by Coralie Moss
“So, what?” Anna asked.
“So, what did you think?” Elaine nudged her with an elbow.
Anna wound her scarf around her neck one more time and patted Elaine’s hand. “I never would have signed up for something like that on my own, and I’m happy you made me do it.”
“I have served my purpose, Anna Granger. Welcome to the next phase of your life.” Elaine whooped and pumped the air with her free arm. She wasn’t going to let it rest.
Anna groaned. “But this doesn’t mean I’m ready to move on to the next level.”
At the hotel’s spa, the masseuse’s oil-slicked hands continued where Gaia’s voice left off. Anna lay belly up, belly down, and belly up again and practiced what she could recall of Gaia’s basic instructions. She breathed in as fingers palpated sore spots along the back of her neck, thighs, and calves, and she breathed out as long strokes swept down her spine and over her buttocks.
Breathing while being aware of breathing was a novelty. She decided she wanted to get beyond a mechanical understanding of why this was such a good thing and get to the point where breathing and sensing and connecting to herself was closer to second nature.
Maybe she’d become Elaine’s acolyte and do whatever her friend instructed. She knew Anna well enough to know how close to the edge she was willing to go—even if Anna’s inclination was an inch or two less. And while she had originally thought the intimacy part of the workshop was about intimacy with others, she was pretty sure Gaia’s goal was intimacy with oneself.
Outer Anna had been able to get an idea of just how removed she was from Inner Anna, and if she wanted to regain a sense of integration, it would require work. She sighed a little on the inside and yelped when the heels of the masseuse’s hands found a particularly knotted section of muscles in her upper back.
“So?” Elaine asked again later, from their perch on high-backed stools at the spa’s white marble-topped juice bar. The two women were enfolded in thick, white, terrycloth robes and turbans, waiting for the hot oil treatments in their hair to set.
“So, what?” Anna was quietly re-tasting fragile bits of the day’s revelations. She didn’t want to talk. Not yet.
“Did you like your massage?”
“I could get used to this, El,” she admitted.
“You’re not hurting financially, Anna. Why don’t you treat yourself more?”
Too big a question to answer from her blissed-out state. She held up her palm and shook her head. “I’m letting you treat me now so I can get used to it. I’m a hedonist-in-training.” But there was one thing she could share. “Oh, and, I have a date coming up.”
“You have a date coming up?”
“Yes.” Anna sipped at the glass of fresh-squeezed tangerine juice one of the attendants handed her.
At least a minute ticked by before Elaine’s face relaxed from incredulous to surprised. “A real date, an imaginary date, a wishful thinking date? Anyone I know?”
“A boyfriend from college wrote to me on my birthday, and he wants to get together.”
“I’m listening.”
“At first, he wanted to come here, to the island. And now he wants to meet on a beach, in Mexico.”
“And what does Anna want?”
Elaine’s question was beyond loaded, and the turban was giving Anna a headache. She’d just spent hours opening herself up. And now she needed to tie it all back up so she could function. She could get used to being a hedonist-in-training. But getting comfortable with round-the-clock intimacy?
Anna signaled to their aesthetician. “Is it time to take this off yet?”
The young woman unwrapped one side and pronounced the process a success. “Come over to the sink, and I’ll wash you out.”
If only everyone had voices like hers, and Gaia’s, Anna could be persuaded to do anything.
“Your avoidance techniques are getting better.” Elaine lowered herself, all grace and cunning, into the chair by the sink next to Anna’s. “So, let me ask that again. What do you want?”
Anna extended her arm toward her friend. The tears leaking out the corners of her eyes weren’t induced by shampoo.
Elaine stopped pushing. “You can answer that later.”
Sunday morning in Vancouver was reserved for brunch and leisurely window-shopping. Anna used her new clothes to justify popping into a home goods store and purchasing a set of padded hangers and sheets of scented paper to line her lingerie drawer.
