5. The thing about chocolate
The bookmark was actually a plane ticket, handwritten on a flimsy triplicate form of the kind that no airline had used for decades. If the information on it was accurate, Megan’s funny, unique aunt, the woman who’d employed oversized sunglasses to hold back her hair until chemo snatched it all, had read this magazine on a TWA flight from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York to Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Megan didn’t know if her aunt had traveled alone, with a friend, or maybe with a lover, but she’d marked a photo of a dark-haired man wearing a light blue dress shirt with contrasting white collar and cuffs. He posed like a model, a navy pinstriped suit jacket slung over one shoulder and his other hand thrust deep into the pocket of his pleated trousers. So pleated, so high-waisted, so eighties.
The title of the article opposite the photo read, “A question for our helpful readers, submitted by Mary from Spokane.” Since Spokane was an Eastern Washington city two hours from the farm where Megan’s mother and Aunt Bea had grown up, she decided to read this instead of continuing to search for the ending to the fireman story.
Dear Editor of Hot Shortz ,
The thing about chocolate is, it makes you do the things you very much want to do but shouldn’t. Last Friday, the most eligible partner at the law firm where I work brought candy to the typing pool, then said, “I scheduled a client call at four. Who can stay to take letters after?” I’ll call him Mr. G. He’s tall, over six feet, and has hair darker than day-old coffee.
Like Nico. Megan lifted her ponytail off her sweaty neck. The fan he’d given her fluttered the pages, forcing her to secure them with her forearm if she wanted to keep reading this close to the moving air.
His eyes are June-sky, and his voice always makes my stomach clench until I settle into the rhythm of his dictation. Thankfully, he’s not married, or it would be embarrassing to watch the rest of the staff try to catch his eye. I’m not the competitive type, not unless I’m on a horse, so I would never claim to have been trying to cause the events of last Friday. No, I would not.
Don’t let this be workplace harassment, 1980s style. Megan didn’t usually hate-read, but after the dumb ending to the fireman story, this letter had better include the actual payoff.
Growing up in the Palouse, I spent every free minute with my horses. My parents were older than average when I was born, and too busy competing with their Percheron wagon-pulling team to pay attention to the 1960s or 1970s. My childhood was full of animals and the freedom of five hundred acres of the most beautiful land under the red, white, and blue. We didn’t even have television until three years ago, when that John Hinckley shot President Reagan and my mother decided we should watch the news in color, not just listen to the radio.
This sounds oddly like Mom and Aunt Bea’s childhood, including the Percherons.
Along with saying please and thank you, my parents emphasized that a good girl waits for marriage. One time, when I was supposed to be asleep, I overheard them talking about a neighbor’s daughter. My father said no man buys a cow if he’s getting free milk, which caused my teenaged self to wonder how my friend could give away milk when her family grew wheat.
Megan’s mother had mocked the same saying, calling it a patriarchal holdover that equated women with livestock. Was the fact that this letter reminded the sisters of their upbringing the reason Aunt Bea had left a page marker? Something about the letter kept Megan reading.
This history is to explain why I don’t have anyone but you, Helpful Readers, to answer questions about life off the farm. I know the manner by which people have sex isn’t fundamentally different from ranch animals, except for the face-to-face part. At school, the teacher sent the boys out of the room when the four girls in my grade studied human reproduction, so I understand that after marriage, a man puts his penis into a woman’s body in order to create a baby, and he pushes in and out until The Deed is Done. By the by, the girl from the next farm was already looking to calve, so that was the day I surmised my father’s meaning about free milk.
Last month, Mr. G gave the typing pool fancy filled chocolates. The gooey cherry cordials are my favorite. My mother strongly favored home-baked goods like apple fritters, coffee braid, krumkake, snickerdoodles, and cream biscuits with strawberry-rhubarb preserves, so when I lit out for the city and discovered that devil’s delight known as dark chocolate, I will confess to a regular yearning to put it in my mouth. Luckily, I was a beanpole when I left home, because an abundance of chocolate has gifted me a similar abundance of new curves.
I’ve put off asking my question because thinking about the event makes me feel very scattered. Readers, I promise, it’s coming.
On the Friday when I agreed to stay late, Mr. G had brought chocolates in fancy gold boxes he said came from Belgium. While I ate one, I digressed into my opinion regarding the merits of Belgian draft horses versus my family’s Percherons. He did not seem to expect so many points of difference in the draft horse world, but he claimed that there were at least as many, or even more, differences between candies. He showed me the box, which contained chocolates shaped like scalloped seashells, and others like half-open oysters with a gold-dusted candy pearl peeking out. When I expressed interest in the ones stamped with a woman on horseback and licked my lips, Mr. G leaned close to me and whispered, “I saved you something special for later, Mary.”
