Erica's Story

She looks over at me cooly. "I wouldn't say you're trying to get close to me. Seems you're more interested in ordering me around."

"You don't mean that."

She pulls her fingers out from between her legs and wiggles them at me, then puts them back.

"Nothing?"

She smiles grimly.

I am definitely a little harder. "Does it matter at all to you that you are bringing me pleasure?"

Her wrist is moving slightly above her hair. She drinks again. "It matters to me that you are persisting in this. It matters to me that I haven't yet been scared away."

I take this as encouragement. I decide to persist further. "Take off your dress."

She hesitates only for a few seconds then stands up, pulls it over her head and throws it over the coffee table. She sits down.

"Go back to where you were, so I can see you."

She doesn't hesitate, she goes back to leaning into the corner of the couch with her feet up and her hand between her open legs.

She has on a tight, white bra that seems to cinch her in. The few folds of wrinkled skin on her belly strikes me as quite sexy. "So you never did this with your husband?" I wait anxiously for her response, wondering if I'm pushing too far. I don't want to antagonize her but I want to draw her out if I can.

"No." She is looking absently at the hand between her legs.

"Why not?"

She takes a quick look at me. "This is intimacy, Allan."

"He wouldn't give you any?"

She is back to looking at her hand. "Well, him, ya, but it was me, too. I didn't know anything about intimacy."

"You're honest."

Her laugh is empty. "It's in the psychiatric report."

"Along with?"

"Notes on repression, anxiety, low self-esteem — the usual jottings about women like me. You can read it in our faces. You did. You had me pegged in an instant. 'Be here at 7.' I was. Actually, I was there at quarter to, freshly bathed. That request for beguiling clothes was a jolt. What was that about?"

"I wanted to get you off-balance. I wanted to set the tone in case you actually opened your door."

"I have no idea why I did ... why I went to meet you. It's shocking, really. Maybe I sensed you ..."

"Weren't up for it."

"Weren't a threat; would do me some good."

"Have I?"

She thinks about this for an agonizingly long time. "I don't know, Allan. I could be a mess when you leave. Or I could be relieved. I just don't know," she gives me her empty laugh, "what with the anxiety, the low self-esteem, the repression and all."

"Come here."

She sits up obediently and shifts towards me. I pull her into me, as awkwardly as before. "You're damaged goods, aren't you."

"Irreparably."

"No, I don't think so. It strikes me as if you're really making an effort here."

"You're making me make an effort. I decided when I sat on that bench tonight I would try and let ... well, que sera, sera."

"How can I help? Is there anything I can do?"

"I don't know. Follow your instincts, I guess." She smiled. "They seem to be working so far."

My instinct are to get out of here ... and to take her with me. "There is a pub a few blocks away."

It was an easy walk but an uneasy talk. When I get her home I go inside but decline a nightcap. When I pull her in and kiss her lightly on the lips I am kissing her goodbye.

"That's it, isn't it?" She is looking up at me, her cold grey eyes narrowed in annoyance.

The whole evening has been an entirely new experience for me but it has made me feel grubby. "You've given me no indication you want to connect with me, Erica."

"Connect? Of course I want to connect. I've taken my fucking clothes off for you. At least you could give it ... give me a try."

It is true, she has taken her clothes off, more or less, and it is true that she has been trying. I make a snap decision I hope like hell I won't regret. "OK, but I can't promise results."

When she picks up the half-bottle of wine I pick up the two glasses and follow her up the stairs, noticing for the first time that she has a very pretty and youthful ass.

Her room is like the rest of her house, impersonal, tidy and soulless; a brooding room of emptiness.

I stand by the bed. "What do you want, Erica? Do you know?"

"I want you to find a spark in me. I have no idea where it is or how you can find it."

"But you want me to look for it?"

She has a very attractive mouth with thin lips that easily set into a scornful grimace. "No, I want you to do better than that — I want you to find it."

The anger and pain in this woman is obvious. And it is obvious to me that I can't do anything for her, can't find her spark, if one actually exists, until she makes a giant stride to help herself. So I off-load the problem back to her.

"Look, Erica, I don't want to go groping around looking for something that might not be there. If you want me in that," I point to the bed, "lure me in and try to get out of me everything you can. It's my responsibility to treat you well, not to heal you."

She isn't ready for this and her eyes, burning fiercely, show it.

