Andrea Millhouse

"C'mon, foxxx ...yeah baby...OH! ...fuuuck, fuuuck yeah ...ahhh" she purred.

Andrea and I hadn't been together for five consecutive nights and we were, a little prematurely, nearing the zenith now because of it. Perspiration was beginning to run down her forehead and breasts as we continued onward to our final oasis...

"Go-out with a bang, aye, love?" she asked with her hot breath on my neck and sweating profusely as she collapsed on top of me, now.

"Not bad, not bad, we'll work on it." I replied, panting.

Lifting her head up to look at me she said "I'm the best you've ever had, mister." We both laughed and kissed.

"Do you think Emma Zimmerman heard us?" I asked. Andrea and I laughed again.

Emma Zimmerman was our elderly next door neighbor and a bit of an exhibitionist, her own self, we had discovered.

"Probably had her ear to the wall and heard every bit of it." Andrea said, smiling widely.

"So did you think about me and masturbate while you were gone?" I asked coyly as we lay together in the afterglow.

Getting up and lighting a cigarette then, Andrea took the first drag and blew the smoke in my direction.

"Yup, every night, in my hotel room. I even did it once inside one of the stalls in the ladies room at the airport in Salt Lake, on my way back-and that's your fault, cowboy." She said matter of factly and admiring me openly now.

"Wow..." I simply said, rubbing my forehead, a little bit in disbelief.

"You've got a beautiful, athletic body and you're a hell of a lot better looking than you think you are, Tim, and you're going to be very proud of the work he did." she replied in reference to my lower eye lids.

"Thank you, Andrea. Your beautiful too, love." I said quietly, reaching for her.

Andrea made love to me several times in short succession that evening. Afterward we lay in each other's arms for a little while before stepping into the shower and washing the grime and sweat from each other.

..."Did you put detergent in the washer? I notice that you didn't turn it on." She asked now, standing naked by the machine and tossing in our love-soaked towel.

"No, I was preoccupied with something else." I replied, leaning down and kissing her.

"So was I." she said as she turned towards the washer and poured detergent in and closed the lid. Andrea then turned the dial and started the wash cycle with its hiss of water pouring inside.

We made love once more, in bed this time, at a much slower pace and then cuddled.

"Good to have you home babe, I love you." I said, pulling her close.

Andrea Millhouse was already asleep.

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The rider was nothing more than skeletal remains and wearing a tattered trench coat which was flying in his wake. A ragged shirt and chaps were covered in filth and grime above scruffy work boots and topped with a tall Mohawk atop the rider's skull. The machine, of course, a menacing Pan-Head chopper and breathing fire out its pipes also carried a passenger, a female with an angelical face and mirrored wrap-around sunglasses. She had a Biblical manifestation and her hair was in the shape of flames, trailing in the wind...

The representation was obvious to some, more obscure to others. The skeleton was Ricky's own macabre view of himself, the girl on back, was Mom. The artwork represented her divine love and guidance, destiny-itself, life and death, Heaven and Hell...

For a guy that was supposed to be suffering from mild mental challenges from birth, the tattoo was a pretty heavy piece of thinking, I reflected. Mom had been so completely devastated when Ricky had begun having the work done, eleven years ago, that she had broken down and cried. She hadn't understood any of it and never did. "Why in GOD'S name would you do that to yourself, Ricky?" she had asked with tears in her eyes. "Mom, you don't understand" Ricky had said quietly. "NO I DON'T UNDERSTAND, RICKY, I NEVER RAISED YOU TO LOOK THAT WAY!!" Mom had wailed with her head in her hands.

...It was a large three dimensional piece on Ricky's left bicep and still being worked on periodically. The work was very well done and the latest addition had been Mom's cherub wings, after she had passed, a little over a year and a half ago. I suspected that Ricky had close to ten thousand dollars invested in the one tattoo alone, he had others, which covered his massive lower arms and chest.

"Which one is that?" I now asked.

"Blonde Bombers" Ricky replied, handing me the photo from across the table.

Ah yes, I thought as I held the picture, "Blonde Bombers" as we had coined the photo. Another Rick Sheffield photo depicting, Mom and Aunt Elsie as they were walking towards the camera together in a park, someplace. The photo had been taken from afar, via zoom lens and captured Aunt Elsie as she was making a vague reference to something, with her right hand, outside of the camera's field of view. Mom, with her head tilted back and right, was looking at whatever Aunt Elsie was gesturing to, probably a bed of flowers.

