A reunion for one brought pleasure to all.
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Michael arrived in Austria three weeks before the beginning of his guest-lecturer ship at Innsbruck University. He decided on a brief visit to the small town he had grown up in, and which he had left twenty-six years ago.
He was nineteen then and he thought it would be for a two-year working holiday in Australia. When his mother died — she had been in poor health — Michael stayed in Australia. He studied and built a successful career as a teacher and researcher.
Besides curiosity, Michael had little reason to spend two weeks in his place of birth. As a health spa — for which he had no need — it was not a particularly lively place. No relatives lived there anymore, and contact with his childhood and youth friends had ceased when he left for Australia.
However, in booking his two-week stay Michael chose a familiar hotel. He and the son of its owner, Gerd, had been in the junior squad of the Tennis Club. Also, on occasions, after Michael had again won in his age group at a tournament, he had been invited to appear at one of the club’s larger functions. These were always held in the Hotel Regina.
Gerd was now its owner. When Michael went down to dinner after arriving, Gerd waylaid and welcomed him like a long, lost friend even though they had never been that. It was also unlikely that Gerd would have recognised his name on the booking or his face on arrival.
Gerd left his hotel’ running totally to his staff and its management to his wife. Therefore, Michael was welcomed by Lisa, Gerd’s wife. She told her husband of Michael’s surprise arrival.
Lisa not only knew Michael from school but much more intimately from their time in the tennis club. Both had been promising juniors who then, in their late teens, represented their club in amateur tournaments all over the state in Singles and Mixed Doubles.
By then, they more than just liked each other. However, Michael would not have dared to move in his relationship with Lisa beyond their tennis camaraderie. Having grown up in the town, he was aware of and accepted its social class system. Lisa was out of his league. Her parents were wealthy and respected burgers while his mother was a war widow on a pension.
The ruling clique in the club would not only have frowned on a sexual relationship between their star players but would have expelled him for his unacceptable sexual interest in Lisa.
Michael’s connection with the rather exclusive tennis club was only nominally as a member. He had not joined the club but had initially been ‘allowed’ to become a ballboy and earn some pocket money. His talent was accidentally discovered by the club’s coach, by seeing him play against other ballboys and as a stand-in partner for guests wishing to practise. He had further coached him and had insisted that Michael was included in the club’s junior competition squad. His successes on the court earned him a degree of acceptance, especially among the younger members.
It must have been Gerd’s selective memory of Michael as a club champion and his now financial and social status as a paying guest in his four-star hotel that made him claim Michael as a friend. The next day after his arrival, Gerd invited him to a, he said, welcome-home party in his hunting hut with some of his old friends.
The friends Gerd had invited were primarily his and not Michael’s although they were his age. Michael could vaguely remember only some. Most of them, Gerd included, had not aged well. They were, it turned out, a close-knit group, united by their interest in hunting, love of cards, and alcohol-fuelled companionship. It made Michael, as well as the three women Michael had known as friends, who had come along to the party, distinctively outsiders.
Eventually, Michael had to escape. Not so much from the incoherent noise of the card players or the fudge of their smokes but the compulsion he was under — as an honoured guest — to share in the too-regular rounds of Schnapps circulating the table. Not used to the 60% proof Obstler, he was in danger of finishing up either sick or under the table.
Even though Michael was the supposed guest of honour at their gathering, nobody noticed any longer when he left and went outside.
In the unlit forest dark, Michael stumbled, already unsteady on his feet, to where he heard water splashing into a trough. He had noticed the hollowed-out tree trunk when they arrived. Grasping its rough-hewn edge, he dived his face into the ice-cold swirl.
When he pushed himself up, gasping for air, he heard a peal of melodious laughter, followed by the question, “Are you feeling better now, Michael?”
Rubbing the water out of his eyes, Michael saw a shadowy figure sitting on one of the logs he had seen surrounding a fire pit. He took a few steps towards the shadowy figure sitting there. The woman patted the log next to her bum:
“Why don’t you join me, Michael? Sorry, nobody bothered to introduce us. I’m the sober, designated driver of the minibus we came up in tonight. At other times, I’m naughty myself. But you know me anyway: I’m Rita, Lisa’s little brat sister, now all grown up, recently divorced, and now pleased to meet you again and have you for company.”
Rita slung her arm around his shoulder the moment he sat down. And now, as he turned his still wet-dripping face towards her, she drew him close and resolutely kissed him.
Michael would never know what would have happened if it had been daylight and he would have been sober and would have drawn back after a chaste welcome kiss. But now he did not, and when his arm slipped under Rita’s and his hand closed over a shapely, thinly covered breast, her lips opened with a moan and her tongue parted his lips and curled around his.
When they broke out of their kiss, Rita burst into laughter:
“Lisa will be jealous when I tell her how quickly we kissed. She fancied you when you played tennis together but not half as much as now. She told me that you were now a man that needed only to ask her to fuck and she would say ‘Yes’. When I asked, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ she hummed and smiled. I told her I would. So she might too!”
Swallowing a giggle, Rita added: