The Woman

1

It was night time the first time I met her, although you wouldn't have been able to tell it from the harsh fluorescent overhead lights at the grocery store where I was wasting my life. I'd never seen her in the store before, but once I had, I couldn't keep my eyes off her. She was tall. Taller than me, with silky smooth straight red hair that ran down midway to her shoulders. Her eyes were a dark green, like two emeralds surrounded by a field of fire. They were framed by sharp black horned rimmed glasses that sat sternly on her noses. Her eyes were so intense. She stared at me as she placed a single bottle of wine and a greeting card on the conveyor belt at the end of the checkout station.

We made eye contact as the cashier, a senior from the local high school, picked up the bottle and ran it across the scanner. It beeped loudly, but it seemed far away. I was lost in a sea of green. The woman raised her eyebrow at me, a slow languid arch behind her sensible glasses and I looked away blushing. The cashier had set the wine down on the other side of the belt, and it was nearly to me. I reached out and grabbed it. It was a fancy white wine, but I didn't recognize it. Wine wasn't exactly my drink of choice. I slid it into one of the smaller paper sacks that were made for hiding liquor bottles, and then slipped that into a larger plastic bag. I looked up in time to grab the greeting card. It was one of the more expensive kinds, made from parchment and wrapped in its own separate plastic capsule. It said something about a wedding, but I didn't read the whole thing as I tucked it and the envelope into a smaller plastic bag, and put the whole thing into the larger bag with the wine. There's a subtle art to bagging groceries.

My task done, I looked up, and found that the woman had moved closer. She was down near the end on the lane, leaning down over the credit card machine, no doubt entering her pin number into it. I took the opportunity to check out the rest of her. She was wearing a long black pantsuit that fit her curves nicely. Her blouse underneath the matching suit top was dark sea foam green that didn't quite match her eyes, but played off them in a sympathetic rhythm. She wore high heels; not inordinately high, but high enough to get the point across that she was an important woman with important places to go. More than twice my age, she was beautiful in a commanding sort of way. I briefly imagined that she must run her own business, signing checks and telling people where to go and what to do all day.

She used the little pen attached to the credit card machine to sign her name after a few small beeps told her she should, as I continued to check her out. She had some makeup on. Not much, but enough in soft and muted tones to show that she was particular about her appearance. The cashier, a senior at the local high school named Katie, handed her her receipt and she turned in my direction. I tried to look away but I wasn't quick enough to avoid getting caught.

I blushed again as she took a step toward me and started to hold out her hand. The skin of her hands was pale and smooth and where she had gone with simple makeup for her face, her long and perfectly manicured nails were painted a deep, confident red. Trying not to look directly at her I held the plastic bag out to her. It crinkled out my embarrassment as it hung there limply between us for a moment. She made no move to take it. After a moment, I forced myself around my embarrassment and looked at her again. Her eyes were cold, like a shark, but there was the beginning of a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth.

"I was under the impression that this store had carryout service...Ben." She said, leaning a little closer and peering at my name tag. Which listed my name and title as "BEN, CARRYOUT". Carryout service was one of the extra services that Muffin's Market offered to its customers to help keep its big box competitors at bay. As she leaned forward she reached up and tapped the hard plastic of my name tag with one of her smooth fingernails. It made a little clicking sound as it tugged against the maroon fabric of the apron all store employees had to wear.

"Oh." I responded intelligently. "Sure, absolutely." I tried to recover, taking a graceless step to the side and allowing her to step in front of me, to take me to her vehicle. He shoes made their own tiny clicking noise as she swayed gracefully past me, giving me an excellent view of her posterior as she passed. It was tight and round in her tight black suit pants.

I followed her out, feeling ridiculous with one small bag of groceries. She led me through the long automatic doors, which hissed as they opened, letting the humid summer night air was unpleasantly over me. The parking lot was mostly empty. It was after eight, which meant the evening rush was mostly over, and Muffin's didn't have many customers these days anyway. She led me to a large black SUV which was parked near the front entrance. Its windows were tinted dark and the parking lot lights shined brightly off the jet black paint and bright chrome bumpers.

