Rendezvous with Fay

By Larry Farmer

Their rendezvous soon turns into a courtship when Fay asks Dutch to stay and he gladly agrees. San Diego, where he’d entered the Marine Corps a few years before, is suddenly much more attractive—it’s Fay’s town. This is where he wants to stay.

Fay isn’t the hippie chick he had thought she was when they first met, but she does make everything seem easy…and with so much happiness and love. She questions his job choices and gives her parents crazy stories about him, but she loves this tall Texan.

Can they make a go of a runaway Vegas marriage?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781509222612

Larry Farmer

Born in Harlingen, Texas on October 7, 1948 where I grew up and worked on a cotton farm. I graduated from Harlingen High School in 1966. I attended Texas A&M beginning in Summer 1966. In January 1970 I dropped out to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, where I served as an enlisted man attaining the rank of Sergeant, with an honorable discharge after 3 years. I worked as a computer programmer afterwards in Houston and as a civil servant for a US Air Force Base in Frankfurt, Germany. I traveled and worked in Europe for two years, which included flying to Israel in October 1973 to aid the Jewish State in the Yom Kippor War. I was also in Greece in the summer of 1974 when the war between Greece and Turkey erupted over Cyprus. I was stuck on the Greek Island of Ios for part of that war until I managed to catch a boat to Athens just in time to watch the Greek military dictatorship fold. I returned to Texas A&M in the Fall of 1976 to finish my Bachelor's degree in Business Management. I returned to Europe afterwards and also Israel where I lived for almost a year. I later taught English in Taiwan before returning home to get a Master's degree in Agricultural Economics in 1980, which I received in 1982. I joined the US Peace Corps in 1984 and served for three years in the Philippines. In 1987 I began work for the Swiss government as a computer programmer until 1998. I have worked in the IT department of Texas A&M since 1998. I have three children and am presently divorced. I am Jewish.

Book preview

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So what’s going to be our song? she asked. Since we’re not in love yet, it doesn’t have to be a big dramatic song. But we should have a song, don’t you think?

Sure, you bet. We rate a song. We’re a pair. That rates a song.

I’ve got one, unless you think of one.

Go ahead. What?

We’re both Beatles fans, she said. How about ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road’?

No way. I laughed. But for now, why not? When we fall in love, then something better. Kiss on it?

Okay, but no tongue, she teased. We’re in public.

I read a statistic where relationships that start off living together, I said before I kissed her in celebration, now feeling earnest, that if they ever get married, it ends quickly.

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Hunter was not a hippie, but he felt the allure of the open road in America and in Europe. In Vienna, he met a Polish girl, Ewa, and she gladly joined Hunter on a trek to India. Shared experiences bonded them, but the Cold War made falling in love the worst hardship of all.

Rendezvous

with Fay

by

Larry Farmer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Rendezvous with Fay

COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Larry Farmer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Tina Lynn Stout

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Vintage Rose Edition, 2018

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-2261-2

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

To Terry, Pat, and Elizabeth

The ache inside over Monica stayed with me every mile that I drove from Los Angeles to San Diego. Driving past Camp Pendleton took some of the edge off momentarily as I recalled my proud past, my days in the Marine Corps. Soon, however, the frustrations of that time during the so-called Age of Aquarius made the anger and pain inside me even more pronounced. That conflict, in fact, the Aquarian versus the Spartan back in the early 1970s, was a perfect match for the conflict these few years later with her.

Why I had gotten mixed up with a hippie was beyond me. And as much as I hated the anguish inside, I relished it, too. Emotional self-flagellation—I deserved every ounce. Teach me what I need and let me move on with my life. The sooner the better. Amen.

As I entered the outskirts of San Diego, warm memories predominated once more. My days as a private in the United States Marine Corps had begun here. Cherished days. Sacred days. Defiant days, as I joined to go to Vietnam and to take a patriotic stand. A stand against people like Monica, in fact, even though I hadn’t met her yet.

The defiance coming out now about those precious days was welcomed by me. I liked the grit and the fight in me again and preferred it over the hurt and moping I had been feeling while trying to work things out with her the last few weeks. At least I knew I’d tried with her, but the defiance now gave me new wings and new direction.

I haphazardly checked the map as I drove on the freeway. Fay lived near the Chula Vista area just off the freeway I was on. I had her address scribbled on the map in big bold letters, as if she was someone of importance, which she was, with a huge X to mark the area of San Diego where that address was located.

More and more, as I drove, thoughts of Fay and our days in Frankfurt, West Germany, barely two years before, prevailed. I regretted not knowing her better. I even resented that I didn’t. I was with Monica then, while Fay was with her boyfriend Joe. Me, the one Texan, trying to mix with these damn Californians. Except Fay was not damned. Anything but. And she didn’t belong in California, I determined, even back then. She had much the makings of a perfect southern belle.

And that’s why I was in San Diego.

The address was of a nice, middle-class apartment complex. It lay in a prosperous-looking neighborhood. Was Fay well off? She was a keypunch operator back in Frankfurt, on the US Air Force base where we worked in 1974, and from her letters I understood she was doing something like that in San Diego. That and secretarial work. I doubted that paid very much even in San Diego.

I searched for the wing of the complex that held her apartment number. My mood was still sullen, but the closer I got to her apartment, the more I began to perk up. As I walked by the swimming pool area, suddenly I heard my name called out.

Dutch! someone yelled.

I turned toward the chairs at the side of the pool, where people were sunbathing. A tall, slim, tanned, gorgeous, bikini-clad body ran toward me. She had her long brown hair in a ponytail that swung as she ran.

Dutch, she yelled again as she hugged me. It’s so good to see you. I can’t believe how excited I am! Someone from back then, the not-so-old days in Frankfurt.

Before I got to hug her in return, she pulled away to grab my hand and lead me out of the pool area. As we walked, she gave a jump-skip for a step in glee while she swung my hand with hers joyously.

You let your hair grow out again, she commented as we walked. I like it. To the nape of your neck like when Joe and I first met you back then, before you cut it all off. You look good. It’s so blond. Just like the surfer boys here. Except you have a long, tall, husky Texas body. And I’m sure you still have your washboard abs. I like that even better. I remember the first time I watched you work out in the gym and saw that washboard stomach of yours. I was so shocked. ‘This guy is a Marine from Texas,’ I thought to myself back then.

As friendly as Fay’s demeanor always seemed to be, and as warm as the memories were, I was surprised at the celebration she exhibited in our reunion. Any regret I ever had back then in Frankfurt about not pursuing her, about any longing inside toward her, magnified in me as we walked to her apartment. What did I leave behind there in Germany? And why the hell did I leave it? I thought as she left me to myself while she changed her clothes.

I see you changed into something more comfortable, I joked sarcastically as Fay re-entered her living room wearing a light blue jumper outfit.

I know. She laughed in return. "But for chumming around in the living room, this actually is more comfortable. Just not to your eyes, maybe. Anyway, listen, Dutch, I’d love to make you some coffee, but maybe you’d like to go out and have some refreshment in a restaurant. Or even a beer? What ya