The idea that his in-box is likely clotted with replies actually helps. What’s one more he won’t answer? As I start typing the subject line, I suddenly realize I could always just sort of stalk Celebration Park some Wednesday until I saw him in person, get a better sense of the man who wants to spend a lunch hour every week kissing a stranger.
Of course, maybe it isn’t just Wednesdays. I have the sudden fanciful notion that maybe on Mondays he meets a stranger to just chat. Tuesdays, he meets another for handholding, then Wednesday he meets one for kissing, and so on, until Saturday. Saturdays he meets a woman for fucking only, completing the entire mating dance with six different women with an excruciatingly prolonged bout of foreplay. Sundays, of course, are his day of rest.
I can’t stop giggling, and try sounding out a dirty version of the “Monday’s Child” poem, until I realize that Wednesday’s child is “full of woe.”
I finish the email, only trembling a little.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Wednesdays Only
I’m certain you’ve filled the position, but it’s late (or very early) and I’m intrigued despite the judgment I should possess staring into the second half of my third decade. My IM handle is “lieberries” on villagemail.
When I send it, my breath comes out in a whoosh and my heart is pounding in my ears. I don’t really expect him to answer, but I open my villagemail account anyway and turn my laptop’s volume up so I can hear the IM chime. I can’t quite work out why I answered him.
Sure, he’s pretty, and maybe I’ve gotten a little comfortable with things, or maybe the insomnia is getting the better of me. It’s been a long day that has stumbled into a sad and quiet morning. I can’t stop thinking about stupid things. My dad’s arm around my mom’s shoulders while she takes pictures of the Alaskan coast. Will and Shelley kissing in their tiny urban goat shed, their homemade cheese in their old beer fridge. I look at my thumb, where the sliver has made it red and swollen.
I pull my T-shirt over my bare legs. Sit up straight and try to think straighter. Practically speaking, meeting a MetroLink stranger for anything, but especially kissing, is not entirely safe. I touch my throat, where a blast of heat burns in the hollow.
Is it really something bad to have a life that’s safe? To wear skirts at a sensible length, to let a friend walk you home from the bar, to meet a man for coffee in a busy diner days before you’re alone with him on your stoop?
I look at his picture, how his cuffs bunch at his forearms.
While I value my contentment, I do apparently have a little fight left—for adventure, for capital “R” romance, for the certain cures that Shelley teased me about—somewhere deep in my lizard brain. At least the part that, say, motivates happy sea turtles to leave their familiar waters and heave themselves up on the scary beach and lay eggs. Not that my eggs have anything to do with this.
I resolve to at least lean back against the pillows and rest before I have to get ready for work, but as soon as I set the laptop on the nightstand, my IM calls out.
In the quiet room, my gasp sounds totally Victorian.
When I spin the screen toward me, the IM box is as real as can be, and the handle is no one I recognize.
GearTattoo: I haven’t filled the position. Still interested?
I kind of laugh/choke. I toggle back to his picture.
lieberries: I’m not sure. You’ve done this before?
GearTattoo: Yes.
Oh God.
lieberries: A lot?
GearTattoo: Three other people. Is that a lot?
lieberries: Well, your proposition is unusual enough that one person might be considered a lot.
GearTattoo: So what intrigues you about my proposition?
I worry the hangnail on my thumb, my hands shaking, thinking about how to answer that. If this were a fancy online dating-site date, I might cheat toward wit in answering his question. But this is not a fancy “98% match” date. This is a man who wants to make out with a stranger once a week during his lunch hour and asked for it, directly, on MetroLink. Surely I can be just as direct.
lieberries: In your picture, you’re very beautiful.
GearTattoo: Do you like kissing?
I think about my married friend’s husband. About the kind of man who would ask for this and nothing else. About safe kisses on front stoops at reasonable hours.
lieberries: Yes, I do. Are you married? Involved?
GearTattoo: No, there isn’t anyone. If someone entered the picture while we were meeting, if you want to start meeting, I would miss a Wednesday.
lieberries: And we would “part as strangers.”
GearTattoo: Yes.
lieberries: So you care about fidelity in this? Do you want to know if I’m married/partnered/involved?
GearTattoo: I care about it for myself. I don’t feel like I can ask the same of you. If you were single, I admit I would feel better, but you’re not obligated to share anything with me.
It seems to me that he is being very miserly with himself. I can touch him wherever I want, but he stays in chaperoned territory. He keeps himself for me, while I could be married with three kids.
I also feel weird that we diverted into an establishment of ethics over something stated pretty plainly in his ad. I wonder again, what is it that he needs?
Recently, I was helping a high school student in our tutoring program with an essay on chivalry, and we got into a pretty interesting discussion about how chivalric code, a kind of objectification of the purity of loving a woman, has sort of devolved into “chivalry,” which we agreed was the sexist objectification of regular manners. I really don’t want GearTattoo writing odes to my dropped hankies.
lieberries: Is this something more to you?
GearTattoo: What do you mean?
lieberries: Than just kissing. Like a self-denial or temptation fetish or something?
