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Subject: {Lysander}JDR"Grey 1a"( MF rom slow )[1/3]
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                           =====================
               See copyright notice at the end of the story.
                           =====================


                            Grey
                        by Lysander
                  (lysander@bitsmart.com)
Part 1

Look, I know I'm not supposed to pick up hitchers.
It's not smart for me, and it's not smart for the hiker.
But it was a rainy afternoon, and the guy up the road
looked really dejected.  He was somewhat small anyway,
and his shoulders slumped over as he slogged through the
mud.  All alone in the half-dark like that, he reminded
me of my cat when I had rescued him as a stray from a
sudden downpour. The kid had a yellow poncho on and
wasn't carrying any bag or even a gas can.  I supposed
he was just walking some short distance, and I could
drop him off and be on my way in five minutes.

I pulled over and lowered the passenger window.
"Where you headed?"

The guy leaned down and looked in through the opened
window.  Except it wasn't a guy.  She was maybe twenty
or twenty-one, and she was soaked like she wasn't
wearing the plastic poncho at all.  If there's anything
that makes my heart melt more than a kitten in a
rainstorm, it's a beautiful young woman in a rainstorm.
The look in her eyes told me that she knew it wasn't
smart taking rides on the back roads, even if -- or
maybe especially if -- the car's a Lincoln.  But it also
told me she wanted desperately to get out of the rain.

"I'm going west," she said.

Nice and specific.  "I'm going cross-country to
California on business."

She considered that for a moment.  I tried to look
non-threatening, without looking like I was trying to
look non-threatening, you know?  I was concerned about
this girl, with nothing but what she was wearing, trying
to reach an unknown destination.  But if I frightened
her off, I wasn't going to do any good.  She looked into
my face, then back down the road in both directions.  
Visibly, she came to her decision.  "Okay."

I unlocked the passenger doors and told her to put
her poncho on the back floorboard.  She did and got in,
putting her purse between herself and the passenger
door.

She stared out the window at the passing countryside
and at the patterns the rain and wind made on the glass.
She could also probably look at my reflection that way,
too. Checking me out.  Obviously, she didn't feel like
talking. That was fine with me.

For about half an hour we were like that, me trying
not to look at her, her trying to hide the fact that she
was looking at me. I had the radio turned down in case
she wanted to talk, but she didn't want to talk.  But
you know how it is when two people are in a car, you
have to talk or the silence grows oppressive.

"So what's west?" I asked at last.

She finally turned her head to me.  "What?"

"I said, 'what's west.'"

"Oh.  My parents.  They live in Seattle."

"I see," I replied, knowingly, but still in the dark.
She looked too old to be a runaway trying to get back
home. And she didn't have that tired, wary look I had
seen in news documentaries.  Maybe she was just down on
her luck, trying to get to a support system on her own.  
I shrugged inwardly and concentrated on driving.

She didn't seem inclined to volunteer more
information, so I turned the radio back up.  The local
public radio station was on, and I heard the last minute
or two of something by Bach, I don't know which piece,
but he's one of the few composers I can recognize
without a program. They thanked the sponsors, and
mentioned my company's name. I pointed at the radio and
said, "That's me.  Or my company, at least.  My name's
Mark Ferguson."

"I'm Grace," she replied.

"Nice to meet you, Grace."

"No, not 'Grace.' G-R-E-Y.  Grey."

"Grey?  That's an unusual name," I commented.  "At
least it is around here."

"Yeah, well.  My parents were hippies, you know?  The
way they told me, they wanted to name me after whatever
the sky was when I was born.  But they happened to be in
Seattle, and I was early.  They couldn't really name me
'Overcast' or 'Gloomy,' so--"

"Grey," I finished, grinning.

"Exactly."  She glanced at me and I saw her smile for
the first time.  Her lips curled momentarily and I
caught a glimpse of her white, even teeth.  Then she
turned back toward the window, and all I saw was her
hair and half an ear.  Her neck was thin and graceful,
the left tendon standing out clear as her head was
turned.  Her hair was unstyled, hanging straight down
her back.  It was brunette, I suppose, when dry, with
golden brown highlights.  What I thought was a man's
scrawny body was, instead, a young woman's athletic
body.  Her blue work shirt was tucked tightly into baggy
army fatigues -- the old olive drab kind, not the
camouflage that soldiers wear now -- and showed off
high, pointed breasts and a stomach without an ounce of
fat.

