Liquid Almond Eyes

This month marks the third anniversary of the publication of my story collection The Funeral Girl, a book that left National Book Award Finalist Brandon Hobson "envious and inspired." Reprinted below is one of my favorite stories from that collection. Enjoy.

"Liquid Almond Eyes"

WALKING DOWN MAIN STREET ON HIS LUNCH BREAK, Gabe runs into the coffee kiosk girl for the first time since word got out that he’s hit the jackpot. Her greeting is customary: a big, generous, two-armed hug. What’s new is the shriek of excitement and enthusiastic squeeze of his upper arm afterward. She’s “Coffee Girl” for short; this antonomasia is well-established: say to anyone (especially a guy) “I saw Coffee Girl at the video store today” and he will know whom you’re talking about. She’s a mainstay, a cornerstone of Main Street, dispensing java and good cheer in equal measure for close to a decade now. Gabe does not know a downtown without her. She’s been a fixture ever since he established his daily routine, dutifully manning her enclosed post between City Hall and the pharmacy. Rain or shine, snow or sun, she’s there, usually with a smile and a disposition no less affable than cheerful bonhomie.

For a one-girl operation, business is booming. Wait times almost require reading material. There’s little doubt that her pleasing temperament attracts more business than it turns away, but it’s hard to pinpoint that as the only reason her sales are brisk because her coffee is actually good. Some go as far as deeming it superlative and refuse to drink anything but her unique, personally-concocted blend. Gabe considers that judgment a bit hyperbolic, though her brew definitely falls within his acceptable limits for coffee. She’s also located within walking distance of several businesses, a distance easily traversed during a lunch- or cigarette-break, if one were inclined. And you can always count on her being there. She’s one of those people who seem to consider their presence at what they consider to be their job mandatory, another of her puzzling affects along with what appears to be unforced happiness.

Plus she’s hot. The fact that a significant percentage of her customer base consists of men with dilated eyes cannot be passed off as coincidence. Some women do frequent the kiosk (another indicator of above-average coffee) but it’s obvious what the main attraction is for the males, which annoys a lot of the females. Even though there isn’t any appreciable difference in her treatments of men and women, she is confronted by a far greater number of irate women customers, termagants who cavil in shrill, unhinged voices about the most venial things ranging from coffee temperature to cup size with an indignation that couldn’t possibly be rooted in the vast insignificance of their complaint. At times, there is the unmistakable whiff of jealousy in the tones of some of these belligerent women (most of whom could be equitably described as “less hot”) and their attacks swing wildly on the verge of being ad hominem. Yet even when excoriated in front of other patrons, Coffee Girl never loses her cool or lashes out with reciprocal vitriol. She turns the other cheek in the face of raving customers, evincing almost inhuman forbearance and equanimity, helpful and willing to correct any perceived wrong, but with also a firmness to her voice that indicates a line where crossing is prohibited. The pugnacious women who push her that far understand then that they are not dealing with a pushover or emotional weakling who will burst into tears at the slightest reprimand, and, upon this realization, they invariably slink off to private embarrassment. Gabe has been witness to a few dust-ups and can testify that the crowd’s sympathies always lie with the girl in the kiosk and that the aggressors had generally been regarded as unpleasant and unattractive bitches before proving it publicly. In the face of Coffee Girl’s understated dignity these catty women seem to exemplify the worst in petty American righteousness, the kind of people who honestly buy into that oft-repeated sophistry: The Customer Is Always Right. Though no one intervenes on Coffee Girl’s behalf while she’s being upbraided (since it’s a situation in which she’s clearly in control), the next customer almost always feels compelled to apologize: for the departing shrew, for himself, for the national identity. She always laughs, dismissive, already over the incident, truly water off the duck’s back.

Her inability to brood or be perpetually slightly pissed off would mark her as Not From Around Here if her dark-complected features didn’t already give the game away. Her birth country is the subject of light speculation. No one really has any clue. A blind throw of a dart at the world map from twenty feet is better than anyone’s best guess. People can’t agree on a hemisphere, let alone a continent. Baseless conjecture covers every possibility from Central to South America, through Europe to the ends of Asia. To be sure, she’s from some place on Earth, miraculously. Beyond that, no one feels a pressing need to know any more than they already do: all the foreign, rarely-seen things about her have combined in a way that is extremely pleasing to the eye.

What she is not is conventionally beautiful. Tête-à-têtes have included the observation that she would never be in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue or even a K-Mart flyer for that matter. She lacks the Amazonian quality, the hourglass figure, the plastic sameness of American sylphs. She is short, with an overall shape more like a bowling pin or a pear. She is cursed with a foreign-born nose, hers flat and a little wide, covering a bit more real estate on her face than most people in town are used to seeing. Her crooked teeth bespeak parents who, during her adolescence, lacked the dental fastidiousness (or the funds) that most parents in the good ole U.S. of A. seem to possess. None of this detracts from the final judgment. All her putative flaws are barely motes in her eye when compared to the defects of truly homely women. Her peculiarities add charm when they don’t outright stun. Her imbricate teeth are otherwise perfect—clean, upkept, and an integral part of a searingly disarming smile. Her physicality suggests an over-sized stuffed animal that you want to snuggle, squeeze, and mount like a dog. Her facial features are unbearably adorable; they seem to have sprung from the end of a children’s film’s animator’s pen—from the lovably wide nose to the chipmunk-like cheeks and buttony dimples to the liquid almond eyes of an Arabian princess: everything designed and arranged for maximal winsomeness. This borderline-zaftig woman’s semi-rounded figure is not a turn-off. On the contrary, her shape gives the impression that her body is all curves, full of the kind of precipitous slopes any man would kill to traverse with hand, tongue, or congruently writhing body. The air around her is thick with the suggestion that underneath her swathe of clothes lies the true meaning of the word “voluptuousness.” Her jet-black hair, in itself a wondrous oddity, purls down her back in wavy tendrils, that is when it’s not clipped up and falling across her face in perfect cute strands. There’s hardly a man alive who has seen her from the back and has not wondered what her luscious ass would look like stripped bare and, after she turns around, what her equally tantalizing breasts would feel like if cupped and caressed. It’s hard to imagine someone not taking her “as is.”

And then there’s her voice. Hearing her talk is an aural joy. Her enunciation is delightfully unique, full of languorous vowels and consonants devoid of sharp edges. Her syllables swirl into each other, creating a pleasing hum. Through her lips, unremarkable digraphs become sensual diphthongs, and you don’t even mind the cacoepy. Her syncopated rhythms quickly turn from novelty into something beautiful that you want to hear again. She’s like a composer, placing each phoneme on a staff, forming delightful movements of words, words the rest of us can think of only as prose. Her sound is unencumbered, soothing to anyone who hears it. The noises she makes meld into a 19th-century impressionist masterpiece; by contrast, white Americans’ voices have all the nuance of a Sunday comic strip. She, a foreigner, has managed to tease the delitescent musicality out of the English language.

Plus there’s her refreshingly direct way of speaking. Her phraseology is stripped of the conversational tics, pop culture references, and eu-/dysphemisms that litter your typical U.S. citizen’s chatter. The thrust of what she’s saying is not muddled by colloquialisms, opaque metaphors, regional idioms, pleonastic phrases, or sesquipedalians. All this probably goes hand-in-hand with learning a second language, but still. Her diction is almost disconcertingly but actually really pleasingly simple. Not that she’s unintelligent, just really to the point. Like, for example, when you ask her how she’s doing, she’ll say something like “I’m trying to be good” and this will be said without any coyness, irony, sarcasm, jocosity, disingenuous-ness, or the like because what she truly means is just what she has said: she is going through her day literally trying to be good. And in one pithy statement she has gotten to the heart of the sentiment we all probably mean to convey when we respond to the question of how we’re doing with things like “Not bad” or “Can’t complain” or that weird parroted non-response “What’s up?” or any number of other listless stock answers, and one quickly sees that her response is a superior one if for no other reason than it actually means something and actual communication has taken place, which—not to put too fine a point on it—makes everyone involved in the exchange feel more human. Any speaker of English can attest that achieving clarity is no mean feat—too often the words get in the way—which makes her facility with the language nothing short of astonishing, especially considering that her lexicon is probably no larger than an average elementary school student’s. It might be strange to cite a person like her for precision, but the undeniable truth remains: she picks the exact right words to say, which, again, most likely stems from her learning the language as an adult. As a corollary, her limited vocabulary and verbal punctiliousness virtually eliminates pretense and dissimulation. There’s no B.S. with her, no prevarication. She doesn’t resort to logorrhea when confronted with silence. With her, what you see is what you get, pretty much. Not totally because everyone, no matter how much integrity they have, puts on some sort of act with everyone they encounter—saying things to men they would never say to women, treating the old differently from the young, things like that. But with Coffee Girl, you get the sense that all the play-acting is kept to a minimum. And this realization might take a while because when you see a nice, generous, cheery girl with adorable phrasing, you naturally assume it’s an act. But she like inculcates you to the inescapable veracity of her innate traits and after never seeing her any other way, you have to admit that that’s probably the kind of person she really is. Which is a pleasant surprise. Compared to her, most people seem to be spouting the kind of manipulative periphrastic jargon practiced by used car salesmen.

