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It was a bright, shiny Monday morning and I should've at least been trying to act like a productive member of Smithfield society. Instead, I sprawled on a rattan chaise lounge on the sun porch, a dying laptop hiding my erection, and I tracked the new lawn boy as he labored to tame the wilds of my backyard. A yard I had conveniently, purposefully, shamefully neglected for two full years.
I liked to think of the grounds as a sanctuary, an overgrown jungle for wildlife to find safe harbor. In truth, they were an eyesore. The roses, which had once bloomed under my meticulous mother's green thumb, were a tumble of sharp briars and deep thickets. And because I'd been so mired in disgrace when my mother died, it had been easy to let the rose arbor rot.
Besides, I couldn't go outside to garden.
The boy bent, muscular thighs tensing. He gripped a bag of mulch and slung it over his strong shoulder. I admired his sleek hind end covered in filthy, work-worn Carhartt jeans. His waistband dipped, his shirt rode high and a sweet patch of winter-white skin peeked above his plaid undershorts. I couldn't take my eyes off that strip of flesh, feeling dirty enough to smack my lips as I leered from the relative privacy of the sun porch.
A few weeks ago my brother Porter had come to stay and demanded I do something about our mother's legacy. At first, I thought he referred to the pair of us. Forty-ish and neither one of us functioning as well as one would expect given our heritage, wealth and education. But no, he meant the blasted roses.
Then Mr. Tindell sent this interesting new hire to help tidy the lawn. The gardener had pulled into the driveway in a rattletrap Ford pickup and he'd enchanted me, though I'd yet to speak with him. The kid came to mow the broad expanse of lawn that reached nearly five acres from South Street down to Meadow and he remained here on the job—coming to work at the house a few times during the week. Today he toiled with a wheelbarrow and a shovel. Sunlight warmed the cool spring air and he'd taken off his jacket.
I squirmed but I didn't look away. I couldn't. I kept him in my sight and watched as he moved effortlessly with pounds of cedar bark balanced on his shoulder. His gait loose, he radiated youthful confidence in his ability to lift that bale and tote that barge in the great wide out-of-doors.
The lucky bastard.
I should write some of this down. Vitality was exactly what my writing lacked these the past six months, which was why I'd recently turned my sorry focus to a culinary memoir.
The lawn boy's shirt dropped into place and that pale flash of lean flesh disappeared from view.
My computer ponged a warning as the three hundredth unread email landed in my inbox. I wasn't interested because finally, my muse had arrived. If the porch walls and ceiling were made of anything other than sheer, spotless glass, I might have touched myself. It had been a long time since I'd felt such interest in another man.
That thought would have depressed me if I weren't so altogether turned on.
From inside the house the whirl of my thousand-dollar vacuum cleaner crept nearer. I sat straighter and crossed my legs, adjusting the crotch of my Levis and hoping to hell Mrs. Henderson wouldn't catch me in a moment of depravity again. As it stood, she spent each Tuesday morning at St. Joe's saying her rosary for me. I wouldn't want her to add Wednesday as well.
