Drinking Tea with Miss Wong Ch. 03

"Manuel- this is pretty robust code. From the looks of it we should be on schedule to launch the customer frontend next week. I'd appreciate it if you could also get around to reviewing the API docs and ensuring everything is current. Other than that, great work. Have a beer and flip on the game."

I finish typing out the last email for today, or the last one I have any patience to write. I raise an extra large mug to my lips and take a swig of cold coffee. Four hours old, brewed after coming home. It holds up fine. Manuel, one of the guys under me at work, had no doubt already begun drinking and/or watching the game. I was nearly a teetotaler myself these days; nonetheless I had a reverent respect for alcohol and sports alike.

Despite sitting in front of a computer, I reach across the desk and pick up my phone to check the time. 5:27PM. I'm due at Anne's in half an hour. Are modified t-shirts good dinner attire? Likely not. I could stand to change into a collared shirt and some slacks.

Put on decent clothes. Brush teeth. Deodorant? Deodorant. Anything else? Probably nothing else. What could Anne be wearing? Is it the same grayish top and gray sweats she had on this afternoon? Surely she wouldn't dress up for me... so but I feel like she's the kind of woman who would look stunning in anything. Jeez, what if she just answers the door in her underwear?

Wait. I explicitly told her it was a date. That means... Anne could be wearing something really nice. I should jazz the shoes I wore to my high school mate's wedding. Is cologne too much? A spritz will do.

I check my phone again - 5:53PM. Reclining listlessly on the single stool in my tiny sink/bar area, I abruptly stand up and appraise it, the stool. It's sturdy and balanced with four wooden legs, well-braced. It's around three feet tall. It's a good stool. I'll bring it with me.

I leave my phone on the counter, lock the place up and begin walking to Anne's. Although it's dusk, the air is meek and dewy. Sideways spires of clouds layered irregularly turn to indigo on the absconding skyline. Somewhere or other, a man wheezes like a horse. I pass by someone non-binary I've exchanged small talk with and give them a warm "How's it going?" while raising the stool in salutation.

Upon arriving at #127, I realize that I've been grinning like a kid this whole time. I decide to sit on the stool before alerting Anne to my presence.

Knock, knock, knock...

Anne answers the door in a short black dress, exposing her shoulders and chest. It tapers down to a V from her collarbones, expertly framing subtle, braless cleavage above the terminal point. She's wearing black wedge sandals - the straps wrap around her dorsum and give her lovely naked toes the spotlight. Her long hair is arranged in a high bun, secured with a small band of pearls and skewered by a single ornate chopstick with a large ruby diamond on the wider end. She has circular gold earrings and the scantest amount of foundation. Her already beautiful features appear nothing short of otherworldly.

I'm slumped forward now, absolutely speechless. My smile has all but disappeared as I stare in bewilderment. If you happened to take my pulse, you'd be forgiven for mistaking my heart for a sputtering engine on a freezing morning.

"Eric? What's wrong Eric, are you OK?"

"Uh-uh-," I stutter. "You look amazing, Anne."

She coquettishly covers her mouth. I see white teeth as her lips part in a wide smile.

"You did say it was date, no? So I thought I look nice for you... on our first date." Anne glances to the well-braced stool. "Why you sitting on that?"

I leap to my feet. "Oh, this. Oh, yeah. I'll show you in a second. Do you mind if I hug you?"

"No, you can do that... but first you come inside. We not eat right here at door, silly boy!"

Anne stepped aside to let me in. I brought in the stool and placed it on the landing as she closed the door. When I turned around, she was toying with her fingers and looking up at me with the same anticipation I had seen earlier that day. Something came over me, seeing her like that. I gently embraced her hands, leaned down to meet her at height, and pressed my lips to her cheek.

I half-expected Anne to exclaim in protest. But she was quiet as a mouse. Suddenly, she wrapped her arms tightly around me.

"Eric..."

I held her close, resting my face in her hair. She smelled like chamomile and roses. I felt her chest shakily expand and contract against mine.

"Ssshh," I whispered, "let's just stay like this for a while."

Usually during such an event, amateur writers would liken the passage of time to an eternity or some comparable eternity-esque duration. Seasoned authors might emphasize the phenomenology of interpersonal histories dancing and weaving about, coming to fruition at the exact point in which two lovers finally join each other in romantic bliss. Still others would opt to describe it as "being in a dream," or "not seeming quite real."