To the delight of men everywhere, she is also an openly tactile girl. She has no compunction or squeamishness about venturing into someone’s so-called “personal space.” Hence: the hugs. They’re not deployed totally indiscriminately of course, but it’s not too hard to become one of the huggables. If you’re a regular at her kiosk and see her out and about in a store, chances are you’ll get a salutatory hug. She is also not averse to reaching out to gently guide one’s arm as she points out directions, or grasping one’s forearm to convey emphasis or excitement, or playfully swatting one’s shoulder after they tell a ribald joke, or rubbing someone’s upper arm (or even back, if she’s in a position to do so) while the person relates some lamentable misfortune. In an age when physical reservedness between non-blood relations is the norm, her barrage of hugs, touches, and rubs initially comes across as somewhat outré, but through repetition becomes accepted, then appreciated and even looked forward to, since being hugged by an attractive woman turns out to be an instant mood-booster.

She separates herself from the herd of cookie-cutter girls that populates every small town in the U.S. by just being herself. She’s an exotic flower sprouting up from the cracks on Main Street. She’s different, a change of pace, new, exciting. More than a few octogenarians have referred to her as the knees and pajamas of bees and cats, respectively. She’s a breath of fresh air from who knows where. All this and a wonderfully vaginal name: Favia. It’s no surprise that she has inadvertently fostered a number of secret crushes. Full-blown, adolescent-era crushes that turn men into gabbling bad joke generators. The kind of debilitating infatuation that renders a man near useless in the presence of his object of affection. Who knows how many harbor carnal fantasies; their number could be legion. This is despite her semi-advanced age (her years are in as much question as her provenance) and her kids in high school (a daughter and son) and, not to mention, her husband and the at least ten years of matrimony under her belt. These things are common knowledge, even though they sound like convenient discouragements fabricated by jealous female rivals. No one’s really seen her dependents or the guy she shares her bed with, making their existences easily pretermitted, which is necessary to facilitate any one-on-one fantasies. The hard facts are attenuated by dulcet rumors: her husband is an overweight American shlub; she’s unhappily married, has been for years; her daughter is almost legal and even hotter. Truths and untruths swirl around her, calumnies mix with wishful thinking, surrounding her in an aura of unreality, making her seem more exalted, truly sui generis. No wonder everyone acts as if they’re in their cups around her. What’s great is that she seems oblivious to all the tumult she causes.

Gabe had been impervious to falling in with the like-minded, googly-eyed crowd at her feet. He has thought her cute in the past and has far from minded her generous hugs, but he had somehow resisted falling in something between love and lust. He had not succumbed to her unintentional charms and she’d been largely off his radar . . . until now. All it takes (he reflects later, somewhat perturbedly) is an arm-squeeze—a shorthand for intimacy, a representational gesture devoid of sexual meaning since no lover has ever squeezed another’s arm in this way, with quick collegial applications of pressure, like checking a plum for ripeness. It’s an ersatz statement of affection, an autotelic touching that lacks the desire for further exploration. A hand that stays decorously above the waist. It’s an illusion, invisible to all but the most credulous. But it does the trick. Gabe’s heart starts beating out a corybantic rhythm, beyond his understanding. Sweat films his clothed crevices. He feels faint; God help him, even his knees feel weak. He steals a look toward her lustrous eyes, whose emanating warmth rules out a returned steady gaze. He feels her hand on his arm; each squeeze inspissates his friable attention, vectors his awareness to the locus of her touch and the excruciating proximity of her fingers, their skin denied access to each other by the thin fabric of his exasperating shirt. It feels as if she’s testing the girth of his biceps; some unctuous part of his brain tells him he should flex, but his nervous system is on the fritz. (The designation never seemed more apt—“nervous” system indeed!) All he can do is stand there frozen while his insides go haywire. She starts talking and he finds himself entranced by the poetry issuing from her mouth. His side of the conversation feels stilted, disjunctive even, and he quickly errs on the side of purposeful laconicism—every one of his words and gestures calculated to elicit a response from her. All he wants is to keep the music playing.

She mentions the money, of course, but only in the abstract, as a triviality subordinate to the more pressing concern: his happiness. “You must be so happy,” she gushes. He sees that she is happy for his good fortune, specifically for how it has (presumably) made him happy. This unadulterated, unqualified happiness she’s exuding causes his heart to be filled with something like happiness, if not the genuine article—something that produces the same elation, at least. “I am,” he assents and, for a minute, her joy is the whole point of his windfall. He gets caught in the full candent blast of her smile and it feels like a benediction. He does not want to be anywhere else, doing anything other than talking to this exquisite woman.

After too short a while, the conversation winds down despite his best efforts to perpetuate it. Even though her amicable expression never changes, he feels a twinge of sadness as they start tossing contentless, conversation-enervating monosyllabic interjections back and forth. But she summarily extirpates his disappointment with a farewell that mirrors her greeting. He dares to hold her for a half-second longer than the first hug, because he hardly dares not to. She reaches out and latches onto his arm, thrilling him with one last squeeze—made more exciting and important simply by being next in the series—before turning to the line of disgruntled interlopers that has formed behind him.

He walks away, dazed, discombobulated. Every step feels like coming up for air. Sights and sounds fail to register for the better part of an hour. When he finally gets his equilibrium back midway through his shift, the first thing he notices is that he can still smell her. Discreetly crooking his neck downward, he verifies that it’s not just his imagination—his shirt has absorbed the fragrances of all her perfumes and cosmetics. It’s a sweet smell, a piquant medley of flowery scents that immediately conjures up pleasing memories of that afternoon’s embrace. His shirt becomes a kind of olfactory time machine, granting him access to an event he is eager to relive, if only in his mind. He finds himself stealing whiffs by pretending to inspect his shirt’s collar. Roy walks in on him in the bathroom when he’s holding his shirt up to his face with both hands, looking as if he’s trying to inhale it. After an awkward pause, Roy heads toward one of the stalls. Neither of them says anything. Gabe slinks out, trailing his tattered dignity. For the rest of the workday, he manages not to draw any further attention to what appears to be either a new shirt-sniffing fetish or an OCD-level compulsion to check for what can only be rank B.O. This does not stop his co-workers from casting furtive glances in his direction and surrounding him in susurrous indictment.

By the time he gets home, only a faint trace of her evocative scent remains. Before he can properly lament the evanescence of a redolence that has kept him stimulated all the live-long day, Jessica brings him back down to earth, re-acclimating him to the comforts of home by using the most effective decompression method at her disposal: a blowjob. He is barely through the door when he finds himself thrust in a situation that reifies the inchoate whimsy floating in his head—there is no need to fantasize anymore since his member sliding in and out of Jessica’s mouth is a physical truth. All errant thoughts exit his mind, for the spectacle before him is an avaricious one and attention must be paid. The BJ proves to be a prolegomenon to a long treatise on sexual pleasure that takes all night to explore the ins and outs of. Somewhere along the way, he completely forgets about anything to do with Coffee Girl.

His oblivescence persists until five minutes before his lunch break the next day, when the possibility of another encounter with a girl he is finding it easier with each remembrance to think of as some sort of goddess fills him with excruciating anticipation. Walking down the street, he feels his palpitant heart straining against its suddenly inadequate confines. When she comes into view, emerging renascent as he rounds the corner, he feels the inexorable curling of the corners of his mouth. He gets into the line already five-men-deep and just stands there, grinning, unable to avoid looking like the simpleton he knows he must appear to be. Better that, however, than the bashful schoolboy he feels like deep down inside. Oblivious to everything else, he watches her with an uncritical eye, reveling in every graceful movement. His countenance is a gift to her, whether he intends it or not. Does a smile exist if no one sees it? In the brief interstice between orders, she espies him waiting and his heart skips a beat when her expression kicks it up a few notches. The pleasant, amicable affect she was formerly going with doesn’t really change by an order of magnitude so much as it simply becomes an entirely different thing altogether. She’s truly smiling now, a smile that exposes what she was previously doing as a factitious contortion of her lips into a congenial but perfunctory breve, short and unstressed, denoting nothing more than telemarketer-level politeness. Her newly widened smile narrows the aperture of her eyes, allowing her to focus on the source of her newfound joy. They’re both smiling at each other now, blurring the distinction between cause and effect. Gabe senses the glower and annoyed vibe directed toward him by the man who just got his coffee. This guy has probably waited months and made scores of witty remarks and observations to see this gorgeous woman do what Gabe is making her do just by standing there. He has managed to extract the immanent sugar from the cane under everyone’s noses. Gabe feels like lifting his hands obligingly to the others and swiveling them around. Look, no hands. And, with a leer: Imagine what I could make her do with them.

