Maid in China

She shut both the door to the hallway and the door to her bedroom, and looked at me with the unvarying placid expression she wore when we were on an excursion and she was in tutorial mode.

"Take off your clothes and lie face down," she said, and turned to face the cabinet in the corner to give me my privacy. I rapidly stripped down, fumbling slightly with the buttons on my blouse because I was so nervous, and throwing little glances at her slim, straight form as she removed things from the cabinet and waited for me. I laid down on the table, which felt cool and sterile against my flushed, naked body, and mumbled that she could turn around now.

Her dark eyes brightened when she turned and saw me, and I couldn't help smiling at the thought that she seemed to like what she saw. But her expression didn't change, and she approached me calmly, with a towel over one arm and a little bottle of liquid in her hand. She poured some of the liquid into her other hand and began to rub them together; I could smell a deep, darkly floral scent in the oil that I could not place.

As she began to run her hands up and down my back, she said,

"My family has always practiced tui na, traditional Chinese massage. It can assist with the balance of qi in your body, the spiritual energy that resides in every person."

Her fingers began to press harder into my spine; I fought back a groan as desire bloomed even more fully beneath her touch. Yiman had her hands on my naked body, and I was deliriously happy; I could barely notice what she was saying.

"Ever since you came into this house, Mrs. Blackwell, I knew you were unhappy. I didn't realize why until I saw you trying to fulfill yourself----" she dug one knuckle very hard into my lower back, pressing my pelvis into the table, and I could not suppress a tiny whimper of pleasure---- "and I knew that he was neglectful of you. I decided then that I would learn everything I could in order to be for you what he was not."

I was gasping now; she was energetically kneading my buttocks, which I could remember seeing nowhere on the diagrams of bodily meridians in the museum of Chinese therapeutic medicine we had visited. Her fingers being so near my overheating, and now frankly leaking, vulva was sending electric signals of almost overwhelming excitement all through me.

"But traditional Chinese medicine as passed down today ignores sexual fulfillment, especially for a woman," she said, her voice growing huskier. "The recovery of the pre-Confucian Taoist techniques is still a matter of ongoing research. Luckily, there are many other cultures in the world with a vibrant sexual ethos."

Her fingers slipped further and further between my legs with each stroke; slippery with oil, warm with vigorous exercise, strong with the weight of her standing body pressing down on my recumbent one, her fingers felt smooth, slick and inevitable.

"The Kamashastra of India, the Song of Solomon of Judea, the Odes of Sappho -- all of this I knew from university. What I researched in order to make you come your brains out----" her fingers slipped gently, but insistently, between my legs, entering my swollen pussy, and pressed deep as I hissed my pleasure between my teeth---- "were more modern instructional videos.¨

Her other hand pressed against the base of my neck, holding me down while her fingers hammered into me, all the gentleness and soothing quality gone. I gasped and choked into the table, squirming helplessly, and my hips rose into the air like a rutting dog's, drooling my pre-cum down to a pool on the massage table between my legs.

I wanted to say something in response to her sudden forceful attack, something that indicated how much I loved it, how much I had been craving this for so long without even knowing I had, but my brain was too much a blur, overwhelmed with the animal heat this quiet, unemotional girl was drawing out of me with every forceful stroke of her hand.

All of a sudden my orgasm was there, and I couldn't stop it, and my hips bucked hard against her fingers and I shrieked hoarsely through a throat still compressed by her other hand. Wave after wave of pleasure shot through me, almost painful in their shocks. It had been so long. I quivered and moaned, and my nethers came down to rest on the table. Her fingers slid out of me with a slurping sound.

And then they were in front of me, beneath my nose, and I opened my mouth to taste myself on her fingers, and licked them clean, my own strong-sweet scent mingling with the dark floral scent of the massage oil on my tongue.

She began to rub me down with the towel.

"Fuck," I breathed. "I needed that."

"Yes," she said, reserved and professional once more.

"Can I do you now?" I turned my head to look at her, feeling oddly shy about asking. Her eyebrows raised gently.

