World Enough and Time Ch. 01

"Certainly, Ruth. What can I do for you?"

She seemed embarrassed now, and in the intervening seconds, I thought for a moment that she was going to change her mind, but then I saw the same tell-tale physiological signs that had overcome me only a few minutes before as they started to wash through her like spring rain. It was almost as if I could see the rush of blood course through her body and flood the beautiful, porcelain skin of her face, and then she said it, "Marcus, I... I want... can I... can I kiss you?"

I knew that on so many levels this was a bad idea, but professional ethics and societal mores aside, I wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted to kiss me, and then, suddenly, the same flush of blood that rushed through her was now charging through me.

I didn't answer, only bent down to her and grasped the back of her head with both of my large hands. They enveloped her head, as my long, black fingers buried themselves deeply in her soft, auburn tresses. I was so big in comparison to her, but the difference in the size of our bodies only served to make everything that much more sensual, and when I pulled her to me, and our lips met in this incredibly delicate caress, that polite, gentle kiss sent a jolt of electricity through us, shocking us both, as if our two sets of lips were hardwired respectively to the Massachusetts Bar Association's Rules of Professional Conduct and the unwritten social codes of a half dozen Norfolk County country clubs.

We broke our kiss and stared for the briefest of moments into each other's eyes, and then Ruth spoke first with palpable regret, almost fear, "Mr. Murray, I am so, so sorry. That was impulsive of me. Please accept my apologies. I must be going." She scurried out of the conference room, and I followed her to the front entrance and unlocked the door from the inside. She exited the door in a blur, and though neither of us said another word, before she turned to walk away, our eyes met again for a nanosecond in another soul kiss, and I knew in that very instant that we weren't even close to through with each other.

I went back to my office, and sat for another hour, just as I had two nights ago and thought about Ruth. It was odd, because I had decided some time ago to avoid romantic relationships. There weren't very many black women living in Beacon Hill, where I now lived, so I simply didn't meet very many black ladies, other than a few women who'd hired me, and the notion of having a relationship with a white woman, especially one that was my client, was simply beyond the pale.

Besides, I had decided to concentrate on building a law practice that could and would be successful, and I had done far better for myself than even I could have imagined. I didn't think it possible for a black attorney to make as much money as I was making practicing law in the City of Boston, and the fact that I was one of the first black persons who had done just that, shocked me to my core.

But when you grow up poor, I think you learn almost instinctively that once the car is moving, it is unwise to take your foot off the gas -- too many dangers all around that have the potential to derail you. It was almost as if I was afraid that one day I would wake up and find out that the whole thing had been a dream, and all the money was gone in an instant. Instead of striving for happiness, I had decided instead to strive for material success.

It was a very American thing to do, and there were countless times when I thought back to some of the most poverty stricken little villages in Vietnam that I had seen, near Da Nang or Khe Sahn, and I would think what a hypocrite I had become.

Still, it wasn't relationships or money or Vietnam that I thought about as I sat at my desk that night. It was that kiss and the woman behind that kiss. I couldn't stop thinking about her, and no matter what I tried to do to distract myself, I couldn't get the images out of my head -- of her face: the almost China doll look of her skin, those big, expressive, brown/green eyes, the soft, feather light waves of dark, red hair, and her body: all of those curves in just the right places, her breasts, bubbling sensuously out of the chemise beneath her chiffon dress, or the taut stretch of that same chiffon as it clung to her round, bulbous backside. For a white lady from the suburbs, she'd really done a number on me. But it didn't really matter what kind of lady she was or where she'd come from, she'd thrown me for a loop.

Still, for the next two months, I didn't see her. I finished preparing the sales contract, did my research on business sales groups, and selected the one that best balanced the ability to maximize sales prices with the lowest commissions. Once I found the right company, I checked in with them far more often than I probably should have -- there was no doubt that I was giving this particular client extra special treatment. I also checked all of the Business Guides for sales of small and medium-sized businesses to see that Ruth's stores were being given solid advertising appeal.