When he gets to the front of the line, she seems to become even more delighted, as if she’s been storing her excitement for when it could be shared with the right person. After an ejaculatory greeting, she moves around the counter and peremptorily spreads her arms. There is no way to refuse her. Not that he had been thinking of abnegating the pleasure of her embrace—in fact, he’d been looking forward to it. He takes a chance and presses his whole body flush against hers, engaging her in a more intimate clasping than the prim, slightly kyphotic politeness they’ve deployed in the past. He also resolves to hold her until she makes a motion to move away and thrills when a suitably decorous duration (considering the line of spectators) comes and goes. They hold each other, her face level with and buried in his chest. He rubs her back a little. Feeling their bodies conform to each other, he can’t help the titillating thought: we fit. After a few eternities, lasting many seconds each, she pulls away with a sigh so content he feels his face start to flush. She looks up at him and, proving their symmetry extends beyond the somatic, voices one of the foremost thoughts in his head: “Mm, you smell good.” He nearly starts at her eerie entry into his psychic space, then recovers enough to say the obvious: “Thanks. You do too.” With consummate aplomb, she leans in for another smell while he involuntarily holds his breath. She looks up at him, smiling. “I like, I like.” The unconventional construction of her affirmation sets off waves of pleasure through his body. Even an awkward phrase, through her lips, becomes an aphrodisiac. The elided object of her compliment could be any number of auspicious possibilities: she likes his scent, she likes that she likes his scent, she likes him. For now, it’s enough that “she likes” in his presence. They stand there, taking each other in, seeing their happy expressions mirrored on the other’s face. Would a third party see a lopsided vase between them or possibly a different type of optical—sparks maybe? Perhaps between them lies a fireworks display of a magnificence not seen since Kelly and Grant hit the south of France. Gabe is too rapturous to say for sure.

Upon returning to work, he holes up in the employee room, which is little more than a small cramped storage area with last year’s calendar on the wall and a single metal folding chair for anyone needing seclusion at the expense of comfort. He spends the last ten minutes of his lunch break absorbed in his shirt. With both hands he lifts it to his face and takes deep, nourishing breaths, as if he were recovering from a traumatic event. The smell of her perfume prevails. He tries to nail down the constituent elements of the fragrance, but finds his aromal discernment frustratingly lacking. Every time he thinks he has a handle on it, the next inhalation wipes him out anew. The scent never changes, yet he can’t get enough. There’d be no reason to get all analytical about it if he could just smell her all day, every day. But not having this option, and with only a few more minutes of intensive panting left before he has to return to a social setting where excessive huffing and puffing is stigmatized, he desperately tries to activate the latent olfactometer that surely must reside in him somewhere. No go. Every exhalation is a reawakening that causes him to completely forget the preceding sapid imagery in his head, if there was any at all. He just can’t seem to nail the scent down.

Intensity isn’t the problem. This is not a subtle perfume as delicate as a butterfly kiss. This one leaves no doubt you are smelling something meant to be noticed. It starts out strong, bracing, and sends you on an invigorating ride, seeming, like sex, to build to a climax that leaves you just as insensate as you are immediately after orgasm. It practically screams its ingredients at you but mental decoction is extremely difficult, like trying to take down all the notes of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in real time while it’s blasting at 150 decibels. It’s starting to look like an insurmountable task. He’s in need of a serious cheat sheet, and only the perfume’s box will do.

Running out of time, he tries a different tack. Instead of letting the fragrance overwhelm him and then trying to parse in the confusion, he takes several short breaths, hoping to grasp some initial data point before the scent’s strength goes exponential. He imagines he smells something flowery, and he isn’t sure whether this being cliché discounts it from being possibly true. Flowers smell nice, why not perfume? There’s more than flowers in there, obviously, not to mention a botanist’s library worth of knowledge that would narrow down his broad generalization—but for now, “flowery” does its shorthand job at limning one of the textures for a scent-deficient layman.

There’s a vinous tinge in there too, he would almost swear. Something fruity, refined into something intoxicating—the formula strikes him in its simplicity. He absentmindedly finishes a long breath and, before the full wave crashes into him, he gets the revelatory impression that a large part of what he smells is her. She must be providing the extra kick herself, her natural musk, the ur-stimulant, wafting off her skin, transuding out her pores, her sweat mingling with the perfume to form an entirely new concoction. The perfume box wouldn’t help after all—nothing has ever smelled like the residue she’s left on his shirt and, after she’s gone, nothing will ever smell this way again.

This new insight stimulates him all over and, as he reverts back to long, deep, heaving breaths, he can feel stirrings beneath his waist. In his mind’s eye, he sees a luxurious and sensual scene, a tableau whose opulence fixes it in an ancient epoch, biblical, Greek. Marble statues abound in a palatial atrium, enclosed by Corinthian columns. Baroque fountains spray iridescence into a central wading pool. A tribute to the gods is taking place. Servant girls offer fruits and liniments to the revelers who are prescribed a dress code of loincloths and robes by divine mandate, which fosters a lubricious atmosphere. The proceedings tend quickly toward the orgiastic. Then the gods themselves arrive, manifest in corporeal forms upon which Man’s gaze can alight without fear of sensory overload. This is an homage to the gods attended by the gods. They’re all here: Aphrodite, Priapas, Eros, Hymen, Uranus. Peitho pushes the surprisingly taciturn Dionysus toward Antheia, who is doing such a good job of taking on the aspect of a wallflower one would think the plant really exists. Within minutes they have broken the ice and begun copulating. Everyone follows their lead. The stench of wine, flowers, and bodily secretions is overwhelming. The coition gets more frenzied; the orgy turns dithyrambic.

In the middle of all this, Coffee Girl emerges: numinous, inviolate, oneiric. And like in a dream, she inexplicably becomes the object of this unrestrained fete. Everyone, be they supplicant or idol, vouchsafes their attention to the newly arriving figure. There she is, a vision to be savored, looking no less compelling for being the only one wearing clothes and the short-billed cap she sometimes dons. They all genuflect and screw each other in her honor. Gabe approaches her. Never has her smile looked more encouraging. He kneels before her and she positions her crotch in front of his face and loosens her belt, a clear indication of where he should focus his worship.

He snaps out of the eidetic fantasy when he hears the door to the backroom open and a voice call out, requesting his presence for the start of the next show. Flustered, he manages to stammer out assurances of an imminent return and as he hears the door close he tries to envision images antipodal to the ones that so deliciously paraded through his mind ten seconds ago. He thinks of vivisected amphibians, excrement, friends in thongs—anything to ablate his massive and conspicuous hard-on.

After getting home, the first thing he does is sit in the easy chair in the living room, close his eyes, and drift back to the fantasy world he had started to create at work. Her scent has once again dissipated from his shirt but he no longer needs a material reminder of the evocative fragrance. Thanks to the intense wheezing he did at work, her smell is imprinted in his memory. All he has to do is close his eyes and he can “see” it, along with all the sumptuous pictures it creates. Later that evening, as he finishes his ablutions in the bathroom, he sees the nearly empty bottle of cologne in the cabinet. He uncaps it and positions the atomizer under his nostrils. This must have been what Favia smelled when she issued her encomium. He always squirts himself a couple times before going to work, more out of habit than a desire for favorable notice. He’s been using the same brand for years. Carol had always given him an exact copy (even down to the bottle size) every Christmas—again, more out of perennial tradition than actual preference. He can’t even remember if she had ever commented on it qua cologne—whether she liked the scent, enjoyed smelling it on him, etc. In all fairness, even he had ceased thinking about it and he was the one wearing it. He had vaguely registered that the bottle would soon be empty and had briefly wondered why Carol didn’t restock his supply this past Christmas until he’d realized that her thwarting of expectation was more portentous than it had seemed at the time. In any case, Coffee Girl has alerted him to a permanence all but forgotten. He smells the scent through her (somewhat large) nose and arrives at the same conclusion—it is quite nice. He’ll have to pick up another bottle sometime.