He doesn’t immediately chime back. I am starting to get nervous when he finally responds.
GearTattoo: I don’t think so. I’m drawing a boundary around it, but it’s not the boundary that interests me, just the kissing, losing an hour to it. It doesn’t bother me if you can do that with me and be with other people, too, I’m just not made that way. Making out loses its escape if I’m thinking of someone else.
Fair enough.
lieberries: Where do you do this?
GearTattoo: Do you know where the teahouse shelters are?
Celebration Park was built to honor the 150th anniversary of our midwestern city, and the planning committee divided it into sections based on the countries of the world in a sort of essentialist, theme-park way. The teahouse shelters are in the “Asian” section of the park and consist of small picnic tables with a carved pergola over each one. They’re visible throughout the park, but afford the idea of privacy when sitting inside one of the pergolas. He’s thinking of safety, my comfort, again.
lieberries: Of course.
GearTattoo: I’ll meet you at the shelter closest to the bank of water fountains this Wednesday at noon. My first name is Brian.
lieberries: You don’t want me to wear a blue scarf or carry an umbrella or something?
GearTattoo: I’ll assume the strange woman addressing me by name is you. Certainly, wear and carry what you would like, though.
I snort at that. I do realize that he hasn’t asked for a picture or description, or anything like that.
lieberries: It’s just that I have a decent picture to go by, to find you and decide this. Don’t you want a picture from me? What if I’m not your type? Won’t that sort of defeat the whole idea of losing an hour to great kissing?
GearTattoo: I’m not worried. Librarians dewey it better.
I laugh, for real, at that. Finally, there seems to be something kind of sexy seeping into our strange chat. Maybe it’s just my own realization that I’m doing this, and it’s already Tuesday morning. Anticipation of my o
wn daring.
lieberries: And I guess, if it’s awful, you just aren’t there the next Wednesday.
GearTattoo: Or you aren’t.
lieberries: Or I’m not. Good night (good morning?), Brian. BTW, my name’s Carrie.
GearTattoo: Good night, Carrie.
I snap my laptop closed. It seems impossible, but suddenly I am drowsy. When I close my eyes, I can hear the streetlights under my window start to snap off, one by one.
Wednesday, 11:48 a.m.
After practically running all the way, I force myself to stop and breathe at the archway that separates the library’s campus from the park. I spent Tuesday in a kind of delicious state of torture, pretending I was debating whether or not to show up today.
A million times, I’ve nearly told Shelley, especially when she sauntered past my desk with our library science intern, Justin, who had also noticed my air of disreputability.
They teased me and we joked about a spinster’s secrets, but I told them nothing.
I did carry my phone around with me to sneak peeks of Brian’s picture from his ad. And then, late Tuesday morning, when I went to look for what must have been the tenth time, I was met with a message from MetroLink: This user has removed their post.
I felt high and breathless, realizing I was the reason he had taken it down.
It has been almost a year since I’ve really dated, after shutting down my experience with the online site. More than two years since anyone serious. I’ve never before been bothered by the social clock—that many of my friends have had their own little families for several years now hasn’t depressed me or made me anxious or even lonely.
I like my job. I like that I have small niches of friends, of three different generations, that all do different kinds of things in our artsy rust-belt city.
I like that I am an only child and can have my parents’ attention to myself when I need it. I like my noisy apartment that I’ve rented for more then ten years. I could get serious about dating, but dating is something I don’t like unless I already know I like the person, have already cultivated at least a tiny bit of a crush out in the wild, away from the pain of a first coffee date.
When it comes to sex, I admit to feeling empty.
The feeling is like those shiny gourds they sell this time of year that look so fat and heavy but are actually paper light, with seeds and strings rattling around inside. My life is cozy, but I’m starting to let myself think I want something wet and aching stabbed through it. I want something substantial. I want to gorge myself. Excess.
I am concerned that it has taken only one day of my own imagination to situate Brian as the potential feast, especially when this is so utterly tenuous.
Simply hearing him speak could break this spell. Even the smallest hitch of disappointment in his face could turn my stomach against it. Years of living alone have made me trigger-sensitive to the motivations of others, and even a trace suggestion that something isn’t aligned when we meet will ruin this charge I’ve had since early Tuesday morning.
When I look over to where the teahouse shelters are grouped, I can’t see anyone but a pair of office ladies eating lunch in the one farthest away from the water fountains. The second I start on the path toward them, I see a tall, dark-haired man on a bike stop at the fountains. He’s wearing a dress shirt under a sweater, and as I watch, he chains up his bike to the pergola closest to the fountains and rolls down a large cuff he’s made in one leg of his dress pants to keep it out of the way of the chain.
Brian.
I can’t see any meaningful details except how he moves his body. He’s lanky, broad-shouldered, and sure. He rode his bike like a wiry kid accustomed to riding his bike everywhere. When he sits on the bench, he doesn’t fidget or get out his phone. Just like in his picture, he crosses his legs, crosses one arm over his body.