"Not tonight," she said. "Another time."

I nodded, feeling like a child who had been told not to be greedy by her nanny.

She continued with the massage, tracing the lines of the traditional Chinese meridians down my limbs and exercising each pressure point with nimble fingers and practiced movements, explaining to me at each point the ancient philosophy behind the gesture, as though she had not just given me the best orgasm of my life. I absorbed almost none of her lesson, but just rested in the glow of continuing to be touched by her; and soon enough my libido was craving more intimate touch.

But then, apparently, the session was at an end. She toweled me down, and wrapped the towel around me so that I could get off the table without exposing my modesty -- just as though her fingers had not just been buried to the hilt in my pussy -- and gave me my clothes, recommending a shower, after which she would have dinner ready for me.

The evening was quieter than usual. I felt shy about asking her more about where she had learned the techniques she had used on me, but my mind was full of nothing else. I watched her whenever her eyes were not on me, drinking in the soft, placid beauty of her face, wishing I could kiss the soft slope of her neck, that I could knead my hands into her body as she had done into mine, that I could taste every inch of her on my tongue. But I felt too shy to beg. How had eight months in China left me feeling that the maid hired by my husband's firm to look after our accommodations was the one who deserved to make all of the decisions about sexual contact between us?

It was true that I had never been with a woman before (not counting some perfunctory makeouts in college bars to get the men that both of us were actually chasing interested), so the novelty of the entire experience must have accounted for some of my shyness -- but after three months of being led around by her everywhere, of relying on her to tell me where I was and what everything meant, I felt like a naive schoolgirl with a crush on an older, more experienced woman, even though we must have been just about the same age.

That at least I could ask.

"Yiman," I said suddenly, feeling my voice loud in the stillness of the house in David's absence. "How old are you?"

She paused in her after-dinner cleanup and looked at me curiously.

"Twenty-five," she said.

"A year younger than me," I said, with an exhalation that was supposed to be a laugh, but without any force behind it.

She raised her eyebrows as though expecting me to add to the observation, but when I didn't she finished cleaning up and retreated to the kitchen.

The next few days were wretched and circumscribed; I was afraid to do anything that might be misinterpreted as extravagant by David, so our excursions were brief and mostly consisted of walking around the now-familiar neighborhoods that ringed the house, while Yiman pointed out local landmarks and mentioned how they related to Chengdu history. It struck me all at once, on the Friday walk, that for all I knew she could have been making it all up. I had never once tried to verify any of the information she gave me.

I shrugged. It wasn't as if I were particularly interested in Chinese history. If she wanted to tell lie after lie in order to provide me with a moderate level of exercise and entertainment, I had no complaints to make. But the question of how trustworthy Yiman really was, first planted by David, did begin to nag at me.

She had not touched me again after that session on the massage table in her quarters. Had this all been some sick mind game that she was playing with me, an excuse to get me in a compromising position so that she could blackmail me -- or David?

"David's going to audit our finances," I said suddenly. She stopped short and looked at me. Her normally placid face looked more serious than I had ever seen it, her lips pulled taut and her faint eyebrows furrowed.

"What?" Her voice was sharp.

I felt suddenly breathless, like I was doing something wrong.

"On Tuesday. He said he would audit the household finances this weekend. He accused you of stealing from us."

Her nostrils twitched as she stared at me, and the pink drained away from her lips. Then she turned and began striding quickly back toward the house. I had to run to keep up with her.

"It's okay, isn't it?" I gasped as I chased her. "You just did the shopping. Even if you skimmed a bit off the top to send back home, that would be fine." (It suddenly struck me that aside from that one mention of massage, she had never discussed her family with me.) "It's not like you could have withdrawn huge sums."

"You don't understand," she said shortly, and continued forward with long quick strides. I had to lapse into silence or fall behind, since my legs were shorter than hers and I was still not as used to walking everywhere.

Once we arrived home, she disappeared quickly into her back quarters, not giving me a glance. Not knowing what to do, I sat down on the couch, fumbling with my phone.

