My writing tends to suggest that I am in my thirties or forties because I want to seem closer in age to the young audience who dominate the Lush family. In truth, I'm a good bit older. Of course, things we publish here don't have to be factual. As it happens, this new story--from about three and a half decades ago--is very close to true...

There was a decade in my middle years when televangelism was superinfluential here in America. One famous Christian con man wept dramatically on camera as he apologized for his encounters with prostitutes and asked his followers to keep sending money. Another guy founded a Christian political movement that to this day is having an impact on right wing politics. He is no longer among the living. A husband/wife team got caught in a money scandal and the husband went to prison. I think they are back on TV now, but I haven't seen them.

This story is about a different evangelist.

Business commitments used to take me all around the country. I was one of those frequent flyer guys they now make commercials about. I knew how to sweet talk the gate agents, I knew about overbooking, knew which schedules were most reliable.

On the day this adventure began, my destination was Los Angeles. Three people had to miss checking in for first class, and that was likely at this time in the afternoon. I had asked the agent to save the seat next to a certain raven-haired beautiful woman--"in case I get lucky with this upgrade."

I remember her conspiratorial response. "You actually might get lucky with that one."

The girl in question was the wife of XYZ, a famous televangelist. The gate agent informed me that the beautiful passenger and her husband were having a very nasty divorce battle.

XYZ was plenty famous in the Bible Belt. Not Muhammad Ali, but big in Christian circles. I'd seen him and his wife on TV, and now, suddenly, her look clicked with me. I'm an atheist, but it's hard to live in America without stumbling on Christian shows as you channel surf in a motel. I'd lusted over Mrs. XYZ on a couple of occasions and I knew from our tabloids that she was wife number two.
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Let's pick a Biblical name and call her Delilah. She had angelic features, flashing eyes, a huge smile, lots of hair, a world class figure that was always emphasized by her wardrobe, and something else that had made a big imprint on me. When her husband was preaching or singing, she looked upon him with total love and devotion.

A loving countenance is something we find in literature and movies but not so much in real life. Maybe the real world is too complex, whereas fiction is more idealistic. At the very least, it's rare in real relationships. I would have given my left testicle to find a woman who would love me in the way she projected!

But we must be careful about what we wish for. In Delilah's case, she had been coached to sit that way...how to hold her hands, when to shake her head. When the cameras were off she hated the son-of-a-bitch. They fought constantly. If the divorce settlement he proposed did not stipulate that she could never work in an on-camera profession, she would have been able to find work in Hollywood or as a competing televangelist.

"Well, there is a God," I said, as I took the seat next to her in the last row of first class. That line was planned in advance and I was definitely pretending not to know her identity. I did my best to look non-threatening and sexy.

She decided in that instant--which she admitted later--that I looked safe and anonymous. If the circumstances allowed it...and if discretion were possible, she wouldn't mind fucking my brains out.

"Why did you say there is a God?" she asked, wondering if I might know her husband.

I saw you in the boarding area, I said. "I travel for a living and always dream of being seated next to that day's beautiful woman. God throws me a bone about once a year."

She seemed to like that. "So I'm a bone?"

"Figure of speech," I said. "Actually, I'm an atheist. And if you don't want to be bothered, I'm perfectly capable of working on my screenplay and not bothering you."

"Oh," she said, flashing approval with her perfectly lined and shadowed eyes, "so you are a writer?"

I was falling in love.

"No, that was a flirtation line. I'm a businessman. I spend 200 days a year on the road. I've got tons of frequent flyer miles but not much of a life." On that cue, I looked down to check her ring finger. "How about you?"

"Did you just decide I'm not married?" she asked.

"I'm not too smooth, am I?" I grinned. "It looks like you aren't married. I also noticed your nice hands. You don't wash dishes for a living."

"I'm a singer," she said.

"I'm not a big buyer of records," I told her. "Are you famous? Are you Dolly Parton?"

She didn't fall for that one and wasn't supposed to. She told me she was married to a famous man and was in the middle of a divorce fight.

I said I was all ears if she wanted to unload...or I'd leave her alone if she wanted privacy. "I've been through a divorce and I know they can be nasty. I'll find the crossword puzzle and be on call for you if you decide you want to talk."

She leaned my way, kissed my cheek and told me she would enjoy unloading because I seemed like a nice guy.

I got a whiff of her nice smell.You can tell a lot about a women by her smell.

"Would you do that again?" I asked, touching my cheek where she had just kissed me.

She said, "Don't push your luck, Cowboy."

For the next two hours she drank wine and dumped her troubles on me. Early on she told me who she was: her name and her husband's. I gave my first name.

Delilah's climb to fame began when she was a teenager. Although XYZ was married, he came on strong and seduced her with his fame. He won her parents' compliance by paying for voice lessons and promising to work their daughter into his show. Every few weeks they flew to LA for voice coaching--also known as weekends filled with alcohol, marijuana and sex. The church bought a ten million dollar estate in Palm Springs as an investment and provided an upscale property back home for Delilah's parents.

XYZ's wife disappeared in short order, and a month later Delilah debuted on his show. Before long she was standing with the big man and responding to his pontifications. Almost overnight she was the heir apparent to be Mrs. XYZ.

It would be disrespectful to the Bible community to call this guy Sampson. So let's go with Billy. She had been impressed with his position and authority since her grade school days, but she didn't like him when they met as real people. Like many powerful men, he was manipulative and phony. She later learned he was a lousy lover who had a small dick. She made that point multiple times!

Her parents pushed her to marry Billy, and there was pressure from the production group. In exchange for an exclusive on their anticipated wedding, Billy and Delilah had been featured in a friendly tabloid story. That one article, she told me, generated a hundred thousand dollar bump in their donations in a two-week period.

