Once they met in this way she became intoxicated, leaning into him, purring like a cat, rotating her hips like a spinning hoop. Jim, too, was transported – and delighted to be doing something so clandestine and dirty that no other soul in the world could possibly have conceived it – erupting again like a testy whale, coating Della’s posterior walls with his warm milk as the scaffold man’s tin of white paint covered the billboard by the Elevated tracks on Second Avenue.
Della swiftly wedged the powder rag inside her thatched crevice to collect any excess drippings. There could not be a baby next Christmas.There simply could not.
They settled themselves and Jim went to his overcoat, drew a package from the pocket and threw it upon the table.
“Merry Christmas, Della.”
She approached the parcel curiously. White fingers and nimble tore at string and brown paper. No ecstatic scream of joy, just hysterical tears and confused wails at what she had found: a lump of coal. Della ran and flung herself on the couch. Jim offered comfort immediately and explained:
“This isn’t as it appears, my dearest.You shall see. In twelve days our fortunes will change, and for the better. Come.”
Jim led his wife to the table and bent her over its top. Again he raised her skirt, revealing her charms. A small vial of salve emerged from his trouser pocket and he put an even layer on the lump. He re-entered Della’s most intimate space, this time with the coal as pathfinder.
“No,” protested Della, her hindquarters not used to such an unyielding invasion.
Jim made soft noises of assurance as he guided the lump further and, in fact, Della was accustomed to it within a few minutes.
“Have no fear,” said Jim. “We shall begin to celebrate tomorrow, on Christmas Day. Then you will understand.”
The young couple went to bed and slept soundly, enfolded in each other’s arms.
When they awoke Della made coffee and a simple, forlornly festive Christmas breakfast. She herself did not eat as the lump of coal suggested a liquid subsistence. She could spare the food given how plump she was. Almost like a Christmas goose, she reckoned.
Jim came to the table with a twinkle in his eye.
“After breakfast, we shall take a nice walk,” he said.
The mere thought of their promenading along the Avenues, greeting fellow neighbors and strangers in Christmas spirit, all the while knowing that his lovely wife hid a pitch black secret beyond her buttocks excited Jim greatly. So much so, that before Della had finished her beef broth he insisted on starting to make use of the particular gift he had bestowed upon her. He laid Della over the table, pulled her nightgown above her waist, and tucked his prick into the opening that had no coal, thrusting towards her heart like a shovel. She wriggled her behind, further arousing him; he fondled her hairy muff in response. Before he could spend he took care to extract himself and instead of penetrating her mouth – though she could actually swallow whatever he had to give as it was not solid food – he deftly lodged in her rear, bucking deeply, stopped by the hard object at the end of his cock.
“Oh!” exclaimed Della.
“Do not worry, my dearest. The coal shall remain in place and I shall leave no babies here.”
Jim spent against the lump, which promptly absorbed every drop he surged. He was right.There was no need for Della to insert her powder rag as usual – no effluvia remained.
They dressed. On went his mended overcoat, with holes in pockets where gloved hands should be. On went her old brown jacket and her old brown hat and the whirl of a skirt and her lace-up boots.
They wandered to Broadway and observed the scene. A light snow had fallen overnight and lines from the carriages were already engraved as if the quiet white surface had been combed. Apple-cheeked youngsters tossed snowballs at one another.They walked past the shop windows, admiring goods exceeding their grasp. They exchanged pleasantries with the grocer, the vegetable man and the butcher; all in repose, out of their work uniforms. Della did not even feel the lump of coal whereas Jim could think of nothing but.
“Squeeze yourself together,” he instructed her. “It shan’t be noticed and will greatly assist things.”
“As you say, my dearest,” obeyed Della. “Nobody could ever count my love for you.”
Mr and Mrs James Dillingham Young went back to the flat and Jim folded Della over the table once more and plugged at her coal until they both were absolutely spent.
Jim returned to work the morning after Christmas but the evening routine continued for twelve days. At seven o’clock on each of those nights the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the stove, hot and ready to cook Jim’s chops. When she heard his step on the first flight stairs Della briefly turned pale, anticipating what awaited her. While Jim ate she drank the beef broth and the juice of a few oranges. They followed with the postprandial promenade to the Avenues, smiling and nodding at passersby as if nothing was out of order.When they arrived home Jim undid his wife’s clothes and churned into her coal bin with enough sparks to start a fire that would be sure competition for the one glowing beneath their mantle.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, while Jim was at work, Della had the notion to surprise him by completely shearing off the curls between her legs, using his long steel razor blade.
“Please make him think I am still pretty,” she whispered to herself.
The door opened at seven p.m.; Jim stepped inside and closed it. His eyes were fixed on Della, prepared for him in corset and boots.
“You’ve cut off your hair . . .” he murmured. “Let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”
“Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, aren’t I?” she entreated. “It’ll grow out, and fast. You’ll see! I just had to do it, Jim!”
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave that could make me like my girl any less.”
He tumbled down on the couch, brought Della close, nestled his face in the bald mound between her thighs – inhaling its scent while teasing the exposed flushed bud with his tongue tip – and smiled.
