they were talking. No, the girls were much better and she hoped and prayed none of the male applicants she rejected ever sought counsel with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Just how would that look to the foundation grant committee?

Kelly's lab was located in half of a former light manufacturing building situate in a small, mostly residential town in southern Virginia, called Jacksonville. It was one of more than two dozen Jacksonville's around the South, all named after the mercurial Confederate general. Kelly was from New Jersey and her suburban upbringing had not prepared her for the sometimes yahoo ways of the locals. She had never been to a Piggly Wiggly before coming here, nor had she ever eaten shredded, barbequed pork for lunch. The ubiquitous rebel flags and decals on the revved up, jacked up pickups, many with the seemingly standard 30.06 shotguns mounted in the rear windows, were slightly disconcerting, making her feel like she had moved to some foreign country armed to repel an imminent invasion force. But the rents and wages here were cheap and general living expenses were low. It helped to stretch her grant money. She sometimes wished, however, she had located the lab in one of the other mostly economically depressed towns in the area with unique names like Splintersville or Gate's Corner. There were seven Jacksonville's in Virginia and her mail was constantly being misdelivered.

But then she wouldn't have found Adele. And she might not have found the beautiful little farmhouse she lived in, at least a half mile from the nearest residence, and built adjacent to a fast running, musical brook. Many a night she had finished her waking day by sitting on the long, covered, wooden porch and listening to the sounds of the water dancing off of the stones in the stream, enjoying the vista of bright stars in the clear night and sipping a hot cup of chamomile tea. She did some of her best thinking there.

She had to laugh at Adele's reference to a theoretical, 6’ tall, broad shouldered, handsome, independently wealthy, Latin lover. Although they had often joked about their common fantasy, she was as likely to find one as Kelly was to find a pearl in the oyster crackers she liked to have with her soup at lunch. There had been some corporate development in town. But the executives were either married or grown up boys who raced off to one of the other more populous urbanized areas of the state in their sleek sports cars at every opportunity. Adele knew that. She was a local. But one who had made the enlightened decision not to marry one of the indigenous high school football stars right after graduation and have two babies, a hound dog and a divorce by the time she was 22.

No, Adele was probably going to hang out with some of her girl friends tonight, go dancing at the Rainbow Club, a ‘B’ grade disco at the other end of town, and maybe, just maybe, catch one of the overdressed, over confident, oversexed, executive types on a night he had been unable to make it out of town, or if his wife had. Adele was no home wrecker, but she wasn't so particular she would reject a coital prospect just because he had a pale, circular ring of flesh around his finger where his wedding ring should be.

Kelly worked until just before 8 o'clock. She spent most of her time reading journals she reviewed regularly for developments in her field. No telling where the clue that would advance her research would come from. And if she could not immediately assimilate the importance of all the details, she would ruminate on them later, hoping the synapses of her brain would bring her a revelation her mere conscious mind could not.

The office was separated from the lab area by a partition made of glass from about waist level up. The lights in the work area were dimmed, but she could still see the long lab tables, the burners and reagents stored on them. There were two large cooking racks on the far wall and a large cooler. Adele's workstation was to the far left, an oversized green metal desk with battered, five drawer, metal filing cabinets behind it. Adele's desk was a mess, something that sometimes offended the well ordered Kelly, but her assistant always seemed to know where everything was, and filed and finished all of her reports on time. Kelly liked to be in control and it irked her sometimes that she had to rely on Adele to produce this file or that. She had learned, though, to tame her obsessive tendencies and let go of the urge to impose her own order on Adele's domain.

Kelly loaded her small briefcase with more work and donned her light fall jacket. It was warmer here in the South than her New Jersey home at this time of year, but it was early December and the air was close to cold at night. She closed the door to her office, and then, after she had conducted an inspection of all of the girls’ work stations, locked the lab and left the building.

The other half of the red brick, single level, light manufacturing building was occupied by a metal working outfit. They specialized in fabricating small, precise surgical tools, minute metal parts for sophisticated machinery and some other secret government projects. She had met Mr. Hardings, the shop owner and manager, when she had moved in. He was a grey haired, slightly roly poly, avuncular man with a large, bushy, salt and pepper mustache. He had helped her select some of the local tradesmen who she needed to set up her lab and had saved her a lot of money. He was also the landlord and often inquired when they met in the parking lot as to how her grants were going. She dreaded the possibility that someday she would have to tell him she couldn't pay the rent. Every time she saw him, her financial pressures came to the forefront of her mind. On the other hand, it was nice to have another operation in the building, especially one that had a 24 hour security guard. It made her feel safer as she walked to her car in the practically empty parking lot to know that somewhere someone was watching over her on a security camera. She had developed a strong sense of self preservation from living so close to crime ridden urban areas up North and she discounted the comments of her old friends who still lived there that it was so nice to live somewhere where there was no ‘crime problem'. Well, they hadn't read the local newspaper and didn't know about the raft of burglaries, shootings and miscellaneous mayhem that occurred in even this bucolic locale.

No one disturbed the attractive, young woman as she walked the forty or so feet to her car. She beeped the locks and opened the door to the driver's side of her 2 year old, leased, silver Sentra. Before she got in, she looked wistfully back at the building. So much of her dreams and hopes were tied up in the neat, 50 year old, red brick structure. “Soon,” she thought. “Soon, we'll get it. The big break.” She just knew it.

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It took Kelly about twenty minutes to reach her rented farmhouse. There had been some apartments and condos that had been closer to her place of work, but Kelly had chosen the more remote location because of its isolation and beauty. She drove up the long, gravel path to the old, wooden structure. The inside had been renovated with new, modern, efficient appliances, clean, freshly stained and varnished wood panel walls, a large, elegantly tiled bathroom. But the outside looked like it could have served as headquarters for some Confederate brigadier. The roof was a dark, grey slate and the exterior was covered by long, grey and brown, misshapen wooden slats. It may have looked like a ramshackle shack from the outside, but it was warm and comfy on the inside and it was home.

The fields surrounding the house were covered with short, brown grass. The owner had reserved the right to farm the hay from the property and two weeks ago had shaven the last, long wavy stalks. The empty fields gave the homestead a desolate feeling. There were copses of tall, bare maples around the edge of the property and the looming, purple Shenandoah Mountains, miles away, appeared like huge, silent sentinels.

Kelly trod quickly up the warped wooden steps, across the porch and into the house. She was in her place of sanctuary. She threw off her coat, letting it drape across one of the antique, stuffed chairs she had bought from an auction house over in Taylorsburg and went directly to her bedroom, flicking on the light. She had a large, four poster bed as a centerpiece to the room with heavy, dark dressers on either side. The bedspread was thick and warm in the chilly nights and was embroidered with small pink and lavender flowers. The double windows were surrounded by heavy, chintz curtains, light beige with long, dark brown borders. Her oversized, fluffy pillows sat on her bed at the head, beckoning her.

Kelly was tired. It had been a long day and a longer week. But she wanted to decompress from her day before retiring. Besides, even for an old maid like her, it was still a little early.

She quickly cast off the short, shirtwaist jacket that went with her suit, undid the buttons to her blouse and drew her slim arms from the sleeves. As she was unfastening her dainty bra from behind her back, she cast a sideways glance at the uncovered window. Who knew who was lurking out there this late at night? It was moonless, and with the lights on it seemed as if the windows were the barrier between herself and some strange, dark dimension. Her mind filled with a vision of some creepy, rag tag redneck lurking out in her yard, peering in and groping his grimy loins as she undressed. She shivered at the thought, but continued undressing nonetheless. She knew in her heart there was no one out there and she would be damned if she would give in to superstition or wild imaginings.

Kelly dressed herself in a baggy, old, orange and grey, Princeton sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants. She had doffed her two inch heels, practical yet dressy enough to make a good appearance if a sponsor or potential sponsor should drop in. It was why she wore the suit. She would have been much more at ease in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but she always wanted to make sure she could make a good impression. She slipped into a pair of comfortable, cloth slippers and headed for the kitchen.

A little more than an hour later, Kelly was sitting curled up on her sofa in the small living room. She had broiled and eaten a small piece of boneless chicken breast and steamed a couple of stalks of broccoli. A wide, stemmed, wine glass sat on the coffee table with the remnants of three inches of the dark maroon merlot she had poured herself. She was on her laptop, surfing lists of recently published scientific articles and ordering a few. The TV was on and the credits for the latest episode of the Sopranos were rolling upwards. The show was one of her few indulgences, many of the scenes being shot not far from where she had grown up with her working class family. Thank God for the Internet, Amazon.com and cable television. Even way out here, the trappings of the modern world could be brought to her home in an instant.

The shapely woman yawned and stretched. Right now, she thought, Adele was probably just getting warmed up. Well, good for her. But Kelly was tired and she wanted to get back to the lab early in the morning to check on some of the experiments brewing in the low temperature oven. She shut down the laptop and clicked off the TV. The dishes she left in the sink for the morning. She turned off the lights in the living room and kitchen and entered her bedroom. She shed her sweats and, clad only in her lacy, bikini cut panties, went to the bathroom to perform her evening rituals.