She saw me staring at her, and she turned her head
to stare back at me.  Her face was... beautiful, but that
doesn't begin to describe it.  She had a high forehead
and intelligent green eyes.  Her nose sloped down and
out, and flared outward in wide nostrils.  Her lips were
neither full nor thin, and always seemed to be slightly
open.  Her face still retained some baby fat, but her
high cheekbones were just discernible.  It was a face
that would age well, going from pretty to beautiful to
striking to handsome as the years passed.

I was getting uncomfortable, and looked away.
"The airport's coming up in a while," I said.  "If you want,
we can call your folks.  I'm sure they'd be willing to
wire you a ticket to Seattle."

Grey stretched out her arms.  "Thanks, Mark, but
if it's all right, I'll just tag along with you for a
while."

"Fine with me, but it's going to take about three
weeks for me to get to the coast."

"What do you do, for a living, anyway?"

"Oh, I own a small company that makes machine tools
for light manufacturers.  I make the machines that make
the machines that make the prizes in your cereal, is how
I put it."  She smiled at that.  "We just started
writing software for companies that want to network
machines from different manufacturers.  I'm not sure how
that works, and my people tell me that in a few years
everything's going to be cross- compatible, anyway.  I
don't know what that means, either, but it'll get a foot
in the door for us."

I looked at her and saw her staring out the
windshield, not listening anymore.  "Sorry.  I talk too
much, I know.  Just tired of the quiet."

"Oh, yeah."  Then, for fifty or sixty miles, she told
me about her life.  How her parents had finally settled
down after she was born, settled down too much, in fact.
At fifteen, she just got tired of her life, so she
decided to quit.  She hit the road, heading south and
east.  She wasn't a runaway, she said.  She just left
home a little early. She knew the dangers, so she
avoided big cities, where it was hard to live and easy
to get into serious trouble.  By the time she was
seventeen, she was in North Carolina and had just sort
of... stopped.  At least that was how she phrased it.

She floated around the state for a year or so,
mostly living with college students around the Triad and
Triangle, working in textile factories and restaurants.  
Then she met Randy.  She was in love, or thought she
was, and moved in with him.  He had a good job as an
electrician, and they were talking about getting married
and starting a family. Then the recession hit.  People
were afraid to build, and Randy's jobs dried up.  There
were bills to pay, more than Grey could handle.  A
friend of Randy's got him into selling drugs.  It's the
kind of thing that just happens.  Several of my
relatives had been busted for the same thing under the
same circumstances.  It's really not that big a step
from moonshine to marijuana to cocaine.

Randy started using, and to pay for his own habit,
he had to sell more.  A way to make ends meet became a way
to make a living.  Grey was getting scared, and when
Randy started selling to kids, she got angry.  She
decided to clear out for good.  She took every penny
Randy had, called the sheriff and told where he kept the
drugs, and left.  She left her clothes behind and just
walked out.  She hadn't even decided to head back to
Seattle until I stopped on the road.

Suddenly I thought of something.  "Grey, I'm
registered at some pretty expensive hotels for the next
few days.  I'd better stop and cancel those, and we can
stay someplace cheaper."

"Don't worry," she smiled, as though at a private
joke.  "I got enough from Randy to pay for
expense-account hotels for a couple of weeks, and to buy
some new clothes, too."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure.  Don't worry about me."

We made small talk almost all the way to Knoxville.
Grey turned out to be an intelligent, witty young woman.
She was widely read as far as I could tell, history and
art, the sciences.  I never seem to have time to read
more than sales and R and D reports.  Once she opened
up, despite her name, she was very lively.

As for me, she seemed impressed by my CD collection.
She thought it was "cool" that "an older guy" like me
(she grinned widely when she said that; I'm only forty)
would like the Chili Peppers and the Hoodoo Gurus.  On
the other hand, I was amazed that she was able to sing
along with Battlefield Band.  I told her about my
family, but she was reticent to talk about hers, except
to say that it had been so long since she had seen them,
that she wanted to work herself up to going back home.

When we got to my hotel, I escorted her to her
room.  I told her when my meeting was, and that I'd drop her
off at a mall so she could shop for whatever she needed
while I was busy.  She said goodnight, and I went on up
to my own room.

The next morning, we had a quiet breakfast in the
hotel restaurant (separate checks, she insisted) and
left. I dropped her off at a shopping center off the
interstate and told her when I'd be back and where to
meet me.  Then I went to my meeting.  I don't like
taking "fun" vacations, so every year or two, I make the
circuit of the company's bigger out-of-state customers.  
It's a policy that pays off in repeat customers and a
lot of word of mouth business, and I can write off about
a third of my vacation.  The meeting went well, and I
went back to the shopping center, only half-expecting to
see Grey there.