Elaine stayed in Vancouver. Anna skimmed through Gaia’s book during the three-hour ferry ride and earmarked a few sections. According to the headlines in the fifth chapter, she should be having regular orgasms. Rereading Daniel’s emails once she got home didn’t give her pre-orgasm tingles, but a quick look at the resort in Cabo San Lucas qualified as foreplay—visually stimulating foreplay. Every page she perused, she imagined herself there. Dining at all the restaurants. Lounging by the pools. Shopping in the boutique. Walking along the beach, at sunrise and sunset. Sleeping in the king-sized bed.
She rehearsed the fantasy again. This time, she pictured Daniel eating with her. Swimming in the pools and in the ocean. Laughing. Sharing stories. Sharing kisses.
Sharing a bed.
Anna lit a fragrant beeswax candle and placed it on the side of her bubble-filled tub. When had she stopped seeing her body as something lush, desirable, sensuous? She mourned the loss as she stepped into the water and slid under the surface to soak.
The hot water encouraged her to relax. She lifted one leg, drizzled orange blossom-scented bath oil from her ankle to her knee, and rubbed it into her skin and between each toe before kneading at her calf muscles the way the masseuse at the hotel spa had demonstrated. Lowering her foot into the bath water, she lifted the other leg and repeated the movements. Bathing was another ritual that had become more perfunctory than pleasure inducing.
She poured more oil into her right palm and massaged her left arm, starting at her wrist and working up to her shoulder. She ran her thumb up and down her forearm, getting into places that often ached after a long day of cutting and sewing the heavy material needed for boat upholstery. Each finger received equal attention before she circled her palm with her thumb and switched arms.
Her breasts waited. Wide aureole and baby-suckled nipples floated above the surface of the water. She wanted to touch her fifty-year-old body the way a lover might, but there was a bridge she had to cross to get there and she didn’t have the inspiration or the motivation to cross it tonight.
Pouring more oil into one palm, she tilted her hand and let the excess drip into the other. Crossing her arms, hands resting on opposite breasts, she ran her fingers over the underside, into the underarm area, and finished each stroke by dragging her fingers around and over her nipples and pinching.
Watching the self-touch felt voyeuristic. She closed her eyes, followed the memory of Gaia’s honeyed voice, and breathed into sensation. She was trying to love her body. She really was, but the threat of tears played under her breastbone and across her shoulders, lifting her collarbones like bits of driftwood caught in the wake of a boat. Two, maybe three years into widowhood, she’d cried all her tears, the tissue around her heart gone dry.
The cistern must have refilled in celebration of her birthday.
Resting her head on the curved edge of the tub and propping her feet on the tiled surround, she released her arms and sank into the water up to her chin. The vague outline of her torso and legs showed under the thinning layer of bubbles. Everything below decks was capable of sensation—or had been.
After Gary’s death, she practiced benign neglect.
The neglect wasn’t intentional, but grief didn’t come with a handbook or a time card for her to punch as she left each stage behind or even a ticket she could hand over in return for an aspect of her prior life. Somewhere in the months and years that followed Gary’s death, she simply forgot her body was capable—and desirous—of erotic encounters.
Now, she had a best fr
iend committed to outfitting her for the trip to Orgasm City like it was a trek to the Himalayas. She had a how-to manual with beautiful and explicit illustrations, a drawer full of beautiful underthings, a half-dozen sex toys, and a college boyfriend wanting to buy her a few days in Paradise.
And something wasn’t right.
A glimpse of what she was missing glimmered when she paired up with Leo at the workshop. He looked good, he smelled good, his voice made her toes tingle, and he was real. Leaning into his back invited her to indulge in the fantasy of being with a man who would step in, take care of her needs, listen. Which, when she thought about it, was way more than she should have gotten from sitting with a stranger.
The bath cooled. The water drained, pulling the last of her tension through the catch and leaving water droplets to bead the oil-slicked surface of her skin. She rose, patted dry, slipped her arms into a faded nightgown with tiny pearl buttons down the front, and blew out the candle.