As soon as he sees Coffee Girl the next day, he can smell her, even though she’s still forty feet away. The two-way synesthetic reaction is complete—the sight of her evokes her scent and vice versa. She’s delighted to see him, of course, and today he is the lucky recipient of an embarrassment of riches. He gets not only a smile and new-and-improved hug, but also a few minutes of alone time with no other customers in sight, the world working in his favor by saddling everyone else with exigent matters requiring their full and immediate attention. He milks the opportunity to be in her presence (if not her person), to get to know her a little better (if not in the biblical sense). As he watches her lips move, he wonders what exactly is going through her head. He knows that behind his own phatic words lies a torrent of vulgarity separated from the open air and her delicate ears by the glacis of his vocal cords and breezy countenance. He can feel his true thoughts demanding a voice. The more he opens his mouth, the more he says, the closer he gets to revealing all, to referring to the unspoken. He considers the words he would die to say, words that would kill him if uttered, and then the words she could use to resurrect him, to deliver him to paradise. The thought immoderately thrills: that she—who has so far proved to be his exotic counterpart, an emotionally-aligned mirror image, she and he two birds of a feather—could be harboring thoughts and desires symmetrical to his own. Maybe not exactly the same but complementary; he has what she needs what he has. Perhaps they fit in multiple configurations, not only in body but mind, too. And there could lie the key to accessing these cravings that fester on one side of a dichotomy of the sundered entity that is a human being. These ineffable desires of the body seem to be known, expressed, and accessible only through the body. The willingness of the spirit to be unwilling: a sentiment that can only be penetrated by weak flesh, flesh that can get stronger, harder, that can swell, clench, indurate to the point of bursting. The idea excites Gabe—that he could share with Favia more than just what’s on the surface. But for now, even he can see that a meaningful exchange—spiritual or otherwise—would be impossible right then with this respecter of persons. There are still no customers but there is the prevailing sense that taking up any more of her time would be an impertinence. Still, he lingers, protracting his valediction as much as possible, a choice made easier by her unwavering smile.

Finally, after a final forced iteration of goodbyes, he starts to take his leave of her. Frustration wells up inside him as he turns away. Every departure is becoming a torment. His digestive system feels like it’s malfunctioning. His stomach feels both hollow and oedematous, as if swelling to accommodate the emptiness expanding within him. He already cannot wait until he sees her again. The hope that their next meeting will be very soon is the only thing that attenuates the fear that their interactions may have just concluded sine die.

Before taking two more steps, and before any tempering deliberation, he swivels around to face her again while at the same time extending his hand. When he thinks about it in an unvexed setting later that day, he will be certain, crazy as it sounds and ruinous as it would have been had his hand reached its intended target, that he had been reaching for her left breast. As his arm shoots forth, his mind is a blank. Repercussions are not a factor. The future becomes as inconsequential as the past, and all that matters is touching her in a way that matters. His eyes are practically closed as he makes his blind grasp. He doesn’t dare bear witness to what could prove to be a catastrophic transgression—the “look, don’t touch” caveat of gentleman’s clubs seems to obtain in the public arena—so he is surprised when he feels her hand slip into his. At first he’s ashamed that she very reasonably felt the need to intervene, to intercalate the closest thing at hand between him and his hunger for impropriety. He timorously looks up at her face, fully expecting an expression of reproof and disdain. Instead he glimpses a new sparkle in her eyes. She is pleased and for a second he has no idea why. Then the realization hits: she thinks he was going for her hand the whole time. And his gesture, the very same one that had had such crass intent, is being perceived as entirely appropriate. An apposite display of the connection they feel. Physical manifestation of their emotional propinquity. Further symmetry—they are like two paper dolls, cut from one design, joined like Siamese twins. They are now comme il faut. It nearly takes his breath away, especially when he beholds his consolation prize.

It’s not a breast, but it’s a lot more prehensile. Her hand continues to surprise beyond the wonder of its presence. He’s taken aback by the unexpected coarseness of her skin. Her calluses testify to a hidden lifestyle of hard work, either at home or her rumored second job at a cleaning service. Her unsoft hands endear her to him more, instilling in him protective urges alongside the previously existing amatory ones. This initial grasp is tentative, the movements of his hand rigid. His phalanges are fused together as his jammed brain frantically tries to revive basic motor skills. His extremities degrade against his will, regress into incipient ur-versions of hands, transform into basically what amounts to flippers. Still, desperate, he enfolds what’s there over her offering. He gently squeezes and feels her apply pressure of her own. Her complicity makes him deliriously happy. She is his partner, willing to follow his lead in a dance he is improvising by the seat of his pants. By something in his pants, at least. After a few gravid moments, they separate, having to extricate themselves physically now, and he finally departs only after they silently agree to incorporate what they’ve just done into their method of communication. It’s an exciting addition to their idioglossia, which comprises significant looks, meaningful smiles, and now actual dermal contact.

He begins to wonder if she’s on any sort of birth control.

Subsequent latchings-on to her hand prove to be less awkward than the initial (accidental) foray. Hugs easily transition into hand-holding, his hands seeking hers and clasping even before they pull away and face each other. He always goes for both hands, discovering that his contentment is directly proportional to the total surface area of his skin in contact with her. She is always accommodating—it sometimes seems as if she’s racing him to initiate contact—and she continues to hold his hands for the duration of his visits. The only thing that can prematurely sever the link is the appearance of a stranger. The reasons for this are unspoken and obvious.

This new plateau in their interactions does not make him as anxious as he would’ve thought. Holding the hand of someone you haven’t slept with but want to proves to have an assuasive effect. What should be a sudorific nerve-racker instead turns out to be a calmative. His arm is a cable, his hand an anchor that moors him to the safe haven of her grasp, sheltering him from the turbulent storm of his emotions. After regaining control of his fingers, he finds it useful to channel the nervous fidgety energy that builds during their encounters through his touch so that their hand-holding is never staid. Together, they create myriad variations on an eternal theme. He palpates the back of her hand. He plaits his fingers with hers in various reticulate formations. They play cat’s cradle without string. His thumb effleurages hers. Swinging the skein of digits between them, he gets an intimation of what it would feel like if they were giddy childhood sweathearts. He tries to convey meaning with every movement, express what he feels about her with the heat from the friction of their skin. He hopes the apothegm holds true, that his body won’t lie. Maybe physical contact can become for them a kind of lingua franca wherein he can achieve the clarity and directness she accomplishes verbally. We’re doing exactly what I want, he would say. Now if only we could go a bit further. . . .

Ironically, if not cruelly, what he desires from Favia he is getting no shortage of at home in his bed with Jessica. It had never been this way with Carol, or perhaps ever. Sex with Jessica is constant, spontaneous, so much so that he often finds himself embedded in lubricity within a half-hour of his last glance of Coffee Girl. Unceasing copulation is not unusual for him but what is new is the recurring impulse to mentally transpose the grunting, sweating, naked bundle of sexuality beneath him with a girl he hasn’t even seen discalced yet and whose foremost quality is platonic altruism and yet who nevertheless arouses in him a frenzied lust. It is an act of pure invention to imagine what Coffee Girl would be like in bed, and, in this respect, Gabe is only too glad to play fabulist. But his attempts to proceed from a foundation of verity are continually thwarted: Jessica frustrates his efforts to recreate the only sensation approaching a sexual nature he knows with any certainty with Favia—the feeling of her hand in his—by keeping her hands constantly roving. At any given time during intercourse she is running her nails down his back, or pulling on his thighs to add force to his thrusts, or stimulating herself to orgasm, but she never leaves her hands quiescent, which prevents him from attempting anything as prosaic as a hand-hold. No matter; if that action alone were enough to get him off, he’d have to bring in a change of underwear every day to work.

Jessica takes amazingly good care of his body’s needs, allowing his mind to filter the experience through his consciousness the way he sees fit. Her enthusiasms help when they don’t hinder. Every moan, every pelvic abrasion, every arch of her back is vetted for comparison with the fabricated idea of Favia’s sexual behavior—her reactions and sounds and involuntary movements—and are either rejected or deemed plausible and used as fuel for his indelible fantasies. There are enough similarities—real or imagined—between the girls for this fanciful substitution to hold water: Jessica has a similarly curvaceous body, comparable midnight hair, and largish breasts the mirror image of which Gabe has only a noumenal sense of.

