Masonry instead of wooden steps now led up to the back door. They were not at all in Poppa's style. Whose? Raymond? Asa wondered as he took them, three at a time, and reached for the glistening brass door handle. His hand froze on the latch, and his cognition instantly slammed the master switch of his autonomic nervous system. Every potential space in the erectile tissues of his genitals and pharynx immediately engorged with blood; spongy gave way to rock. Through the parted, red and white checkered curtain on the highly buffed pane of glass he could see Anita on her hands and knees near the refrigerator, the tail of her spine aiming directly along his line of sight. Synchronized with the motion of her scrub brush, and against permissive constraints of a taut house dress, her buttocks swerved as through describing an elliptical orbit whose geometric center was somewhere in the depths of her pelvis. "Ugh!" he exhaled as his under drawers first swaddled, then straight- jacketed and finally strangled his penis.
Miss Rouelle's words rang in his ears; but now in Anita's voice. For an instant, he considered turning around and going away. And he might have, had he not been temporarily paralyzed. As he was regaining voluntary control of his musculature, the Deep Brain declared, Don't be unphilosophical Asa. And then his arm acquired a will of its own. And was raising his hand. And was diffidently tapping his knuckles against the glass.
Anita stopped gyrating. She curved her torso to look over her right shoulder at the back door. Suddenly she was pitching the scrub brush into the bucket, springing to her feet, running with arms outstretched and opening the door.
"Asa! Asaaa! I'm so glad to see you," she sang, wiping her hands on her hips and throwing her arms about his chest. Then she backed far enough away to kiss him on the cheek. "Come in, come in. Here let me go get the pail out of the way so's I can sit down and get a good look at you."
He hurriedly moved to the table while she was transferring the bucket under the sink. "Piece of rhubarb pie? Cupacoffee? Glassamilk?" Asa chose milk. "Your gramma and grampa is in San Francisco. Won't be back 'til the end of the week." She placed the cool white cylinder before him. He could smell armpit.
"I've brought a present for you Anita." He removed a rice paper envelope from an inside pocket of his jacket. She accepted the envelope with both hands. Her lips parted as she drew out its contents, a string of pearls. When she saw them, she inhaled through her mouth, held her breath a moment and then exhaled: "Oooh! Asaaa. They're absolutely love- ly. For me? For meee?" She skipped to where he sat, hugged his head momentarily and then danced to look in a mirror over the sink.
The pearls were one of many such purchases, ancillary to his ventures into conversation. "They're cultured. I bought them from a friend in Kobe who assured me they are of excellent quality."
"Oh, they are. They are," she reassured, alternating her attention between his reflection in the mirror and the gold catch.
Please her? He'd, of course, thought they'd please her. But in a casual sort of way. He'd not at all anticipated the sheer joy she was emitting now. As he absorbed her pleasure, he decided that, except for a jade brooch intended for Gramma when he bought them, every item in his considerable trove Anita would have, one by glorious one.
"Asa," her image was talking to him from the mirror, "I can't seem to reach this...Can you come here and help me? "
Earlier in the morning, after he'd spread the items on his bed, he'd been drawn to, and almost selected, a set of silver tea spoons for this occasion. He had not at all foreseen the request she was now making of him. He rose and stiffly walked to her. As she executed a quarter wheel to hand him the pearls, one of her buttocks grazed his distended fly. He almost dropped the pearls. "Whoops," she said and cupped her hands below his. But he rescued them himself, and Anita turned back to the mirror.
The catch was indeed very tiny, Asa discovered. He had to concentrate in order to feed the miniature prong through the barely visible grommet. But he managed to hinge the hook and, with his thumbnail, ease the safety hasp into place. And only then did he become conscious of the faint feel of her flesh at his finger tips. "They are absolutely lovely, Asa." She examined the pearls in the mirror and let her fingers play, bead to bead, up and down the string.
He had selected them in favor of the spoons because he could actually imagine them about her long neck. Now, in real life, the opalescent spheres radiated hues his imagination had not reconstructed. She was much prettier than he remembered. No. She was utterly beautiful, even in a half- wet house dress and tied- up hair. He wanted to place his hands on her and caress the exposed parts of her shoulders with his lips. One step at a time, the Deep Brain advised. He complied and returned to the table.
"My mission here this morning," he opened, "has yet another purpose, Anita." He was intending to add that no ontological connection existed between his gift of pearls and the request he was about to submit. But the Deep Brain mercifully intervened. And Asa started again. "I wanted you to have the pearls, Anita. And now that I see them on you, I can only say that you lend to them a beauty which, unworn, they could never possess. "
Her smile had disappeared on 'My- mission-' but had partially recovered. "That's such a sweet thing of you to say, Asa." She walked to the table, took the chair facing him and rested her jaw on interlaced fingers. She seemed to be waiting to hear more.
"I do not want to conceal my primary purpose in coming here this morning...The principal reason for my visit at this time...I am here because...Anita, I have no wish to offend or embarrass you in any way. But I came to ask you, Anita if we might gradually cultivate a... a friendship..." He cleared his throat.
