Cars are going by. I would guess that most of these people work in Flagstaff by the way they are headed. The traffic does occasionally stop in front me. A Jeep pulls to a stop right in front of me. DAMN! There she is. The hair is almost white, she still has her Bette Paige bangs, and her face is weathered, but even though I haven't seen her since she was nineteen, I would recognize her anywhere. She turns and looks at me. I smile. No recognition. She can't be bothered and starts up with the traffic. SHIT! Oh, well. What could I expect?

About two-hundred feet down the road, the tail lights come and she pulls over to the curb. She stands up on the driver's side step and looks over the top at me with a look of disbelief. Trying not to look too excited I walk over to the Jeep. She sits back down in the car. I look in at her.

“You know, “ she says finally, “you're not such a fine sight to see.”

Somehow, her Texas accent seems stronger than I remembered it.

“You're long past being a girl and this isn't a flat-bed Ford, so I guess we're even.”

“What do you want to do? Pick up where we left off?”

“We can't. We're not the same people. You were nineteen and I was twenty-two. We have to get to know each other all over again and see where that takes us.”

“Don't just stand there. Get in!”

I throw my stuff in the back and get in the right seat. Before I even have the belt clipped she is back in traffic. As soon as she finds a spot to hang a U-turn we're going back the other way. She gets out her cell phone.

“Hi,” she says. “I need the day off today....Yes, I know but something is going to come up.”

I give her a wry smile that she returns.

“I know, but I have been your most reliable employee for the last ten years, I think I deserve a little slack.... O.K. I'll be in tomorrow.”

She closes the phone.

“By that, something is going to come up, remark I assume that you are not still married,” I said.

“No.”

“That didn't last long.”

“I'd rather not talk about it. And, you?”

“No. And, it lasted too long.”

“What? It took you over forty years to realize that you married the wrong woman.”

“Hey! It was my mistake, but I gave it a good run. Besides, I think that if you hadn't been through a marriage yourself we wouldn't be having this conversation.”

“Probably not. You know, that was a pretty nasty remark you made that last time we saw each other.”

“Yah. I want to apologize for that. I wouldn't have been facetious except thats what I thought you were being. I didn't realize that you were probably the only person who didn't know she was pregnant.”

“If you had just said that she was pregnant it wouldn't have hurt so much. I probably would have question that you were sure it was yours.”

“I didn't find out the truth of that until thirty-seven years later. By that time it was ancient history and not worth getting upset over.”

“Oh! I didn't know. Sorry. Does your kid know?”

“What's the point? There are no medical issues so I will always be Daddy. My ex won't say anything. Whatever you think of her for what she did forty years ago, she isn't really a bad sort.”

“Yes, but you are divorced.”

“You're right. I said that it wasn't worth getting upset over, but it stuck in my craw, and stuck, and stuck. When she said that she didn't want sex any more, I did what all men do when they hear that, added the words 'with you' to the sentence, and decided the marriage was over.”

“So, that's what all men do when they hear that.”

“Explain something, does it?”

“Not really. When I say something I'm very clear. It comes with age.”

She turns into her drive. I suppose you would call the place a small ranch. There is a mid sized, contemporary house with a three-car garage, proper desert landscaping, and a stable with a corral out back.

“I see you have someplace to keep horses.”

“You have to get something out of a marriage. Did you ever learn to ride?”

“I 'm still not what you would consider a horseman, but I've learned to move with a horse so I can go on a trail ride without falling off.”

“What made you do that?”

“An affair with other girl from Texas. She said that she could teach me to move with the horse in a minute, but it only took about thirty seconds.”

“Tied your balls to the saddle horn?”

“How did you know?”

“I was going to do the same thing. Come on. Let's go inside.”

As soon as we get in the house she turns and gives me a long, hard kiss knocking both our hats to the floor..

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Have I told you lately you talk too much?”

We leave a trail of clothes on are way to the bedroom and are both naked when she pulls me down onto the unmade bed.

About three hours later, I wake up from our after sex cat nap. She is looking at me across the pillow with her big, dark eyes. I look at her face and realize that this is still a face that I don't mind looking at across a pillow when I awake. At sixty she is as pretty as any woman ever needs to be. Raising her head off the pillow and leaning it on her hand she uses the other hand to trace idle circles in my chest hair for a moment.