His voice made me want to gulp air or water or I didn’t know what.
Later it became.
During my six months of city life, I’d replaced my round-pleated skirts and church dresses with a wardrobe approved by my roommates. I left the jacket to my best red power suit hanging on the back of my chair and took my steno book through the deserted office. The illuminated wall of glass blocks that separated the hall of partners’ offices from the reception area glowed in front of me. Wearing my silky white blouse and my straight red skirt with its high kick-pleat, I imagined being a Christie or a Cindy strutting the catwalk when I placed each foot across in front of the other. As I swayed through the open door into Mr. G’s corner office, I felt fizzy inside, no longer Mary from the farm, but someone who belonged here in the city, a woman going places.
He sat behind his desk, with the view of the Spokane River making a perfect backdrop for his dark hair and suit. Shirts like the one he wore, with a white collar and blue fabric, remind me of small clouds scudding high across a summer sky. One of the other girls told me that the art on the side wall, images of black and white ovals with pointed ends, are abstract prints, but I think they look like giant leaves that have come inside to stare at the couch.
I too stare at the couch. That couch confuses me. Like furniture pictured in those magazines that are too fancy to sell at a grocery checkout line, one side of it has a big, padded arm, but the other side doesn’t. It’s so deep, I wouldn’t know how to sit on it, and there’s a square ottoman almost as large as a bed. More startling than any of that, however, is that it’s made of purple velvet. Before I worked here, I thought office furniture had to be tan or black.
I prefer the gray leather armchairs that face his glass-topped desk. I’m descended from Swedish immigrants. Shoulders that look small when I drive a combine get some long glances when I wear a suit jacket, so I appreciate how those big, firm cube seats take my body without wobbling on their chrome legs.
After I sat, Mr. G produced another gold box. “Just for you, Mary,” he said as he came around the desk and handed it to me. Instead of going back to his chair, he propped himself on the edge of his desk and watched.
The little box looked like its rightful place was in Mr. G’s world, on the mirrored table next to the glass vase that held a single huge leaf, where it could be reflected alongside infinite images of the shiny man who’d given it to me. My fingers managed to open it, but not without fumbling from the weight of my farm girl dreams. The twisted gold cord tying the box was so beautiful and so useless that I wanted to keep it forever, wrap it around my wrist, and feel it slide over my pulse.
“All cherry centers. You like those, don’t you?”
I was hungry, but also a tad embarrassed he’d noticed me eating the others, because I mostly use my tongue to lick out the filling until the chocolate is hollow, which I then nibble separately to preserve my lipstick.
I got over being embarrassed when he suggested I eat one right then. He watched me without moving. At least, I figured he could see from under his lowered eyelids.
These were more gooey than I expected, and a bead of cherry filling dripped onto the white fabric across my chest. Since one hand held the box, and the other had chocolate on it, Mr. G pulled his pocket square out of his jacket and knelt in front of me. “May I?”
I’ll confess to feeling overly warm and flustered when he blotted the stain. I’m twenty-one years old, and I’ve kissed a lot of boys, more than five, and even let a few put their hands under my shirt. Once I got so carried away after showing at the Lincoln County fair that I sat in a pickup with a boy whose steer won the grand prize. I had taken ribbons for my tomatoes and my long-haired rabbit, so we had sincere congratulations to exchange. Well, one thing led to another, and bench seats being bench seats and fair parking lots being large and dark, soon that boy was on top pushing his body hard against mine, for sure with his jeans on, and I was pushing back, and that was all very nice. But none of those before-times ever lit tremors deep inside like when Mr. G knelt in front of me to address that cherry filling.
After a moment, he said, “I’m afraid this needs to be wet.”
I surely agreed.
He rose and moved to his desk. While he dipped the end of his pocket square into a glass of water, I freely studied the way his dark hair curled over his white shirt collar.
He turned back to me with a dampened handkerchief and a smile like a man who knows something, and I licked my lips. In the beat of a dragonfly wing, he was in front of me and lightly touching the cloth to the last bits of stain. Strangely, I immediately wanted to dab more on my blouse, but it was my favorite and awfully new, so instead, I took another bite. When I used my tongue to swirl the last bit of filling out of the ball of chocolate, Mr. G made a noise like a growl. It startled me, and a smear of that cherry syrup stuck to my lower lip. I said, “I’m sorry, sir. I should be more careful.”