As for myself, I couldn't begin to characterize or comprehend what was happening. Mentally, I drew a complete blank. It was the same feeling I had while struggling to breathe after coming back from yesterday's run, now under circumstances that were serene and invigorating instead of life-force-draining. And just like yesterday, my body was on fire.

In short; I eventually came to my senses.

"I have another surprise for you, Anne."

Her head was still against my chest. "You surprise me enough already today... what is it this time?"

I give her tiny frame a tender squeeze, then slowly pull away. Her hands caress my hips as she follows suit.

"It's this," I say, picking up the stool and carrying it to the area where her lonely TV was piqued up on the floor like an itinerant canine. I moved the TV aside, replacing it with the stool. I picked up the television and squared it on the wooden seat, then placed the R_ box neatly on the surface of the its flat plastic stand.

"There. Now you don't have to crane your neck to watch TV."

Anne observes all of this in silence. After a few seconds, she explodes with laughter.

"Hahahaha, oh Eric, is that why you bring a stool all the way here?"

She runs over and jumps into my arms.

"I like it. You so thoughtful, concerned about something like that. Thank you Eric. You go sit at dining table," she says as her hands not-inconspicuously inspect my pectorals. "I serve you big mouth-watering meal, OK?"

"Sounds great!"

I take the seat facing the kitchen and rest my chin on my palm while watching Anne open stainless steel pots with glass lids, steam billowing upwards in vaporous poofs ascending beyond her concentrated eyebrows and radially mushrooming outwards upon hitting the ceiling. She scoops things into large bowls from several pots and one behemoth of a rice cooker, then brings them to the table. There's white rice, beef curry, and dumplings of some persuasion.

"You drink wine Eric?" she asks.

Hadn't expected that. If I start drinking, I'll really need to check myself. But Anne went through all this trouble tonight just for me. A glass or two... couldn't hurt.

"I do tonight, Anne. Special occasion. Very special occasion."

"Ooh, I see. You not big drinker. In China, my family always drink wine with dinner. Mother opens bottle, father empties it. Ha!"

I roar with laughter, definitely not expecting that. In addition to being kind and generous, Anne is quick-witted with a lively sense of humor.

"Sometimes shot of baijiu too," she continues, "if you up to it!"

"What's bye-joe?" I ask a bit hesitantly. Spirits?

Anne places an empty bowl before me and another on the opposite end. And then two saucer plates. She brings four glasses to the table; two for wine, two for baijiu. She places a spoon and fork on the aesthetically folded cloth napkin to my right.

"Ba-ee-j'yo," she enunciates. "Chinese 'white wine,' but really distilled liquor. Very strong. Very popular in China. America not so much. I search everywhere to find this stuff!"

"I'll see how I feel after the wine!" I say as jovially as possible, trying not to betray any feelings of apprehension.

However, I felt as if I might be in over my head here. I mean it's not like I can't hold my own or anything; as I said, I have a reverent respect for alcohol. I threw down a fair amount with the college roomster, sometimes staying up until 3AM taking shots and solving partial diffs and barely working through algos just to stumble into class at 9:17AM and toss my homework in the general direction of a paper pile that was probably a homework pile, eyelids fluttering arrhythmically as my pupils lost the war against daylight and fluorescent tubes.

But those were the good old days. Since starting work five years ago - right after making a grand total of nothing dollars and nothing cents at an internship for two years while still in college, it was rare that I'd touched liquor.

An undulating scarlet fountain of wine spills into my glass, then hers. Anne puts the bottle aside and sits down, raising her glass in an elegant show. I raise mine as well.

"Cheers, Anne!"

"Cheers, Eric!"

As I take a swill and swish it around in my mouth, I instantly forget any misgivings I'd just had.

"You help yourself, take as much as you want!" Was she talking about the booze, or the food?

Ah, the food of course. I fill my bowl with rice and drown it in beef curry. Anne smiles approvingly before loading up her bowl and picking out a dumpling with chopsticks, placing it in her saucer. I ask to borrow the chopsticks. She skeptically hands them over and I deftly manipulate a dumpling into my own saucer.

"Ooh, you can use chopsticks? Impressive!"

I feign nonchalance. "Hah, oh that- I'm a pro with chopsticks."

"There so much I not know about you Eric," Anne coos, "tell me what else you 'pro' at?"

