Poked

by Naomi Niles

“Why did you do it, then?”

  I had to think about it for a moment. “I suppose because I realized what a loss it would be to this community if her bakery had to close down. And I wasn’t going to let that happen, not when it was actually in my power to do something about it. And I’ve known her long enough now to know how devastated she would be if she couldn’t bake every day. Cakes and books are her whole world; if they were taken away, she would be inconsolable. And if there’s anything the world needs more of, it’s cakes and books.”

  “It makes sense,” said Sean. “I wish we lived in a world where everyone had the leisure to pursue the craft of their choice.”

  By now it was nearly five, and I had about two hours to finish getting ready before I picked up Lori. Sean helped me clear the table and left humming “That Green Gentleman.” I took a long shower and spent a few minutes deliberating what I wanted to wear that night. Finally, I settled on a teal shirt, a dark evening jacket, and a pair of boots.

  On my way to the door, I paused to examine myself in the mirror. No matter how much I attempted to dress it up, I was in no state to be going out. If anything, the welts under my eyes had gotten darker since the day before. The bandage had the look of a cheap Halloween costume. Lori had once remarked that whenever we went out together, we drew stares. We would be drawing them tonight, but for all the wrong reasons.

  I dug through my closet until I found a hat that suited me—a camel wide-brim fedora. Placing it gingerly on the top of my head, I returned to the mirror. At least now the bandage was invisible, my face partially veiled in shadow. But that only served to give me a more sinister appearance. On the bright side, it was unlikely that anyone would attempt to mess with us.

  I was still fussing over my appearance when the doorbell rang.

  I hadn’t been expecting any visitors, and for a wild moment, I worried that maybe Tom’s boys had tracked me down to my house. But when I peered through the peephole, a feeling of relief came over me. It was Lori.

  She was wearing a pair of loose-fitting black pants tied around the front with a drawstring that accentuated her curves and a low-necked silver and purple Doctor Who shirt. In one hand she carried a large grocery bag.

  “I was supposed to be the one picking you up,” I reminded her. “What’s in there?”

  “I figured why not just have dinner here tonight?” said Lori, stepping into the living room and taking off her shoes. “I bought the ingredients for General Tso’s chicken, which I’ve actually never made before, and a package of white rice. I’ll do the cooking if that’s alright with you.”

  “Of course.” For a second I half-wondered if maybe she was too embarrassed to go out with me in public, but those fears were laid to rest when she set the bag down by the stairs and came over to hug me.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, running a smooth hand over my face. She smelt faintly of citrus and baby powder and old books bound in leather. “I just wanted to treat you tonight. It’s the least I could do after all you’ve done. Plus, I’m the sort of person who doesn’t like to go out much. Indoor dates are my favorite.”

  “Noted,” I said quietly, filled with an irrepressible appreciation for her. “What if we went to the library?”

  Lori let out a low moan. “If only the library were open on Friday night!” she said with a snap of her fingers. “We’ll take a rain check. But in the meantime, there’s food to be made.”

  We began boiling the rice and cut up the chicken into squares, coating them in flour and an orange sauce. While we waited, she told me the story of bringing the signed check into Pastor Gustman’s office, and the look of surprise on his face when he saw it.

  “I get the sense that he never expected us to actually pay such an exorbitant rent,” said Lori. “He looked utterly defeated when he realized we had come through.”

  “Well, of course not. He wanted to run you off the property as soon as possible so that his guys could move in and start their own coffee shop. He’s not going to rest until that happens.” Now he was demanding that we pay upwards of $2,000 a month to rent the property, which we could just barely manage to pay given that we only brought in about twice that amount monthly.

  Lori shook her head. “I want to believe the best of him. I really do. But I guess that’s business, and I can’t really blame him for trying to run a good business, even if it puts me out of work.”

  “You’re too good for this world, Lori,” I replied. “You have every right to be mad that he’s trying to drive you out.”

  “Perhaps,” she said in an uncertain tone. “Anyway, when are you going to tell me how you ended up in the hospital?”

  “Ah, yes. That.” I had been avoiding the subject for one reason or another ever since being released.

  “Do you not want to tell me?” asked Lori.

  “I don’t mind. It’s kind of a long story, actually. Sean’s grandfather had mentioned that there was a group of guys who played poker together on Wednesdays…” I told her about our previous run-in with Tom and River and how I had become determined to win the money she would need to keep the bakery in business.

  Lori paused in the middle of stirring the chicken and set the wooden spoon down on the counter. Surprise and something like disbelief shone on her face. “After almost getting thrashed by those guys once before, you went down there and tried to win that money for us?”

  I nodded. I wouldn’t have painted the story in such heroic terms, but that was the gist of it.

  Lori turned from the stove and strode forward, light blazing in her face. Wrapping her arms gingerly around my neck, she began to kiss me tenderly and fiercely. “Marshall Savery,” she said low in my ear, “sometimes you’re too good to be real.”

  Feeling slightly abashed by this sudden display of attention, I shrugged. “I’m nobody special, really. Just me.”

