Companion

I will write a cheque for the pulse ... and the innocence.

The innocence.

This third-world girl-woman will cook for me and clean for me and pour for me for the chance to live beyond her means, live beyond her prospects — live beyond her station.

Servitude. Privilege understands servitude; they are always on different sides of the counter, the great demarcation between the classes ... a barrier that vanishes when one body tries to cross that line and the other assents.

The hand that reached for mine on the plane was a glass of scotch to me, nothing more. It calmed me, reassured me, even encouraged me and when I walked off that plane it wasn't with a stagger and it wasn't with a thirst.

Whose hand was that, anyway? I barely wondered, I barely cared. It offered hope; it would pour.

And now the offered body. That would blur the line like a fifth drink. But it would be so much more than that. Her hand can pour; her body can only prove my nothingness.

The last time I cried had something to do with a stuffed toy. My mother had slapped me; she had told me to grow up.

It was sunny the next morning. I could pretend that nothing happened but I would be pretending. I'm not good at pretending. She is.

She didn't know how to work the coffee machine, I showed her. And while the coffee was brewing I showed her where I keep the cleaning supplies. I showed her the office that would be out of bounds to her and I showed her what little else she should be concerned with.

I drank my coffee at the kitchen table with the hired help and wondered what to do with her, how I could possibly fill her day.

The line between us was indelible. It was there at the kitchen table, in the car, at the grocery store. And it was there again in the kitchen as I watched her put away the food.

What life could she have, really? Little education, few experiences, youth and vigour, sure, but there was an army of that on the march. What did she really have to offer? At her age I had intelligence, beauty, wealth, opportunity, hope. I was on the right side of the counter. She isn't. And she hasn't the physical allure and the sex appeal to be pulled herself across it. She knew that.

She isn't particularly pretty, more proper and sensible looking like she would be a good student if she had the chance, maybe one of those Asian women you see in white coats looking through microscopes or walking hospital halls. Generic came to mind; an unremarkable third-world worker trying to find her way through a first-world maze that offers dauntingly few prospects for the low-born and the unqualified.

I was on the same body time as Florida so I went out for a walk at 2; she offered to come, I demurred.

Despite the tearful, largely sleepless night, there was a slight spring to my step, I recognized it immediately — not only the step but the reason for it. I wasn't alone; there is a body in my house and it would be there when I returned, a living breathing body. That was enough for the first half hour, a half hour that sped by like no other. The trouble was in the second half hour when I tried to answer the question why was that body there?

"Why did you say that last night?"

She leaned back against the counter and didn't pretend not to know what I was referring to. "If I can't bring you pleasure there will be no hope for me here."

Her honesty totally disarmed me. I sat staring at her waiting for something to occur to me. She said nothing more, she just stared back waiting.

"I am not a lesbian," I finally said, expecting to end it.

"Neither am I but I want to be a companion."

"Ah, yes, a companion in every sense of the word ... for a $100 a day. Have you ever done anything like that?"

"What?"

"Lesbian things."

"With my friend when she met her partner. She had a lot to learn, fast. We learned together." She grinned, sheepishly.

"And you could do it?"

She looked around dramatically. "I will think of this as mine." She looked back at me. "I will think of you as mine. How else can I stay here? As a boarder? How long would that last?"

"So you crawl into bed with me?" So you cross the counter.

"A way to ..."

She hesitated so I filled in the blank. "To serve me."

"To make you happy. Yes."

It was my turn to hesitate.

She added, "It's an important way, without it we will be strangers."

"I'm twice your age."

"I can't live here and not be in your bed. That's ridiculous. It's you who have to decide if you want me, I know I'm not ..."

She didn't finish her sentence, she didn't have to. But she didn't change her look, either. She glared at me defiantly.

"I never once thought of sex, that was never part of this for me ... I never thought it through."

"We won't survive together without it." Now for the first time she smiled, a nice smile, a kind smile. "Plus it's a lot of fun and Angie thought I was pretty good at it."

"What if I'm not?"

"If I'm good at it you will be ... at that restaurant that first night you were wearing a white blouse with buttons down the front. I wanted to undo each of those buttons slowly. I want to do that now, I want you to watch my excitement ... if you see that I think you'll understand and you'll have me."

