It was a different Judy I held in my arms. She was not the loving, sweet, and cuddly Judy tonight. She had changed to a voracious female animal that demanded to be possessed. There was a wildness about her that I had never experienced.

I had felt it as she walked in the door. She didn't close it, she slammed it shut. She did not wait for me to embrace her and welcome her back from her sightseeing tour; instead she crushed me to her.

After the storm was over and we lay next to each other, I stroked her hair and soon heard her breathing become regular and shallow. She was asleep.

Lying next to Judy I reflected on my four-year odyssey with her, and the times I could bring her love and fulfillment as her gigolo. The many wonders I had seen while journeying across the globe with her. During this time I had developed deep feelings for this beautiful, sweet woman, who was my senior by twenty-four years. This was our last night together.

I did not want to leave without voicing some of my feelings.

"Judy, you lovely, loveable woman," I started, knowing full well that she would not hear me. "I want to thank you for the time you allowed me in your life, - no, - being part of your life." I stopped to collect myself. It was more difficult than I had thought to say good-bye to this woman who, without knowing it, had burrowed herself deep into my heart.

After I had calmed down I whispered to her, "I am happy that you have found your love. He is a good man I hope, and I am sure you will be happy. But I want you to know, too, that out there is another heart thinking of you."

I could not go further. There was so much more I would have liked to tell her, but I did not find the words. All I could do was look at her, etching her face into my memory; her lush lips, her dainty earlobes, her throat that I loved to kiss, her laugh wrinkles that I adored.

She had been invited by a lady acquaintance and there had met the lady's brother. The following day he had taken her on a sightseeing tour in his two-seater sports car. Judy returned late at night. She was a changed woman. It had been love on first sight. I met him the next day and I could not have been happier for her, Mike seemed the perfect match for her.

I got up quietly and tiptoed to my room. It was time to pack. I had opted for the earliest flight; I did not want a tearful, maudlin good-bye. When I was ready I sneaked into her room again to plant a warm final kiss on her forehead and hoarsely whispered, "Good-bye, Adorable."

It was a long flight back to Arizona, half way around the globe; giving me plenty of time to take stock of my situation. I had my severance pay and a good sized bonus in addition. Money was not a problem, but it was no substitute for Judy; I knew I would miss her so very much.

The flight should give me plenty of time to plan my future. Or so I thought. Instead of the future my mind chose the past. At once the events that led me to Judy came back to me in full color like a movie.

I was sixteen again and had just bought an old clunker of a car with the money I had saved for the last year, working weekends, plus doing odd jobs like yard work after school.

Without that old car I would not have met Judy. The car, my three teddy bears, and I, were traveling to Phoenix from Tucson for a job interview as a translator. About 60 miles south of Phoenix I saw a car on the side of the road, obviously disabled. A well dressed girl, probably a college student, stood in front of the car, which had its hood open. I pulled over and parked, then walked back to see if I could be of assistance, maybe offering her a ride into Phoenix.

The closer I came to the car and its driver the more I was surprised. This was no 20-year old college student; this was a well dressed 28-year-old secretary. When I was face to face I upped my estimate to maybe 33. At any rate, she was a classy lady with a trim, youthful figure.

"So, what is the problem?" I asked. Then I felt absolutely stupid. The problem was obvious.

"I don't know," she answered, shaking her head. "A construction worker stopped a few minutes ago and looked, and did not know, either." Despite her predicament she managed a short laugh.

I looked at her, then at that old beat up clunker of mine, then back at her, and I heard myself saying, "I would be happy to give you a ride. I am going to Phoenix, if you don't mind arriving in an old, decrepit vehicle." I smiled by best smile at her, hoping she would accept.

She didn't hesitate a second. She took another look at my vehicle and laughed, "I prefer yours who stopped to help over the Mercedes who drove by honking his horn."

We didn't talk much on the way to my car down the road, except that I introduced myself

"My name is Judy, and a knight in shining armor who rescues fair maidens in distress needs only to know a first name. It's Judy, OK?" This time I noticed that her voice had a sprinkle of mirth mixed in when she talked; hers was a happy voice, I could have listened to it for hours.

She looked at my beat up, dented contraption and laughed again, a laugh with lots of music, lots of humor, and a promise of much fun.

"You think we can make it to Phoenix in this? Well, if you are an optimist, I will be one, too," and still laughing she opened the passenger door and slipped in.

Before I started the engine I turned and addressed my three teddy bears in the back window. "Hey guys, I want you to be on your best behavior. We have a pretty, young lady passenger going with us to Phoenix. Her name is Judy."

Judy looked at me with mirth in her eyes. "Do you always talk to your teddy bears?" she wanted to know.

"Why, certainly, they are my friends." What else could I answer, I do talk to them, I really do.

We had an hour and a half to get acquainted with each other before I delivered her to her Hotel. In the lobby I said my good-bye and wished her happy trails.