I have to call her bluff, find a way for her to make the first move, to become the aggressor. I pick up the bottle and a glass. "I'm going downstairs. Come and get me when you've thought this through; when you've made an effort to make yourself ... desirable." I stop at the door. "And think about what you want, Erica. I don't want to go groping around only to find that I'm just annoying you."

I listen for her feet to follow me down the stairs but they don't. When I sit back on the couch I am torn by doubt. Do I want to be here? Do I want the responsibility of this fragile woman? Am I up to the challenge? Should I just go?

I have two glasses while I ponder these questions. I have no answers, only that I'd like to see her whole ... then open the door and walk out of her life.

She is standing in the doorway back-lit by the hall lighting. I can't see her face very well but her outline is clear through her negligee. She is quite slim but curvaceously feminine. I feel a stirring.

"You're gorgeous, Erica. Come here." When she gets near me I can see she has spent some time with her make-up kit. I stand and pull her into me. "Thank you." I kiss her and am surprised when she kisses me back. Then she takes me by the hand and leads me upstairs.

She stops me at the bed. "I want you to make me feel like a woman, Allan. I want to feel like you want to be here."

"Just stand there and let me look at you." I slowly take off my clothes.

She is really a very beautiful woman when she tries to be. She has a feminine elegance that can be breathtaking. Like now, with her rosy red nipples on wonderfully sagging breasts barely visible behind the filigreed black negligee and the sexy shadow of her lush black bush.

"Sorry about the hard-on," I said, fully aware of my inadequacy. "This should be up to here, now, " I exaggerated a height with a smile. "You're spectacular?"

She doesn't look convinced but she does offer a hint of a smile. "Do you want me to take this off?"

With all my clothes off I shuffle into the middle of the bed and take my shrunken penis between my fingers. "Just stand there for a minute, OK?" She looks nervous, even a bit scared. "How difficult was it putting on that make-up? Did I make you feel manipulated?"

She thought for a moment before she spoke. "I felt like I had a reason to put it on. I liked it. I liked that you asked me to, told me to. I used to like to wear make-up." She smiles. "I know I need it."

"And the negligee?"

"I knew it was there ... in the back of my bottom drawer. I've never thrown it out — I guess because I hadn't entirely given up. I felt sexy when I put it on. I looked at myself in the mirror. I never do that."

"How much does it bother you that I'm not hard?"

"It doesn't."

"Why, because I'm not threatening, to use your word?"

"I had a difficult marriage, Allan." She pointed to my half-limp prick. "I like it like that a whole lot better. I admit it."

"It can't excite you."

"But it doesn't scare me, either and I'll settle for that any day." She moved to the edge of the bed. "Anyway, you excite me."

"I love giving oral sex, Erica. Is that allowed? Can I have you?"

She appeared oddly shocked by this and didn't answer for a few seconds. "We never had ... that. I gave him oral sex, of course, all the time but he never ... on me."

"So?"

"So, I don't know." The doubt on her face was almost comical. Almost.

"I do. Lie down here ... no, with your head ... yes. And I want you to enjoy this, Erica, I want you to do your absolute best to enjoy this. If you don't, I'm going to get my guy up to his thor-like maximum and hammer you with it. OK?" I lifted her negligee. She has a little grey in her shaggy black bush that looks all the more lush because it is framed by two very white, very shapely thighs, nicely toned.

I love her hips. They are very white and smooth and quite narrow with a wonderfully sensuous arc. I run my hand along the outsides of her hips wonder what she's thinking. I've always been a slow lover and, I think, considerate. To me the act of love-making takes time and sacrifice, I like to get off, of course, but my real thrill is to see my partner nudged into uncontrollable lust. That's what I'm trying for here but I don't know if I stand a chance.

Her legs are together as if in resistance but she opened them, slowly, uncertainly when I trail my fingers along the inside of her thigh. I prop myself up on my hand, push her leg open a little further and inspect her. "You've got a fantastic pussy, Erica, really exquisite." I'm doing this deliberately. If she's never had oral sex before no one has ever been so deliberate with her and I'm hoping it takes her places.

"Do you want me to suck you?"

"No, just concentrate."

I've been wisping my fingers along her thigh. Now I bring them up and slowly move them into her thick patch of hair. She flinches slightly but doesn't move away and she doesn't move away when I lightly poke into her, peeling her back a bit so I can see pink which I bend down and kiss.