  “I know,” she said, brushing her lips against my collarbone. “And that’s what I love about you.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Lori

  We stumbled into the living room, my hands pressed against the collar of his shirt. Despite his best attempts to conceal it, I could tell that his head was hurting, and I wanted to be careful. But at the same time, I felt a hunger for him that wouldn’t rest until it was satisfied.

  Sensing my caution, he paused for a moment as he lowered me onto the couch. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m not worried about myself. If you’re not feeling up to this, you can say so. I won’t be offended.”

  “At this point, I’m not sure anything could stop me,” he said frankly, brushing his tongue against the baseline of my hair.

  I wanted to tread carefully because I didn’t want him to think I was opposed to what we both wanted to do. “As long as you’re okay with it. I suppose it is your skull. On the other hand, I would never forgive myself if something were to happen to you.”

  Marshall pulled back and studied my face. He smelled strongly of wood smoke and aftershave. “Are you having second thoughts?”

  I shook my head emphatically. “I’ve never wanted anything more, to be honest. I just don’t want to hurt you.”

  “It’s kind of you to want to look after me.” He placed his lips on the center of my forehead and left them there for a moment. “I was telling Sean yesterday, I’ve had quite a bit of luck in my life, but the luckiest thing I’ve ever done was stumbling into you.”

  “I’m very pleased to hear you say that.” I reached up and touched him gently on the side of his head, brushing my fingers against his ears. “You could have easily given up on me the first time I sent you packing when we tried to make love.”

  By now, I was seated in his lap, rubbing my hands against the prickly stubble of his bruised face. Marshall was leaned back against the couch with his arms around my waist, the breath of his nostrils fogging up my glasses. At the mention of our first date, he laughed lightly. “Promise you won’t do it again?”

  I nodded, motioning toward a small stack o
f books on the kitchen table. “The only thing that might distract me is those library books in the corner, and at the moment, even that’s not enough to stop me.”

  “That is the first time I’ve ever heard you say that.” With no trace of embarrassment or hesitation, he plunged his lips down my neckline and between my breasts.

  Having never slept with a man, I had long been curious what it was like and how it felt. My sister had made some erotic videos, but I didn’t dare watch them. Once in college, a couple of friends, amazed that I had never seen pornography, tried to show me a few clips on a website that billed itself as the YouTube of porn. I hadn’t cared much for it. The participants all seemed joyless and unmotivated. What was the use of having sex without love or tenderness?

  My friends had been surprised by my reaction. “Are you maybe asexual?” Krystal had asked me, placing a disapproving stress on the last word. It was as though she had just learned I was an alien or vampire. “Because I’ve never seen anyone have that reaction to porn.”

  “It’s not for me, thanks,” I replied. “I want my porn to show couples who are enthusiastic about making love to each other. I want to see them having foreplay and exploring each other’s bodies. I want to see real intimacy.”

  They never made the mistake of showing me porn again.

  Making love to Marshall was both different and better than the videos had led me to expect. He was clearly someone who hadn’t taken his cues for love-making from pornography, or at least not the kind that seems to be favored by most people. Although his yearning to have sex with me was palpable, he never betrayed a hint of impatience. Instead, he took his time getting me aroused with a curious mixture of gentility and fervor.

  Raising me into the air with his calloused hands, he stood up and lowered me onto the couch. At the same moment, I lifted my Doctor Who shirt over my head, tossing it onto the floor behind me. This was roughly the point where I had lost my nerve last time, but this time I felt no such hesitation. Instead, I luxuriated in the brush of his lips against the plump flesh that my bra only partially covered.

  “Every time I see you like this,” he murmured, “I’m surprised by how much is there.”

  “Sorry I’m always hiding it,” I said, only half-kidding.

  “You’re just so modest. One would never suspect unless they had seen it.”

  “Not many people have—just you and my sister.” It felt like a metaphor for my whole life.

  Maybe I just had a morbid temperament, but the experience of love-making drew my thoughts inexorably toward death. Sam had often pointed out that the French term for orgasm was “petite mort”—“little death.” She said death and the erotic were inextricably linked, and I was beginning to see why on some mystical, intuitive level. All the little parts of me that Marshall was kissing and nibbling would one day be laid in the cold ground; and whatever the pleasures of the afterlife, this love, or at least the manner in which we expressed it, was a purely earth-based affair.

  As Marshall nuzzled my shoulder, I made a mental note to show him The Seventh Seal as soon as possible. My sister had gotten me turned onto Bergman shortly before the end of college, and I hadn’t been the same since.

  “Are you enjoying it?” asked Marshall, raising his eyes to my face. There was a hint of shyness in his voice, as though he secretly worried that he might not be good enough.

  “I am.” He had been lapping at my navel, which I found oddly pleasurable. “You’re so gentle.”

  “Too gentle?”

  I shook my head firmly. “No, just gentle enough. If anything, I need to be gentler with you. I keep worrying that your bandage is going to fly off.”

  “If it does, we’ll just put it back on. And if I start bleeding from my skull, we’ll just make love in the hospital.”

  “Mmm, sexy,” I said sarcastically. I tapped the side of his neck lightly with my fingers. “Now that I’m a bona fide someone-who-has-been-made-love-to, there are so many places where we can make love.”