Chapter Four
Anna’s Monday morning disposition didn’t match the clear sky and unseasonable warmth of early October. Canadian Thanksgiving was one week away, and her offspring had yet to settle on who was cooking what and where they were gathering. She slid her arms into her plaid wool robe, the one with the frayed cord trim and satin-lined collar that had belonged to her grandfather, and gathered what she needed for an attitude adjustment on the pebbled beach.
Her mood lightened the closer she got to the familiar perch of her favorite rock. High tides, storms, and human scavengers were forever rearranging or carrying off the driftwood littering the shore, but her rock remained ever stalwart and dependable.
Once she had her pillow under her butt and her coffee mug balanced on the flat, lichen-covered surface, she opened Gaia’s book and searched for the chapter on the pelvic floor muscles.
Concluding it would behoove her to locate and activate those muscles as part of her preparation for the trip to Cabo, she closed her eyes to the anatomical drawing and focused on squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing. With any luck and a ton of perseverance, she’d be having breath-enhanced orgasms any day now. Just like Elaine.
And this, she wanted. Whether it was with Daniel in Cabo San Lucas or some other male companion. All she had to do was figure out how to isolate, contract, and release. Isolate, contract, and release.
The steady crunch of shoes on dried leaves alerted her to the approach of company. The skin across her back tingled under the scratchy warmth of her wool robe. Regular visitors to her beach used the path on the other side of her house. Footsteps behind her meant she was probably about to meet her new neighbor, and she couldn’t remember if she’d brushed her teeth.
Too late. She kept her eyes closed, folded the book, and slid it behind her back as the person rounded the far side of the rock.
“Saffron.”
Oh, that voice. She’d thought about that voice in the bathtub last night.
“Leo!” she said, her eyelids flying open. She tried to hide how flustered and unprepared she felt. At least her hair was in spectacular condition, and great hair could cover for a multitude of fashion sins, like patched grandpa bathrobes and scuffed gardening clogs.
And why did she care if Leo liked her hair?
“This is a nice surprise,” he said. “I take it we’re neighbors?”
He raised his mug of coffee to their surroundings. Gaia’s book was tucked under his other arm.
“Yes, we are,” Anna responded, pulling her copy from behind and holding it up for him to see. “And I see we share similar tastes in reading material.”
Leo rewarded her with a wide grin and a slight blush. “You didn’t stay for the second workshop.”
“My friend and I made other plans,” Anna explained. “Was it good?”
He nodded and gestured to the small house behind them. “Very good. Lots of different exercises and helpful information. I’ve rented this place for two months.”
“The MacMasters’ cottage. I thought someone was using it. I’ve seen lights off and on all week. When did you arrive?”
“I flew in Sunday a week ago. It’s my first visit to this area of the world.”
“Would you like to join me? It’s even nicer up here with a cushion.” She patted the bare rock beside her. Might as well keep stepping out of her comfort zone, maybe try a little multi-tasking. They could chat, and Leo would never know what she was doing underneath the bathrobe.
A slight tremor passed through his hand as he relinquished a ceramic mug adorned with red and pink hearts. “If you could hold this, I’ll be right back.”
Anna blew out a quick breath and focused on the view to one of the neighboring islands. She knew the tides and currents of the water out there better than she knew what was happening inside her. Leo returned with a throw pillow in one hand and the same striped knit cap she’d seen him wear after the workshop pulled to a rakish angle over his head.
“How are you settling in?” she asked, completely distracted by his I-just-rolled-out-of-bed approachability and the scruff along his jawline. She wondered how some men could do that, look so delicious first thing in the morning.
“I like it here, so far,” he said, adjusting his pillow. “I’m taking some time off work.”
Anna rotated his mug so he could take the handle.
His hand trembled again. “It’s the chemo. I finished treatments a year ago, but I have residual tremors.”