The illusion is of course easier to maintain from the back. Not even necessarily doggy-style, where one is compelled to watch, to gaze upon, to analyze what is usually more unclothed flesh normally seen from a lover—especially a diffident one (not a problem with Jessica)—or at least those parts of the body (viz. her back, her buttocks) not easily appraised for a length of time without coming across as slightly deviant, and one can do all this staring without being observed oneself, making dorsal spectation during doggy-style humping practically irresistible, and but n.b. that all this pointed and focused staring severely hampers one’s ability to picture anyone but the person one is screwing, what with all the particular details of the topography of her body (e.g. moles, collops, spinal alignment, tattoos, etc.) accreting to form an incontrovertible image of what can possibly be only one person in the world, and that’s if one is inclined to want to think about making mental substitutions for sexual gratification in the first place because (A.) all this analysis can get dispassionate and a bit unerotic (the same way repeating a word over and over until it is pure sound strips it of any meaning, staring intently at discrete body parts drains them of sexual connotation and all that is seen is flesh covering musculature and bones) and (B.) the position itself is physically tiring to maintain, and one ends up either concentrating on keeping up the steady thrusting or adopting the grim blankness of thought that seems to help people get through repetitive physical exertion. For Gabe, the position maximally conducive to envisioning an alternate lover is side-by-side spooning. This position requires less effort and keeps her occiput front and center, the reminder of her face firmly out of view. Missionary also works but only when he buries his face in the pillow beside her head and even then it doesn’t work as well. Spooning allows him easy access to her breasts and affords him enough arousing visuals so he doesn’t have to completely imagine the sights that will get him to the point when he shuts his eyes and nothing else in the world matters.

The look of Jessica’s skin supports the illusion almost as much as the feel of it. The coloration is similar to Favia’s, although obviously darker. Chroma and hue are close enough, only the value has to be adjusted. Contrary to all laws of ocular perception, the only way to lighten Jessica’s skin is to remove the light sources in the room. Only in the semi-darkness can the value-correction take place, and then only in his mind. He convinces himself that he’s seeing Favia’s skin, closing his eyes sometimes to get over the hump of reality and maintain what he imagines to be there. He ignores the truth of darkness, counters the decreasing value of every color in the room by making the naked body before him more valuable for it, more useful to him for being something different. A bit lighter, coarse around the hands, smooth as silk everywhere else.

One day, a late season ice storm descends on the area. After a night of gelid conditions, every traversable spot outside is turned into a hockey rink. Gabe ventures out during his lunch break into light sleet and frigid desolation. The climate has sucked all the urgency out of outdoor activities and sent everyone to shelter. So it’s no surprise that Coffee Girl is where she always is, though her kiosk is icily corticated and she’s getting a respite from the scourge of long lines that usually harry her. They rejoice at the sight of each other, friendly faces gladdening their wearers’ spirits, united in solidarity against the inclement weather. He knows he’s been drawn out by the necessity of seeing her and she is only there, in a way, to see him, the only person in sight, a prospective customer, potentially more. She quickly expresses horror that he’s willingly submitted himself to the elements and, proving her tut-tutting is rooted more in genuine concern than feigned compassion, she unlatches the side panel of the kiosk and invites him in. He stoops down and enters as she pulls down the jointed slats that cover the counter opening, enclosing them in, shielding them from the rest of the world.

He’s excited to find himself truly alone with her for the first time, immured in an unobservable space away from the inquisitive glances of the overly solicitous. He momentarily has the impression, no doubt abetted by the feeling of isolation prevailing this day, that they are an old impecunious couple, nestled together in this hovel, relying on each other for need and want and no less happy for it. One of the first things he notices is a feeling of warmth—not the heat radiating through his insides but the warmth of his surroundings, enveloping him in a shroud of comfort. The emanating source of this comfort, he sees, is a space heater in the corner which has no doubt made the day easier to bear for Coffee Girl. It has also allowed her to be decked out in such incongruous raiment as hunter green capris with adorable ties on the bottom, affording him a provocative glimpse of crural skin, and glittery sandals, which show off the impressively upkept peach-colored polish on her toes. She looks breathtaking, as always. He grabs her hands and her expression positively shines. She directs him to a stool and pulls another one close so that their fingers can continue to play. His excitement is beyond measure at this opportunity to interact with her sans the intervening chaperone of a counter or someone looking over his shoulder, hanging on their words. The small talk turns from weather to the rigors of maintaining the kiosk, which include but are not limited to the ungodly hour she’s expected to be open for business and, of course, the unappeasable customers. She doesn’t whine her litany of grievances; instead she unfurls them in a slightly eager way, as if she lacked for confidantes, betraying her need for understanding, her gratefulness for a sympathetic ear. Gabe squeezes her hand and rubs her arm consolingly. Before the mood can become doleful, she smiles at him and they veer off onto more congenial topics. They discuss his job, mutual likes and dislikes, favorite music (his: anything, hers: slow romantic songs). He manages to pry out of her that she takes belly dancing lessons and makes her promise to show him her moves sometime, a promise that lacks the specificity to be taken seriously but is potent enough in its potential form. Their conversation takes on the easy unimpeded rhythm of two people enjoying each other’s company.

While she talks, Favia slips her feet out of her sandals and places them alternately on the rungs of the stool and on the seat, folded up against the inside of her thigh. It’s a familiar move copied by girls everywhere. Gabe wonders how deliberate it is, if they know how crazy men are driven by the gesture. Like all girls, Favia does not overtly draw attention to what she’s doing; her movements are easy, airy, as naturally executed as a smile. The foot apparently persists as the only body part that can be denuded without sexual import. Can girls really be oblivious to the suggestive power of this habit? Perhaps it is truly an unconscious movement for them, as unremarkable as placing their hands in their pockets, a custom made meaningless through countless reiteration, a reflexive motion the purpose of which has long been forgotten, like the covering of one’s mouth when yawning. Nevertheless, intentional or not, Gabe is stimulated by the sight. After a few seconds, he decides that something must be done lest he wonder for the rest of his life what could’ve been done. Attempting to match her nonchalance, he casually reaches out and takes hold of her foot. “Here,” he says, willing his voice not to crack, “you’ve been working hard lately. Let me give you a foot massage.” She gives him a short chuckle and looks momentarily taken aback, lending further credence to the possibility that she had no idea what she was doing. However, she quickly responds to the offer, out of either desire or an amenable spirit, stretching her feet onto his lap in gratifying acquiescence. She becomes for him suddenly effaced above the ankle, no longer even appurtenant to the newly discovered body part, though her feet more than adequately attest to her overall loveliness. His hands rove freely, claiming territory on her insteps. He discerns her metatarsals and ungual phalanges, a budding podiatrist alone with ten live little piggies. He grazes the underside of her toes. Her feet are as coarse as her hands and he rubs her calluses as if hoping to intenerate them. Upon reaching her arches, his fingers linger on the soft virginal flesh they find there, a cavernous and illicit place which sends suggestive thoughts racing pell-mell through his mind. He subtly shifts position and he honestly doesn’t know if it’s to get her feet closer or farther away from the newly formed protrusion in his pants.

During this ostensible massage, their conversation continues unabated. The talk turns to personal matters, as all conversations invariably do. In ten minutes, he learns more about her than he has in ten years as she opens like a book in front of him. It’s as if everything they had ever said to each other up to this point had been part of a pour parler before the big colloquy. For starters, she hails from Brazil. She arrived in country about fourteen years ago, rooming with four other Brazilian girls. A crazy, exciting time she relates, her eyes wistful at the memory. Gabe can only imagine, his mind filled with gamboling sex-starved beauties and their nights of tequila-fueled experimentation. She’s fluent in Portuguese, which is her home country’s official language, a fact that may throw for a loop those who were leaning toward Europe as the place of her birth. She claims she’s thirty-four years old and, in the face of his skepticism, insists on the accuracy of this number, though she stops short of pulling out her driver’s license to prove it. Not that Gabe really doubts her, he just finds it propitious to express shock, ingenuous or not, whenever a woman says a number over thirty. Although, when she reveals that her daughter is a junior in high school, she prompts more questions than she answers and her assertion barely manages to hang on a thin thread of plausibility. Still, Gabe can’t deny that the math leads down some intriguing roads—pretty hot ones actually.

