Grace a novella

By Peter Kelton

Grace a novella

Grace sits there high and mighty and commanding in a svelte pose, looking haughty and unapproachable. A guy gets up enough nerve to speak to her, and wham, out pours the friendliest downhome talk a man could ever hear. She could charm the skin off a rat

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Kelton DBA as Edit Ink
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578311418

Peter Kelton

Peter Kelton writes fiction when he's between news jobs and has written for some of the world's largest news organizations. Most of his work has been in New York. He has critiqued more than 450 novels in a national column and has written six novels of his own in a unique erudite literary fiction style of adventure, mystery, suspense and satire. He grew up in Texas, served overseas in the US Army and returned to Europe as a foreign correspondent. He currently divides his time between his homes in East St. Louis, IL and Querétaro, Mexico. He has ghost written for more than 100 clients and is a top-rated writer for the Upwork free-lance agency.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Grace tried to believe what Harry prescribed for her. Balance your outer and inner worlds where dreams, visions, hallucinations, and delusions are of value for their meaning, where your unconscious has equal weight with the here and now.

Jesus! Harry . . .

Give it a try, Grace.

She got dressed. All sessions with Dr. Harry Volvo transpired in the nude. He slipped through a back door in his consultancy and dressed, too, in privacy before a full-length mirror, his tie aligned with his dangling private part. Then jockey shorts and his creased trousers to cover up. Tucking in his blue shirttails came as the finishing touch. His next patient, Eleanor Hempfield, would show up at 2 p.m., plenty of time now for lunch.

Grace drove her red MG convertible north up Broadway into Alamo Heights, an expensive older neighborhood in San Antonio. She knew her condo mate, Eleanor Hempfield, would not be home until after three or four. Their Saturdays were like that. Dr. Volvo for Grace mornings and for Eleanor in the afternoon. It seemed the only time they could see him and the only time he could see them, for each worked five days a week in the underground headquarters of the National Air Defense Command, snug beneath the Alamo, maybe down below 100 feet of solid basalt, a secret relic of World War II.

At home Grace mused over her luncheon sandwich of sliced Bayonne ham and Provolone cheese on dark rye about Harry Volvo’s peculiar office in the triangular Medical Arts building. Built in 1926, once housing more than 100 doctors, it became the Emily Morgan Hotel in 1984, but Volvo clung to his office off the Mezzanine. It became a high-ceilinged, two-story outer wall space while the renovation made room for Mezzanine conference rooms across a wide hall. Volvo liked his exclusive special arrangement. Only his Mezzanine conference featured high 24 ft. headroom. In that airy space hung two single swings, the kind found on playgrounds and in backyards. His patient would swing in one direction and Harry in the other. As they passed, they exchanged words, confessing feelings about this and that. No session ever lasted more than an hour, so as the swings slowed they could exchange more thoughts and feelings, until they paused, adjacent to each other, and Harry said, We are getting closer, but adding, Time’s up.

Grace thought, six months into his swinging therapies, my ACE number clings to that high ceiling. (ACE standing for Adverse Childhood Experiences.) At the height of my first swing, I glanced out of the tall window at the old building’s famous creepy Gargoyles. They supposedly had warded off diseases for those doctors when the building was the Medical Arts. Now they haunt the hotel, along with ghost nurses in hallways in the middle of the night.

While swinging nude opposite a nude male psychologist might seem peculiar to even Volvo’s medical associates, he indeed had published a paper in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experiments. He explained stripping off clothes essentially made stripping off layers of neuroses more natural.

Eleanor’s ACE numbers flew even higher than Grace’s. Yet Grace dreamed, as Harry had suggested, of the terra-cotta Gargoyles lining the exterior of The Emily Morgan Hotel, now a DoubleTree by Hilton. Those Gargoyles are one of the few remaining traits that hint at the 1924 building’s origins, when it opened as the city’s Medical Arts Building. Designed by Ralph Cameron, each Gargoyle crawling on the downtown hotel’s façade seemed fashioned to depict a medical ailment, including many that may have been treated inside from the 1920s all the way up until 1976 when the building transitioned into an office space before becoming a hotel in 1984. Inside, though, some guests and local ghost tour guides say there are other traces of the hotel’s hospital past. On the 12th and 14th floors, which were hospital and surgery floors decades ago, guests have reported seeing hospital patients in the hallway when they open their room door—only to look back moments later and see nothing, according to the touristy Ghost City Tours. Others have returned to their room to find a bathtub mysteriously filled with water, or sensed lights come on late at night when no one is near the switch and reported phones ringing with no call on the line. The seventh floor and basement, which once acted as a morgue, are also reported to have paranormal activity, again according to Ghost City Tours. Located across from Alamo Plaza, the gothic revival-style hotel was once named the third most haunted hotel in the world by USA Today. It is one of a handful of hotels that are rumored to be haunted downtown, including the nearby Menger Hotel, where Grace’s imaginary dream world occasionally sat her down at the bar. She knew in 1887 the bar was built as an exact replica of London’s House of Lords Pub. Maybe Harry Volvo knew his stuff, she thought, for the Menger Bar does not just feel authentic, it really is! Teddy Roosevelt recruited some of his Rough Riders in the bar.

Grace recruited an assortment of young men in the bar from time to time, a friendly competition with Eleanor, and she thought now while putting away her slight luncheon debris, Gosh! We do have fun with our afflictions, don’t we?

Ever the professional psychologist, Harry had warned them each separately such shenanigans could land them in a heap of trouble.

You tell us to balance our outer and inner worlds, then pull the rug out from under us, Doctor Volvo, Grace had said. What kind of shit is that?

As their swings swished in opposite directions, Harry whispered, Germs!

That transpired only this morning, Grace thought, and we’ve got plans for tonight. I can’t wait for Eleanor to get here.

Their condo at The Stratford spread over 3,000 sq. ft. and Grace sped through each room with their canister vacuum cleaner named Freddie trailing after like a puppy for a quick hour, imagining as she worked, trying to balance her outer and inner worlds, that the humming little engine powered one of the UFOs they had been tracking at work. With the Soviet threat diminished, the National Air Defense Command became National Air Observer Command, its Congressional funding concealed in the broad Central Intelligence Agency budget.

On paper, we do not exist.

Come on, Freddie, Grace urged, One more room and you can rest for a week.

Eleanor eased quietly through the door and plopped on their leather couch.

I’m not up to it tonight, she called out when Freddie’s roaring ceased. Grace tucked Freddie into his hall closet and sat opposite Eleanor on an overstuffed easy chair.

What’s wrong?

Nothing, really, Eleanor said. I’m just not horny enough to play our little game. At least, not convincingly. But I’ll keep you company if you like.

Let me think about it.

Could you pour me a glass of Ruffino Chianti?

Sure, Elli . . . Harry pumping your depths again?

I like Chianti. Dry, but not too dry, you know?

Don’t want to talk about it, eh?

Hmmmm . . . maybe. He has just about filled up my ACE . . . Grace, do you really believe all our little idiosyncrasies come from childhood?

I think I’ll join you.

Grace still wore her doctor swinging costume, an Alo brand Anthracite Heather long-sleeve cover top and matching Anthracite Heather tights. Eleanor watched her move to the wine cabinet with all the gracefulness of an Iberian lynx. She thought, the only difference looks like Grace is not an endangered species. She has got the survival skills of a pioneer grandmother, even a trace trait of the predatory. I could see her aiming through a crack in the log cabin at marauding Comanches, Bang!

Grace jumped at the sound of Eleanor’s loud bang. She spun around, empty wine glass in each hand.

What the fuck!

Sorry.

She poured their glasses and slunk lynx-like to the couch and sat.

Elli, this time where’d he probe? They each sipped some wine.

My parents used to yell at me for not doing what they wanted. He said that is considered abuse these days. Shit, I love my parents.

Eleanor lounged back in her pink yoga togs, quietly sipping. She rolled up on one elbow.

Grace, he stood up, swinging. That’s dangerous.

How’d he do that?

Behind my back, couldn’t see him. Then when we swung back, I saw him swinging high and away with his dangle dingy on the rise.

You think he played with himself?

Don’t know. I have often wondered how he could run our sessions, talking about intimate stuff, and remain unaroused. Great discipline, what?

Yes, I’ve admired that, too.

When we passed, he said, ‘Parental abuse.’ And of course, as the swings slowed, bringing us closer with more time to talk, he said, ‘Ever think that could be what set you up for Mike?’

Still standing?

With a hard on.

You think he’s got the hots for you?

Eleanor broke into deep-throated laughter. Come on, he’s married to that beauty queen from . . . where’s Gloria from? Oh yeah, she is a former Miss California, that is what. Sexy as all get-out.

But he brought up your ex-husband.

Yes. But linking early abuse to Mike’s . . . Anyway, friend, the Chianti has done the trick. Now I am ready to play the game tonight. You are such a comfort. I’m off to the shower.

No lunch?

I’ll snack later.

Grace washed their glasses and thought about what to wear. But Dr. Harry Volvo swinging stand up with an erection, she thought. No wonder Elli did not feel horny!

The game, as she and Elli had designed it, involved each picking up an attractive guy. Grace mused: that is what men did, so why not us? We are mature divorcées, capable of admitting all kinds of quaint idiosyncratic delusions to a psychologist. We can just as easily imagine enough romance to get laid. We are not afraid to admit we like good sex. What makes this a worthwhile adventure? Well, there’s safety in numbers, as our mothers would say. Yes, we know they did not mean what we mean, but times have changed, mothers dear.

Possibly the only rule of the game that could not be broken, just one night with each guy, then never again. But, thought Grace, we may be spreading disappointment among the male population, but consider it retaliation for all the female broken hearts of the past.

Grace chuckled and Elli came upon her laughing alone in the kitchen.

What’s so funny?

As Eleanor prepared a salad, Grace said she had been laughing at their unbreakable Emily Morgan Rule, the only rule they swore by.

The Emily Morgan Rule took its name from the same source as the luxury hotel.

I’m all for the rule, at least most of the time, said Eleanor. But last month, that cute air force lieutenant, name of Randy, he actually came to The Stratford office asking for me. Sweet! They did not tell him, of course. I felt tempted, but I stuck to the rule . . .

Elli, there is a piece of cucumber on you lip, left side.

Oh thanks, she said, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin. Randy tempted me . . . a lot!

If one of us breaks the rule, the game is over. Look at the scoreboard.

Grace pointed to a white board on the kitchen wall where they kept score, rating their dates from one (lousy) to 10 (orgasmic).

Elli, I started laughing when I looked at the scores. Yours add up to 45 for nine dates, an average of five. And my six add up to 48, an average of eight. What do you think that means?

Pour me some Chianti to go with my lunch, will you please? I’ll think on the scores’ significance.

You got it, kiddo.