The One That Got Away (15 page)

“Did you find it?” Maxine called from the living room.

“Yes, I did,” I called back. I stood in the hallway, trying to calculate how much time I had until I returned to my own apartment. Say another half-hour at Maxine's, maybe fifteen minutes to the subway, at least forty-five minutes to Manhattan if the trains were running frequently, an hour or more if they weren't, plus a five-minute walk to my apartment. Too long. I was trying to think if there was some place I could stop on the way home when Maxine came into the hallway.

“What's the matter, B.D.? Did Paddington spook you? He's harmless—I fed him today.” She strode past me, opened the door, turned on the light, and bent down. The snake slithered up her arm and around her neck, and she carried him past me into the bedroom.

When I came out of the bathroom a second time, the bedroom door was closed.

Back in the living room, I asked Maxine, “Why do you have a snake and why is it called Paddington?”

“Oh, Paddington isn't mine; I'm just taking care of him for a friend.”

“Well, I think I should be on my way,” Bridget said. “Can I drop you off at the subway, B.D.?”

“That would be great.”

As I thanked Maxine for the wonderful dinner, she suddenly hugged me. It was so unexpected that I walked with Bridget to the car in a kind of shock.

“Maxine hugged me,” I said. “Do you think that means she likes me? I don't mean ‘like' like—you know, the girlfriend kind of like—more like she thinks it's OK that I exist in the same universe as she does.”

“That dinner definitely had a deleterious effect on your brain,” Bridget said.

“That was no dinner, that was assault and battery,” I
said. I couldn't suppress a shudder as the soup, tofu lasagna, Brussel sprouts, and frozen yogurt reappeared before me as a kind of mental indigestion. “Maxine hugged me. Don't you find that amazing? She's never shown me any affection before.”

“B.D., I don't understand why you're making such a fuss about a hug.”

In the car I began taking a long-distance inventory of the contents of my refrigerator.

Bridget drove for a couple of blocks, then parked the car outside an old-fashioned diner.

“This isn't the subway,” I said.

“No, but they make terrific ice cream sundaes in this diner. And ice cream sundaes don't require a lot of preparation time,” Bridget said. “You have the air of a desperate woman, B.D.”

“You know me so well.”

Bridget ordered hot fudge with chocolate ice cream; I ordered butterscotch with vanilla.

“I have never been so glad to see a maraschino cherry in my entire life,” I declared. I began working my way through the whipped cream, moaning softly.

Bridget laughed. “Are you coming or something?”

“No,” I said. “This is better than sex.”

Bridget looked concerned. “For your sake, I hope you're exaggerating.”

I was halfway through the ice cream and sauce when the idea hit me. It was so perfect that I put my spoon down to contemplate it.

“Now what?” Bridget asked. “You look as if you're on the verge of speaking in tongues.”

‘I think I should host the next dinner,” I said.

Bridget grinned. “And you're already planning the menu?”

“Yup,” I resumed inhaling my ice cream. “Pâté to start,” I said, spoon poised for re-entry. I paused to savor the ice cream and sauce before going on. “And none of
that vegetable pâté either.” I took another spoonful. “Maybe I'll do a baked Brie instead.” My ice cream was approaching the soupy stage. “Then a filet roast. Baked potatoes with butter and sour cream. Asparagus with hollandaise sauce.” I didn't really like asparagus, but I was willing to suffer for the sake of the sauce. The asparagus would be the price I'd pay for my revenge.

“And for dessert?” Bridget asked.

“Chocolate mousse cake with real whipped cream.”

“And when are you going to have this dinner?”

“Well, I have to clean up my apartment first.”

It was the fatal flaw in an otherwise brilliant plan. I recalled how Eduardo had once made the mistake of stopping by my apartment unannounced to drop something off. The instant he stepped through the door, he took out his newly acquired cell phone and called a friend, begging him to come and escort him home in a taxi, then brew him a tisane so he could recover from the shock.

Chapter 18

Angel and I were working our way through the top ten activities preferred by authors of personal ads. We had gone to a movie, visited a museum, and attended a play and a concert. We had traveled around the world via New York's ethnic restaurants, and had spent a day antiquing in a scenic village on the Hudson River. Angel had bought me a copy of
The House at Pooh Corner
to replace the one I'd given to my elementary school library because I felt guilty about an overdue book. We both disliked the blue M&Ms, and preferred the white icing to the chocolate on black and white cookies. Angel simply refused to eat the chocolate, while I ate it first and saved the best for last. And we had gone for walks in the park and on the now-empty beach with Betty Boop, Angel's Great Dane. At the end of each meeting, agreeing that it had been fun, we would stare at each other intently for a couple of minutes, then go our separate ways.

I was frustrated, but afraid of making the first move. However, I was getting a little tired of shopping for new lingerie every time Angel made a date with me.

Tonight, we were attempting a quiet evening at
home—Angel's home, of course, since mine was not in a state suitable for entertaining guests.

Angel proved to be a good cook. The meal she prepared was simple, but tasty—salad, roast chicken, wild rice, steamed vegetables, sorbet for dessert. After she served the coffee we settled in to watch
The Maltese Falcon
, one of Angel's favorite movies.

Angel put the DVD in and sat down in a recliner.

“There's plenty of room here on the sofa,” I said.

Angel didn't take the bait. “I always sit in this chair when I watch DVDs.”

Betty Boop jumped up and lay down next to me, with her head in my lap. I sighed.