"I haven't been with many women. A few before my wife. None during or after. You tend to want what you can't have, don't you? I've long imagined a woman like you, thin and elegant. My wife put on weight in the last half of her life. She was beautiful but, Jeez, Erica you are just fabulous."

I bend down, nuzzle my face into her, smell her, taste her, run my hands under her. She does nothing at first, she is as limp and lifeless as my dink. But as I open her and probe my tongue around her, sucking on her clit, easing a finger into her, pushing a finger gently against her anus she slowly moves into a place she has never been before, I can hear it in her gasps and moans, feel it in her insistent thrusts against my face and I experience it in the long cry that starts where my tongue starts probing.

It's not unusual. I often wake up with a nice woody. What is unusual is what happened. It takes me a moment to realize where I am then I turn and press myself against her, meaning to restart what I had begun last night.

But it doesn't work out that way. In pressing into her I press my woody hard against her thigh and this, remarkably, is enough to propel her out of bed and into the washroom where she closes the door and doesn't come out until after her shower.

"What's wrong?" I asked, thinking I might know the answer.

"Memories." She is partially hidden by her towel. "I acted instinctively. I've tried hard to forget about those things." She flicked her hand in my direction. "I thought you said it couldn't get like that any more."

"It can in the morning."

She is clearly uncomfortable as I watch her dress — as quickly as she can.

I pull the sheet off me. "So that's it? You're going to leave me with it?"

"I have to go to work, Allan."

My penis stays strong as I watch her remarkably sexy body disappear behind an appropriate office uniform of severe blues and blacks. But I have one more shock for her, as if last night's oral orgy wasn't enough. They are on the floor in the pile of her laundry she is just about to move to the basket. "Would you hand me those, please?" I say, pointing.

"What?" She looks at me, confused.

"Those yellow panties on top."

She took a kind of comic double-take. "Why?"

"Because I don't want to waste this. Your smell will help a lot."

She stands frozen. "You're kidding." She clearly thinks I am.

"If I can't have the real thing they'll have to do." I snap my fingers impatiently. "Pass them over."

She hesitates. "Are you serious?"

"Perfectly, they'll help a lot."

She looks at me hard, trying to figure out if I'm serious. I am and she finally realizes it. She picks them from the pile and hands them to me.

"Thanks," I say, with a smile, brushing them across my face then settling down for a long flog. "I'll let myself out."

She looks at me as if I'm totally weird then leaves.

I yell after her. "I loved last night, Erica. Thanks." I had no idea how she felt about it ... or me.

She said 5:45. She is sitting at a table with two other women.

When I see her I feel a noticeable stirring I didn't expect. When I get to the table I lean down and kiss her lightly on the cheek then settle into the only empty chair.

Wrong. Everything stops at the table. It's like a freeze-frame. The woman who had been in mid-sentence stares at me like I've just pissed in her lap and the other one almost gets whip-lash on her double-take.

"EXCUSE ME!" It's the one who'd been speaking. She looks at me so startled I feel like a Martian. "You just did WHAT?" She is way too loud. People are looking. But she's about to get louder. "What was THAT? A kiss, a peck, a smooth, a buss — a CANOODLE?" Her eyes are enflamed. "TEMERITY, that what that was, undiluted, unalloyed temerity! Walking in here planting that on a cheek that hasn't felt a lip since, what? Since I was, like, 3? Do you have any idea who's cheek you just OSCULATED? That is my MOTHER, sir, the broodmare of gloom. SLIDE YOUR LIPS AGAINST YOUR SLEEVE LESS YOU GET CONTAGED."

The whole place has gone silent. I wave at a phantom waiter and yell, "Another Red Bull for the little woman!" and I smile at Erica.

Erica's smile is closer to a grimace. She rolls her eyes and says, "Gail this is ..."

"WAIT!" Gail frantically throws up both hands then pulls out a cellphone, expertly opens it, punches in a number and waits a moment. "GET OVER HERE. NOW! BULL AND BEAR. IT'S OUR WET DREAM. MUM HAS A FRIEND! IT'S HERE. IT KISSED HER — I SAW IT!" She slaps her phone closed.

I circle to the waiter for a round and order a beer then I stand up and stick out my hand towards the mouthpiece. "I'm Allan Carsten."

She throws up her hands as if I'm about to assault her. "No, no, no, no, you have to wait. I can't do this alone."