He did indeed fancy her shorn. A little schoolgirl, she was. He jolted her rump that night with greater ardor, hugging her bosom as he released. And, shuddering together in their pleasures, they both felt something had changed. Della sensed a contraction within and the warm flow of her husband’s baby-making liquid. Jim hit no wall at the end of Della’s dark tunnel. He reached into her tight aperture with a few fingers and beamed. It was as he knew it would be.
Della leaped up like a singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”
She had not yet seen her beautiful present and eagerly held out an open palm. Jim deposited an item of precious metal upon it – something fine and rare and sterling – that seemed to flash with a reflection of Della’s bright and ardent spirit. Covered with his spunk, ever the more easy to slip on a finger, was a diamond ring.
(First draft written on Christmas Day, 2007, not far from the Manhattan location where O. Henry allegedly penned “The Gift of the Magi” in 1906.)
Iced
Erin O’Riordan
“Hey, Nikki.”
Jayce, the bartender, looked up from cutting his lemon twists.
“Hey, Jayce,” I said back. I took my seat at the wooden counter across from the bar and prepared for the daily grind.
Jayce had the face of a Caravaggio cherub, if a cherub could manage a five o’clock shadow. His thin, graceful body was half rock star and the other half cross-country runner. When he wasn’t watching, I watched him work. I liked to watch his long, thin hands grab for bottles, pour, and mix. There was poetry in the way he chilled a shot, and art in the way he uncorked champagne. And on slow nights (like this snowy one was surely going to be), when he flirted with me, I felt sparks in the air.
I was just about to ask Jayce if he did anything fun last night when Robert walked in. Robert was my protector, my “big brother” at Belle’s Midtown Inn
. He was tall, black-haired, and brown-eyed. Next to Robert’s meaty features, Jayce washed out like a watercolor painting.
“Give me your hand,” Robert said, parking his big body next to me. Jayce stopped cutting twists, briefly.Then he shook his head and went back to work.
I put down my napkin and stuck my hand out, palm up. Robert pulled my hand closer. Studying it carefully, he then began to massage the center of my palm with his thumb.
He looked into my eyes. “Didn’t it work?” Robert’s thicklipped smile caught me off guard, made me smile too.
“Didn’t what work?” I asked. I took my hand back, and studied it to see what I was missing. I gave it a few rubs with my own thumb, just for good measure.
“I was trying to make you come,” Robert said. “I guess it didn’t work.”
I thrust my palm back under his nose. “Well, keep trying!” I said.
Robert laughed, a loud donkey’s bray that echoed down the bar and into the smoking section. Jayce laughed and set the last of his lemon peels aside.
“See?” Robert said to Jayce, slapping his hand down on the bar. “At least I get a reaction out of her!”
I stared at the two of them. “What, did you try that on Jayce?”
“No,” Robert said with indignation. “It only works on girls. I tried it on Ellen, and she didn’t say anything. Nothing! I felt like a complete idiot, so then I just had to walk away.”
“Maybe you just embarrassed her,” I offered.
Robert shook his head. “Everybody thinks Ellen is so naive, but it’s not true. Ellen looks like she’d shag like a minx. She’s just stuck up.”
“She is not,” I said. “Ellen is very warm and funny, once you get to know her a little. She’s just shy.”
“I’m surprised she even let you touch her,” Jayce said to Robert.
Robert was about to say something, but Belle called to him from the swinging door to the kitchen. “What did it feel like?” Jayce asked me when Robert left.
I looked at my palm. “It was the most sensuous thing I’ve ever experienced.When Robert touched my hand, I started to get wet. And then he started to rub in slow circles. It was just my palm, I know, but it felt just like he was rubbing my clit. He had me right on the verge, Jayce. Every muscle in my body tightened up. And just as I was about to feel the sweet release, he stopped.”
I laughed so hard I almost slipped off my high-backed bar stool. Jayce looked a little less than amused. “Smart ass,” he said. He chuckled a little, then restrained himself. He came back with, “When you’re done with that, Nik, can you get me some ice?”
“Sure,” I said.Then Jayce handed me his freshly cleaned ice bucket. I took it through the bar and up the stairs, passing the hostess stand on my way into the kitchen.
Ellen was on the phone, taking a reservation, so I waved my hello to her. She acknowledged me with a nod of her head. Ellen’s white-blonde hair was swept up. She wore a black sweater over a charcoal-gray skirt, with near-black winter tights and fur-trimmed black boots. I’d come in through the snowy parking lot an hour before, and the bottoms of my black pants were still damp. She seemed untouched by the near-blizzard. Not that I was jealous.
I carried Jayce’s bucket through the kitchen and down the industrial-style steel stairs. The ice machine was in one lonely corner of the basement. Sometimes – like this time, when the restaurant hadn’t opened yet, and everything was so quiet – the basement freaked me out a little bit. But I was a big girl; I could handle myself. Jayce wanted ice, and I was going to get it for him.
