Her course had been set since the tenth grade when Frank Parsons had asked her for a date and she had refused. It was the first time any girl had refused the rising star of the football team.
A few months later, Frank asked again and was again met with a refusal. Though she did allow him to sit with her at lunch in the cafeteria.
By the time Frank mustered the courage to ask a third time, nobody doubted that they would soon be walking down the aisle together. Which they did after Kimberly finished college and Frank started his Master of Divinity program at the Seminary.
Frank’s coach had been disappointed by his choice. He had been a starter on the college team in his first year and there had been talk of a possible NFL career. But his early promise had faded and by his final year the NFL talk had stopped and he was no longer even an automatic choice as starter. But for a run of injuries on the team he would have been cut.
Frank had heard the call of the Lord and saving souls was more important to him now than moving pigskin yard-by-yard across a playing field. And Kimberly, ever faithful Kimberly never questioned Frank’s choice then or in the six years that had followed.
Kimberly had found work at one of the telephone call centers that were advancing across the mid-West as agricultural employment declined. The work was poorly paid and unrewarding but it paid the bills and allowed Frank to find a step on the first rungs of the preaching profession. Kimberly’s college degree allowed her to rapidly work her way up through the ranks to deputy center manager. Which in practice meant manager in all but name and pay grade, the owners believing a Y-chromosome to be an essential prerequisite for receiving a manager’s title and manager’s pay but not to do manager’s work.
The titular manager was a nephew-in-law of the owners who arrived late in the morning and left early in the afternoon for either his mistress or the golf course. Kimberly knew about the mistress of course, as she knew the private lives of everyone in the office. It was her business to know.
She knew that in the next six weeks she would have to fill at least two positions of employees who had given notice and at least another three who had not: Beverly who prepared the scripts for the representatives to read would be leaving to care for an aunt with Altzheimer’s, Kath who answered calls was considering returning to the abusive husband she had fled six months ago and Carol who had discovered she could earn more money with less aggravation working a pole instead of a telephone.
It was a shame about Carol, she had been one of their most productive reps. The others work would not be missed. The life choices of others were their own affair. If she was going to be judgemental, Kath’s choice seemed remarkably poorer than Carol’s.
Kimberly knew that compared to most women at the center, her marriage was a success. Frank’s job was poorly paid an likely to remain so. But Frank was ambitious and his congregation was growing.
The problem was sex.
Or rather, the lack of it. Kimberly had not been a virgin when she began her careful pursuit. In high school through the start of college, sex with Frank had been hot and frequent. Then in their sophomore year, Frank had stopped making approaches and began withdrawing from hers.
By the start of the summer, Kimberly had had enough. There was a blazing row and they separated. Then a few months later, Frank returned and declared that the reason he could not sleep with her was that he had found a personal relationship with God and sleeping with a married woman would be a sin. After a long talk, Frank had proposed and Kimberly accepted. There would be all the sex she wanted again after they were married.
Only after the marriage ceremony and only by degrees did Kimberly begin to understand that sex within the marriage would be for strictly procreational purposes. Sex was now a duty to be performed once a month at the peak of her cycle. A passionless, joyless exercise in futility for all concerned: she was taking the pill.
The call center was a production plant, one of almost a dozen run by the company. Their job was to fulfill the orders won by headquarters in Austin. Once a month a manager from each of the fulfilment centers would gather in Austin to receive their marching orders for the month ahead. It was a routine chore that her boss would have normally delegated to Kimberly if not for the chance to spend a night away from home with his mistress.
In late spring of 1994, the mistress’ husband completed his overseas army posting and with it the opportunity for overnight stays. And so early in May, Kimberly found herself driving over the McHoon bridge on her way to Austin. The strength of her marriage, her faith and her faithfulness were as beyond question as the strength of the bridge itself. No-one who knew her would imagine that they would soon be brought down by an incident involving three strangers she would never talk to.
The meeting ended early in the afternoon and the managers headed to a bar to drink. Later they would visit a strip club together. None of the managers would think to invite Kimberly of course. The least worst outcome was that she would be offended, at worst she would accept.
Kimberly joined the men in the bar, ordered one drink for forms sake, made her excuses and left. She had expressed an interest in visiting the Zilker Botanical Gardens, but that was really an excuse. Had the epoch been later she would probably have returned to the hotel to work on her laptop but at the time portable computers were still rare and without a network to connect to of limited use. The manager had one of course, but like the cell phone the company paid for, it was for status rather than use. Kimberly knew how often he used the cell phone because she paid the bills each month. Which is also how she knew whenever he changed his old mistress for a younger model.
With several hours to kill, the botanical gardens were as good a place to be as any.
As she walked the meandering path through the wooded part, Kimberly reflected on the fact that the men she worked with were without exception, total shits. Where did it all come from, the idea that men should automatically occupy the top position regardless of merit?
“Why should a man always be at the head?”
Kimberly realized she had said this out loud. She looked round to see if anyone might have overheard, but nobody was there.
There was a bench at the top of a rise overlooking the lake. She did not need to rest but she did need to think. She had heard the same question the previous Sunday when Frank had given his sermon on a reading from Corinthians.
Suddenly her train of thought was interrupted by a flapping and fluttering of wings as the geese on the lake quarreled. A young woman in a bright red dress was throwing bread crumbs. Straight, jet black hair framed a narrow face with pale white skin, blue eyes and thin lips. Short and fashionable, with lips, shoes and purse co-ordinated to the exact same shade of red as her dress, any young Parisienne would have been pleased to wear the ensemble to a reception or a shopping trip on the Champs-Élysées. On a Texan nature trail, even a nature trail in the state capitol, it was incongruous.
Red dress continued to stare out at the lake as the geese came to terms with the fact that the food had gone. After a short time, another woman appeared, older, maybe mid forties, also immaculately dressed but in grey.
Without exchanging a word, grey dress approached red dress and grasped the hem with both hands, raising it to expose her buttocks and midriff.
A third figure approached, a man wearing a blue blazer, English cut in the style with which Gary Cooper and Fred Astaire created men’s elegance in the 30s. Past his twenties but certainly short of his fifties, blue blazer might have been any age in-between.
