Coffee With Chris

Chris was the young mother who lived three houses down on the same side of the street with her husband and newborn son, Max. I knew them only casually until Chris started taking little Max for morning walks in the stroller. I was too old to be Chris's father so I figured it was safe to be friendly to her-when I saw them pass. I had seen her come and go on a working woman's schedule for the last couple of years before she gave birth. After Max was born her comings and goings were more sporadic. Chatting with Chris and another woman in the neighborhood one day I learned that she was working from home part-time by computer.

I didn't even know if Chris drank coffee when I casually invited her in for a cup as she was passing by one morning with Max in the stroller. She smiled and said, yes, because she had been curious about me for a long time. She left the stroller outside the front door and took Max in her arms. While I poured her a cup of coffee she wandered around the living room looking at the pictures on the walls.

She sat across the table from me and sipped at her coffee. She was a solid-looking woman, slightly pretty with shoulder-length brown hair parted in the center. The large square jaw was what didn't fit with the fineness of her nose and eyes, I realized as I looked intently at her. I dropped my gaze to her breasts and realized that she must be breast feeding little Max. They looked large and heavy under her simple cotton blouse.

"These look like original prints," she commented with her free hand as she gestured toward the living room.

"Yeah, they're my stuff," I replied.

"You portray women with warmth and sensuality," she noted. She raised her cup and took another sip, glancing up at me as she drank. Her comment and her look demanded a reply.

"You think so, huh?" I responded. Max was beginning to fuss. Her attention went to him momentarily and then came back to me as she readjusted her arm to cradle him.

"Yes. You are the curiosity object of the neighborhood," she said. "Now I'll be grilled by the other women about what your house is like on the inside. They'll be green with envy when I tell them about the coffee invitation and the pictures." Max was whining and squirming in her cradled arm. She stood up and began rocking Max in an effort to quiet him.

"Grist for the mill huh?" I said. I figured she would be leaving any second now that she was on her feet. I wondered how she would describe what she had seen to another woman. What would she remember since the female mind is so different that the male mind. I wasn't really focused on what she was saying and had to go back into my three-second tape-delay memory to replay what she just said.

"He wants to be fed. Do you mind?" she had said.

"No problem," I replied without really thinking about what she was saying. She moved to the love seat in the living room area and sat down facing away from me. She put the baby on the cushion beside her. Suddenly I realized what she was doing ... baring her breasts so she could suckle the baby. She bent toward the baby, picked him up and put him to her breast.

"Do you ... do you get excited when you are photographing women nude," she asked. She appeared to be looking at a photo of a nude on the far wall although all I could see was the back of her head.

"Maybe a little sometimes," I replied. "Most of my attention is on the artistic and technical aspects of what I'm doing. That pretty well uses up my mind," I added.

I saw her head nod several times acknowledging my answer.

"I feel like I am being rude to you because you have to talk to the back of my head. Please come and sit in your chair. I'm sure you've see lots of bare bodies and mine isn't that good anyway," she said.

I eased into my recliner and tried not to stare at the baby suckling at her breast. I maintained eye contact with her and struggled to keep my wits. Chris looked at me and smiled. "Tell me more about you," she said.

"Well, this is a first for me," I blurted.

"What," she asked.

"The nursing," I replied.

"It's just a basic function of nature," she said. I asked you and you said it was okay," she countered

"I guess you did at that," I replied. "I should be honored that you would trust me so quickly," I added.

"The affection and gentleness in your pictures of women convinced me," she said. She shifted the baby to her right breast. I was struggling to find something to say.

"Thanks. It blows my mind that you are willing to literally bare your breasts to a man you hardly know. Does this become part of the neighborhood gossip," I asked.

"Not if you want it kept between us," she replied.

"I'd like it that way," I told her.

"Fine." She bent down to place the nearly asleep infant on the couch beside her. When she straightened up she found me looking at her bare breasts. She had folded the cups of her bra back under her blouse. That had the effect of holding her unbuttoned blouse open. She stood. Then she took a step back, her heavy breasts swaying with her movement. Her eyes were wide with surprise. "Oooooh, you want to nurse on me too, don't you!" she whispered.

"Yes, I do," I said very quietly. I was amazed at my own words and how she had read me so completely. If she hadn't verbalized her sense of my desire, I might never have let it come fully into my awareness.

Chris stepped close to me as I sat in the chair. She offered me one nipple and then the other. I pulled milk from her. I sucked and swallowed as I must have during the first months of my life. The warmth and softness of her nipples yielded exactly what I wanted. She was attending to me. She made no sound and waited until I was done with each breast. When I looked up at her face I saw a smile of satisfaction.

After resecuring her clothes she took her son in her arms and I walked with her to just outside the front door where she eased him into the stroller. "That was nice. Can I come by again?" she asked.

"Of course," I told her.

[Gentle reader, you may wish the story to end here. If you require more irony, conflict and finality, read on.]

Two days later she wheeled infant Max along the sidewalk in front of my house. "I want to give to you again," she breathed as she began to unbutton her blouse, standing on the sidewalk in front of my house. The morning sun had already heated the cement to the point of discomfort. I was there to get the morning paper, barefoot, dressed only in a towel-like affair that was held in place with Velcro about my waist. I had already twisted the switch on the coffeemaker and seen the amber light acknowledge that it was to make some fine brew for me. I had taken a half glass of orange juice that would contrast to the sweetened coffee. I stood still in honor of the fact that Chris was before me, offering part of herself.

"Come in," I told her. Newspaper in hand, I turned and walked back into the house. I heard her whimper as I pulled the rubber band off the paper.

"I'll nurse you after you fuck me," she announced as she opted out of her blouse. She swiftly unhooked her front-opening bra and quickly cast it aside. Her thumbs hooked into the waistband of her cotton shorts and panties. She pushed them to her ankles and flicked them away with a single motion of her left leg. There was a ripping sound as she pulled on the edge of the bath wrap around my waist. The only other noise was Max making baby sounds to a wooden frog knickknack she had taken off the end table and handed to him. We made love on the couch that morning and many others into the winter while she grew more and more pregnant

Ten months later at the beginning of another summer, Chris, holding the hand of her toddling son Max with one hand cradled her infant son in her left arm. "Can I have a cup of coffee while I tell you the news?" she asked.

"Sure thing," I replied.

After a long pause she tasted her coffee and gently set her cup down. "My husband is divorcing me because this is not his child. He had a DNA test done," she said.

"Wow, I'm sorry to hear that," I told her.

"I won't be able to keep the house, it has to be liquidated. I came over to introduce you to your son and ask how soon we can move in," she continued.

[End the story here if you like or read on for yet another twist of fate.]

"Chris, I had a vasectomy in 1971. My sperm count has been zero for many years. Finish your coffee and go present your child to his real father, whoever that may be but it's not me," I informed her.

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