She emerged, dressed in her maid outfit, but with a coat over top as if preparing to go out again. I jumped to my feet.

"Yiman ----"

She shook her head at me, still frowning.

"I am sorry, Mrs. Blackwell. I have to go out again. But keep your phone with you. Please." Her face suddenly twisted, and I saw her lip tremble and realized that she had been holding back emotion this whole time.

"What about dinner?" I said, feeling stupid.

Her smile came and went so quickly that it was as if she did not trust it.

"There are ready-make dumplings in the refrigerator," she said. "Just pop them in the cooker. It's preset for them."

I nodded, understanding nothing.

She headed to the door.

"When will you be back?" I asked suddenly.

"I don't know," she said, and repeated "Keep your phone with you," and then the door shut behind her and she was gone.

It was a lonelier afternoon and evening than I had experienced even in the five months before she had taken me under her wing; before that, she had at least been physically present in the house, even if we had politely ignored each other except during meals. I dreaded David coming home, but as the hours dragged slowly by and Yiman neither returned nor sent any indication of what she was doing to my phone, which I kept nervously toying with, I could almost wish that he would come in just to put an end to this intolerable waiting.

I did not feel equal to wrestling with the dumplings and the cooker in the kitchen, but hunger eventually drove me to rooting through the pantry, and I found enough dried snacks to munch on that I made a poor dinner and decided to go to bed early so as not to give David the satisfaction of another scene before the morning.

But I was too nervous and on edge to fall asleep, so I heard him come in. And even though I pretended to be asleep when he opened the bedroom door, he shook me "awake."

"Where's that maid?" he demanded.

"Is she not in her room?" My hours of anxious uncertainty helped me play into a just-woken stupor.

He scowled and shrugged.

"She's always been up when I get back," he said.

"Maybe she's not feeling well," I said. He looked at me suspiciously, but didn't say anything and went back out into the rest of the house.

"She's not in her room," he reported, coming back in abruptly. "Why the hell does she have a massage table back there? She hasn't been having clients in, has she?"

"God, no," I said, but I felt myself flush at the thought of what she had done to me on the massage table. "I have no idea where she could have gone," I added, trying to hurry past it.

David grunted and looked at me as though trying to understand something. I looked back at him, trying to produce the old provocative smolder of our college days. He grimaced.

"You told her I was going to audit the household finances, didn't you?"

I had to admit that I had, and he threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Well, she'll be long gone now. I'll report her to the authorities and maybe we can get some of the money back if they catch her quick enough. It won't look good for me, though. Hard to promote a junior partner who gets fleeced by a fucking maid. Goddammit, Victoria, you just can't keep your mouth shut, can you?"

For the first time, I let his yelling wash over me, as though it couldn't hurt me. My hand was still closed around my phone, and I felt it vibrate. I didn't dare look at it right in front of him, though.

"Are you sure she stole anything?" I felt myself saying. "You didn't actually do the audit, did you?" Anything to get him out of the room, compiling evidence, rather stay there than cross-examining me.

"Well, it's not like I need to now," he snapped. "Running out like that is basically the same as admitting guilt."

"You don't know," I said desperately. "Maybe she has a sick relative who she had to go visit."

"And didn't tell either of us about it," he sneered. "You're such a sap."

"I am not!" I wanted to scream, but instead I looked down, and clutched my phone tight against my thigh on the bed.

Seeing that I wasn't going to give him the excitement of a fight, he grumbled a bit more, and then eventually strode out to make the threatened call to the authorities.

I dashed into the bedroom, locked it behind me, and finally looked at my phone.

Yiman had sent me four texts over the secure app which she had made me download on our first excursion together in case we got lost.

The first was a map route from our house to a bus stop. The second was a prepaid bus fare to Chengdu Airport. The third was a boarding pass for a one-way first-class flight to Hong Kong. The fourth was just the words "Don't forget your passport."

I stared for a long time at the texts. The flight to Hong Kong departed in three hours. The bus ride there would take nearly an hour. The walk to the bus stop was twenty minutes. David was already on the phone with the authorities; I could hear his stentorian Mandarin through the walls.