“You;re better than you were forty years ago,” she says with a pleased look on her face.

“So are you.”

“That's a given. I was a virgin.”

She sits up and playfully hits me with a pillow. We wrestle around in the bed for a while like a couple of kids.

“Why don't you use the bathroom? Come back and we'll see just how good we are.”

I practically jump out of bed. When I get back she has one pillow at the center of the bed and one in the middle. She motions me to put my butt on the one in the middle and my head on the other. When I lay down, she straddles my chest and spreads my arms out.

“Remember how you were going to tie me up when we had sex, but we never got around to it?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she says, pulling handcuffs up from between the mattress and the headboard, “In a way, we really are going to pick up where we left off.”

I'm a bit uneasy, but I let here cuff my hands to the headboard. She gets off and pulls a rope out from under the mattress at the foot of the bed and in short order I am tied, spread eagle, on the bed.

“Just a moment,” she says with a smile, “I have to get something.”

She returns with a can of shaving cream, a razor, and a bowl of water, puts them down and walks out again. When she comes back she is holding an elastrator, green bands and a stockman's knife. She holds up the elastrator and stockman's knife for me to see.

“Do you know what this is for?”

“You have got to be kidding!”

“I loved you. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, I gave you my virginity and you dumped me. I decided right them what I would do if I ever saw you again, give you a really grate fuck, so you would know what you were missing, then cut your balls off.”

She kneels on the end of the bed and sets to work shaving my balls. Of course, I get hard.

“Men! I'm going to castrate you and you get a hard-on.”

“There is a law against malicious castration in the State of Arizona, you know.”

“Please, all I need is one woman on the jury and they will never get a conviction. You made me hate you and you deserve it. There is nothing you can say that will talk me out of it.”

“If you hate me then you have passion for me. That means we can love again. If you had recognized me and kept on driving when you saw me, then we would have no hope. We can love again. Let me make a deal with you.”

“Save your breath. I want you to live the rest of your life knowing the feeling of loss that I had when you dumped me. I'll drop you off at the emergency room when I'm done, but I'm going to take my time and make you feel it.”

She finishes shaving me and starts to load a band on the elastrator.

“If you're sure you aren't going to change your mind it won't hurt to listen.”

I've upset her rhythm. She tilts her head and gets a little exasperated look.

“OK. Talk.”

“Let's live together as lovers for five years, denying each other nothing We'll live with complete honesty, no lies. We've both been married, so we both know how hard that is to do. We will share all our sexual fantasies, no matter how perverted we think they are and try to realize any of them that won't do damage to us. Then, at the end of that time, if you still think that I deserve to be castrated, my balls are yours.”

She's thinking.

“What if you can't get it up after that?”

“I'll lick your pussy as long as we both shall live.”

She looks at me for a moment then a bit of a smile crosses her face.

“That should be part of wedding vows.”

Her look is serious again. She leans forward and crawls up until she is looking me in the face.

“Three years, we're not getting any younger, and we have to get married.”

“Done!”

“You agree to that?”

“It was my idea.”

She sits up across my thighs, gets an almost petulant look, and makes a show of idly flicking my penis back and forth with the elastrator as she thinks.

“I don't know if I should trust you. You could run off as soon as I let you loose.”

“I wouldn't run off this time even if you wanted to cut off my penis.”

“Don't give me any ideas!” she says as she starts to laugh. “OK! It's a deal.”

She gets off of me, unties my feet, gets the keys and unlocks the handcuffs.

“Come on! Get up!, she is pulling me out of the bed. “We still have time to shower and get into Flagstaff this afternoon. We have errands to run.”

“Errands?”

“Yes, you don't have to get a blood test in Arizona, and there is no waiting period after getting the license. If we can find an available judge we can get married this afternoon. And, no more sex until we're married.”

She pulls me into the bathroom and turns on the shower.

“What other errands?” I asked.

“There is a Staples in Flagstaff. The last time I was there I saw a really nice four-year calendar.”

“That's why you said three years. So it would fit on that calendar.”

“We're getting that calendar and a Sharpie so you can check off the days yourself.”

She pulls me into the shower and while she's kissing me under the running water grabs my penis.

“It's a solar heater so we won't run out of warm water,' she whispers. “Maybe just one more time before we are married.”