I sent her two monthly statements, itemizing the hours I had spent and the specific nature of the work I had done. I had already spent more than the 10 hours of work that were covered by the check she'd written for the retainer, but I didn't bill her for all of that time.

Ruth didn't need the benefits of the gratis tasks I was performing for her without her knowledge, but that wasn't exactly how I regarded the work I was doing. I somehow instinctively knew I would be paid back in spades. That is, of course, a crude way in which to think about love or even sex, but crude or not, I already sensed that we had a kind of reciprocal relationship, and as I've already said, I somehow knew that Ruth and I had only just begun.

Then, shortly after Memorial Day, around the first week of June, I received two bids on Ruth's businesses on the same day. The first was clearly intended as a lowball offer, and required the sale of another business in order to be effected. It was out of the question.

But the second, on the other hand, was from a fairly large company with hundreds of shoe stores throughout New England and beyond, and it was just what I suspected that Ruth would want. It was better than what I had expected, and the business agent that we'd hired and who'd informed me of both offers agreed.

Quite intentionally, I told the agent that I would contact Mrs. DeStephano to present the offers to her and find out how she wanted to proceed. As I mentioned earlier, I pretty much knew the answers to most of the questions I asked of Ruth before I posed them.

I called her, and told her that either we could talk over the phone or she could come in to see me in my office. Again, I suspected that despite her hasty exit the last time I'd seen her, I knew which option she would select. She agreed to come in the next day in the early evening, and I, of course, was delighted.

When she arrived about 6:30 that next night, she was dressed even more provocatively than the last time. It had been a warm day, so she was wearing a sun dress that, because of its diaphanous fabric, very nearly provided me with the supernatural power of X-ray vision. I was reminded of the lyrics of the Big Joe Turner cover of the old R&B classic "Shake, Rattle, and Roll."

Maybe you're not familiar with the lyrics, but they came from what was always my favorite verse from my favorite version of the song. Considering that song was right out of the 1950s -- perhaps the most conservative decade in American history -- it is hard to believe how graphic the lyrics really were -- "Well, you wear those dresses, the sun comes shining through/Well, you wear those dresses, the sun comes shining through/I can't believe my eyes, all of this belongs to you."

It's no wonder that the arbiters of white American values and morals started referring to those recordings by black artists, quite condescendingly, as "race records" and spent the better part of the 50s trying their damnedest to keep that music out of the hands of impressionable white teenagers for whom R&B and early rock and roll were indistinguishable. They failed.

All of this suggests, I guess, that we black people were quite a bit sleazier than the rest of the populace and whatever it was that we liked must certainly be unsuitable for more proper, white audiences. Nonetheless, once Elvis Presley started shaking his own very white hips on 50s broadcasts of The Ed Sullivan Show, albeit out of view of very morally impressionable TV audiences, the genie was out of the bottle, and once it was, there was Elvis himself doing his own immoral version of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll."

But Ruth, instead of being a lyric right out of a "race record", was a widow right out of Brookline. So when I unlocked the door to let her into my office that warm, pre-summer night, her beautiful porcelain face was smiling so sweetly that even that dress couldn't despoil her virtuousness. She was simply a suburban mother who had come to meet with her attorney to find out how quickly she could be done with the crass and confusing world of selling shoes.

"Hello, Ruth. Thank you for coming in. How have you been?" I smiled, wordlessly inviting her inside and relocking the office door when she stepped into the lobby. Then, I gestured her back to the interior of my office and the conference room where she had shared that one and only kiss with me -- the kiss that I'd been contemplating nearly constantly for the past two months.

"I have been well, Marcus. Thank you again for seeing me again so late. Before we start, let me apologize for my behavior the last time that I was here. That was incredibly rude of me, and I am deeply embarrassed. I'm sorry, Marcus."

I nodded, and then said smiling sincerely, "That's all right, Ruth, I rather enjoyed that kiss!"