When the movie was over, I started to shiver. I tried to control it, but when my teeth began to chatter, Angel looked at me.

“Are you cold?”

“Nnnnoooh,” I said. It was hard to talk with my teeth making like the happy, tap-dancing feet in
42nd Street
. “This ha-happens whenever I tr-try to figure out if someone is going to m-make a p-p-p-pass at me. I can't t-t-t-take the suspense any longer. Either t-t-t-tell me that you just want to be friends, or k-k-k-kiss me.”

She put me out of my misery without a word.

You might have thought I'd be engaged after that, but the voices in my head kept buzzing, fluttering, zapping themselves on the light. What if Angel wouldn't do the one thing I really needed her to do, the thing I was almost embarrassed about wanting because it was so identified with lesbians that my desire for it seemed boring and conventional? Maybe Angel was one of those women I'd read about who strapped on huge dildos and wanted them sucked. I tried to figure out why a woman would find this arousing. She wouldn't feel anything—unless it was a phenomenon like the phantom limb, but
reversed. Or maybe it was a visual thing. When I came out of the closet, I thought I had left fellatio far behind, and I felt a bit resentful having it pop up again. Women's genitals were so much nicer; they were less ostentatious, and they never made you gag.

My internal disc jockey turned sadistic and began playing the refrain “Girls just want to have fun,” like a taunt while the great storm cloud questions rolled slowly across my consciousness.
Am I going to cry? Will I be able to come?

I had tried talking to Bridget about the crying, once. She shrugged and said that lots of women did, if that made me feel any better, which it didn't.

“Ticklish?” Angel asked, after my shoulders scrunched up in response to her nuzzling my neck.

“Yes. Sorry.”

“I think we'll be more comfortable upstairs.” She took my hand and led me up to her bedroom. Betty Boop was sprawled across the bed.

“Betty. Off the bed.”

Betty yawned.

Angel picked up a rubber toy and squeaked it. Betty sat up, and then ran as Angel threw the toy out into the hallway.

I slid my hands under the sleeves of Angel's t-shirt and stroked her muscles. Then I slid my fingers down to her sides and under the cotton again, around and up to her shoulder blades, while I plucked at her upper, then lower lip with both of mine. We sank down onto the bed and everything shifted—weight and tempo and touch. There was a desperate quality to my need for both of us to be naked. I pulled my tank top off, and Angel put her hands behind my back.

“In front,” I whispered.

I had to admit that I'd had some trouble with the clasp myself. Still, it was disconcerting to see a woman with a
license to carry a .44 Magnum stymied by a bra that hooked in front.

Fortunately, I didn't have to face that problem because Angel wasn't wearing a bra. Beneath the white t-shirt her breasts formed soft, sweet peaks of meringue. I brushed the tip of one with the back of my hand.

“Do you mind?” Angel said. “I'm in the middle of a highly technical operation.” A moment later she was able to slip the straps off my shoulders and hold the bra in the air. “We have lift off.” She dropped it on the floor by the bed, and grasped the hem of her t-shirt.

I gasped and quivered.

“What?” said Angel, arms above her head, breasts exposed, the neck of the t-shirt stretching over the tip of her nose.

“Betty's licking my toes,” I whispered. We both watched her for a moment.

“Would you like me to do that to you?” Angel asked.

I considered this. Perhaps if I'd had a pedicure, and was fresh from the bath, wearing that magenta silk robe I'd admired earlier in the week. “Actually,” I said, wiggling my toes to dry them off, “I'd rather you lick something else.”

Angel's eyes were the blue beginning of a flame. With her flushed cheeks and coppery hair, she was a creature of fire, an underworld goddess come to take me on a dark, heated journey. “The back of your knee?” she asked.

“An intriguing possibility, but not precisely what I had in mind.”

“Your inner thigh?”

“I'd prefer that you bite that. But you're heading in the right direction.”

Angel lay down on top of me, light in weight but solidly muscled. As our kisses became longer and deeper, our breathing shorter and more ragged, Angel began moaning, “B . . . B . . . B . . .”

That's one of the problems with having a name like mine—Bambi doesn't exactly fit into a Great Moments in the Heat of Passion scenario.

“B.D.,” Angel sighed.

I held my breath while Angel's mouth moved up my inner thigh. As she lapped and circled and thrust, I offered up an inarticulate chant. But some part of my brain remained on guard duty. Was I making too much noise? Taking too long? I was afraid I might break if she kept on going. “Don't stop,” I gasped, clutching the sheet with my hands. I wanted to be on overload, my clit so charged it would black out my brain like New York City in the summer of ‘77. But when I came it was less of a shattering than a slow sinking back into the here and now. I turned away from Angel, curled into myself, and wept.

“Are you OK?” Angel asked.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't understand why this happens; it just does.”

“I don't mind,” Angel replied, smoothing my hair. “I just want to be sure it's not because of something I did.”

“You were wonderful,” I said, and headed for the bathroom and a tissue. I decided that it wasn't the crying that was so bad, it was blowing my nose afterward.

From the doorway, I looked at Angel on the bed. Her patch of blonde pubic hair fascinated me and I lay down between her legs to take a closer look. Her hair was straighter, sparser, silkier than mine. I rubbed my face against her like a cat marking its territory, then turned back to lick her clean, alternating long slow strokes with quick flicks. With Angel's every moan, I became more predatory. When she pulled my head away, I lifted myself up and over. And then I, who had never been able to work a hula hoop, found my hips in orbit as I pressed myself to her.