Two Americans in Paris (16 page)

“Yup!” I grin, my eyes on you. My dearest, I have finally succeeded in bringing you home with me. I am so high on excitement and anticipation for the possibilities of our evening together in my box that I glide toward the second pair of doors. I quickly enter-in the code to open them. My senses are so intensified that the cool silver buttons leave a rim of cold on the pad of my pointer finger. I hold open one of the doors to let you through and you follow me to the back staircase. This staircase is wooden like the main staircase of your building, though less worn.

I climb the stairs with boundless energy and count the flights in my head as we go. Never have I been so eager to reach the top.

You begin to breathe heavily behind me. “How many more flights are there?”

“Three more. It’s not that bad,” I assure you.

“How many are there total?”

“Six.”

“There are six total? Ugh.”

At the top I wait for you. Within a few moments you arrive and I lead you down the hall and into my box. Inside are the barest of living essentials. A shower is slotted in the corner and beside it is a sink. Along the left wall is a small fridge and on it a hot plate. Above my fridge is a long shelf which holds kitchen paraphernalia; a rod attached beneath the shelf holds my silk dresses and cotton skirts. In anticipation of having you here, I have neatly stacked my books, which are normally scattered everywhere, beside my dresser and on the stool that serves as my nightstand. My bed lines the right wall and a slim path down the middle of my room leads to my small window.

I plunk my bag on the floor and prop open my umbrella to allow it to dry, its hood arching between my shower and my nightstand. You put your backpack beneath the shadow of my umbrella.

“Would you like me to dry your umbrella too?” I offer.

“No, it’s okay.” You walk over to my window and admire the view as I have so often imagined you would.

I sit on my bed and stare up at your handsome body silhouetted against the charcoal-gray rooftops. My chest is pulsating with desire. I long to run my hands down the length of your abdomen and feel your hands on my body in response. For now, though, I restrain myself. I can hardly believe you are here, in my room. I feel as though my lust is emanating from my body in hot pink clouds that wash over you and dissipate over the streets below.

You look up at something in the skyline and I notice your eyes have turned cinnamon brown in the early evening light. You gesture to it, “Look, there’s a rainbow.”

I stand up, my side brushing lightly against yours, and look over your shoulder at the rainbow arced over the dappled gray sky.

I seat myself back on my bed. “A perfect ending to a perfect day.” I say softly, hardly able to believe my own words. I never expected today would go so well.

You turn away from my window and look around for a place to sit. “Can I sit on the bed?”

I smile. “No, you’re going to have to sit on the floor.”

“Yeah, I guess there really is no other place to sit.” You settle in beside me and look around my box. “When you said ‘box’ I thought you were joking. But it is!”

“Oh, hah, no, I wasn’t joking,” I shake my head.

Before I start making our meal I offer you something to drink, but you say you’re alright. I set about cooking the chicken breast on the hot plate. “Do you want to help a little bit?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Could you open and drain the cans of corn and mushrooms into the sink?”

“Sure.” You take the cans and set about the task I have given you. Even though you are only a few feet away from me at the sink, the distance causes an ache of longing to flow through my abdomen.

When the chicken is done, I set it aside. I cook the bird’s nest rice pasta and add the chicken, mushrooms, corn, and a container of coconut milk. The final ingredient is
piment
—chili paste. I add a large, red dollop of it, turning the noodles pink and adding a sharp spice to the odors of warm food floating around my room.

“How much do you want? A full plate?” I ask.

“Yes,” you say. As I scoop the dish onto a plate for you I am filled with gratitude for being able to share this meal we made together. I place the plate in your hands.

“I’m going to use the bathroom before we eat,” I tell you. “It’s in the hallway. Oh, and there’s Chardonnay. Do you like Chardonnay?”

“I love Chardonnay,” you say.

“Do you want to open it?”

“Sure.”