Just as all talk tends to the personal, all personal talk eventually arrives at sex. The subject is eased into via a few words about Gabe’s recently terminated relationship. Coffee Girl, like everyone else, knows about the big split with Carol and, through inference or access to someone with inside information or just plain old gossip, she knows about the brusque and peremptory way he was informed of the break-up. Actually, there is no way for Coffee Girl to know the exact details, but she interpolates the anguish he must have felt, the unnecessary heartbreak that has befallen him, and the derogation he has undeservedly been subjected to. If there exists a mold of compassion, she conforms to it utterly, right before his eyes: brow scrunched up in concern; eyes free of judgment, completely unwavering and filled to the brim with caring. The empathetic slight downward curve of her mouth. Her whole body leaning forward, ready to be his fulcrum, both physically and emotionally. The comforting way she rubs his arm, her touch of solace. All of this forces him to adopt a downtrodden aspect so as not to waste her display of consolation. She reassures him of his favorable prospects for finding someone else, someone he deserves. She appears to know nothing about Jessica, and he sees no reason to apprise her of his current relationship status. Secretly, he exults in the fulsome attention she’s giving him.

An offering of seemingly invested solicitude confers on the recipient of the sympathy a responsibility to comfort the now-distressed comforter; it is incumbent on Gabe, as the cause of her worry, to smooth out the wrinkles of concern on her face. He assures her that his dignity had not been comminuted beyond reconstruction, that he has emerged from the evirating ordeal with his self-respect intact, and besides. . . . Here he breaks off. A slightly waggish grin plays on his lips. He knows that this aposiopesis is all but irresistibly compelling. Sure enough, she senses that he’s on the cusp of revealing some scabrous tidbit and urges him to continue. After a suitably dramatic pause, he confides that he’s really not sweating the break-up because it’s not like Carol was that great in the sack. This is false, a flight of fancy. He had been nothing but satisfied with Carol’s bedroom performance. Whether out of a desire to steer the discussion in a stimulating direction or to slyly hint at unfulfilled needs that can be met by a willing party, he has preempted the truth with a lie and must now run with it. Coffee Girl emits even more sympathetic mewls; she considers the revelation just one more piteous thing on top of the rest. A good, mutually nurturing sex life is important, she avers, and proceeds to elucidate the differences between Brazilian and American women with respect to sexual praxis while Gabe, to whom all this is news, listens avidly.

Apparently, Brazilian gals are a more halcyon bunch when it comes to sex. Not only are they free of the priggishness and hesitancies that seem to be part and parcel of the U.S.’s most truly desirable girls (which include the girl-next-door types, the southern belles, the three-sport goddesses—basically the non-skanks), but they’re this way from the moment they step onto the scene. During courtship in her hometown of Mariana, sex comes early and often. It’s a non-issue in the dating ritual, unremarkable in its occurrence, as intrinsic and expected as a first kiss. You like someone, you have sex, she shrugs. It’s ingrained in the culture—everyone is screwing without inhibition, even the “nice girls,” and they can do so without the specter of elders with stern faces fixed in expressions of disapproval or the puerile gossip from their peers. Without the need to feel coy or abashed, lovers in Brazil are free to make sex the sweaty, fulfilling enterprise it was always meant to be.

She relays all this to Gabe equably, as calm and matter-of-fact when talking about the act as she claims to be when engaging in it. In fact, Gabe has never seen her look more composed—this is her bailiwick, she’s in her comfort zone, she’s got a pitch in her wheelhouse and is knocking it out of the park. Her words have the confident flow of a teacher imparting brand-new knowledge to an eager student, the kind of knowledge the teacher knows is no less interesting once learned. Coffee Girl even manages to multitask while she talks (a real indicator of a stressless comfort level), getting up to make him a cup of coffee on the house. He comments on how wonderful international sex sounds, and muses that if Carol had been a Brazilian girl they would probably still be together. He tells her that Carol was too reserved, too austere in the sack: another made-up bit come up with on the fly, once again proving that truth is the quintessential liquid commodity, always exchangeable for a more interesting lie. He looks at her conspiratorially and says he was willing to do anything—anything—Carol wanted him to do, but she lacked the sexual wherewithal to capitalize on his submissiveness. “I still am,” he adds, “willing to do anything.” He grins at her. “With another woman, of course.” Suggestive, hopeful, lecherous.

He takes a sip of coffee, lets out a contented sigh, and once again beseeches her to divulge her secret ingredients. This is a familiar method of joshing her, and she submits to it gleefully, teasing him right back. “No, no,” she says. “I’ll never tell.” He lunges at her, wrapping his arms around her as she squeals and laughs. He is in the dark about his intent, but since his hands are on her, he squeezes and tickles and rubs. They giggle uncontrollably, like two youths—one Brazilian, one willing to learn to be. They disentangle from each other after a few minutes, out of breath and flushed. They look at each other adoringly. He reaches out and soberly takes her hand, no longer playful, and gives it an optative squeeze. “Out of all the coffee places in town,” he says, “you’re my fave.” He gives her a meaningful look and repeats it: “You’re my fave.” It’s more than a simple paronomasia on her name. It’s a perfect mimesis of the sort of affectionate diminutive used by long-time lovers, a personal cognomen indicating carnal familiarity. Coffee Girl seems to grasp the implications. Her cheeks bloom red. The effect is like a cherry cordial with its attendant juices showing through a veneer of dark chocolate. She is exquisitely esculent, the dessert one indulgently orders for the entrée. At this moment, she is the meal he would most like to order off a menu comprising roughly three billion choices, a meal, it would seem, he is also prohibited from having—a forbidden fruit.

As he watches her reconcile his affection with her perception of the truth, he considers, not for the first time, whether there’s a way to tell her that he thinks of her when he comes—both alone and with Jessica. That that’s what puts him over the edge: the image of her in his mind. He wonders whether she would take it how he intends it to be taken—as a supreme compliment; she is the angel who guides him to the only heaven he knows. He tries to conceive of circumstances—baring impending eschaton—in which such an expression could be voiced and received properly, with no equivocation by the speaker and no misunderstanding by the listener. Perhaps no such setting exists, or perhaps what’s missing is the courage to tell her the truth. Is he being untruthful to her, letting lies taint the relationship before it has a chance to take flight? By acting as if she’s not a part of his most intimate acts, is he nothing but an abhorrent whited sepulcher? Even if this is the case, he is mindful of the potential ruination that could result from such a proclamation and instead tells her something safe and almost trite, though no less true: “You look really beautiful today.”

For a moment, his comment seems to affect her adversely; she freezes and looks stunned—this despite what has been, by all indication, her endless capacity for praise. This time he has waylaid her with a judgment she never expected to hear from his lips, maybe from anyone’s. The idea that she isn’t told what she so clearly deserves to hear on a daily basis is piteous to Gabe. The way he has so simply induced a flabbergasted aphonia in her, the way her mouth lies open in a rictus of momentary incomprehension, it breaks his heart. He tries to savor her unguarded reaction, knowing that he’ll never see it in all its glory again, as she’s bound to become inured to this particular combination of words, which he intends to repeat to her ad nauseam. A strange pang of regret and nostalgia jabs him even as she reaches out and pulls him close. She blubbers her appreciation, her thanks, discomfiting Gabe in return, who isn’t sure how to respond. Her actions seem born of a need for momentum, for her to do something besides just stand there, to be a gracious recipient of his kindness and offer some reciprocity of commensurate value. After some hugs and clutches and grasps, with need still lying between them unfulfilled, she improvises and gives him a kiss on the cheek. Her lips on his skin feel unreal. He automatically goes to kiss her opposite cheek before she can pull away. She has regained enough presence of mind to expect it, turning her head to offer him a receptive target. The skin of her face is smooth; the surface of his lips feels calcified in comparison and he doesn’t press in too firmly for fear of leaving an indentation.

As she starts to pull away, he is not ready to give her up. He maintains contact as she brings herself back upright, his hands sliding across her back, around her sides, arriving at the long-sought destinations residing about chest high. Unable to help himself, he grazes the sides of her breasts, letting his hands drift across their bulbous mass. She’s wearing an unpadded bra, a wisp of fabric that does little to conceal the softness underneath. His fingers trace these globular twins along their equators, achieving liftoff just before reaching the nipple, the passing into another hemisphere for a return trip deemed too flagrant even in his mindlessly excited state. He takes his hands away reluctantly, slowly, as if resisting a strong gravitational pull. He looks to her face immediately, an apology sitting in the back of his throat ready to be deployed at the slightest trace of objurgation in her eyes. Instead, he sees her familiar pleasant expression containing no hint of acknowledgement of the liberties he has just taken, no castigating look, no wry smile or bemused pause, no nod to the event at all. Her continuing insouciance to all forms of physical contact strikes Gabe as auspicious.