"Have me."

"As your partner."

"You've planned this all along?"

"Angie calls it hooking your wagon to a star — you're the star obviously."

"I don't feel like a star."

"Would you let me try to do this. I'll go slow. Your star can shine much more brightly ... that's my job."

I could feel my grimace — she was making this sound plausible when I hadn't had a lesbian thought in my life. "You'll have your hands full."

When she laughed her whole body came alive. "I'd love that. Let me get that blouse ... and you were wearing a yellow bra." She was looking at me challengingly again; the girl is no shrinking violet; the laughter was still in her eyes.

"Now?"

"Where are they? Let me get them; you sit at the table, we'll pretend we're at the restaurant." She came over and stood right in front of me; the enthusiasm and excitement in her eyes were obvious and contagious, or would have been were I not so riddled with fear. "Where are they?" she repeated, now more demandingly.

"In the laundry in my room." Somewhere, somehow I found the capacity for humour and added, "You are expected to do it later today."

I didn't move; I didn't have much time to, she was back in seconds. "You're supposed to be at the table," she said, handing me a fistful of clothes. "I'd put on my dress but I had to give it back ... I'll put on a t-shirt, we can pretend."

I didn't. I just sat there holding the things trying for a moment to make sense of what she was talking about. My husband claimed I was sexually dead. I believed him; I hadn't had a sexual thought in years, wasn't sure I was having one now, it felt more like hope.

"Put them on!" she demanded from her bedroom door.

I obeyed not because of the command, but because of the little laugh that followed it. This wasn't about sex ... the way she was acting made it seem more about fun and even I remembered good things about fun, although I had to cast my mind way, way back.

What she had on was a long t-shirt; a kid without a shred of sex appeal. "Look at my nipples." They were poking at the shirt. "They get like this even when I masturbate." She frowned with her thought. "You don't masturbate, do you?"

"No."

"You used to?"

"A long time ago."

"You're going to start again; we'll be doing it together." With that absurd pronouncement she sat down across from me. "So we're in the restaurant, never mind the people — you have to do this, you have to let me, OK? I'm going to undo those buttons, you're going to just sit there and watch me — you're going to see how much I want to do this and that's going to make you want to do it with me. We're in it for the fun; we're going to do whatever we think is fun ... whatever you think is fun, you have to get fun-loving again. OK?" Her fingers reached out and undid the first buttons, there were nine of them, I counted them as I was doing them up.

"Have you ever had sex with a man?" I asked.

She sat back, held her arms out wide and smiled. "What man is going to want to have sex with me?"

"Plenty of men, once they get to know you."

"Ya, but which one of them is going to want to get to know me?" If this bothered her it didn't show. "You have freckles in your cleavage, they're pretty, like your breasts."

Alas. "They used to be, they aren't any more, they've just big and droopy."

She was taking her time. The whole point of this was so I could see her excitement — and I did, it gleamed in her eyes; I could feel it radiating from her body. I doubt it was my chest that was getting to her, it might have been the idea that she could successfully inch her way into a vulnerable woman's life ... which inspired the question that was bothering me. "Do your parents know what you're doing?"

"My mother does," her enthusiasm totally belied my point. "I told her months ago that I was looking for you. I phoned her two night ago and told her I found you. She was thrilled for me."

"Found me."

She grinned and wisped her fingers along my cleavage, flicking at my freckles. "The One — I told her about the bench and when I first saw you and started talking to you, I told her I knew you were The One; I knew it was going to take you some time to come around but I was sure you'd figure it out too."

Her words stunned me. If I thought of her at all, and frankly I didn't or if I did it was as a purchase, now it occurred to me that she is the only person in my life who cares for me, as irrationally as it is. Was it her words? Yes? Her mother's approval? Yes. Her impossibly stiff nipples poking her shirt? Yes. I felt a stirring I had entirely forgotten about. "Do you feel lust?"

She giggled. "Oh, yes, but we will go slowly, we have to get this right."

"What's right?"

I was looking for an answer, she was looking at what she was doing, finishing off the buttons, now opening my blouse.

