Toy Soldier Pt. 01

Tits and ass, ass and tits. She said she was attracted to them and proved it by all the attention but calm and quiet and tits and ass does not a relationship make, even I know that. If I was writing my own story and a beautiful black woman showed up with that longing obsession I would have torn up the draft as beyond belief. But her hand had been on my ass a lot, her lips and tongue and mouth on my breasts and she is black and she is beautiful and she does want a place — but for how long?

Black and beautiful sat across from me, dazzling with a smile that weakened me. She placed the big roll of paper in front of me and spread it out on the desk she had Murph place across from mine in my office. She used a coffee cup and stapler to anchor one side and a stack of stickie notes and her thumb to anchor the other. It was a drawing of the train room come to life, not the whole room, an approximation of it with three detailed illustrations, one of a trestle over a gorge, deep and scary, one of the small town now with a rivered artery running through it, a town now backed by a mountain at the foot of which was a lovely pasture so inviting to the grazing buffalo.

"You can do this?"

The solarium would be her studio but she insisted her office be the same room as mine, well, she didn't insist, she just got Murph to help her move a desk in while I wasn't there and she just set up camp.

I wasn't pleased. This room had been mine and mine alone since I was eight. When I went in I stopped in shock. It's like I had been burgled and the place left a mess — everything had been rearranged to accommodate the desk and chair and the empty bookcase, my life had been shunted aside.

I could feel her behind me. She knew, she must have known. She pressed herself into my back, her hands went around me hugging herself against me then her hands went under my shirt, up squeezing my breasts as she pressed her hips harder into my ass. Change, she was telling me changes would be made, she was making them.

Her lips on my neck tickled at first then she licked and bit then she pulled at my shirt, lifting it, standing back pulling it over my head then unclasping my bra while pushing me forward, pushing me over to her desk where she forced me down face first. She picked up a Sharpie, tapped it on the desk.

I could see Murph in the doorway looking on courteously. So could Tosh. "Art. What do you think?" I could feel the Sharpie on my back; it felt odd more than anything but then no one has ever written on my back before.

Murph came closer. Of course he can read, he delivers the mail.

You were made for me

I love you

Your Tosha

He read.

"Don't wash it off. If you'll have me, I'll tattoo that on tomorrow."

I pushed myself off the desk and half sat on it. "That would be permanent."

"It would."

"Why would I want that?" I said, standing up, not caring that Murph was still standing there and I was bare breasted.

"We're growing old together."

"Nonsense."

"You were made for me. I meant it. And I meant the other part, too." And then another of her non sequesters. "Do you always wear a bra, I'd rather you didn't in the house."

"I'm not a toy Tosha, don't treat me like one." Murph left while I put my shirt on as I walked to the kitchen with my bra in my hand for the coffee I had been looking forward to for over an hour.

She sat at the kitchen table and watched me make it, knowing I would make one for her.

"I'll reserve for right after work, say 5. It will take a couple of hours."

I turned to face her. "What do you want Tosha. A place to stay? Sure, you can stay here until you get your things in order or whatever you're doing."

I sat down putting her coffee in front of her and fell silent, exhausted. It was Murph for one, that shocked me. If he couldn't get a reaction from seeing a woman's breasts, there was no chance he'd be getting a rise from me alone ... so it confirmed that it wasn't me who was getting to him, it was my fingers — my grope, my attack, my assault. And I am defenceless against her, her mystically demanding demeanour, her beauty, her insistence that I am her's. I am lost, the pornographer doesn't have the imagination for any of this.

"Whatever I'm doing? I'm getting you," she smiled her gorgeous smile, her white teeth gleaming, "quiet, calm ... and braless you."

"Braless because you want to control me."

"You do things I want, you will have me doing things you want, it's what relationships are all about."

"You've been in them?"

She laughed, "No, but I've always wanted to be in one, I've just never found a quiet, calm ..."

"Big assed woman, I know ... one you could brand."

She was obviously thinking about this, the fabulous face gets even more fabulous when it scrunched in concentration. "I guess that is branding in a way, isn't it?"

"Makes it a little awkward when you wake up alone."

"I can be pushy. Ok, no tat until you want it, but that's what it's going to say, I mean that, you are ... I move in and stay."

"Why are you doing this Tosha, just tell me."

"I have, I've even wanted to write it onto your skin. I love you. I've been watching you for months, you are who I want and I'm prepared to work for you and you will be prepared to work for me. You want me, too."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I'm gorgeous and because I love you," she stood up and reached for my hand, "so let's go and make love for a couple of hours like real people in a relationship do ... let's start our future together."

I hesitated while the last line sunk in. I think I had started to truly believe that when the trains moved in, I could make it with Murph, that we could create something that could make us both happy. It felt then like I was beginning to live my future, him with his trains, me with my erotica. Lonely people can create their own fiction, there is no one to stop them.

I reached for the bra hanging over the chair and stood up, my coffee only half finished.

She stood up beside me and pulled me into her arms. "Let's get the fucking tat," she said, her fingers up under my shirt pressing into my flesh below her writing.

"No," I said into her shoulder.

She was leading me by the hand to the bedroom. "At 5, at the parlour I once worked at, I'm good at it."

"You'd do it?"

"Of course I'd do it, I'm not going to let anyone else touch you."

There are countless ways we give in, my writing has proven that ... you're tired of holding out ... you're anxious to change ... you're mesmerized into delusion ... you're mindlessly optimistic ... you're hopelessly physically attracted, I am all of those and one more: I decided just before I stood up from that desk to try to win her ... I can't do that, of course, fat, frumpish me could never do that but my money can.

It's the money that would empower me ... she has all the beauty, yes, but I have all the resources, it's why I have the confidence to push her onto the bed and land on top of her. I would open the bank to her, I would be every bit as irresistible to her as she is to me. The starving artist will be a depended.

I have made love to many women before, maybe dozens of them with my pen on a page or my fingers on a keyboard. It was never hard or even confusing, it was always expression, the expression I imagined. This would be no different. When my mouth found her mouth and my fingers her breast, it was the monied me making a purchase, I didn't know what the price tag would be but I could afford it, I could afford the black beauty who claimed to be smitten by quiet calmness.

But you are who you are.

I tore off her clothes like wrapping paper and went to all the places I had written about, from mouth to nipples to belly to pussy, then I flipped her over and went to her ass, a full inspection of my purchase ... and a possession of it: if she could love me, my munificence would be forever binding.

I would have written that ... of another, but the self I was dealing with fell off her, laying beside her — writers write because they don't do.

"You will quit tomorrow, move all your things in. The solarium is your studio."

She snuggled into me, her hand trying to cup my breast, her lips kissing my neck. "After the tattoo."

"Yes."

She sprang to a sitting position, her black skin shinning like her eyes. "Really? I can?"

"If you mean it." For the first time, for absolutely the first time, it looked like she did.