Damn, I thought, Aunt Elsie looked, smokin' hot, in the photo. So did Mom, of course, but I didn't look at her that way. It looked to be a beautiful day, wherever they were, and both ladies had their hair down and fashionable sunglasses on as they walked. I doubt that they even knew they were being photographed at that moment. ...Probably mid, to late nineteen sixties, I thought. Maybe it was another of Rick Sheffield's carnival photos from San Diego, in the beer garden, perhaps.

Aunt Elsie had been eleven minutes older than Mom, with blue eyes and Mom with brown. Many people had been unable to tell one from the other, aside from the eye color. To Ricky and me it had always been obvious of course, which of them was which, as I know it had been for Rick Sheffield, our biological father. He obviously had been a very talented amateur photographer, but then, his subject matter had been dazzling to begin with. That the two ladies turned many heads that day, I have no doubt. "Blonde Bombers" was certainly an appropriate name for the photograph, I concluded.

"Tim?" Andrea asked as she held the coffee pot near my cup.

"Just a splash, thanks honey." I replied, looking up.

Ricky handed me another photo, this one of Mom while she played on her electric guitar in the living room at our house in Stony Brook. She looked like a rock-star during the British - Invasion of the sixties and Mom would have done any record album cover justice.

I also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she had been playing 'Jumping Jack Flash'... a tune which Ricky and I had heard her bang-out on that cheap guitar and amplifier more times than I ever cared to remember. Mom had eventually gotten pretty good at playing the guitar, at least 'Jumping Jack Flash.'

I doubted that Rick Sheffield had taken this particular photo, although I believed that his camera had been used. Mom was not centered properly in the photograph and there was a little too much of the floor, in front of her, captured in the picture to make it a good photograph. Yet again, I don't think my mother ever took a 'bad' photograph in her life.

Looking again at the picture and thinking back, I wasn't even sure where Mom had gotten the instrument, maybe Rick Sheffield had given it to her. Looking up from the photo now, I peered over at the guitar where it was leaned against the wall. Ricky hooked it up to an amp and planked on it occasionally and it sounded just as bad now as it had forty years ago, when I used to hear Mom practice. It was worn, battered and certainly an antique now and probably worth a few bucks to the right person as a nostalgic icon of the nineteen sixties.

Mom was looking downward at her hands as she played the guitar. ...She had also possessed a beautiful voice and sung a lot but in all honesty, she couldn't carry a single note. I know that the music leader at Mom's church must have been baffled, with what to do with her, as Mom had always insisted on being a member of the choir, which she had been, for years.

"When was this, again?" Ricky asked suddenly, as he looked at another of the photos.

"Probably, just before you were born, Ricky. Mom may even have been carrying you in the photos." Brenda now piped up.

"It was more than fifty years ago" I said, a little astonished.

Ricky was still having a little trouble comprehending the actual implication of the photos with their recent discovery. He had always struggled, to some degree, with the implication of time and still wasn't quite certain that he understood where Rick Sheffield fit into the theme of things. Ricky abruptly put his head in his right hand and closed his eyes, whereupon I reached across the table and grabbed his left hand and squeezed it hard.

"We all miss her, brother." I said.

Ricky squeezed my hand in return but kept his eyes closed and said nothing in reply.

"Guys, is it time for a break from the photos, maybe?" Andrea asked quietly.

"Yes! Let's go out and see what Yogi and Stormy are up to. We'll bring our coffees, with us." Brenda had answered, eagerly.

Brenda, Ricky's girlfriend, was not one of Mom's kids but she had loved Mom, as if she were and had called her "Mom" for years.

Brenda was an E.R. Nurse and looked similar to a tattooed version of Grace Slick from back in the day. Brenda was, what I would consider, a cute girl and she had been end over tea kettle, in-love, with Ricky since she first saw him. Her fifty third birthday was looming and with it, the usual party at the trailer which Andrea and I planned on attending in a few weeks. The birthday party was a big to-do for my little brother and his girlfriend and would be Andrea's unofficial initiation into the family, at least for me.