There was a small beeping noise as she used her key fob to open the SUV's cargo hatch. It opened on its own with a slow pressurized sigh, revealing crisp new leather interior and an overwhelming breath of new car smell.

"Just anywhere?" I asked stepping in toward the hatch.

"Yeah, any where's fine." She said her voice chilly in the humid evening air. I stepped in past her and sat the bag in as close to the side of the hatch as I could. The back was empty so there was nothing to pin it against to keep it from rolling around, but there was nothing I could do about that. Instead I quickly tied the bag closed and stepped back, hoping to avoid staring at her again. At this point you probably think I'm some kind of lecher who always stared at the woman who came to the store. But that's not true. Well, maybe it is. I was a horny 20 year old, but this was different. There was something about her that drew my eyes. She looked so...powerful?

Maybe.

"Have a good night, Ma'am." I said trying to get out quickly, embarrassed with myself. But as I turned to go she spoke again.

"Do you leer at every woman who comes through the checkout line or is it something about me?"

I felt my face flush bright red and hot as I averted my gaze to my feet. She had caught me looking and it had made her angry. Of course it had. She was a rich, successful, beautiful woman headed to some fully catered wedding party and I was some stupid college non-attendee who would be spending the evening smoking a bag of weed that I would be buying later from Julio in the deli. I was so embarrassed, I wished I was dead.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am." I said shuffling my feet and staring into my converse high tops, "I didn't mean to stare like that."

"I don't want your apology." Her voice was cold and her footsteps were loud on the parking lot asphalt as she stepped in a little closer to me. A faint breeze picked up then and I could smell her perfume on it. It wasn't light and flowery, like the perfume the girls in the store wore. It was deeper, and darker. It made me think of a meadow right before a thunderstorm.

"I wanted to know if you stare at every woman." She said, taking another step closer. She reached out with her smooth hand and placed fingertip under my chin, raising my face to her.

"Or is it just something about me?" She wiggled her finger a bit, dragging her fingernail through my unkempt stubble. I took an involuntary step away and looked up at her surprised. Her eyes were still cold and deadly, but the smirk was back on her face. She arched her eyebrow at me.

"Ummm." I quipped, taking a stumbling step away. "It's just you. I didn't mean-"

"What is it about me that makes a young carryout stare so intently?" She said, maintaining her shark's gaze for another moment, then turning to her SUV closing the hatch, "I'm old enough to be your mother, you know."

"I don't know." I said, "You look so...I don't know. Professional?"

She laughed at that, a thick, world weary 'HA!' that broke my tension a little.

"Professional. How romantic." She transferred her keys to her other hand, then took a step closer to me. I could smell her perfume again, and I was drawn into the deep well of her eyes.

"I didn't mean it like that." I said, feeling my face flush ever redder. I wasn't sure how much a person actually could blush, but surely I was near my limit.

"I meant like...You'd know what you're doing and exactly what you want and stuff. I don't know. I was just checking out a beautiful lady. Don't put me on the spot."

She laughed again, and took another step toward me, leaning down, she got close to my ear, and I saw a generous expanse of her cleavage, at the top of her blouse. Had it been unbuttoned that far in the store? I didn't think it had.

"I'll tell you a secret." She whispered, her hot breath swirling around my ear, sending a tingling sensation through my whole body. "You should be more careful who you stare at. Because I do know exactly what I want." She leaned back up, and I saw that her blouse was definitely open another button. She stepped away, crossing around behind her SUV, and getting in on the Driver's side. I stood there dumfounded as she carefully backed her car out of its parking space. I caught a brief flash of green eyes in her rearview mirror as she pulled the SUV away. I stood that way for several minutes, waiting for the tightening in my pants to go away before I turned around and headed back into the store.

2

I had another four hours in my shift, but the rest of the night is kind of a blur in my memory. I know that when I finally got control of myself enough to sneak past the cashiers without showing off my trouser tent, I spent several minutes hiding out behind the dairy case. It's hard to be turned on when you are cold, and that place seemed to do the trick, but not entirely. For the rest of the evening, I found myself thinking back to the incident. Imagining those green, almond shaped eyes, looking down at me, then find myself flushing with embarrassment all over again.