"Well, the only thing I'm really good at is computers," I say through mouthfuls of curry and rice. "I've been messing with them since I was a child - now it's my living, and not a bad one."

There's so much I don't know about Anne, either. Not wanting to talk too much about myself, I ask about her life before coming to America.

"Where did you grow up in China," I start, "mainland, or-?"

Anne answers as she drinks. "Mmh! Ah," she exhales in a nostalgic way. "Yes, I born in mainland south China, in province called S_. I live in small village with sister and two brothers, mother and father and grandmother, all under same roof."

"Wow, big family!" I drink as well, trying not to lag too far behind Anne - she might be through her second glass already. I feel the wine filling my brain and subduing my inhibitions. "Do you ever visit them?"

"I visit when I can. Sister and brothers also move out long time ago, so we take turns..."

She coyly oscillates her glass within her middle and ring finger, causing the dark liquid to splash from side to side. "But you try to change subject, Eric. Obviously you not sit in front of computers all day. What else you enjoy?"

I wore a dumb grin now, becoming more buzzed by the minute.

"I enjoy you, for one."

Anne purred and lowered her chin, looking at me sweetly, almost too much so. "But you not 'pro' at me... not yet. What else?"

Damn - she was good. I could tell Anne wasn't going to be seduced so easily.

"Hmm..." I attempt to tally my interests, if you could call my various diversions anything like 'interests.' "I like to read. I like learning about stuff. At school, my best subject was math- pretty nerdy, right?"

"You like reading learning and math huh? You have such like... gym body..." she says as her eyes comb my arms and torso. "I not expect that from... nerd."

I take the offensive now. "There's probably a lot of things you wouldn't expect. And what does a gorgeous 'older' woman like you spend her time doing?"

Anne laid her palms on the table and excused herself like a princess. She grabbed the clunky wine bottle by its stem, cattily meandering to my side of the table. She stood next to me as she poured another libation. It felt like there was an absence of space between us; we could get sucked into each other at any moment. With tipsy confidence I ensconced her thighs and pulled her close.

"Mmmmh..." Did she just moan, or was I imagining things? "I read too. I paint. I write poetry, but not in English. When I younger I play tennis. I try to stay in shape but it's hard when always so hot outside..."

"You really paint and write poetry?"

"No I lying, I write tourism pamphlets for clueless foreigner."

"Have you ever made up attractions to visit, like 'Hideous and improbably deformed squirrels can be found in the trees of this city?'"

"Yea but not too often. They catch on when they search for ugly squirrel but only find cute one."

I had long ago stopped trying to judge how much wine Anne and I drank by counting empty glasses and eyeballing amounts with each refilled glass. I stopped pretending I could be in control of everything all the time. And the magnum-size bottle was more than half empty, anyway.

"God- you're so sexy, Anne." I bury my face in her side, massaging her thigh beneath the stretchable fabric.

"You mean that Eric?" There's a thud as Anne puts the bottle down without looking. She drapes her pale arms across my shoulders.

"I really and truly mean it."

"Say it again..." Her voice is abstracted, interwoven with longing and enigmatic sadness like a minor seventh chord.

"You're really, really sexy, Anne. You're fucking hot..."

Anne's forehead rests against mine. It's warm and soft, like her.

"Again."

"Anne..."

"..."

Anne closes her eyes. Her mouth is agape. I feel her heated breath against my face. I hear her heartbeat in each heady gasp.

I close my eyes and match lips with hers, kissing her deeply. Her tongue shyly explores my mouth. Her lips feel like velvet. Her breathing grows more labored and intense.

I draw both hands upwards along the subtle contours of her body and affectionately cradle her head in my palms, pulling back ever so imperceptibly as I successively fail to stop kissing her for long enough to speak.

"I like you a lot, Anne."

Anne's chin shines with a lustful mixture of sweat and saliva. Her countenance has transformed into halfway between like a slutty cat and the inscrutable heroic resolve of Russian revolutionary Sophia Perovskaya.

"Eric."

"..."

"Don't stop kissing me..."

I run my hands down her breasts; now her thinly frail rib cage; now to her ass. Anne's fingers lock behind my neck. She lifts up her right knee and wholly roundhouse kicks the air as she mounts me. Her elastic dress has hiked up her creamy thighs to the bottom of her ass. I finish the job, swiftly yanking it above her waist before grabbing sumptuous handfuls of her sweet, perfectly proportioned cheeks. Anne gyrates her pelvis as she grinds my abdominals, her spine alternately arching then relaxing. I guide her downward and slowly pump my hips, seeking out her defenseless pussy with the rousing titan in my pants.