A moment after straightening herself, she announces her need to use the powder room. Would he mind staying here and watching the kiosk while she goes to the gas station down the street for a few minutes? She asks as though there is any chance at all he would refuse. Her unassuming nature charms him and he wants to tell her of all the things he would be willing to do for her that would involve much more discomfort, pain, and hardship than he will incur by the bagatelle of simply watching her workstation. Not to mention the intensely pleasurable things he could do to her as well, given the chance. She puts on some socks and slips her feet into boots, then bends down to grab a coat lying in the corner. She’s facing away from him, putting her backside on display. The bottom of her camisole and the waistband of her capris slide away from each other, parting to reveal thong underwear. It’s black and appears to be made of a shiny spandex-like material, pulled taut across the top of her buttocks into a “T” that threatens to disappear if stretched any further. Standing up, she puts on her coat and conceals the sight, to his eternal disappointment. After switching her cap for a wool hat, she smiles at him in a slightly embarrassed way and says she’ll be right back and exits the kiosk, shutting the panel behind her.

He is alone. After a second of deliberation, he picks up the baker boy cap she’s left behind and holds it to his face. He smells what he usually smells when they hug, when her head is nestled right underneath his nose. Only now, smothering himself with her hat, the smell is more concentrated than ever. Her perfume mixes with shampoo, beauty product, and dried sebum. Handling an item of her personal effects—something that has touched her skin, pressed against her, something that retains the secrets it knows of her by being so close, something she has exposed herself to, and now that something enveloping his face as he drinks in the sensations—makes him tremble with gratitude. He wouldn’t be more aroused if it were her thong occluding his nostrils. In this cramped space, surrounded by the mundane everyday accoutrements of a dedicated coffee slinger, with nothing more inspiring than a still-warm hat to work with, all he can think of is release. He would tame the angry python, even in this constricting space, but his concerns are more temporal than spatial. What if she came back and found him in a compromised position: using her hat to burke himself but trying for all the world to come before biting the big one? Then again, so what if she did? He allows himself to imagine the unimaginable: that she would come upon him in a similarly frustrated state. She would mask her delight by pretending to be shocked, though there would be little question whether she took offense after she reaches out to take over his own hand’s task. The hand he was jerking off with would be free to slip underneath her shirt, though his other hand would still be clamping the hat to his face so as not to interrupt the fantasy. There would be time for conventional lovemaking later; now is the time for fetishistic indulgence. The hat would be incorporated in their future playing; he would come home to find her sprawled out on the bed wearing nothing but. With a carefree laugh and confident flick of her wrist, she would fling the hat across the room, toward his pelvis, trying to score a ringer. He would catch it, hold it to his face, and whatever problems he had faced that day—none involving her—would wash away in the remembrance of his initial furtive desire.

He hears the latch of the kiosk release and, without thinking—or perhaps with a stunning amount of compressed calculation—he stuffs the hat inside his jacket. As Coffee Girl reenters the kiosk, he greets her effusively, willing her attention not to wander, barely concealing his need for flight. After some energetic but vacuous conversational sallies which are all he is capable of in his current nervous state, he stutters that he must really be leaving now. She calms his anxiety by holding him close and he feels how at ease she is, how free from worry. She stands on her toes and, with a stillness, whispers in his ear, “You’re so good. I’m lucky to have you in my life right now.” He looks down at her, amazed by this thing in his arms, and presses against her, exerting pressure on her whole body with the willful intention of making her change her position, of making her step back against the counter for leverage so she can withstand what he irrationally plans for them both to engage in, right here, right now. She misreads his signals, holds him tighter, leans against him harder, an indomitable object as true and secure as the statements she has made to him. When she releases him, he brushes a stray strand of hair off her face and lightly kisses her fingers. Eventually he leaves, because he has to, all the while feeling the lump in his jacket he can’t wait to extract, something he knows he will find benign, delightful even. He will live, and in so doing will find his release, many, many times over.

Lying in bed that night, alone, Jessica away on a two-day conference, he goes over his options. There is no question that he wants Coffee Girl in the only meaningful way one can: as an inamorata, and there is no chicaning himself to believe otherwise. The possibility seems close at hand, so close that he has little trouble imagining the deed already done. The jump from woman to lover is so small, the actions needed to fulfill the requirements of the change in title so inconsequential, that it’s easy at times to bask in the gorgeous prolepsis of every girl he sees being his lover, just ones who haven’t taken the ten seconds or so and participated in the pro forma act of copulation with him. And after all the formalities are dispensed with, before you know it, a quondam lover becomes a partner, a metamorphosis that leaves her no less hungry for sex (Gabe has little doubt in Favia’s case) but affords a different, quotidian set of pleasures, and, since he has spent ample time thinking about the more immediate gratifications she could offer, Gabe speculates on long-term delights, the various things that could be in store for him years down the road. Coffee Girl’s sleep-encrusted eyes being the first thing he sees in the morning. Knowing all her stories, every opinion she has and ever will have. Taking the sight of her naked body for granted, as just the wallpaper of his life. Lust must be as blind as love, because it all sounds great to Gabe. He begins careful consideration of how these things can come to pass. He thinks of inviting her over, maybe not for a cup of coffee exactly, but in a sort of neighborly spirit. Then, through some contrivance most likely tied to the decorative scheme of his home, leading her through the apartment. The key is getting her in the bedroom; behind closed doors, anything’s possible. The decision to make the plunge isn’t decided by quorum and consent need not be given the next day or even the next minute for something to happen now. He needs to corner her into a situation where a “yes” would be so much more easily uttered than a “no” and then let biology take over. Position her in the exact time and space, align her carefully along four dimensions, and the decision is no longer hers; something implacable takes over, something the non-perspicacious are disposed to call “fate,” not knowing that doing so absolves those guilty of orchestrating the machinations that hide from the ignorant every path but one. How lucky she is, Gabe reflects, that the person behind the scenes is working toward her direct and unambiguous pleasure.

The major impediment would seem to be the ring of platinum cinctured around her finger. She never references the person it represents, yet the ring is always present, serving as a reminder to all in sight. Gabe has traced his finger around it a few times, pinched it between his forefinger and thumb as if testing its integrity. He ponders the unknowable: how often do they have sex? Did she have a strong religious upbringing, adequate to instill in her enough fear that she takes the vows of matrimony seriously? Most important, does he make her happy? Because if this unknown guy is uxorious, he has almost no chance with Coffee Wife. But what of her other suitors? He just cannot be the first to throw his hat into the ring; she sticks out like Everest, both prominent and irresistible, something people will inevitably try to climb and conquer. How did those other hapless glory(hole) seekers fare? Crashed and burned, no doubt, ending up with the rest who got no further with her than having their change handed back. But what if that’s not the case? Gabe has fancied himself as treading on uncharted territory—to a destination visited a few times, sure, but blazing a new trail, arriving there in a wholly new way. But now he considers the possibility that he is only following in the footsteps of many who have gone before him. He may even meet a few of these intrepid folk when he reaches the summit, on their way down after exhausting the pleasures of the peak. With one guy, a weary king of the hill, presumably overseeing all the comings and goings. This perspective casts the husband in a new light as a possible wittol, more of a help than a hindrance. Maybe he’s even encouraging his wife to find guys for troilism, which Gabe has no interest in at all. No, easier to think of the guy as an uninspiring shlub, married only in a legal sense to someone better than he deserves, to someone who is looking to abdicate whatever obligations she foolishly agreed to, the two of them living under one roof but hardly together in any sort of meaningful union, biding their time in a stultifying modus vivendi, locked into a regrettable mesalliance. Gabe has to show her that marriage vows are more honored in the breach than the observance—something he can personally attest to. Only then can they. . . . He thinks of her elliptical thighs and soft belly and inviting hips and reaches over for her hat sitting on the nightstand, fully intending on putting it to use one more time before turning in.

The next day, sloshing through the runnels on the sidewalk created by melting ice, he anxiously debates the best way to give the hat back to its rightful owner. It bears no trace of the use and abuse it was subjected to the previous night, but the actual handing it back could be awkward since there is no plausible reason for him to have it. He considers stealthy legerdemain—distracting her then throwing it into a corner of the kiosk. He thinks of keeping it and disavowing its existence, even if confronted with direct questioning. In the end he decides to claim a different sort of ignorance, handing the hat back sheepishly, apologizing for taking it inadvertently and finding it when he got home bundled in a coat he’s not even sure he took off—a literally incredible explanation. With no better option, that’s what he goes with, and what’s more incredible is her easy acceptance of it, her thanking him, assuring him that these things happen, putting the hat off to the side and moving on. As he stands there dumbfounded, she reaches out toward his neck and starts fiddling with his shirt. It takes him a second to realize that, in a swivet about the hat, he has rushed out of the house in a minor state of dishabille, with a half-tucked-in collar on open display. He submits to her sartorial ministrations and she takes her time making sedulous adjustments. The moment distends. Gabe feels as though he is taking part in a domestic scene: the big-hearted wife seeing her husband off, preparing him for a hard day’s work—they play the roles exactly, a preview of things to come, a dress rehearsal before they do it for real. Her movements have an underwater feel to them; she’s absorbed in fixing his shirt, as if she’s doing it by habit but is surprised at how much she’s enjoying it. He feels safe and comforted and contented. She sighs, indicating she may feel some of the same. Finished with straightening him out, she pats him on the chest and says, “You’re so good.” Her eyes turn sorrowful. “I wish I could do things for you. I wish I could.”