She turned to me abruptly, in much the same way she had when she kissed me two months earlier with a kind of amusingly confused look on her face, and then she said wryly, "I wasn't apologizing for the kiss, silly! I was apologizing for leaving!" We both smiled, and I think that each of us recognized where the evening would soon be headed. But that would have to wait.

"So you have an offer?" She asked, changing the subject. I pulled out a chair for her in front of the paperwork I had laid out on the table, and Ruth sat down. I joined her in the chair next to it, and we got down to business.

"Yes, actually two. The first is not really worth talking about -- it is under our asking price and has several contingencies -- but the second one is a good one, I think. I don't know whether or not this factor was important to you, but the buyer has agreed to keep all of your current employees in place at their present salaries."

"Oh, Marcus!" She put her hand to her forehead as if it again hurt horribly to think so much. "This is why I am so ill-equipped to be in business. I suspect that that was something that you wrote into the contract. Was it?"

"It was. I figured that you might want that, but you should know, the buyer wanted it, too."

"You are a good and decent person, Marcus, and I am afraid that I am not. I was so blind to this whole process and so hesitant to become involved in it in any way that I didn't even think about anyone other than myself. I don't care what the offer is; I'll take it. The fact that I won't have to ruin the lives of people that worked for my husband for so long makes it worth it, no matter what."

"Well, I might not be so convinced that this second offer is right for you, except for that fact that it is also coming in at $25,000 over our asking price, and the buyer would like to expedite the sale. It is a rather large company, Ruth, and they are offering cash. I think it is a win-win-win -- for you, your husband's employees, and the buyer. The extra $25,000 will cover nearly all of the agent's commission, so you'll walk away with almost the entire asking price. I think this sale will set you and your son up for life. Would you like me to go over the details with you?"

"No. You think it is a good offer, and I am confident that you have my best interests at heart. Besides, it seems that you've thought of everything. I just want to sign the paperwork to accept it."

"Are you sure? There is no need to rush into this, unless you want to. Who knows, we could get an even better offer."

"No, I don't need a better offer. I just need to be done with this. The only good thing about the whole process has been meeting you, Marcus! I've thought about you a lot in the last couple of months."

"You have? Why is that, Ruth?" It was a dumb question, and like all my questions to Ruth, I already knew the answer.

A flush of blood quickly reddened her cheeks, neck, and upper breasts. "I don't suppose it is any surprise that I am attracted to you, Marcus." She paused and smiled at me. It was a smile that expressed a kind of modesty and restraint, without disguising its brazen desire and yearning for some inexplicable, but, heretofore, untried passion. I started getting hard.

"No, but that's understandable. You've probably been lonely since your husband's death. Have you, Ruth? Do you miss him?"

Tears began to form in the corners of her big, expressive eyes, and when the first one trickled slowly, painfully down her rosy cheek, she said something that really surprised me. This was not what I expected to hear.

"Oh, Marcus! It started so long before that that I can't even remember when I started feeling lonely. It's not that I didn't love him. I did. He was a good provider, and when he was around, he was a good father to our son. But the passion had left our marriage long before Joseph died. I don't think we'd made love for a least a year before his heart attack, and even before that, it was always without feeling." The tears now fell unhindered from both eyes, and they were running down around her slender nose, and into her mouth, and I could tell just by looking at her that, even as we spoke, she could taste that salty sadness.

"At first, we tried so that we could have children, but then I found out that that wasn't possible. I was infertile -- I had polyps on my uterus. They're benign, and there's nothing else wrong with me, but...." She paused, but the smile had completely abandoned her. "So then we adopted our son, and then Tommy became my reason for living. And after that, there really wasn't a reason to make love. Joseph never desired me. Not really, and I guess, I probably didn't desire him either because he didn't seem to want me."

She stood up and, reaching into her handbag which hung over the back of her chair, she pulled out a tissue with which to dab at her tears, even though a box of tissues sat in the middle of the conference table.