Anne receives the memo. She drops into my lap with such momentum that it would make Newton proud. Her sandals slip seamlessly from her narrow feet and fall to the ground. Her movement is electric.

Words are too slow; we talk with our bodies, thrashing like wyverns. Anne tugs roughly at the collar of my only casual dress shirt, almost tearing the buttons clean off. I rapidly lift it up my chest and over my head, somehow sloppily melding with her mouth all the while, then carelessly fling it across the apartment.

She's absolutely moaning now, there's no mistaking it.

In one continuous motion I swiveled to my right, shoved my heels into the floor and bolted up, supporting her in my hands as I sauntered to the camouflaged couch, undershooting its cushions and slamming into an arm. We toppled down together like a sinking ship.

I'm laying on my back with one leg swooped over the side of the couch, Anne now on all fours, her limbs bending and slanting in every direction as she forces herself against me. I kick my shoes off quickly, recalling the faux-leather heel backing that was loose or defective or something was the reason I never wore them again after tripping over my feet several times at the wedding.

The sharp V of Anne's dress folds outward and I can almost see her nipples hanging underneath as she pulls her shoulders together, riding me forcefully. I drag my lips down her jaw and to the salty nape of her neck, easily doing a slow sit-up while slipping the straps off. She tastes like an apple out of Eden; forbidden sweetness and unbidden filthy degenerate sex, a universe of new delights. We work perfectly in tandem; Anne lifting her arms out of the straps before I take charge again and lower her dress rest of the way, freeing her luscious A-cup tits once and for all. The sight of her totally naked torso is a shunt in my perception, an ineluctable visual stimulus that excludes everything besides. 'Animistic' didn't begin to do it justice. Straight away my hands fondle and knead her tits as I roll her nipples between thumb and forefinger, now licking and sucking, now groping and pinching again.

I struggle with the button of my slacks, hastily ripping the zipper in twain. As I force them down my legs Anne sits up and I reach around her, just able to pull out my left foot before kicking them over the couch arm. One foot ought to be enough for anybody. She looks at my bulge in astonishment and doesn't waste another second as she falls back into my lap.

Without warning Anne slaps a palm on my pecs just below the manubrium, her fingers outstretched and unevenly parted. She pushes me down, not exactly physically, but with a telepathic suggestibility that I'm powerless to disobey.

We're both heaving and gasping and sweating madly. Anne's bangs have escaped the bun and stick to her skin in cute strands.

"Baijiu."

"Huh- should we take shots?"

"If you really like me, we drink baijiu. Then I do anything for you-"

"Yes."

"Let me finish-"

"Yes, Anne. Let's do it. I'll go pour-"

"Eric! You not listening! If you really like me, we stop and take drink now. I pour. Then..."

"And then what?"

"Then... you learn exactly how older I am than-"

"Anne, you don't have to-"

"Shush, Eric! If you still like me, then I yours completely, but if not..."

Anne's face was now 100% Russian revolutionary. It's like she wasn't drunk or tipsy or anything at all. Although my slacks were hanging impossibly contorted from my right ankle like a Calabi-Yau manifold and she was baring her incredible puffy dark brown nipples that adorned her perky breasts dripping with sexually charged condensation and sitting on me but more like idly pleasuring herself with my cock while I achingly twitched and jerked beneath the pressure of her mischievous pussy that was pathetically protected by little more than one or two thou of textile, Anne was deathly serious.

I propped myself up on an elbow I don't know which as blood rushed to my head and I kind of rocked to the side in a manner I drunkenly thought must have looked fucking cool like James Franco cool but actually was the kind of inebriated gypsy waltzing you see on reality cop shows right before the guy gets arrested for failing a breathalyzer or taking 2 minutes to stumble through 1/6th of the alphabet while reciting it backwards, so that's Z Y X V- no, W, and then the guy is in the fucking back of a cruiser. Anne kept staring at me with her really intense serious face and not knowing what to do to reassure her I just planted my lips firmly on hers without like sucking face or tongue dueling, it was just a sincere genuine dumb drunk kiss. I didn't have my eyes open but if I did I probably would have seen her scary serious face relax a bit because her body drooped and she just kept rubbing against me.