But she was waiting for me, bags in hand, wearing
a white blouse and knee-length dark red skirt, and medium
heels instead of sneakers.  She looked much nicer than
she did in the work shirt and fatigues and maybe a
couple of years older.  She stepped off the sidewalk and
we put her purchases in the trunk.  I complimented her
on her new clothes.  When she thanked me, she reached up
to loosen my tie a bit and said, "If I'm going to be
travelling with you, I think I ought to look the part."

Okay, this was probably a perfectly innocent remark.
But at the time, I wasn't sure how to take it.  On the
drive into Tennessee, I had certainly noticed how
attractive she was, and had wondered what she would be
like as a bed partner.  But then, almost every man
thinks that about almost every pretty woman he meets.  
The fact that my long-time lover and I had split up not
long before didn't make matters any easier.  But this
girl was not even quite twenty yet, half my age.  So I
tried to put her eyes and legs and the perfume she was
wearing out of my mind.

The next day was nothing but relaxation.  When I
vacation, I like to do absolutely nothing.  I'm not a
work hard/play hard kind of guy.  No golf or tennis,
just sitting by the hotel pool, reading a book.  As I
said, these meetings I had scheduled for the next couple
of weeks were mostly just to make sure everything was
running smoothly, so I didn't have any paperwork to wade
through.

At any rate, I was sitting by the pool, trying to
finish "The Creators" so I could move on to something
lighter, when Grey stepped up beside me.  "Are you
nearly through with that?" she asked.  I looked up to
see her standing above me, wearing a soft pink one-piece
bathing suit and matching knee-length wrap.  A bow held
her hair away from her face.

I thumbed through the remainder of the book.

"About a hundred more pages, I think."

"Can I borrow it when you're through?  I left my
copy at Randy's about half-read."

"Sure.  This won't take long."

She dropped the wrap and sat on the lounge chair
beside mine.  She reclined and tilted her head back,
enjoying the warmth of the late spring sun.  Her eyes
were closed, so I took the opportunity to look closely
at her. The suit was cut low front and back, and high
along her hips.  Her skin was smooth and just barely
tanned on all the parts I could see.  Her legs were
well-toned, not too muscular.  Her arms were the same.  
Her fingers were delicately crossed beneath her breasts
and a smile played across her lips.  I then noticed that
her eyes were cracked open.  I think I may have blushed
as I turned my attention, but not my concentration, back
to my book.

I had gotten through about half a page when Grey
spoke again five minutes later.  "Do you think it's warm
enough for a swim?"

I considered.  She was probably quite beautiful
when wet but not moping.  "I think so."

She stood and and removed the bow, facing me.  I
looked at her out of the corner of my eye while
pretending to read my book.  She turned and I saw the
rest of her suit, what little of it that there was.  It
was one of those "thong" suits.  I could see faint,
almost invisible tan lines across her buttocks where she
had worn a more respectable bikini the previous summer.  
She dove cleanly into the water, feet and legs together,
and for a split second, that exquisite posterior was
pointing skyward, filling my vision.

I didn't burn with passion for her, I didn't want
to possess her body; nothing so cliched.  Part of me
sexually appreciated the display of her body, but for
another part, there was an aesthetic appreciation of the
grace of her movements, of the proportions of her form.  
I found myself to be tantalized more than anything else.
She swam possibly a dozen laps, using different
strokes.  I watched her the entire time, and she saw me
watching her, but I didn't turn away, this time.

When she came to the edge of the pool after her final
lap, I was waiting for her, towel in hand.  I helped her
out like a gentleman and handed her the towel.  "You
swim beautifully," I said, more softly than I meant to.

"Thank you.  I--"

"Excuse me, Miss."

We turned to find that we had been joined by the
manager of the hotel.  When he had our attention, he
continued.  "Some of our patrons have requested that I
ask you to change into a less revealing swimsuit, or to
not use the pool."  I noticed two women, about sixty
years old but trying to look forty, sit down and begin
talking and looking in our direction.  Despite the sun
hats and dark glasses, they looked like they had just
come from a DAR function.  It was obvious that the
manager approved of Grey's attire about as much as they
did.

For a moment, I thought Grey was going to protest,
and I was eager to see it.  But she didn't.  "All right.  I
was going to have lunch anyway.  Would you join me,
Mark?"  I said I would join her shortly.  I wanted to
stay and tell this glorified desk clerk that I would be
checking out and not patronizing his hotel ever again.  
But Grey's actions made me forget what I was going to
say.