I looked up at her. "That's a sad story, Ruth, a truly tragic story. I feel so badly for you." Even though I remained seated, her face was only a foot or so above the level of my head. But that left her breasts at eye level, and I couldn't stop staring. "I don't know how your husband couldn't find a desire for you within himself, because you are very desirable, Ruth. You're beautiful; everybody can see that -- a very, very sexually attractive woman." I shouldn't have said that, but then again, it was Ruth that had chosen to wear that dress.

I kept trying to refocus my eyes on her tear-stained face, but her impressive cleavage and the silhouette of those endless soft curves kept drawing me back, and soon I was aroused, aroused more than I had been for a long, long time.

I tried one more time to look into her eyes, to let her soul wash through me, and then I said sincerely, "But, Ruth, beyond that beauty, that desirability, that undeniable sensuality, you're a wonderful person, too -- full of compassion and love and caring." I felt such a strong, emotional attraction to her, but it still wasn't enough -- as my gaze fell again, my passion consumed me and I gave up trying to conceal it.

At first, she didn't notice my preoccupation. What I had said had resonated -- she knew I was sincere, and so her coyness overcame her, and a timid smile gradually crept across her face. But then suddenly that look was gone, and it was replaced by an expression of bewildered astonishment as she began to comprehend the effect she had had on me. She stared down at her swelling bosom, and with her hand that held the tissue, she touched her breast, and now I realized she had made the connection -- she understood what it was that had caught my attention. She sat down sort of stunned by the realization of her power over me.

As overcome as I was, I knew that I had to try, however ineffectually, to be pragmatic and reasonable -- to act like an attorney and someone who she had hired to counsel her. What I was about to say, what I needed to say, was something that I had been thinking about ever since that night two months previously, when in the very room that was now filled to overflowing with our boundless emotions, desires, and passions, we had repressed those same emotions, desires, and passions, filed them away in some manila folder that was hidden in a cabinet somewhere deep in both our hearts.

I knew that what I needed to mention might very well lock that cabinet forever and, in effect, throw away the key before either of us had a chance to grasp ahold of it and unlock our passion, but I was a cautious man, and so I was going to say what needed to be said. And even though Ruth was now sitting, I stood up, thinking that the gravity of what I was about to say required it.

"Ruth, I haven't stopped thinking about you, not since the last time I saw you, and I want you to know that I can't get our kiss -- that one, momentary, fleeting show of affection -- out of my mind. I... I can't... express... what it meant.... But, Ruth, you need to be sure that you want this, because there are so many barriers to our being together, barriers that neither one of us can even begin to understand, and I think we both need to think long and hard about what we want to do." The moment the words left my lips, I was aware that Ruth's own attention had been diverted -- she had ceased looking into my eyes and was now staring straight ahead of her with rapt attention, staring at something else that was "long and hard" and that was now commanding her complete attention.

She looked up at me, and then, while she remained seated only a few feet away from me, she asked, "Can I touch it, Marcus? I don't think I've ever seen anything that has made me more excited!" She wasn't the only one.

It was clear that neither of us was going to heed my advice, and so I said nothing, only nodded very slightly to indicate my approbation. It had been a long time for Ruth. I knew that. But it had also been a long time for me, and so at that point, I was every bit as impetuous and unthinking as she was.

She reached for my belt and unclasped it, and then, while her left hand stroked the outline of my stiffness through my trousers, her right hand slowly unbuttoned and then unzipped me, and then the weight of my belt and my wallet in my back pocket allowed gravity to take over. My suit pants slid down my legs and fell helplessly around my ankles.

She was just staring at what was in front of her, looking at it with childlike wonderment, and then she slid a finger from each hand inside the front band of my underwear and, stretching the elastic outward, pulled my briefs wider around my hips until my erection was freed, and like my trousers before them, she let my underwear fall harmlessly to my ankles.

My hard, erect blackness fell, too, until its solidity stopped its downward freefall, and it came to a rest, pointed at her in gaudy accusation of her complicity in its enlargement. She gasped with both surprise and almost fear. "Oh my god!"