"I heard a long time ago about girls from my country finding partners over here." She traced a finger along the border of my bra. "A lot of them wanted men. Me and my girlfriend thought a lot about that. She is smarter than me. She came up with a lot more reasons to want a woman ... like you."

She pulled her chair closer to mine then bent in and kissed my upper chest and bra, then she brought her arms up under the blouse and undid the bra.

I was dealing with the strange dichotomy of how foreign this was feeling but how utterly normal she was making it seem. I have a big chest, big enough to make me look oddly top heavy; my upper body makes my lower body look undersized. My sister teased me about it growing up, but then so did everyone else including my own father.

She stood up, went behind me, lifted away the blouse leaving the bra dangling above my fallen breasts. She went back and sat down and looked at me, grinning.

I have never been scrutinized like this before, even ogled. "If you're not a lesbian why do you care about them."

"We're going to learn to have fun with each other; there's a lot there to have fun with." She was already having fun where I was all but frozen in doubt. She laughed. "You're going to have a harder time with mine, a much harder time."

She reached over and delicately edged the bra straps off my shoulders and then let the bra fall on my lap. She grinned even more brightly, she wasn't putting it on, there was something about this that was really getting to her.

"I'm going to pick them up, hold them, don't stop me." This mattered to her, that's why I didn't pull away, I just let her. She reached out timidly, slid the backs of both hands along my thighs and came up under them.

"Oh, my goodness, they're so hot and so heavy."

I grimaced, "Yes, Maria, I've had occasion to notice that over the years."

She stood up still holding them, encouraging me onto my feet. She backed me over to the couch and pushed me down curling onto my lap. "I did this with my friend, I know how great it feels."

She latched onto my breast and sucked hard a few times then looked up. "Have you ever felt sexy?"

To ask the question she probably knew the answer. "Not for a very long time."

"Well feel sexy now." Her mouth went back to my nipple and she moved away a little; her fingers started undoing my pants. My instinct was to immediately slap her hand away but I didn't and it wasn't because of the sensation at my nipple. It was the age thing, she was just so young and innocent and I am so old and tired; I had the strength to resist, I just didn't have the energy ... or, it seemed, the will. Even so at her insistence I didn't sit up to allow her to pull my pants off so she bit me playfully on the nipple and slapped me on the stomach, not hard just to make her point. I complied and when I did she striped off my underwear with the pants.

You can feel lost even within your own body ... in your own house; it's because you relate to nothing that is happening and then her fingers was pressing between my legs, then pulling at my thighs to open me up.

I gasped when her fingers raked through my hair and touched me, it was a feeling that brought back memories, bad memories slightly fogged by time. Dan, before he stopped caring about me, was attacking and insistent; her fingers were more curious and knowing, like her mouth on my nipple; her sounds were purring and pleasuring. This was mattering to her, I could feel it in her touch, hear it in her sounds, see it in the face scrunched at my nipple. I surrendered to all the sensations, surrendered by sliding further down and shifting to make her comfortable. And by utterly shamefully opening myself up to make it easier for her.

She asked me often as she fingered, 'is this the place? is this right? is this what you like?' I liked her mouth on my nipple — I held my breast for her and watched her eyes close and her face soften as her fingers teased me, poking, gently prodding before entering. She looked up when I gasped, she spat out my nipple and pressed her face into my breast and soon I started to cautiously shimmy at her fingers, remembering the possibilities, feeling a hint of them, at first at a feeling deep inside me, then it started to radiate, it began to take hold, to clutch at me, the exquisite forgotten pleasure crawled throughout my body; she could hear my moans like I could, they caused her to rub more furiously as I thrust more insistently, more wantonly, more lewdly.

It came as a shock: the body that just wouldn't, did, it surrendered, then succumbed, then reacted, then responded. I watched her flying fingers in fascination as she coaxed from me a climax so foreign I barely recognized the full sensation, maybe because I had never had one quite like it: it flooded me in wave after wave of spasms, exquisite shudders as her eyes widened and gleamed as she laughed in awe.

I was holding her wrist as she tried to coax more from me, holding her wrist in horror then I pushed her away, grabbed my clothes and all but ran to my bedroom.