She pulled out a bunch of bills from her purse and tried to push them at me. "Please take this for gas money," she said.

"No way, Judy," I waved her off. "I don't want to get paid for having had fun, and as you said, for helping a damsel in distress."

"OK," she relented, "then let me invite you to have dinner with me tonight. And I will not accept any excuses."

There was no way I could or would turn down such an invitation. In fact, I was eagerly looking forward to being in her company. There was something about this woman that made me want to be near her.

"Judy, there is nothing I would like more at the moment than enjoy your company a little longer." I almost blushed saying this.

"Give me a call about six at suite 601. That will give me enough time to unpack, take a shower, select the right dress for an evening out with a young man I just met. There is still plenty of time to make reservations at a nice place."

As I left I overheard her making arrangements to have her luggage retrieved from her abandoned car.

I was glad for being dressed properly for my interview instead of wearing jeans. When I returned to the hotel the concierge greeted me as if I was an important or wealthy person and then hailed a bellhop to escort me to Suite 601.

Judy opened the door and I almost gasped. When I had met her she was distressed, this time she was radiant, maybe expecting a pleasant dinner conversation with her rescuer. She greeted me with a warm 'hello' and a hand shake. But instead of releasing my hand she pulled me into her living room.

Her phone rang before I could select a chair. But I didn't mind standing; I could watch her and marvel at her graceful movements as she went to the dresser to pick up the receiver. As she leaned against the dresser I had a chance to study her closer.

Did I have a surprise. She had told me enough during our drive so that I could figure her age, she was either forty or forty-one. I wondered how she could have the body of a twenty-eight year old, not to mention her other attributes; a lovely face with just a few laugh wrinkles to make her interesting, slightly pouty lips that asked to be kissed, hair of a soft shade of brunette with an overtone of auburn, and perpetually twinkling eyes of a greenish grey.

Her voice was pleasantly low, with a tinge of sexy huskiness in it. I hoped the phone conversation would be a long one. I wanted to study her more in detail. It was not to be, it was a short phone call. But it definitely was long enough to start my hormones to take notice of a lithe female.

"Hold it, what are you thinking, you lecherous teenager," I chided myself, "this is an older lady, not a young chick who talks only about movie stars and the latest music CD. But she is sexy and attractive and desirable, she is not old, she is mature.'"

I started wondering, what would a mature woman as Judy be like. Certainly not like the bimbos I had slept with till now. I don't know where in my body the hormone factories are located, but I knew they were working at capacity. My sixteen year old brain had become a movie theater where picture after picture flashed on the screen, all involving Judy. Not an older lady, but JUDY.

I was still standing when she got off the phone, and when she sat down in one of the arm chairs I did likewise. I had myself in hand again, having stopped the fantasizing, for the moment at least. Time went fast and we started to develop a nice friendship.

"I became a widow two years ago," she started telling me. "My husband was on a major stockholder of a pharmaceutical company and due to the circumstances surrounding his death I was offered a huge settlement. Both of us had worked hard, long hours, six or seven days a week to get were we were.

I suddenly realized that the past was behind me, that I was independent and could arrange my life as I pleased. I replaced my stuffy office with the wide open world."

We had a few minutes left before we had to leave for dinner. I filled them with some short bits of my current life and my aspirations.

The restaurant she had picked was definitely out of my class. In fact, she had to interpret the menu for me; I learned about the sommelier, about escargot and pate frois, and many other things. She told me that she likes to dine European style, slow, savoring the meal through several courses, with time for conversation in between.

"Tell me a bit about yourself," she demanded, "I detect a slight accent that I absolutely cannot identify."

"I was born in Odessa, Russia," I started, "a port city on the Caspian Sea. My father held a high office as a well paid Communist Party functionary. He had traveled around Europe on Party business and knew the world outside the Soviet borders.

My mother was a medical doctor Dad had met while on business in the Russian occupied German territory. It was one of her grateful patients who agreed to help in smuggling her out of Russia. I remember the filthy, stinking space full of bilge water that we had to crawl into when mother escaped, taking me along."

"How old were you when you and your mother escaped," she wanted to know.

"I was about four years old then. Dad stayed behind to arrange a swindle about a boat accident and the drowning of his wife and his beloved son. We later heard that he had put up a marvelous show of grief. He also had scuttled an old boat not far from the shore in shallow water. When the military located it and raised it they found several personal items of mother and me in the boat, proving that we really had drowned.

"He almost got out two years later. In the extreme southwest of the Ukraine is a short stretch of border with Romania," I explained. "He was killed trying to cross the border there."

"This is terrible. You and your mother mad it out obviously. Were did you go??"