"We're already friends, Asa." Her smile now included her eyelids. She shifted her hands forward and slowly oscillated an index finger through the dimple in her chin.
Asa again cleared his throat. "I meant of the sort...I mean of the variety wherein...a relationship that may one day include...I mean...
"I know why you're here, Asa." She transferred to the chair adjacent to his. "I knew the minute you walked in the door." Her lips executed a single twitch and her smile transformed into a grin.
"That... "
"Yes, that."
What next? What next? What follows the accepted offer of a glass of beer? What am I to say now? Nothing, Asa, the Deep Brain advised.
Anita inserted the tip of her little finger under the cuff of his shirt sleeve. Before he was fully aware of what he was doing, he was leaning forward, kissing her mouth. "Not here," she whispered. Fending off his embrace, she rose, skipped to the back door, locked it, drew the curtains, tiptoed back, took him by the hand and led him down the hall.
***
Morning sunlight flooded Anita's large, brightly decorated room. She drew the shades, but sufficient light still entered to show the color of her hair and skin.
"You want to do this, Asa?" His heart actually stopped and might not have restarted except that he immediately concorded her question with gesticulations she was making with reference to the buttons on the front of her dress. Yes!. Yes! He very much wanted an active role in this phase of the ritual. His fantasies had undressed her a thousand times. But now his trembling fingers unbuttoned buttons of the real world.
When trembling and unbuttoning released his attention, his cognition registered the fact that the parted folds of her dress revealed naked muliebrity. Memory insinuated itself momentarily; and his imagination recreated pantylessness on the gyrating posterior that had greeted him at the kitchen door. Had he been aware of this fact then, his brain might have burst.
He eased his hands through the opening, carefully slid them by the lateral extremes of her velvety breasts and around to her firm but soft- textured back. And he drew her close to him. He placed his mouth on hers. For a long moment their nostrils breathed each other's spent breath. The kiss completed, he eased the dress off her shoulders and let it drop. Her arms went about his neck, and she initiated a wet exchange of mouth and air.
When she relaxed, he held her at arms length, and they smiled at each other. Then his visual memory wanted to compare the perceived reality before him with the boy's imagination. He began his inspection with the known, with what his eyes had long ago explored, up at the base of her neck, and proceeded slowly downward until his gaze was upon what, until this instant, had been a subjective invention. His eyes stopped tracking to register her mammillary munificence: perfected roundness; crests presenting succor; Nature offering life. He focused on her tense nipples, each the girth of a little fingertip, each mounted on a terraced, silver- dollar sized areola, each competing with the other to be taken first.
He resumed his visual hunt down the under slope of her breasts, onto her abdomen where he paused to marvel at the umbilicus. His impatient tongue itched to explore this pulchritudinous dimple. But he repressed the tongue's desires and continued the visual exploration, down over the slightly convex lower belly. Then his eyes locked and focused a sharp image of her rich lawn of pubic fur.
Like a nestful of newly hatched hawklets, each and every one of his senses suddenly demanded immediate gratification. But the wise coach of a Deep Brain again advised, Patience Asa. Don't rush life. Select a lead from among your sensibilities.
Asa chose touch and assigned the point to his lips. And the lips immediately chose breasts. He had kissed her breasts in his boyhood imagination. And a prostitute had once let him briefly purchase the privilege. But neither imagination nor experience had prepared him for Anita's tangibility; for her suppleness; her motility; her incubated palpability. He carefully drew a nipple into his mouth. Automatically, his lips pursed and began to suckle. But his naughty tongue pushed the polite lips aside and launched into a tactile rampage. His will ordered the miscreant organ back into his mouth. She gestured for him to transfer his attention to the opposite member. He complied.
When his tongue continued to defy him, and it became plain that its out lashings would soon abrade these tender places, Asa attempted to transfer to Anita's neck. "The pearls!" she squealed, drew back and quickly and expertly undid the catch. In the short interlude, Asa realized she'd required no assistance from him back at the mirror, that she'd merely been performing her role in the rite. He mentally filed these valuable data for future reference.
But as Anita unlimbered her prize, raising her arms to do so, the sight and smell of her axillary jungles caught his attention and forced him to abandon his intentions for her neck. After she deposited the pearls on her bureau and returned her person to him, he nuzzled his way into her armpit, there to inhale its muttony summons and rummage the source of her musky smell. "Devil," she whispered. "Dev-viiil," she squeaked. By the hair of his head, she dragged him from the pit of paradise and violently kissed him on the mouth. And again. The air hissed from her nostrils now. But suddenly she drew back and said, "Asa honey. You're supposed to get undressed too." She giggled and scampered to the bed.
Asa tore off his clothes and followed.