  Marshall grinned with all his teeth. “And where would you like to make love?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose we could start with all the rooms in here—the kitchen, and the hallway, and eventually maybe the bedroom… we can work our way back to the bakery, and hopefully, that will go better this time.” I added in a scared whisper, “I’ve sort of always wanted to do it in a library, but I don’t want the librarians to catch us!”

  “We could hide in the stacks and wait until they leave for the night,” he suggested.

  “No, but they always know somehow. They have a sixth sense. It’s one of the superpowers of a librarian: they can sense love being made.”

  “Shame,” said Marshall, and then went back to lapping at my belly button. I stroked his hair affectionately.

  After getting us both worked up in this manner, Marshall finally did the thing I had been wanting him to do since we lay down and undid the drawstring of my trousers with a single deft motion. With his hands, he worked to pull them down to my feet, while he continued to stroke and caress my belly with his lips. It was with a prickly feeling of hunger and excitement that I helped him remove his coat and pulled his shirt over his head.

  At this point, I was lying on my back on the couch wearing only my bra and a pair of thin cotton underwear, vestiges of guilt and shame fighting against the desire that coursed through me. It was always a weird feeling being even half-naked in front of a man. It felt weird to be seen by him, and, weirder still, to know that he liked what he saw and that he found no flaw in me.

  “God, I love you,” he murmured. It was the voice he always used when he was being overcome by desire, when his body seemed to be moving independently of his brain. And as yet, I hadn’t even taken off my bra.

  But before we could progress any further, he sat straight up, senses on alert. “Do you smell that?”

  I hadn’t until he mentioned it, but now the acrid smell of burnt meat was unmistakable. “Crap! We left the stove on!”

  Marshall lifted himself off of me and raced into the kitchen clad only in his boxers. A second later, I heard a loud click and a series of oaths. “Well, I don’t guess we’re going to be having chicken tonight.”

  “How bad is it?” I asked, not daring to look.

  “Not bad if you enjoy black hunks of charred flesh. I’m just glad we were doing it on the couch instead of in the bedroom.” He carried the skillet into the living room so that I could see it. If I hadn’t known it was chicken, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize it.

  “How would you like to have pizza for dinner?” asked Marshall, and without waiting for an answer, began digging through his pants for his phone.

  ***

  After it was all over—after the nibbles and the lickings and the love bites; after the sensation of bliss that seemed to lift us both out of our bodies for a moment—we lay in bed together eating wood-fired pizza and singing along to The Gaslight Anthem.

  “You know how I know you’re a keeper?” I asked him.

  “How?”

  “Because you didn’t order pizza from a chain restaurant. This is some real, honest-to-God pizza, and I couldn’t be happier.”

  “Well, shoot,” said Marshall modestly. “If I had known that, I would’ve ordered it earlier.”

  “You were good, too, but this pizza is perfection.” Lest he should think I was being serious, I lay my head on his chest. “I’m kidding, of course. You were perfect, too.”

  “Okay, good. Whew.”

  We were both quiet for a moment. I remembered reading somewhere that there was a kind of joy that was too deep for jokes, too deep for words. Before now it had been just words in a book, but now I was getting a sense of what it meant and how it felt. I wanted to lay beside him and never get up. I wanted to feel the warmth of his breath on my face and watch his chest rise and fall as he slept. I wanted to listen to him snoring and count the snores.

  And the best part was that he seemed to feel the same way.

&nbs
p; He reached over and turned down the stereo, rubbing his eyes wearily as he did so. “It’s a shame these perfect nights can’t last forever. It’s too bad morning always comes.”

  “I know,” I said sadly. “If only we could lay together always—and not have to worry about food or drink—”

  “And have pizza delivered to our door.”

  “As long as you promise to get the good kind.”

  “Promise.”

  “Thank you.” I leaned over and kissed him on the head. “You have a way of getting all the little things right.”

  “Well, I pay attention. I would have been fine with Domino’s, but I remembered you saying that you prefer food to feel hand-crafted. I suppose that’s what makes you such an excellent baker. And a skilled lover.”

  “Am I really?” I asked, blushing. “I felt so inexperienced.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Marshall. “You put your whole self into it. I couldn’t have felt more loved if it had been anybody else.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be over.” I kissed the tender spot just under his left shoulder. “I felt like we were just getting started.”

  Marshall sat up and studied me eagerly. “You’d be willing to go again?”

  “In a heartbeat,” I said. And we did.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Marshall

  “So did you finally manage it?” asked Sean. “Or is the old librarian still a virgin?”

  “Not anymore, and she was never old unless she’s aging in reverse.”

  It was a relief to report that Lori hadn’t gotten up and run out in the middle of our most recent love-making session. This time, despite the interruptions, we had seen it through to the end. Once it was over, we had lain in bed happily nibbling pizza and talking until dawn.

  Now it was Friday of the following week. Sean and I were seated in a fishing boat on the middle of Lake Marion, the warm spring sun bearing down on our necks and backs. We had already drunk all the waters in our cooler and moved onto the beers. The fish seemed to be keeping a respectful distance, as if not wanting to interrupt us.