"Mother had a distant relative in France, in Alsace, not far from the city of Mulhouse," I continued. "Lots of people there still speak German and we sort of melted in. That's

A long odyssey followed, much spent in a small village in the Alsace, France. Mother made sure that I did not forget the two languages I had grown up with, Russian and German. And now I added French as my third language. At my age that was still easy."

"That explains that tiny bit of an occasional accent I heard. No wonder I couldn't make out what it was," interrupted Judy.

I finished my story with the present. "Learning English later was a bit harder since I had reached the ripe old age of twelve when we immigrated to the US. And when my mother died in a car accident I found myself in a foster home."

The evening went much too fast. The two hour dinner was like 30 minutes to me. I knew that the evening had come to an end when we returned to her hotel.

I started to say good-bye, but was cut short when she wordlessly took my arm and led me to the elevator and up to her suite.

"Give me a little time to freshen up and change into something more comfortable," she explained.

She did change into something more comfortable. It was comfortable for her alright, but not for me. Her gown was more revealing than covering. I hoped I would not have to stand up. Fortunately, she went back to the adjoining bedroom to get something.

Three minutes passed and I heard her call me.

"Please help me find an earring I dropped a while ago. It must be somewhere around here."

We were both on the floor side by side with her body brushing against mine. Her body fragrance, combined with a very subtle perfume, overwhelmed my senses and I almost reached out for her.

Just then her hand slipped and she fell tight against me. Her arm came around my waist ostensibly to steady herself. Her body pushed me and I lost my precarious balance. A moment later her face appeared close to mine. Her eyes closed, her lips opened ever so slightly, asking to be kissed.

I could not hold back any longer. I forgot the far away earring and concentrated on the close by lithe female body that was molded tightly against mine. My right hand went around her to the back of her neck. My lips found hers and savored their lushness. An inquisitive tongue parted my lips and went exploring in my mouth. A half an eternity later we broke the kiss.

As I focused my eyes to look at her I noticed an impish smile flitting across her face and I knew at once, this had not been an accident, it had been conceived and executed by a clever, attractive, foxy lady more than twice my age. A lovely and lovable lady who knew what she wanted and was used to getting it. And the IT was me, I realized.

Another eternity later, after we had showered and toweled each other dry, she faced me and stared at me for several seconds before speaking.

"Are you sure you are only sixteen?" she asked, to which I just nodded. Then she explained.

"There was no one in my life during the two years after my husband's death. It was a very lonely time. I was almost getting desperate. And then you appeared. Having met you just a few hours ago I feel as close and comfortable as if we had been together for months."

I decided to be bold and open up.

"It is really strange, I also feel as you do. I am so happy that I met you and could spend a few hours in your company. But I am also sad to think of the distance that we will be apart soon when you move on." I choked on my last words.

We were silent, each lost in their own thoughts. Judy was still here, but I already felt a great loss. I hoped I would get some mail from her from time to time and maybe even a photo. And I better remember to ask for a picture before she leaves, I said to myself.

It was obvious to me that something was bothering Judy. She dressed quickly and left for the living room to sit down in one of the arm chairs. She looked pensive when I joined her a bit later.

Her opening sentence surprised me.

"Move your chair close in front of me so I can see your face as I talk to you." She leaned forward and started, haltingly at first, "you told me that you were sorry I was leaving. You already felt a loss, you said. Well, it does not have to be that way.

I want you to listen to me with an open mind and heart. I am going to offer a solution. I know only what little you have told me about your situation and I must guess at the rest. If I am guessing correctly my solution might work just fine.

I found you a very mature person, a man who wants to cherish and please his lady. A man who is considerate and sensitive. You opened up your character for inspection when you stopped to help a lady with a problem. You refused to accept money for the ride, you clinched the evaluation when you tenderly told your friends, the teddy bears, that you had a new passenger.

I am proposing to you a position with me as my friend and as a gigolo. Being my friend I will pay all expenses, and as a gigolo I will pay you a small salary so you have some spending money of your own. I have always had the urge to see the rest of the world and now I have the means to travel and satisfy my desires, and having you as my companion will be twice the fun."

My jaw must have dropped sometime during her talk, because I suddenly noticed that my mouth was wide open and I quickly closed it. Goose bumps crawled over my back and my heart thumped wildly in my chest.

She had more to say. "This arrangement is an open ended contract with the following conditions and clauses, - blah - blah - etc."

I followed her up to the first 'blah', then my mind went blank. All I remembered were words like 'solution' and 'friend', the rest was friendly noise. I had been willing to agree to anything she proposed before listening.

After the first shock wore off I jumped up, embraced and kissed her with so much emotion that it almost overwhelmed me. After I came back to reality I had to ask her a question that had just popped into my mind.

"Judy, I am wondering how much of our relationship is proper to show, and how should it look to the public?"

She burst out laughing hilariously and then explained.

"When you are rich, nothing matters. People think that with the rich the abnormal is the norm. So don't worry about that."