"Wait!" Anita ordered when he attempted to ease her supine. "Not like that," she whispered. "Not at first. "
Following her pantomimic instructions, he maneuvered his buttocks to the edge of the bed. She ordered him to plant both feet flat on the floor, brace himself with his arms, and angle his torso back toward the bed. Cupping one hand behind his neck, her knees sharply bent, she partly straddled his pelvis as though mounting a racing saddle. "Wait!" she demanded. He should scrunch forward some; that was enough; now he should hunch up just a little bit and hold his knees closer; that was much better. His legs and back soon began to tingle with the onset of muscle fatigue. He felt more cramped than in the sitting position with the rifle, from which he could at least shoot; but now he had insufficient slack in his joints to risk blinking his eyes. Anita shifted, dug one knee into the mattress and used the other to stabilize what became a posture for polo. "Okay," she said. "Now you let me begin it. You don't do nothing till I start to come. Then roll me over and really make love to me."
Come? 'You- all fixing to come yet soldier boy?' 'You come, GI?' Come, of course, translated into ejaculation. But, from experience, he'd reluctantly concluded, in spite of his boyhood research, that come was something he did. Coming was a male reflex, wasn't it? Well whatever, he'd follow her instructions as faithfully as his ruined musculoskeletal system would allow.
Anita spat into her free hand and smeared saliva over his glans penis. Then grasping the organ halfway down the shaft, she used its wetted end to massage the vestibule of her vagina. More lubricative saliva. More massaging. He became aware of a firm, moveable, subcutaneous knot about the size of a lima bean, which he postulated was her clitoris; and which she seemed to be trying to pin and roll flat against her pubic bone. He also became aware of fissile folds intermittently grasping for the end of his penis. An occasional stray pubic hair pinched between his and her contact surfaces, which she would pause to extricate. "Kizz me and say nice things," she uttered. "But don't move it." 'It' he assumed was his penis. 'It' he'd conceded to her some time ago to do with as she pleased.
He almost bucked her off while trying to crane up to her lips. After an apology, more lubrication and a restart, he found that she'd given him just enough play to engineer his lips onto one of her breasts. He found and drew a nipple into his mouth. When he could think of no 'nice things' to say, he merely suckled.
Her exhalations transformed into gasps. Coincident with her respiratory changes, she fed herself halfway onto him, squared her position and, lacing her fingers behind his neck, began posting at a pace between trot and canter. And now he smelled armpit. The mutton evoked a resurgence of his own cramp- quenched lust. He eased her nipple from his mouth and declared, "I love you, Anita." Her gasping became panting. He reiterated the simple statement of fact. Momentarily breaking stride , she unflexed her knees, one at a time, wrapped her legs around his waist and placed her open mouth on his. The tip of her tongue licked his lips and forced its way inside his mouth. There, it sought out and attacked his tongue in the manner of an angry cobra. His own tongue, responding in kind, chased hers in retreat into her mouth. She gestured for his embrace. The rhythm of her hips modulated, and her excursions now involved the entire length of his penis. Her nostrils began to snort hot compressed blasts. And from the depths of her throat, but strangled back by their lingual battle, she uttered either Oh! or Ouch! or Now! He wasn't sure which.
This is come, his cognition advised. And as he pondered the data, she yanked back her head and shouted, "Now, damnit."
He rolled her onto her back. At last, he finally knew what he was obliged to do. But on his first full thrust, she emitted a wavering wail. "Am I hurting you, Anita?" He hesitated.
"Godalmighty don't stop now," she protested.
He cradled her lower body, eased her away from the precarious edge of the bed and complied.
Anita squirmed and groaned. He still feared she was suffering. But her pelvis rose and fell harmoniously with his strokes. He dismissed thoughts of stopping again and tried to imagine he was performing a pelvic variation of bayonet drill. Short thrust! Parry! Long thrust! Back in the guard position, ho! Then he sensed the first feedback from his own internal contractures. He almost laughed. For he'd totally displaced own lust. Then his brain began to lose chunks of vocabulary. He heard himself pant and his sounds join the chorus of hers. Then Anita began a long monophonic moan. Her body went into a violent and sustained paroxysm. And his own perception became chaotic as a lifetime of imprisoned need exploded from the dungeons of his being.
***
She was looking up at him when he opened his eyes. Shifting his weight from her and onto his elbows, he continued the clasp until the crests of the last low amplitude after- waves rippled to extinction. And he was sobbing.
He brought her lips up to his and held her in a long, gentle kiss. As he backed away, he said, "I love you very much, Anita." He eased carefully off her, turned and collapsed onto his back. Anita gathered bedcovers up over their bodies. As though marking the spot where she would momentarily place her head, she kissed him softly on the shoulder. Then he felt the warm sticky wetness of her pudendal ruff press against his thigh.
"Asa, honey. "
"Yes? "
"Thank you. And for the pearls, too. "
"Thank you, Anita." He did not add, but his mind proclaimed to the cosmos at large: Thank you for my immortal soul. He raised her head, just enough to expose her cheek. He rendered the solemn kiss of the Zooks. And then he went asleep.
Copyright, 1996 by Paul Pietsch, all rights reserved. May be copied for personal, educational or other non-commercial "fair-use" purposes, as defined by U.S. copyright law.