I sit down, as confused as I am amused. Is this woman for real? Everything about her shouts parody — a faux drama queen run amuck, but I'm not sure she isn't serious. It's those eyes.

In a couple of minutes the double-take girl leans over and says in a sincere voice as she pats my hand, "We don't apologize for Gail any more. We haven't for years."

I look over at Erica. She smiles sheepishly. She is embarrassed. I think because I'm here.

And it soon becomes clear that the daughter, I'm assuming, is in fact entirely serious. We have to wait for conversation. The sound at the table falls from barking hysterics to total silence. Even the psychologically challenged tax lawyer complies. This feels really weird to me. And fabulously interesting.

After a few minutes the double-take girl leans over and says in a hushed voice. "What are you smiling at?"

I whisper back. "I was thinking, oh, if my kids could see me now."

She smiles. "Ya, I know the feeling. My parents think I'm completely nuts. Gail is insane, of course ... to them, and I'm only marginally better. I'm Fergie. I'll shake your hand later when I get permission. She's a tyrant you know. An absolute tyrant but I love her."

Fergie is pixie cute — I'm old enough to call her darling. She's short, with short blond hair, blue eyes, a slightly up-turned nose and a wonderfully expressive mouth that has a fascinating tilt to it that gives her a touch of the scatter-brain look. I liked her immediately.

The tyrant, on the other hand, has an even more classically pretty look than her mother, but with all the warmth of a statue ... waiting for a pigeon to land. You'd look at her from four tables away, she has that kind of draw-to beauty, but you'd be wondering, too. It's in her eyes. She may well be slightly mad.

It takes the better part of ten minutes when all eyes turn. So mine do, too. It's the sister, unmistakably. She moves through the tables like a dancer. Eyes follow her. She is shockingly elegant, beyond description. Breath-taking, a young version of the mother.

Gail hooks her foot around the leg of a chair at a near-by table and slides it in beside her. Ms Elegant settles down like dew on a rose.

She doesn't look at me. She looks anxiously at her mother, as if for an explanation. "Ava, Gail and Fergie," she checks them off with her finger, "this is Allan Carsten. A friend."

"What kind of friend? Where did you meet him? What have you been up to?" Gail blurts out her Gatling gun of questions with ill-disguised angst.

But Ava taps her sister on the arm, tut-tut style, then turns her remarkable eyes on me. "Mr. Carsten, are you from the city?"

"No." I allow. "I live up north."

The questions are unrelenting in an increasingly bad-cop, bad-cop style, I think because, while I answer the first salvo with good grace — they have a reasonable right to know — the last dozen are increasingly invasive, irritating and irrelevant so I toy with them. They don't like it.

We break up in a pool of bad blood.

Erica and I don't talk for much of the one kilometre walk to her home. She hadn't said anything at the table; I thought she might try now. But nothing. I only had three beers but it was enough to make me deeply pensive and, as we walk, I go to a place where I shouldn't be going.

I start laughing just as we near her lane. It just pours out of me ... uncontrollably. "God, it must have been awful" I say before I almost collapse from uncontrollable hysterics. I have this mental image of Erica standing barefoot in her kitchen shuffling eggs on the stove when those two walked in. 'What are we having for supper?' is all Gail has to say before I lost it. "God," I say through streaming tears and a broken voice, "it must have been an unbelievably hell raising those two." The thought of it seems way beyond impossible. In my empathy for her I just can't stop laughing.

But I do by the time we reach the door, the last 30 metres or so are an on-again, off-again guffaw while I try to control my adolescence. But I succeed at the door ... until she turns to face me and it all comes rushing out again: the commitment to misery when there is so much to offer. It just doesn't make any sense to me: life is way too short.

I expect to be sent packing but, strangely, I'm not. I offer, I even suggest that I depart but she holds the door open and I soberly walk in.

I know the house now, I know my way to the kitchen. I know the wine is in the fridge. She supplies the corkscrew.

When we sit down she doesn't demand an explanation. But I apologize anyway. Unfortunately, I turn to her to emphasize my sincerity and the whole picture comes rushing back and it happens all over again: the monumental disconnect between the sober sanity of her practical, even patrician beauty, the misery of her life and the unbridled anarchy of her off-spring.

To her credit, she remains impassive through it all: the laughter, the tears, the fist pounding on the couch, the feet kicking the air, the spilled glass and, finally, the appended and re-stated apology. Then all is quiet.