It was absurd. Run out on my marriage? To do what? Be an accessory to grand larceny? The first-class ticket was essentially an admission of theft; no maid's salary could have afforded it, I was sure, not even under Communism with Chinese characteristics.

But I thought of the massage table in her quarters, and my pussy ached with longing, and I thought of her bright eyes under the awning on the mountain, and my lips tingled to kiss her again, and I thought of spending the next four months alone with David until his assignment was over and we could return to the States, and I sighed a long, excruciating "fuuuuuuuuuuuck," and I sent a single pink heart emoji.

I waited for what felt like eternity, and then my text was marked as read, and then I waited even longer, but there was no reply.

I turned on the shower, my mind racing with a thousand thoughts that I could not put into words. When I emerged, I informed David, who was waiting for his turn to use the bathroom to brush his teeth, that I would be sleeping on the couch. He was peeved and tired enough to not argue much about it; I gathered that the authorities had not been as deferential to him as his ego would have liked. While he was in the bathroom I quickly gathered together as much of my clothing and effects as I could, bundled them in a sheet, and took them out to the front room.

I went as far as to lie down on the couch with my things bunched up beneath a blanket that was pulled up to my chin, and it was good that I had, since he emerged and tried to give a half-hearted non-apology that made it clear he still had no idea why I would be upset with him, after eight months of being continuously neglected. I told him to go to bed and we'd talk in the morning, then lay awake listening.

Once I heard him snoring, I got dressed, made sure my passport and everything else I would need was in my purse, and sneaked out of the house feeling like I had back when I was a teenager breaking my parents' curfew.

Yiman's directions were faultless. The bus stop glowed under a halogen lamp, and the bus arrived exactly on time. The ride to the airport was not exactly crowded, but full enough that I felt relatively unobtrusive; and at the airport I followed those of my fellow passengers who had luggage, figuring that I would be able to find the departures that way.

Leaving Chengdu was almost too easy; an uninterested glance at my boarding pass and passport, a wave through. At every moment I expected to be stopped, for David to have woken up and discovered my disappearance and sent police to chase me down. But the first-class ticket opened every door, and finally I found myself in a comfortable, reclining seat and was able to catch some fitful sleep during the five hours. Every time I opened my eyes I checked my phone again to see if Yiman had responded, and every time she had not.

The plane landed in Hong Kong, and I felt hollow and disoriented, as though the entire world was unreal. Very little food, very little sleep, and near-constant anxiety for the past twelve hours left me feeling dissociated, as though I were a stranger in my body watching in curious wonder as I got into the snaking line that wound through customs.

And there she was, sitting demurely to one side watching the line with alert eyes, the gray of her maid's uniform still peeping out from her overcoat. Our eyes met at the same moment, and she leapt to her feet and ran to join me in line. Our arms went around each other immediately, but at the last moment I pulled back from kissing her on the mouth, unsure of how that display would be received by those around us.

"You came!" she said at last, as we inched forward in line, our hands tucked into the pockets of each other's overcoats. Her voice was full of more suppressed excitement than I had ever seen in her before; she couldn't stop smiling.

"I couldn't not," I said. "I had to see you again."

"I'd hoped so," she said, and then broke off to look away shyly.

With her to help translate, customs was a breeze. Neither of us were carrying anything larger than a purse, and although the official stared pointedly at the wedding band on my finger, he stamped the entry visa in my passport anyway.

"What now?" I said, falling into step behind her as I had become accustomed throughout our time in Chengdu.

"A hotel," she said. We slipped through the busily growing crowds in the Hong Kong airport on a Saturday morning and finally made our way outside. She flagged a cab, gave an address, and ushered me into the back seat before getting in next to me.

She paid for the cab using her phone, and we stepped out from it into the courtyard of a soaring hotel. She spoke to the attendant, who ushered us to the front desk; she spoke to the clerk, who gave us room keys; she spoke to the bellhop, who guided us to the elevator. As we rose into the air in the elevator, alone for the first time I finally pulled her lapels close to me and kissed her.