Squab Tonight

Well, Cynthia, shall we have squab tonight? But Steven doesn't like squab. Her shaking hand fluttered up to smooth her perfectly arranged hair and she dropped a glove. She looked at the glove as it lay there between her mismatched shoes. Whose is that? she wondered. I never wear gloves during the day.

*A glove on the floor by the bed. Long, white. Her eyes following the line of her own arm as it hung off the bed, pointing to the glove. Andrea's glove. Steven hadn't wanted to come home yet. Had more business to do, he'd said. It didn't matter that she was tired. So tired. "Andrea and Mal can drive you home," he'd said. Mal hadn't wanted to leave either. Andrea's glove on the floor. So tired. Lying on the bed, evening gown bunched up around her waist. Legs splayed. The tongue. Oh, my god the tongue. Arching her back, grabbing the luxuriant brunette hair; holding the head to her, between her thighs. A growl from deep inside her, rising from deep down. Writhing, pounding her pelvis against the brunette cascade. Melting. Exploding. Musn't cry out. Steven will hear. But Steven wasn't there. Steven never was there. Bucking, begging, barking. moaning and collapsing into herself.*

She gazed at the Williamsburg-fussy glass ornaments in the window of the gift shop on the downtown pedestrian mall. She would have thought them quite clever and cute if she were really seeing them.

What was she doing on the mall and why had she come into town today? She was sure she didn't know, but for some reason this didn't worry her. Pressing in on her was the nagging thought that there was some important reason she had come downtown.

A passing young man bent down, picked up her glove, and handed it back to her. It was quite dirty and stained. A feeling of indignation flooded in and she was about to admonish the young man, but he was gone before she could say anything.

I should have asked him where the police station was, she thought. But why would she ask him that? It wasn't really his fault her glove was soiled.

I wonder if I left the squab out to thaw before I left. But, I musn't have. Steven doesn't like squab. He's really quite nasty about that. About that and so much else. Well, screw Steven. She gave a nervous little giggle, but she managed to stifle that because those passing by were giving her strange looks. Can't look suspicious.

Steven. It was something about Steven. Whatever she had come here to do concerned Steven. She entered the store and banged the door behind her. A somewhat perturbed shop clerk drifted toward the front of the store.

"Yes, ma'am, can I help you?"

"I think I'm meeting someone here. Maybe for lunch?" She asked the question as if maybe the clerk would know the answer. But then she giggled and let her hand flutter to her hair again. "But, I guess I wouldn't be meeting anyone for lunch here, would I?"

"No, ma'am, Foster's is just for gifts; it doesn't serve lunch. Perhaps you were looking for the Fuel Store just down the block."

"A gas station? No, I don't think so. Not for lunch, I wouldn't think so. Oh, you mean the Fuel Store Restaurant. Yes, of course, that's a restaurant, isn't it?"

Once again, it seemed as if the saleswoman was supposed to supply all of the answers. But she just smiled and moved back toward the center of the store. You never could tell here in Jamesville. Some of the looniest people who came into the shop were some of the richest and most famous. She knew enough to be very careful in dealing with any well-dressed woman who wafted in—no matter how wacky she seemed to be and whether or not her shoes matched.

"Yes, I'll just go back to the Fuel Store. I'm sure Andrea will be along shortly."

*Never in a hurry, that Andrea. Begging for her to get on with it, to finish it, for those fingers, inside her to make her flow, explode. Searching rubbing. Panting for it, but never in a hurry. Lifting her up to clouds, beyond to heaven. Sucking, rubbing. Hands gliding over breasts, probing crevices, squeezing mounds. Moaning and begging. Hips in motion, grinding against the heel of Andrea's hand. The fingers unfold and enter. And enter and enter. Writhing. Panting. Begging for it.*

Well, at least that mystery is solved, Cynthia thought, as she went back out onto the shaded bricked walking street. She was meeting Andrea there—at the Fuel Store.

Cynthia looked down at her feet and knitted her brow in determined concentration. Her shoes didn't match. Now, wasn't that strange? But not so strange. The image of Steven floated through her mind. She was taking the squab out of the freezer, and Steven breezed in, all decked out in his golf togs. But the calendar had clearly said that Steven was leaving this afternoon on a business trip to New York. She had planned to have Andrea over tonight. They were going to have the house all to themselves for two days, and then Cynthia was going to tell Steven about Andrea and herself when he got back from New York.

"No, I didn't know your trip had been canceled. Yes, I know you don't like squab. I just didn't know you would be here tonight, and I do like squab. In fact, I love squab. Yes, I do love squab so much I was going to have two. Please don't yell at me, stop making those disgusting little piggy noises, and don't be so damned sarcastic. They're just squab; they won't kill you. Just go on out on the patio and finish off that bucket of martinis. I'm going upstairs to look for my gloves."

Steven hadn't even asked why she was looking for her gloves. And, if he had, she wouldn't have been able to tell him. She just knew this was a time when people wore gloves.

She managed to find her gloves upstairs, went back to the kitchen for one of the frozen squad, and then found Steven out on the patio.

Afterward she'd had to throw the shoe away. She regretted that; it was so hard to find spikes that fit that comfortably anymore. But there weren't any repairmen left who could do a good job of reattaching heels—not ones as dented and scruffed up as that one. Everyone was wearing those flat shoes now that made their calves look fat. At least that's what Steven always said about her own legs whenever she wore anything but those painful spike-heeled shoes.

The squab hadn't been enough. She'd had to take off her spike-heeled shoe to finish up.

She had reached the front of the Fuel Store Restaurant, but for the life of her she couldn't remember if she had left the squab out to thaw afterwards or whether she had put them back in the freezer before going upstairs to find her gloves.

Cynthia looked up and her face was transformed by a radiant smile.

"Cynthia, there you are. I've been looking all over for you. All you said was to meet you on the downtown pedestrian mall. You didn't say where. You sounded so strange over the telephone. Is everything all right?"

"That depends, Andrea," responded Cynthia. She paused, her mind momentarily muddled again, and then she stuffed the blood-stained glove in her purse and smiled a secret little smile as she remembered the all-important question. "That depends on whether or not you like squab."