He seemed to mirror my concern, because he said, “Let me help you with that, Mary. We don’t want to make another spot.” Rather than use his handkerchief, he rubbed his thumb across my lip to capture the drip. Well, I couldn’t squander yummy cherry cordial, so when Mr. G pulled his hand away, I leaned forward and licked the end of his thumb. Waste not, want not, my mother would say. I certainly wasn’t going to waste something I wanted.
Cleaning his thumb took my tongue longer than I expected, and Mr. G put his other hand on my leg for support. Even through the fabric, his palm and fingers were so heavy and hot, I gasped. I grew up riding. My thighs can work all day. The one time I remember feeling trembly in my knees was a time I got thrown at a fence and landed with the wind knocked out of me. I guess that’s why when his hand squeezed my leg and I got a funny melting feeling in my bones, I moaned.
“Is this wet spot making your blouse uncomfortable?” he asked.
Amazingly, he’d figured that out before I did.
“It might dry faster over a chair.” His blue eyes were like the flickering colors on a jay’s wing, bright enough to make you chase even when you knew that bird was too fast to catch.
From the quirk of his lips, I suspected that he knew I didn’t have a free hand, but no harm in clarity. “It appears I need assistance. Sir.”
His nostrils flared when I said that last word, but all he did was take the candy box and set it on the floor next to the chair. On my first day at work, I’d noticed that Mr. G’s chest was very broad, but when he leaned closer and my nose almost brushed his shoulder, I also noticed how perfect he smelled. I could imagine that he and I were tramping through the forest, carrying a picnic basket filled with cherry pie while crushing pine needles under our feet, that’s how good the scent of his skin was. In case your readers think I exaggerate, let me be clear: farm girls know their odors. This man smelled lickety-slurp good.
Before I knew it, he’d unbuttoned my blouse. While I wiggled to extract myself, he whisked it away from my shoulders and stood. I watched him drape it over the back of the second chair. Shame he wore suit pants. A rear end like Mr. G’s belonged in denim.
Lest readers consider me to be immodest, I wore a camisole. With skirts or dresses that do not have a sturdy lining, I also wear a half-slip. If Princess Diana had my mother, she would never have posed for that photographer with sun-silhouetted legs visible through her skirt. She would have worn a good solid slip, like I was raised to do, guaranteed.
Mr. G knelt near my chair again and picked another chocolate from the box. His blunt fingers unwrapped the foil with the same efficiency I admired in his deposition questions.
As I parted my lips, that naughty man squeezed so hard, the cherry filling spurted on the skin below my collarbone. The liquid hung like a ruby pendant before it tracked a route toward the top edge of my camisole. Unlike my blouse, this layer was synthetic and washed like a dream, so I didn’t mind. I thought Mr. G intended to apologize, because he looked like a dog that’d been caught with a hen in its mouth.
But he did not say a word. Instead, he licked that cherry goo from my skin with a long, slow lap of his tongue.
A shiver went up my spine, and my lips parted. He was a dirty dog indeed.
Seeing the remains of the cherry cordial and melted chocolate smeared on his fingers and thumb, instinct spurred me to grab his wrist and lift his hand to my mouth. I could smell the starch used on his cuffs, the underpinnings of cherry, but best of all, I could smell him. I slid one finger past my teeth, let my lips encircle his knuckle, and swirled my tongue. That must have been the right thing to do, because he made a humming sound against my skin.
He was chocolate and soap and heat. The pad of his finger was rougher than my tongue, and it dragged across my lower lip as he pulled back, before he pushed it inside my mouth again. Its weight pressed on my tongue. I felt the urge to suck it like a straw. My legs wanted to wrap around him and catch him close, but when I tried to spread my thighs, my skirt trapped me. All I could do was rock my teeth in the grooves of his knuckle and suck. When he pulled his finger away again, breaking the seal of my lips with a popping sound that jolted through me, I wanted to snap at him like a cranky mare at an apple.
The way his eyelids lowered and a flush colored his cheekbones made me feel like a woman who could stroll down a street, toppling men in her wake. He placed both of his palms flat on the lower part of my camisole, slicking that fabric across my ribs. I’d previously thought the material was smooth, but it caught and pulled on every bump and prickle of my skin, and I had so many prickles. Then he curled his fingers around the bottom hem and began to raise it. My breasts had filled in during the months I’d lived in the city, but I hadn’t known they could become a size bigger in the seconds it took him to lift my camisole over my head. I’m pretty sure I would have overflowed the cups of my bra if he hadn’t unhooked that last restraint.