I know that before my shift ended I spent at least an hour walking around the store with a big plastic jug of detergent in my hand, acting like I was looking for where it belonged. I wasn't the best employee to ever grace the fluorescent halls of Muffin's Market. I definitely got my weed from Julio before my shift ended. Julio was a squat Mexican with what I would have guessed was too much body hair to work in the deli, no matter how many hairnets you slapped on him. We had a very intricate system designed to hide the fact that Julio was dealing drugs to most of the staff at Muffin's. The person who wanted weed would go to the deli, and just...ask him for the weed...Which seems pretty stupid to me now. But back then? Foolproof, baby.

When my shift finally ended I ducked out the back of the store, past all the cute little high school girls smoking cigarettes behind the dumpster, not stopping to say anything to anyone and walked up to my truck. It wasn't much of a truck, a red Chevy S-10, which was only red by virtue of being so rusty. I looked at myself in the reflection of the window as I Pulled open the Driver's door with a long, rust squeak. I was and am tall, at around six feet. At the time I had kind of an unkempt mop of blonde hair, which sometimes flopped down and hid my blue eyes. I wasn't skinny, but I wasn't fat either. I probably would have been if I'd made more money, but between weed, Netflix and rent, there wasn't usually a lot left over for junk food. I'm not particularly muscular, but I am pretty solid, as evidenced by the rusty squeak of the truck as I leaned in ant sat behind the Driver's seat. Fortune favored me as I tossed my weed in the glove box, and the truck decided that tonight it would start.

It was about 10:30 when I pulled into my apartment complex and parked my rust bucket truck in my designated parking spot at the Woodfield Apartment Complex. The building I lived in was brown and tan stone with roughhewn wooden accents that clashed in unexpected ways. It was exactly a dive, but it was...kind of a dive. I was on the ground floor, with a tiny exterior patio that had a great view of my parking space, and the rest of the parking lot. There was one cheap plastic chair out there, but no BBQ or anything like that. I wasn't spending a lot of time outside back then.

I walked up the corridor with a flickering light and turned my key in the tarnished brass colored doorknob under the peeling 1B sticker, and let myself inside. The apartment was one of those "one Bedroom" Numbers with a Kitchenette, a hallway, a bedroom and a bathroom. The carpet was a thick brown shag, and the walls where a fairly clean white. The apartment was a mess. This wasn't unordinary for those days. There was a stack of dirty dishes in the sink, and there were several not so fresh shirts and pants littered around the living room floor. I took the tightly wrapped little baggie of weed out of my work apron pocket and tossed it onto the scuffed coffee table in the center of the room. It landed next to the hollowed out dictionary that I kept all of my other pot supplies in, then quickly peeled myself out my apron, and added it to the accumulated pile on the floor.

I turned on the television, and opened up Netflix while I ground up some of the new weed I had picked up. Julio had informed me that it was supposed to be pretty good stuff, apparently from a new dealer, and I was anxious to try it. Weighing my options, I decided to pack a quick bowl, instead of rolling a joint, and as I did, I flicked through the various shows in my Netflix queue. I settled on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which, side note, is excellent to watch high. Kicking my shoes off and lighting up the bowl, I settled in to watch Captain Sisko and the crew get turned into Klingons for some reason. It was a good episode. It helped me forget all about my embarrassment earlier, but it didn't help me get the woman out of my mind.

I kept losing track of the show, mind drifting off to the thought of her cold green eyes, or her silky smooth red hair. I wondered what her legs looked like, under the pant suit. I thought about what it would be like to see them slowly fall down her long legs, into a pile on my floor. Then I saw all the other clothes already piled up there and the fantasy was broken beyond repair. I couldn't even imagine such a classy beautiful woman in my crappy little apartment.