“How are you doing now?” She tamped down the maternal urge to soothe and comfort. She didn’t want to sound trite or pat.
“Cancer free,” he assured her, knocking his knuckles against the large piece of driftwood behind him. She raised her mug to his.
“Cheers to you. Where is home?” Not the Pacific Northwest, going by his accent, and maybe not even Canada.
“Upstate New York. I design and fabricate custom furniture, and my workshop’s in Rhinebeck. I have a showroom in the city. Manhattan”
“Why are you taking time off?” she asked. “Or is that getting too personal?”
“Haven’t we already gotten pretty personal?” He sipped his coffee and looked at her over the rim of his mug. His eyes were a lighter shade of brown in the morning light, and she was no less fascinated by their hidden stories. “And no, it’s fine to ask.”
Anna’s turn to blush. Her cheeks warmed.
Leo looked from his coffee, to the horizon, and back to her before expanding his answer. “Everything in my life was going pretty well until about two years ago. I was diagnosed with cancer right after my fortieth birthday, when I went in for one of those big annual check-ups. Treatments took about a year.”
That would make Leo forty-two years old. Anna’s heart sagged slightly. There wasn’t much about her or her day-to-day life to interest a younger man from a very metropolitan area of the world. She took a quiet inhale through her nose and studied him out the corners of her eyes.
He set his mug between his legs and fiddled with the chipped edge, turning the cup in circles. “My girlfriend and I started talking about getting engaged before the diagnosis, but we parted ways once I was out of the woods.”
“That’s a lot to have to deal with,” she said, reaching for his wrist with her fingertips. What she really wanted to do was hug him. A hurting heart was a hurting heart, no matter the person’s age.
“Yeah. It was. But now that I have some distance, I’m okay.”
His words seemed genuine, like he’d had time to reflect. She withdrew her touch and smoothed at the fringed edge of the robe’s belt.
“Well, my fiftieth birthday was a week ago, and I have no idea how I got here,” she admitted. She ran her fingers through the hair falling across her forehead, and tried wrangling a glossy chunk of it behind one ear.
“Happy birthday. Did you do anything special to celebrate?”
She nodded, rearranging herself into a cross-legged position, and massaging her toes. “Dinner at my son’s summer house with lots of friends and a big c
ake. I wanted it low-key, no black balloons, no gag gifts, and they obliged.”
Okay, only one bag of gag gifts.
“What do you do here on the island?”
“I sew things for people, mostly boat owners. I’ve had my own business for about twenty years.” She pointed in the direction of her house. “See that building beside my house? The one set in the woods? That’s my sewing studio.”
A not-uncomfortable silence settled between them while pleasure boats and a large ferry chugging its way to Vancouver passed in the distance. Anna spied a seal popping its head above water near the rocks on the left side of the cove, but she would need binoculars to confirm the sighting. From this distance, it could also be a loose piece of bull kelp or something that had fallen off a boat.
“What did you think of the workshop?” Leo’s question interrupted her musing. The timbre of his voice stroked the back of her neck, rubbing at the sore spot at the top of her spine.
Anna stiffened on an inhale before she remembered to blow out her breath and relax. “My best friend signed me up, and at first I thought she was doing it as a joke. I went in with low expectations and high anxiety, but I ended up enjoying the experience. What about you?”
“I enjoyed it too. Once I acclimated to the idea of being on vacation and not having to get up each day and think about other people, I decided this trip would be the perfect opportunity to try new things. I’m going to my first Tai Chi class on Thursday.” Leo pondered the horizon before turning to look at Anna. “Ever have one of those times in your life where everything seems to tell you to stop and take a good look at yourself?”
“I’ve had times where everything changed in a moment.” She didn’t mention Daniel or his email. His re-entry was a stop-and-take-measure moment for her, but it didn’t arise from the weighty place of a cancer diagnosis and the end of a relationship—or the sudden death of a beloved spouse.