I laugh because I feel a little afraid. He’s serious about this. His ad was an honest statement of what he wants accompanied by a picture anyone could identify him from. He’s done this before. Just kissing.
I already know, as I walk slowly toward the pergola, that I will do what he wants. This is such an uncharacteristic certainty for me that I can hardly begin to analyze it.
There are still a few last steps before I will appear in his line of vision and he will guess who I am. My brain can’t decide if it wants to send an icy or burning wash of nerves down my spine, so it does both alternately. And now I’m half a dozen paces away, right where he can see me, and oh. He’s just so lovely. I try clearing my rough throat, and he’s standing and grinning and his dimples are in both cheeks.
“Carrie?” His voice belongs to him, low and determined.
I stop, not quite close enough to prompt either one of us to shake hands, which seems wrong for what we’re here for. “Hi. You’re Brian?” I sound breathless, and I feel my face warm up with embarrassment.
“I am.” Brian puts his hands in his pockets, as if he knows why I stopped, and I shuffle another step forward. Our eyes meet, then look away. “I knew you were you ’cause you brought the umbrella.” He nods toward the old-fashioned cane umbrella under my arm.
“The blue scarf didn’t match my outfit.” I try to look into his eyes again, but it’s like staring into the sun. A sun with green eyes and curly lashes. My brain must be washed with hormones to steal these details so efficiently.
“Please, sit down.” He sits down himself at one end of the bench, giving me options. I sit in the middle, not right next to him, but not on the other end, either. Under the pergola is a very pleasant shadow that helps.
I turn to him, putting my umbrella on the table, arranging the pleats in my skirt over my knees, the hem of my sweater over my hips, fussing as though I’m settling into a church pew with my mother instead of a park bench with a superhot stranger who shortly will introduce his tongue into my mouth. Probably.
He’s watching me, but it feels patient. I have to blow out my breath or I’m going to pass out, and it comes out like a laugh. “I’m nervous.”
“It’s okay.”
I finally make eye contact that takes, and my heart slows down in a delicious way that fills me with something I can only describe as peaceful recklessness.
“You must not work far from here if you’re on a bike.”
“Nope. I work in the Federal Building. I’m an attorney; I prepare government contracts.” He moves his hand out of his pocket and over the knee pointed toward me. Is it weird that I think his fingers are perfect?
“Wow.”
“Not really.” He moves his thumb in a circle over his kneecap and I’m mesmerized. “There’s a whole whack of us doing the same thing. I’m mainly in it for the benefits.”
“Oh.” When I look up into his eyes again, he reaches under his sweater through the vee and pulls out a pair of glasses. When he puts the silver-rimmed frames on, he’s a professor fantasy come to life.
“I have bad near vision. Lots of contracts.”
I tap the side of my own. “I have bad vision vision.”
He reaches over and pushes the bridge up my nose. “I like them.”
First contact. Not even skin to skin, but the slide of my plastic frame over my nose under the power of his index finger makes me hyperaware of all my parts normally covered by a bathing suit.
“Ah-h. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiles.
“I work at the library.”
His smile gets bigger. “I kind of figured.”
“Do I look like a librarian?”
“Well, yes. In the very best way possible, but that’s not why I figured.”
“No?” I think he is flirting with me.
“No. Um, it was more the ‘librarians dewey it better,’ ‘lieberries’ thing.”
I groan. “Right. Seriously nerdy, huh?”
“Again, in the best possible way. Your email address is why I contacted you.”
“You have a librarian fetish?” I don’t mind. Not at all.
“You look exactly like your picture. Maybe better.” I can’t believe I just said that, but he seems to have a librarian thing, so let’s do this.
The pink on his cheeks satisfyingly deepens. “Thanks. It’s meant to be a likeness, being a photograph and all.”
“It’s just that it’s unusual for MetroLink personals. They’re typically a bit …”
“Seedy?” he supplies.
“I was going to say anonymized, but yeah, that, too.”
“You were looking on them. You found me.” He doesn’t sound accusing, not when his voice gets a little deeper and softer like that.
“I like them, like reading them. I—” I almost explain my thing about how the men’s voices sound in my head but realize he’s one of those men, and I’m not sure what he would think.
“I’m glad you read them.” He rests one finger, the finger he slid my glasses up with, on my knee. I am certain I can see smoke rising from that spot. “Because it means you’re here.”
This should be more awkward.
I obsess about the idea that his finger on my knee, which he has already moved away, violates the promise in his ad not to touch me below my shoulders and that the fact of this violation really, really, really turns me on. I slide forward without looking at him until my shin presses against his knee.
He takes a very deep breath in, and at the same time that I look up into his face, he’s curling his palm around the nape of my neck. His hand is hot and my skin shrinks into goose bumps all over.
“Okay?” He keeps our gazes connected, and everything about the way he holds his body, touches my neck, is asking permission.
I didn’t realize I was waiting for him to ask until I feel consent melting my bones. “Yeah,” I whisper. And so he won’t mistake what I want, “Kiss me.”
Mary Ann Rivers Page 2