I leave you to uncork the bottle. Upon my return I find you sitting with the wine bottle on the floor beside you, the corkscrew mired halfway into the cork. You look defeated, your head bowed like a shamed dog. I sit down next to you and look between you and the unopened bottle.

“It just doesn’t go deep enough. Story of my life,” you sigh.

My body recoils instantly at the impact of your words. I wouldn’t care whether you had a penis, but the suggestion that you might have bedroom problems is not welcome, considering how much I want to have sex with you. I want you to tell me you’re joking.

Responding to my body language you say with a laugh, “Just kidding. Don’t worry.” To emphasize your meaning, you pat my knee. With each pat, shockwaves of pleasure are sent through my body, giving me a brief but intense high so overwhelmingly pleasurable it is like a dream, separating me from reality. My vision is blurred, my breath held tightly in my lungs, my sense of touch intensified exponentially. I quickly realize, though, that if I allow this pleasurable high to continue, you will notice it. I pull myself back down to reality. I gesture to the wine bottle, “Here, let me have it.” You gladly place the bottle in my hands. I twist the corkscrew deeper into the cork and easily extract it. As I pour the wine into glasses, a light, mildly fruity odor is released that complements the odors of coconut milk and
piment
.

“Cheers! To poverty!” you say.

“This isn’t poverty!” I exclaim. “My room is small, but my needs are covered.”

You look around my room, reassessing your statement. “You’re right.”

Your glass meets mine with a clink I find jovial and bright in its promise of a full evening before us. We each take a sip and eagerly begin to eat.

Upon your first taste of the dish you make the “mm,” sound. Just the sound of the mm’s humming in your throat gives me the loveliest pleasure, as if the mm’s are reverberating through me. “This is so good.”

“I’m so glad you like it. It’s one of my favorite meals.” Each bite I take is so delicious. Although I make this meal for myself fairly often, I have never enjoyed it so much as I do now.

“This is so good,” you repeat. “We’re good friends now.” You look between me and your plate of food. “We have to do this again before we leave.”

I’m so glad you have given me a reason to ask you to return to my box. “Certainly.”

We drink the wine quickly. The alcohol makes me feel wonderfully relaxed and woozy. I offer you more wine, which you gladly receive, and I fill my own glass as well. You soon clear your plate and cast your eyes about my room, eyeing the pot especially.

“Would you like some more?” I ask.

“Yeah, I would. If you don’t mind.”

“You’re welcome to it. Have as much as you like.” You are my very hungry caterpillar, a ravenous creature always searching for more, your image a joy for my eyes. It occurs to me that the various entities I often compare you to—the narrator of Hemingway’s
A Moveable Feast
, Professor, even the very hungry caterpillar—may not be as much like you as I make them out to be. Yet I cannot help but make you out to be more than you are, for I see everything in you. Even as you gather more of the Indian food onto your plate, you expose to my eyes a divinely handsome curve of your broad, finely-muscled back, reminding me of how Degas found such beauty in the nude backs of women. He painted them nude over and over as they performed such simple tasks as emerging from the bathtub or combing their hair. He was obsessive in his work. In our case, the genders are reversed—it is I the voyeur and you the subject of my hungry gaze.

Your plate again full, you return to my side on the bed and we continue to eat. Once we have both finished, you browse through my books. You pick up my copy of
The History of Sexuality
Vol. 1
by Michael Foucault. “Can I look at this?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

You read the first couple pages, say, “Very interesting” without elaborating, and gently return my book to its place on my nightstand.

My thoughts turn to the many books in my room you might find of interest—lots of Spanish literature, Proust, Beckett, and my various art history tomes. At the moment, though, the most important one is my guide to Monet’s home and garden in Giverny. I long to go with you to Giverny. I imagine we would sit knee by knee on benches looking over Monet’s pond of water lilies and muse over how Monet’s garden is as much an artwork as his paintings are. I pick up the guide book and flip through the photos, admiring the sterling irises interspersed among ruby poppies on one page and a Japanese maple’s burgundy leaves hanging above coral-peach azaleas on another. I notice you looking at the pages with interest, as I hoped you would. “Here, you can look at it.” I hand it to you.