The bath I took was long and troubling. Who have I become, that's what I was struggling to fathom? Someone I didn't know; someone I didn't recognize; someone didn't like. The bath water got cold; I warmed it up as I dealt with my guilt and more than that, with my confusion.

I was on the bed in a robe when she came to tell me dinner was ready. I change and went out. I didn't have a message for her, I couldn't think of one. Could she stay? I couldn't see how and maybe she couldn't either. She was looking at me, I could feel her eyes on me, her sad and pleading eyes. I sat down with my eyes on the food and my anger on a boil. Was it anger? No, not at her, not at someone so young and so ... the word, the word that kept on punishing me, so innocent. I understood my embarrassment, I just couldn't understand my resentment.

"You are beautiful."

I quickly looked over at her assuming she was kidding. She wasn't.

She smiled, a warm, kind smile without a hint of knowingness. "I'm so happy you would orgasm for me."

Her words shocked me, stunned me; she could see it and it stunned and shocked her. She dropped her fork and slapped hard at the table. "No, don't be like that. Don't you dare be like that. It's what we want. We want me to be on your breasts; we want me to have my fingers in you; we want me to make you orgasm."

I fled.

I was reading when she came in. She didn't ask, she just came in, pulled the cover back and got in. I continued reading, not seeing the page. She lay still for a few minutes then shifted over to lie her back against me. I had a choice, it was the choice I was dealing with all last night, all day. But it wasn't a conscious choice, that would have been to shun her. The choice I made was to sit up, press my hand under her neck, lie back down and pulled her closer. "I'm sorry. I didn't handle that very well."

She grinned. "I wanted to tell you that I think you're beautiful, I think you're sexy and I want you to know that I'm going to love making love to you." She struggled to raise up; she kissed me and when she did she licked and bit my lip. "And you know what? You're going to love me making love to you, too. Maybe it will take some time, it's a shock to you, I know, but it can work, you showed us that."

"The age." I thought it was the lesbian stuff but it isn't.

"It shouldn't matter to you, it doesn't matter to me, I know what I'm doing."

"No, I don't think you do."

She chuckled. It made me feel foolish, naive, then she turned on her hip, snuggled her groin into my thigh and when she kissed me gently on the lips she brought her hand up under my shirt and took my breast in her hand. "Ask around. We Filipinos women look so delicate and breakable; ask the people living with us how breakable we are." She chuckled again. "We're tough as nails; we fight for what we want; we get it." She kneed me again. "Me? I want to be your partner and your lover." She kissed me quickly and pulled away, squeezing my breast as she turned over. "Let that sink in."

I was afraid she was going to leave.

"Oh," she said getting comfortable. "Tomorrow I'm going to thin out and trim your pubic hair. It's just way too thick down there; I couldn't even see you."

Her hand was in mine when I awoke, her face pressed against my shoulder. I remembered a moment in my past, waking up on Christmas morning in my parents' bed. I had a flash of that excitement now. Now, for the first time since that morning more than 50 years ago, I didn't feel alone.

I looked over at her in the dim light. She smiled. "Did you sleep well?"

I squeezed her fingers in response, not telling her that I lay awake half the night feeling her at my side, wondering how she came to be there, wondering if she should stay, could stay, would stay. Wondering, finally, how it came to be that I have lived such a lonely, friendless life. It didn't need to be, it shouldn't have been. Once, I was alive.

I felt her fingers crawl onto my belly. Quickly, I clutched them, holding both her hands, immobilizing them.

This doesn't just happen, I realized that at some stage of the night. When this woman sat across from me, wide eyed in that restaurant in Florida a part of me must have known what was going on, it was the impossibility of it that pushed that knowledge away. You can become so wound down you become lifeless.

But I awoke on that chair yesterday as the thin fingers I now held started to unbutton my blouse. But awoke to what? That's what I struggled with as I had fought for sleep.

I found some answers, not all of them, not enough of them, but some. In that moment on that chair I wasn't alone — I was surprised at how much that had thrilled me, actually thrilled me. I remembered at the time looking over and seeing a dish towel on the counter. It shouldn't have been where it was — I didn't put it there, it was starkly out of place — it should have been folded in half and draped over the middle part of the oven handle. It wasn't. My life felt disheveled but rather than being annoyed it felt curiously as if there was something much larger happening.