She had gathered up her wrap and tanning lotion.
The wrap and towel were draped over her arm, and she swung
the lotion back and forth in the other hand.  Her route
took her right past the Daughters, but she didn't
acknowledge their presence.  But then the bottle of
lotion flew out of her hand to land directly in front of
the women.  So Grey bent to pick it up.  From the waist.
Facing away from the women. She gave her hips a little
shake, and the look on their faces as she did that made
me laugh out loud.  Grey winked at me and continued on
inside the hotel with the most arrogant walk I have ever
seen a non-feline do.

I went up to my room, half-hoping that Grey would
be waiting in the hall for me, wearing that suit.  She
wasn't, of course.  I hopped in the shower to wash off
the sunscreen, dried off, dressed, and was out the door
in fifteen minutes.

I went down two floors to Grey's room.  I could hear
a blow dryer running in her room, so I knocked harder on
the door than usual.  It hadn't been completely shut, so
it swung open smoothly.  I looked around the open door
and saw Grey staring at me in the mirror above the sink
outside the bathroom.  She was completely naked.  All I
could see, however, were those eyes, looking out of the
mirror at me. The rest was just an impression.  I
stammered some sort of an apology and stepped back into
the hall.

Grey came out not long after.  Again, she was dressed
conservatively, but her dress highlighted her figure.
Neither of us said anything about what I might have
seen.  I wanted to tell her that she looked beautiful --
and she did, in a belted navy dress and white
half-jacket -- but I feared she would take it as a
reference to my view of her naked. If I had had more
confidence, I would have, but I was looking for a clear,
a very clear signal for her.  Mainly because I didn't
want to look foolish before her.

Lunch was filled with wonderful conversation.  I
suppose the food was delicious, at least Grey said it
was. But all my senses were concentrated on her.  Sure,
it sounds hackneyed, but it's the truth.  I was terribly
fascinated by her.  It wasn't really love, though the
physical and emotional attraction was there.  No, I was
interested in the totality of Grey.  Her laugh and wit,
the way she whispered when she thought she might be
overheard even though all we were talking about was my
intinerary.

I realize I haven't mentioned much about Grey's
part of our conversations.  That is because I find it
impossible to isolate a short fragment for illustration.
I could relate her explanation of why she both loved
and hated the rain.  About taking her general
equivalency diploma and taking a semester of college
just because people might otherwise think she had quit
high school because she couldn't handle it.  About her
theories on the cyclic nature of history -- I think we
argued that one the whole time we were on the road.  
Which do I pick and which do I ignore?  I can't, so all
I can do is give an overall impression of Grey, which
built up slowly, evolved over the weeks, until I had
this complete picture of a woman I was happy to call my
friend, and possibly more.

The next week went much like this.  Little Rock
and New Orleans.  Scintillating conversations.  More
probably- innocent remarks from Grey, and ambiguous
feelings on my part.  I found myself staring at her more
and more.  A few times I think I caught her staring at
me.  One day, out of the blue, she brought up our
relationship, if I can call it that.  We were watching a
pay-per-view movie in my room when she just asked me
flat out, "Mark, how come you haven't made a pass at
me?"

This was making me uncomfortable for some reason.
Maybe I thought my sexuality was being questioned.  I
tried to joke my way out of it.  "Just never got around
to it I guess.  Would you like me to make one now?"

But Grey was having none of that.  "I'm serious.
I've been with you for ten days now, and not once have you
asked me to spend the night in your room.  Hell, you
haven't even put your hand on my knee in the car."

If she wanted a serious answer, I would give her a
serious answer.  Of course, I had been wondering myself
why i hadn't tried anything.  "Look, Grey, first of all,
I'm twice your age."

"That hasn't stopped other men."

"Then there's the fact that, when we first met, I
thought I might be taking advantage of your
vulnerability."

She was actually indignant for a second.  "I am
not some helpless puppy who needs your protection."

I held up my hands in a conciliatory gesture.  "I
know that now.  But by the time I figured that out, I thought
we were more friends than anything else.  I just didn't
want to damage that by making some kind of unwanted
advance."  Yeah. When was the last time you heard a guy
say "we can still be friends?"


Copyright 1993 by Lysander (lysander@bitsmart.com)
This story may not be archived at any site that would charge
for access to it.
This story may not be sold as part of any collection that
charges more than a nominal copying fee.
Otherwise, this story may be distributed freely by
electronic means as long as the title, my pseudonym and this
copyright statement are not changed or removed.


                                   Grey
                                by Lysander
                                  Part 1a
                                   -30-


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