Delilah refused to sign the prenup.

She had done the drugs, alcohol and sex, but, by God, she would have a legitimate marriage or none at all. I believed her rant but reserved the right to change my mind later. Maybe this was an act.

They got married six torturous years ago, she said. Now she was sticking it to him. She had photos of bruises on her face and arms and private investigator evidence of an affair he had had with another minor. He was going to cough up fifty percent of his legitimate holdings and the Palm Springs property as a bonus or she would report his battery and statutory rape.

"He'll either have me killed," she said dramatically, "or I'll get every Goddamn penny of what's due." She paused for effect after that declaration and then went on. "But he can't have me killed because he knows the evidence is in my attorney's possession. We've shown it to his lawyer."

The story went on and on as she poured down the wine. I helped her keep her voice down. I had begun holding her hand. I'd regularly go sssh and give a little squeeze.

There was a good chance that I could sleep with her if I wanted to--and I definitely did. But that might be dangerous. Besides the personal stuff, her stories covered tax evasion, political corruption and organized crime. Even if she had the goods to protect herself, I had no goods at all. This was a situation a smart man would run from.

She didn't know my name or any contact information, and I promised myself I'd keep it that way. Even so, I wondered if a spy was sitting one row in front of us. An investigator would have no trouble getting my name from the airlines. Maybe I knew too much already. On the other hand, I had flashing fantasies of closing my business, getting her off of alcohol and living happily ever after with this magnificent trophy woman who smelled good.

And fifty percent of Billy's millions.

A lifetime of emotions had passed between us when the pilot finally announced that we'd be landing in forty-five minutes. Some of us on the left side, he said, might have noticed a hilly area that was covered with windmills. Big windmills were something of a novelty back then.

"Those windmills are on the way to Palm Springs," my companion said.

"How are you getting there?" I'd been rehearsing that question for hours.

She told me her car was at the airport.

"That settles it," I proclaimed. "I'm going to drive you to Palm Springs. I want to see those windmills."

What I wanted was to see her naked.

She fell into a deep sleep as we drove, almost a coma. She didn't stir when I left the car to register at a Best Western in Banning. "I'm putting you to bed," I said, "as I removed her from the car."

She seemed okay when I mentioned Banning.

At seven the next morning I went to a Big Boy restaurant and came back to the room with a spread of breakfast foods. It was nine Texas time. She was still in bed but fully awake.

"Where the hell did you go? I thought you'd run out on me," she said with genuine concern. Then she saw the bags and gave me a radiant smile. "You took my clothes off."

"Not completely," I said. "I left your panties on."

"What's your name?" she asked.

After hearing my answer she continued, "I know it's Bob, you silly man. I want to know your last name. Did we make love?"

"You know we didn't," I said. "You begged me, but I decided to wait."

That's when she told me she had decided when I first sat next to her that she wouldn't mind fucking my brains out.

"You're that needy?" I said.

"No," she countered, "you're that irresistable!"

I was spreading the food on our small table. "I'm flattered. Have things changed now that you know I'm an atheist?" And then I inserted, "By the way, are you willing to eat breakfast naked? I think I'd enjoy that."

I walked over to the bed and bent down to kiss her.

"I haven't brushed my teeth," she said. It was a little too late because a second later we were kissing. That's when I discovered the had brushed her teeth while I was away."

"Oh, my God," I said. "For a gal who hasn't brushed her teeth in twenty-four hours, you are a delicious tasting woman."

We kissed for a couple of minutes. I played braille with her breasts and then moved down to kiss them. Her nipples were erect and she had a field of hard goose bumps around each one. I pushed my face deep into her full busom. My kisses moved down her tummy until finally I blue warm air on her mound through those red panties.

That was when I realized she had cleaned herself and changed her panties while I was away. "Lift your hips," I said.

We checked out just after noon and pulled into her estate less than an hour later. She and Billy had four two-car garage bays and an oversized single bay for their tour bus. This was in the late seventies and, even so, the value of their vehicles would have been well over a million bucks.

Reality hit me as we stepped out of the car. "Get back in the car for a second," I said, "I want to tell you something."

I asked if the place might be bugged. She didn't know, but she agreed it was a possibility. We came up with a cover story and a second round of sex went out the window.

"Are you sure you don't want to take a shower before you go?" she asked. "It's the least I could do after all that driving."

"No thanks," I said, looking around at the expensive appointments and wondering where the microphones were. Just show me your guest bathroom and give me a hand towel."

In the bathroom she gave me a lot more than a hand towel. She pulled my cock out and said she wanted to tell it goodbye. I was plenty hard and her mouth was warm, but I couldn't cum in the time we had for playing out our scheme. It was a shame.
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At the airport she handed me a check for five hundred dollars to cover my air fare and serve as evidence that she had paid for my help. It stayed folded up in my wallet for at least five years, and then it disappeared. I probably threw it out when I changed wallets.

Three months later, on a Sunday morning, I got a surprise call from Delilah.

"How did you get my name and number," I asked.

She had picked up the Best Western receipt from under the hotel room door.

She asked if I were married or had a girl friend. When I said no, she asked if she could come over.

Five minutes later she was at my door. One eye was black, her lip was swollen and she wore no makeup.

She said her husband had accused her of bringing a man to their home in Palm Springs. She had used our cover story, but he'd been harassing her about that almost every day for three months.

"I want you to make love to me," she said.

So that's what we did for the next twenty-four hours. I ordered pizza and fed her some miscellaneous crap from my bachelor's fridge, but mostly I gave what she had come for. It wasn't orgasms, although I gave her a few of those. She wanted someone to really love her.

And I did.

She did not divorce her husband and I never heard from her again. They're old people now, still married and perhaps living in Palm Springs. I wonder if she's happy. Probably not.