and did his best.
He had one eccentricity; after our first time, in my apartment, he insisted on
getting a motel room for each assignation. ‘Maureen; he explained, `if you are
willing to make the effort to come where I am, then I know that you really want to.
And vice versa, if I go out and rent a motel room, you know that I am interested
enough to make an effort: When either of us stops making an effort, it is time to
kiss and part, with no tears.’
In June 1982 that time had arrived; I think each of us was waiting for the other to
suggest it. On 20 June I was heading on foot to an assignation with Arthur and was
thinking that perhaps I had best bring up the matter during that quiet time after
the first one… then a second one if he wanted it and say goodbye. Or would it be
kinder to announce that I was making a trip back east to see my daughter? Or simply
break sharp?
I had come to the intersection of Lomas and San Mateo Boulevards. I had never liked
that crossing; the timing of the traffic light was short and the boulevards were
wide – and getting wider lately. And today, because of repairs in progress on the
PanAmerican Highway, truck traffic had been routed around the repairs by sending it
down San Mateo, then west on Central, and the reverse for northbound traffic.
I was half-way across when the lights changed and a solid mass of traffic started at
me, especially one giant truck. I froze, tried to run back, tripped and fell down.
I caught sight of a policeman, knew that the truck would get me, wondered briefly
whether Father would recommend prayer after my heathen lifetime.
Somebody scooped me up off the pavement and I fainted.
It seemed to me that I was taken out of an ambulance and placed on a stretcher. I
fainted again and woke up in bed. A pretty little dark woman with wavy hair was
hovering over me. She spoke slowly and carefully in an accent that I thought was
Spanish:
`Mama Maureen… Tamara am I. For… Lazarus… and for all… your children… I
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bid you… welcome to Tertius!’
I stared at her, not believing my eyes. Or ears. `You are Tamara? You really are
Tamara? Wife to Captain Lazarus Long?’
`Wife am I to Lazarus. Tamara am I. Daughter am I, to you, our Mama Maureen Welcome,
mama. We love you.’
I cried and she gathered me to her breast.
Chapter 20 – Rebirth in Boondock
Let’s review the bidding.
In 1982, on 20 June I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on my way to a Sunday
afternoon motel date for some friendly fornication… and that made me a scandal to
the jaybirds as I was only days away from my hundredth birthday – while pretending
to be much younger and, mostly, succeeding. My assignation was with a widowed
grandfather who seemed willing to believe that I was his own age, give or take a
bit.
Part of the orthodoxy of that time and place was that old women have no interest in
sex and that old men have limp penises and no sex drive – except dirty old perverts
with criminal and pathological interests in young girls. All young people were
certain of these ideas through knowing their own grandparents, whom they knew to be
interested only in singing hymns and in playing chequers or shuffleboard. But sex?
My grandparents? Don’t be disgusting!
(At that time and in that country, nursing homes for the elderly kept their guests
chaperoned and/or physically segregated by sexes so that nothing `disgusting’ could
take place.)
So this dirty old woman on evil bent got caught in heavy traffic, panicked, fell
down, fainted – and woke up in Boondock on the planet Tellus Tertius.
I had heard of Tellus Tertius. Sixty-four years earlier, when I was a modest young
matron with a snow-white reputation, I had seduced a young sergeant, Theodore
Bronson, who in pillow talk with me had revealed himself as a time traveller from