His hands cradled my breasts and lifted them to his mouth as he followed the Giorgio perfume dabbed between them. I sunburn easily, but his lips scorched hotter than any summer I’d ever encountered, even in the middle of a hundred acres of August wheat. His mouth mounted the curve of my breast to my nipple. He suckled me. He suckled, and I shook. Sensation radiated from my nipples through my body, as far as even the edges of my ears. My senses opened so fully that I could hear every creak of the leather chair that cradled my body, every raspy breath that fled my lips, the thud of my heart against my eardrums.
His mouth left my breast, and I heard a sound like a moan. It came from my own lips. I didn’t want him to stop. “Please,” I whispered.
I saw his chest expand, his gaze focused on my breasts, but he didn’t return.
I wanted to pull him back, but my fingers were too sticky to touch this beautiful man. It seemed unfair for me to be shirtless, speechless, and breathless, and him completely covered. I tried to get what I wanted without grabbing. “Please, sir.” I lifted my chocolate-streaked fingers. “I’m afraid to get this on you. I’m so…” I knew what to say. “Dirty.”
When he rose from the floor, I worried that he’d misunderstood, until he shrugged out of his jacket and draped it on the other chair, covering my blouse. His blue shirt had white cuffs folded double, which required cuff links, a thing I’d only seen on a prom tuxedo before meeting him. Today’s pair resembled gold knots, as if miniature rope had been tied and dipped into molten metal. I watched his fingers, the nails clean and neat, twist the ball holding his cuff closed. In the quiet, my breathing sounded louder than his, louder even than the air system, which echoed the hum I felt crossing and recrossing my bare skin, an invisible touch that puckered my nipples and lifted my chest until my shoulders dug into the back of the chair. Still, he didn’t hurry.
By the time he switched to the second cuff, my breasts were so needy, I had to bring my hands to cup their weight. When I lifted them toward the man standing in front of me, his gaze sharpened on my offering. That’s when I noticed the smear of chocolate on my pale skin.
“Here, Mary.” He dropped the set of small gold links onto the slope where my breasts nestled together. They tumbled for a moment, but I squeezed my flesh together, and their metal posts caught.
I stilled. The cuff links felt cool for one instant, then warmed to match my burning skin.
“Do not let them fall,” he said while working his shirt buttons. The pressed white fabric parted to reveal a white cotton V-neck. A triangle of dark hair curled up to the hollow at the base of his throat. I waited and watched. I could picture thrusting my fingers through those strands, moving my hands down his chest to stroke his heated skin. My spread fingers scissored closed, squeezing my nipples into points. When my shoulders shifted, I felt the cuff links slide a fraction closer to my fingers.
“What did I direct you to do, Mary?”
“I shouldn’t…” I had to breathe a few times before I could continue. “Let them fall.”
“Are you being very still?”
“Yes. Of course.” I wasn’t. My thighs and butt were clenching. My hips were shifting under my skirt. The chair seemed to have become as uncomfortable as a bike seat.
“Then I will continue.” Finally, he removed his shirt, laid it over his jacket, and returned to stand in front of my seat.
Pulling a T-shirt over your head is a thing anyone old enough to tie a shoe can do without thought, but Mr. G seemed to be relearning how to remove this article of clothing. His lackadaisical pace made my heart beat double-time. My eyes were almost level with his flat stomach. I couldn’t see anything but the dark trails of hair across his lightly tanned skin, where shirtless summer weekends had left lingering kisses into fall.
I checked his thighs, at least what I could discern of their muscularity underneath his suit pants. Perhaps I also looked at the area between them, even though we weren’t going to do it in his office—obviously. There was no bed, and it was still daylight.
“Patience, Mary,” he said.
I don’t know why he said that. I hadn’t spoken. Maybe I’d licked my lips, but I hadn’t tapped my foot or given any indication of a need for speed. Patience, he’d said. Like waiting all the years it took me to shake Lincoln County wasn’t blue-ribbon-bedecked patience.
Then he pulled his undershirt over his head, and I saw the hair in his armpits surrounded by more than enough on his chest that it could belong to Mr. Thomas Magnum, Private Investigator. His nipples were light brown and so unlike my own that I let out all the air in my lungs. One of the cuff links tumbled into the lap of my skirt.
“Mary.” His tone was stern, almost as hard as I imagined his grown-man muscles would be. “Bored already?”
Nowhere near bored. Restless as a weathervane with an urge to spin, that’s how I felt. But the one metal knot in my lap, the other still precariously balanced on the shelf of my breasts, pinned me in place. I wanted to touch him, but that word patience hung between us.
My arms trembled from holding my breasts for this long.