As I walked back to the bar, my bucket triumphantly full of ice cubes, Ellen called my name. “What’s up?” I said, leaning against the hostess stand. The doors still wouldn’t open for twenty more minutes.
“I got you a four-top,” she said. “They’ll be here when we open.”
I smiled. “That’s about the best I can hope for tonight, huh? Not many people are going out to eat in this weather.”
She shrugged. “You might get lucky,” she said. She turned her back to me and went back to what she’d been doing.
She was right.That table was four guys from the university. Good drinkers, good tippers, and each one cuter than the last. They were my only table, except for the old couple who come in every Saturday night regardless of the weather. When they left, there wasn’t much for me to do. I parked my ass at the bar and had a cigarette.
“Can I get you something?” Jayce asked me. His tip jar was empty; no one wants to drink in the snow, either.
“Pepsi,” I said.
Jayce shook his head. “A real drink,” he said. “Robert and I are just about wasted on the house whiskey. It’s not too bad chilled, with a splash of grenadine.”
I looked around, sensing that Belle was going to pop her head into the bar at any moment. “Look, I’d love a drink, but it’s not worth losing my job over.”
“You won’t,” Jayce said. He made a point of standing right in front of my bar stool, leaning over the brass bar so that his mouth was right at my ear. “The kitchen ran out of butter, so Belle took off to get some.We could get away with murder. So, what are you drinking?”
I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Gin. It’s what I always drink when I’m out with my girls.”
“Always had you figured for a gin girl,” he said. “You like it cold?”
“Yeah,” I said. I watched Jayce’s slender, white hands as he poured two, three, four shots in the shaker with ice. He set up two Collins glasses and poured two doubles. He held up his glass. “Cheers.” I clinked our glasses together and took a modest sip. Jayce drained his.
“What happens when Belle gets back?” I asked him.
Jayce raised his eyebrows skyward. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
Sparks. Definite sparks.
I finished my cigarette, then my drink, and lit another cigarette. I could have stayed there all night, just watching Jayce floating behind the bar.
Soon, I headed back up to my section. I didn’t have any tables, but I thought I’d at least straighten up the server station. I noticed then that we were out of ice. I found the servers’ ice bucket with the clean dishes and took it down to the basement.
Above me, I heard the cooks and the dishwasher stomp across the kitchen floor. There were no other sounds in the basement, except for the electric hum of the ice machine, making new ice. I would have to wait before I could fill my bucket.
“Hello?” I called, testing to see if I was really alone in the basement. Maybe it was the loneliness, the isolation down there. Maybe it was reverb from the sparks that had been flying between Jayce and me. Maybe it was just the gin talking. Maybe it was the way Robert tried to make my hand come. But I was hot. Felt like I had a fever.
I leaned against the ice machine. It was then that I realized, for the first time, that between the ice machine and the wall there was a little space, a nook into which I could cram myself. No one would be able to see me back there, not unless they got right up on the ice machine. Feeling devilish and little bit reckless, I squeezed myself into the cranny.
I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts for a moment. Thoughts that kept running in a sexual direction. I imagined myself leaning across the bar, my lips brushing against Jayce’s. Maybe I’d let Robert watch. Maybe I’d let Jayce and Robert take turns kissing me. Our three tongues, all tied up together, could be a pleasant way to pass a slow night at the restaurant. And if one of them happened to unbutton my white shirt, and my breasts happened to slip out of my white bra . . . well, then, it might be fun to let Jayce and Robert each have a nipple to suck . . .
That was all I needed. I came hard. I fought myself to stay quiet, but it didn’t completely work. A tiny squeak escaped my lips. It was nothing compared to the furious thundering of the blood in my veins. By all rights, the dishwasher should have been able to hear it over the roar of his sinks.
I stood there in the nook, panting, until I felt collected enough to rejoin civi
lized human society. This was not like me, masturbating in some dark corner. At work. A creeping sense of impropriety caught up with me. I considered how I would explain going upstairs without the ice bucket, and dashing to the bathroom to wash the hell out of my filthy little paws.
Suddenly, there was Jayce. “What were you doing back there?” he asked me.
I didn’t know what to say. “Nothing,” I said. “I wasn’t doing anything back there.” Oh God, could he smell my pussy?
“Well, that’s weird,” he said. He looked at the ice bucket, sitting abandoned on top of the ice machine. “Aren’t you going to get ice?”
No, I thought. Not with these dirty, dirty hands. “I will later,” I said. “I think my pager just went off. I must have food up.”
“You don’t have any tables,” he said. He laughed nervously.
“No, nothing horrible like that,” I said. “I was just thinking.”
“Okay,” he said. “You were wedged behind the ice machine, just thinking. And still not getting any ice.”
Enough of the third degree. “I was thinking about you,” I said. Hell, might as well lay it all out on the line. “And it turned me on.”
Jayce’s eyes were one big question now. Fortunately, I knew the answer. I walked over to him, filling in the space between us completely, and kissed him. He didn’t have to think about it. He threw every inch of his graceful body into kissing me back. For a brief portion of a second, I felt myself falling backward. In the next moment, I was lying across the front of the ice machine, caught between ice and sparks.
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