...In some ways, Ricky had been closer to Mom, than me. As an infant he'd been stricken with a severe fever at birth which had almost killed him. As a result he had been bestowed with learning challenges and never fully understanding the meaning of time. Ricky understood, yesterday and tomorrow, but he "lived" strictly in the present moment - here and now. Time had very little significance to him, this made the photos challenging for him.

Mom had worked diligently with him throughout his entire life to help him conquer most of these challenges and been largely successful to a degree. She had taught him to read using Hot-Rod Magazine and Ricky could do basic mathematics quite well now, two things the experts said he would never be able to do. Mom's divine love and superb teaching skills had made liars of them all.

But now she was gone...

Brenda and I did the best we could to help Ricky but we could never fill Mom's shoes in this regard and all three of us knew it. Ricky was a smart guy and possessed a lot of talent which he had learned from my Grandfather, as we both had, growing up. Yet I clearly saw that Ricky was befuddled by the photographs and that bothered me...

..."Is your Aunt Elsie still alive?" Andrea asked me now, as we lay in bed together.

"No, she died in nineteen seventy nine while running a ten kilometer race for charity, with thousands of other people. Apparently she been going along at her own pace and even joking with a few people when she suddenly fell dead, at fifty two years of age. She ran all the time, in lots of races and had been in very good physical shape at the time but the paramedics said that she had been dead before she hit the ground." I replied.

"How did your Mom take it?" Andrea asked.

"Andrea, ...I've always believed this, I think Mom knew that Aunt Elsie was going to leave us. It's been said that twins have an intuition that most of us never experience. They were close and I think Mom instinctively knew. Somehow she was at peace with it." I said quietly.

"Your mom had a strong Faith, I know, and I'm sure that helped." Andrea replied.

"Yes" I said, without elaborating any further.

Andrea and I were currently inside the guest's bedroom of Ricky's Seattle trailer house with the soothing sound of rain pattering on the metal roof above us; Ricky and Brenda were asleep, just down the hallway from us in their own bedroom. The single-wide trailer sat on a massive storage lot that was owned by a man named Mont Hadley whom had been a friend of Mom's for many years. Mont had taken a liking to Ricky and me, during our teen years and had eventually "hired" Ricky, as a young man, for security of the yard, even though the premises were monitored by a security company, complete with several state of the art cameras and police dispatch.

..."I love my little brother, Andrea, I just wish there was more I could do to help him." I said, after a long silence.

"Every time you come and visit him, you're helping, and he worships the ground you walk on, Tim."Andrea replied, evenly.

"You really think so?" I asked, turning my head toward her.

"Yes, ask Brenda, she'll tell you." Andrea said.

Stormy the cat jumped onto our bed within the darkened room and walked across my chest to nuzzle Andrea while totally ignoring me.

"Awww, hey Stormy girl, how ya doing? You and Yogi dog been doing OK?" Andrea asked as we both began to pet the kitty-cat.

"I think she's a pretty happy camper, here, Andrea" I said, listening to Stormy purr.

Andrea made an acknowledging sound and then asked "Where did your Momstand politically, I'm just curious, you don't have to answer that, Tim, if it's uncomfortable or none of my business."

"Mom liked Eisenhower and JFK but after his assassination and the quagmire that Vietnam became, she no longer had any faith in politicians ever again." I said, simply

"Sounds a lot like my own folks." Andrea replied.

We both fell silent then with just the sound of rain falling on the roof of the trailer and Stormy's purring while we continued to pet her.

"We get on the plane Wednesday." Andrea reminded me with a bit of hesitation in her voice.

We were actually, getting on the plane tomorrow evening, which was Sunday to fly back to Laughlin but that wasn't what she was talking about.

"I'm looking forward to it honey." I said pulling her closer.

"You're still good, with it?" Andrea asked.

"Honey, I'm in-love with you and I want to meet your family, you've already met mine. I'm in this deal for the long haul, c'mon." I said reassuringly.

Andrea was still a bit nervous about being in-love again. The sudden and abrupt disintegration of her marriage had made her slow to trust and she still had some self-esteem issues to work through, like we all did.

Stormy jumped down off the bed and left Andrea and I alone then.

"How you doing?" I now asked with a completely different connotation than we had currently been speaking in.

"I could use a mustache ride, I think." Andrea admitted.

"Sure you can handle it?" I asked solemnly, in a teasing way.

"If we close the door, I think I could..." she replied.

"Saddle-up cowgirl." I said as I flung the covers off of us with my leg.

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