I had finished my first bowl, and episode of DS9, and was starting to seriously consider what food I might have in my sickly yellow refrigerator when there was a knock at the door. My heart jumped into my throat as it usually did when there was a knock on my door. I had no idea who would be knocking so late. It wasn't like I had any friends who might want to pop by, as I was kind of a loner, and it...shouldn't be my dad. He wasn't really the 'pop by" kind of person. A flood of relief passed into me, as I realized who it must be. Mister Dinklage, my upstairs neighbor was a busybody type. A short, lonely man with more grey hair on his knuckles than on his head lived alone upstairs with his cats. He was always complaining about something or other I had done. My television was too loud. I came and went at odd hours. He could smell pot coming from my apartment. I wasn't too worried about the pot, though, since everyone called our building the Weedfield Apartments. The Super was generally pretty cool, but I wasn't really looking forward to a lecture from an old man about my television's volume tonight.

"Just a sec!' I called, as I shuffled my pipe and the weed I had ground up earlier into the hollow book. I stood up and grabbed a can of pine scented air freshener and sprayed the room liberally as I walked over to my patio window and peeked outside through the mini blinds. I wouldn't be able to see who was at the door, but I would be able to see if my Dad's car was parked out there or something. I didn't see his car, or anything unusual, except a large black SUV parked in Mr. Dinklage's spot. He didn't have a car of his own, but he watched his spot like a hawk to ensure no one parked in it. If it ever happened he'd run downstairs and leave a note under their windshield wiper.

"He probably thinks whoever that is, is here to visit me, and he wants them to move out of his space." I realized, as I let the blind's fall closed. I gave the air another quick puff of pine scent just to be safe, before crossing the floor to the door, and pulling the chain to open it up. But it wasn't short, fat, lonely Mr. Dinkladge.

It was her.

3

I didn't recognize her at first.

No, that's not right. I recognized her. I hadn't forgotten about those green eyes or that long red hair all night, but I couldn't place her. She didn't belong in my doorway, in the dark hallway with the flickering light. She belonged in a well-lit boardroom, with charts and graphs and some sort of long pointer stick that she could smack on the table when her employees didn't get the first quarter profits high enough. But she was still there, somehow, wrapped in a long black coat with lots of buttons, over the dark black pantsuit she'd been wearing earlier, a bottle poking out of a thin paper bag poked up out of the crook of one arm.

"Can I...help you?" I managed, after staring at her standing in my hallway for way too long.

"You can invite me in." She said, nonchalantly. "Or didn't you get enough of staring at me in the grocery store parking lot?"

My heart leapt at the idea (and my pot addled brain didn't out up a fight), as I stepped aside and allowed this tall, fiery haired goddess into my apartment. She walked past me without another look, heels clicking on the linoleum rectangle just inside the door, as she glanced appraisingly around the apartment, then shrugged elegantly out of the long black overcoat. She looked around for a moment, as though for a coat hook that I didn't have, then tossed to overcoat, and the suit jacket, which she'd taken off with the over coat, to me.

"Put that somewhere, won't you?" she said, stepping into the apartment and looking around. Her eyes lingered for a moment on the dirty dishes and the dirty clothes on the floor, as I silently kicked myself. I had already hurried past her, and draped her coat over the back of my kitchenette chair, before I realized that none of this made any sense. Why was she here? How was she here? Where was here? What year was this? My god she was beautiful.

I turned back to her, wanting to express all of those thoughts to her, but all that came out was, "How...How did you find me?"

Of course I regretted it the moment I said it. It sounded like I was some sort of mole in a James Bond movie. I'd just been uncovered by the sexy CIA operative, who was there to kill me so I could never talk. Wait...was that what was about to happen? I felt my eyes widen as I looked at her. She smiled her cold, predatory smile.

"You don't know who I am do you?"

I shook my head, which caused her smile to widen, showing white teeth. She regarded me curiously for a moment, then held the brown paper wrapped bottle out to me, jiggling it.

"Here, pour me some of this in a clean glass. You do have clean glasses, don't you?" She said, arching an eyebrow at the pile of dishes in my sink.

"Yeah, I do." I said, taking the bottle, and scurrying off into the kitchenette. I did have clean glasses, but none were wine glasses, I also didn't have a corkscrew. I slid the wine, the same bottle she had bought at the store out of the bag and stood looking at the cork for a moment. I heard the low voices of Captain Sisko and company go silent, and realized she had shut of Star Trek. God, why was I sitting alone in a dirty house watching Star Trek tonight? I beat myself up as I pondered the wine bottle.