“I was waiting for you to stop
hogging
it,” you tease. With the richly pigmented photographs of Monet’s flower and water gardens opened wide in your lap, your chestnut irises are tinted with a dash of the rich yellow of a tree peony, a velvety ruby from a Papa Meilland rose, a soft lavender from a water lily.

“We should go to Giverny,” I suggest.

“Yeah.” You raise your head from the pictures of Monet’s garden. “I went with Abroadco, but I’ve been wanting to go back and spend more time there. I’ll check my schedule and let you know when might be good.”

You return my Monet guide to me and begin to fidget restlessly. You stand up and face me with your back to the door. The sun is setting, tinting the horizon dark pink. Faint shadows shade your handsome form in beautiful patterns of light and dark. “I have to go home, call my mom. It’s her birthday.”

I know you’re lying because you told me a few weeks ago that you mother’s birthday is in September. In any case, it is now clear to me that you are resolved to be faithful to your girlfriend. Even so, I naively hope that if I can find a way to incite you to stay here longer, you might change your mind. “When do you need to call her?”

“She gets out of ministry at six, so that’s twelve here.”

“You still have time. I thought her birthday was September fourteenth. You told me a few weeks ago.”

You give me a befuddled look. “Yeah, my grandmother’s birthday is September fourteenth, but not my mother’s.”

I decide it doesn’t really matter whose birthday is when. I hadn’t planned on you leaving so soon and I have no premeditated ploy to keep you longer. I need to improvise a new activity, something that would keep you here as much longer as possible. “Would you like to watch a movie?”

“What movie?”

“Secretary.” 

“Is that the one with the spanking scene that was all over YouTube?”

“Yes, but it’s more than that.”  It is an intense love story with more sexual tension in it than in any film I have ever seen. I hope that watching it together might facilitate the expression of the sexual tension between us. “It’s my favorite movie.”

I can tell you want to stay because you are no longer fidgeting and your body’s inclination is toward me rather than toward the door. You return to your seat beside me on my bed. I can feel your body’s heat, and it isn’t just warm like it usually is, it’s hot, like your inner radiator is on overdrive.

So we can comfortably watch the movie, I pull out my folding chair, which is broken and not able to support much weight, and put my laptop on it in front of my bed. I set
Secretary
to play.

While the beginning credits roll across the screen, I lie down on my bed and prop myself up on my elbows. I look up at your back slouched over so that it forms a broad, swooping curve. You look a little uncomfortable, so I tell you that you can lie down too, if you want, but you decline. You say you’re fine the way you are.

As we watch the film, my pointer finger and thumb rest in a lip of fabric in your soft jeans. Only a layer of denim separates the pads of my fingers from your bare skin. The touch is so slight it seems coincidental, that I could not possibly take any pleasure in it, but a flow of energy is running between your body and my fingertips. It feels fantastic, like a steady electric charge is coursing through my entire body. You shift your leg slightly, leaving my fingertips bare and cutting off the flow of energy I was so enjoying. It would be too obvious if I were to move my fingers back into the lip of fabric in your jeans that is now half an inch away. I silently beg you to move your leg back. As if responding to my thoughts, you shift your leg so that the tips of my thumb and pointer finger again rest against your calf. The flow of energy instantly recommences and the pleasure I find in it is strengthened by my knowledge of what it feels like for it to be cut. The physical contact is meager but feels so good that I want more. I contemplate rubbing my palm down your calf but restrain myself from doing so. It would invite the opportunity for you to reject me. I’m not ready for that yet. I want at least the rest of
Secretary
’s length to not know whether or not we will have sex tonight. I do know one thing, though. The pleasure I am experiencing right now is so intensely wonderful that before you leave this room I must at least ask you to stay.