Before he can respond, maybe to let her know that what she wishes is possible, her head goes down and she noticeably slumps as she drops the big news on him. Her mother, living back in Brazil, is unwell. Favia is unable to articulate the specifics of the malady, but Gabe gets the impression that it has happened suddenly and is unexpected and more than a little worrisome. The grasping of her hand is automatic; he’s always looking for the flimsiest pretext to touch her, though this time it’s for honorable reasons, his caresses meant to be more soothing than stimulating. He wonders if she perceives the difference on her end or if his hands are even moving any differently at all. While his face is scrunched up in concern and sorrowful hums rumble from the back of his throat, there is only so much invested empathy on display until she says the thing that truly disturbs him: she’s leaving very soon to go be with her. His hands reflexively clamp on hers, as if she intends to bolt immediately. With his mouth suddenly desiccated, he mechanically gets the answers from her he knows he will want to know later, when he has regained the ability to think straight. Yes, of course she’s coming back; she’ll be gone for a month. Yes, she’s going alone; the husband and kids are remaining stateside. No, the illness does not appear to be life-threatening, for now. The overwhelming sadness of the situation is evident by her blank expression and even tone of voice; it’s the kind of serious news that drains the emotion from a person. Still, she tries to maintain the compassionate optimism that defines her. She clenches his hands just as hard in return, asking him to pray for her, and he promises he will, convincing even himself. She wills a wan smile, citing encouraging facts such as the fast detection and her mother’s relatively young age, which seems to substantiate her truism about the accelerated nature of sex in Brazil; Gabe’s attention is momentarily derailed as he thinks of three generations of dark-skinned beauties—from teenager to grandmother—separated from being contemporaries by the slimmest of margins. She misreads his silence and attempts to cheer him up by saying she’ll miss him. He emphatically returns the sentiment. He expresses mock concern that she’ll find a suave, good-looking guy over there, a lusophone chevalier who will win her heart and he’ll never see her again. He’s half joking, half feeling out her receptiveness to the idea. The hypothetical causes a genuine grin, and she assures him that it isn’t even a remote possibility, that she has no intention of repatriation. Despite her demurral, he has his doubts.

Their time together no longer feels like a refreshing break from the world, more like sand slipping through his fingers. He’s running out of time to do something, though he’s not sure what. He’s in a dream, ill-prepared for the mysterious task before him. When they say goodbye, she once again presses her lips to the side of his face, a movement he mimics, and somewhere he finds the determination to do something else, to push things forward while he still can. He goes in for another kiss, deluding himself that he’s going for the center of her lips, ending up exactly where he had really intended: the corner of her mouth. His lips touch pliable matter, something that moves, something labile, alive. He feels as if he’s touching something clean, pure, something rubbed smooth or missing the layer of protective integument that covers the rest of her body. He feels closer to her, closer to exposed nerve endings and hot humid cavernous enclosures—passageways to her soul. He pulls away, no longer overly concerned about her reaction, which appears to be favorable; there is laughter in her eyes. A customer comes up and he tells her he’ll see her later and walks away. He feels a coolness as the trace of her saliva evaporates off his skin. He runs his tongue over his lips, licking the rest of her away, hoping for a residual taste but getting nothing. He looks back and she’s still watching him with a child’s arch delight. He resolves right then to prepare a dramatic gesture for her, one that will show her every facet of his desire.

That night, he paces around his apartment, expending the pent-up nervous energy that has built up throughout the day. He visualizes what he wants to see happen the next day, all the best possibilities, a panoply of favorable scenarios that result in his sweeping Coffee Girl off her feet. An event they can both look back on fondly as a turning point, a daring escalation, the time he bravely consigned the consequences to hell. He says her name again and again. “Favia. Favia. Favia.” He paces back and forth, ranging all over the apartment. He repeats the dactyl over and over—“Fa-via, Fa-via, Fa-via”—as if introducing the concept of her to the apartment before she makes an appearance. He eventually exhausts himself, allowing the previously unthinkable notion of getting some shut-eye to creep into his bones, and wearily gets into bed. The gears of his mind grinds away at his anxiety, and slowly his nervous anticipation gets sublimated into a dispersing flock of gold-tipped, well-intentioned butterflies fluttering gently in his stomach. He closes his eyes and lets his mind and hands wander. “Oh, Favia.”

He isn’t completely sure he will go through with his plan until he rises the next morning to shut off the alarm, which starts blaring at 4:45—needlessly, since he has been lying awake in bed for the last twenty minutes. He gets up quickly, and stumbles into the bathroom. After relieving himself and brushing his teeth and washing his face and combing his hair, he turns off the bathroom light and wanders into the kitchen, glancing at the digital display of the time in the kitchen. He stands at the table, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, staring into a bouquet of flowers placed in a makeshift vase (a glass pitcher he found in the cupboard), twelve long-stemmed roses purchased yesterday at the florist on Dixon after getting out of work, the glass container filled about three-fourths of the way with water, the flowers wrapped in pellucid red-tinted cellophane and prettily arranged with baby’s breath, the water slightly murky, the pitcher positioned at almost the exact center of the table. He stands transfixed, going over a plan that is dangerously close to being enacted, the linchpin of the plan right there in front of him, in full bloom. He is so lost in thought that a few minutes pass before he realizes he should’ve already left, and only then does he register that he’s still in his nightclothes.

A few minutes later, he rushes out of the apartment, dressed, surrounded by an invisible cloud of (newly purchased) cologne, keys in one hand, flowers in the other, and strides to the parking lot with a sense of urgency. He gets in his car and carefully places the flowers in the passenger seat. He looks at them again, recalling the precise calculation with which they were chosen, the consideration taken to ensure an optimally perspicuous representation of his intent. Even the color choice was deliberate. Twelve red roses—the meaning is unmistakable in any language. It’s a semion of romantic love, which implies intimacy, which is synonymous with sexual intercourse, which is a euphemism for anal action. He wants her ass, and his message could not be more clear.

He drives into the enshrouding solvent of darkness. The morning light has yet to break and the sky is a deep indigo color Gabe is unused to seeing. It irrationally seems unnatural, the color of a painter’s failed experiment. Under flickering streetlights, Gabe slowly passes quiet houses as he drives down deserted streets. It is still a touch too early for widespread activity, which unnerves Gabe. Though it is as dark as the dead of night, there is the feeling that the day should be starting, that the darkness has lasted about as long as it can and is starting to ripen, that night is over and what he is seeing is a facade, an untruth—day dissembling as night. The sense that things are not as they appear gives everything a slightly sinister edge. He feels assaulted by waves of suspicion from unseen eyes in umbral alcoves. A still small voice within him says he should not be out here, and he would normally have no reason to be, but he feels the pull of a beacon heralding him from Main Street and the rapidly closing window he has to answer its call; Coffee Girl will be leaving soon and Jessica will be back from her trip later today and be next to him in bed at this time tomorrow and would surely have questions—which could not be answered plausibly—about his sneaking out with a bunch of roses at the crack of dawn. Thinking of Jessica dampens his spirits, and not because of the vehement objections he knows she would have to this morning’s activities. What saddens Gabe is that among the many reasons not to be doing what he is doing, Jessica’s a priori disapproval—and the very probable hurt she would feel if she could see him now—does not affect him more and is not reason enough to turn around.

Coming onto Main Street, he sees Favia opening the kiosk and he is simultaneously proud and thankful of his perfect timing. He pulls up to the curb and gets out, carefully hiding the flowers behind his back. She is still fiddling with the lock as he strolls up. He impulsively reaches out to rub her back. He fights the urge to drop the flowers and wrap his arms around her, stroke the belly he is owed sight of, hold her close with the overly familiar ease he feels they’ve already achieved. Before he throws caution to the wind and just does it, she turns around and starts, opens her mouth slightly, and makes a startled sound; she seems more surprised by the sight of him than she is by his touch. She quickly recovers though and beams at him, giving him her hand, which he raises to his mouth and kisses. She always bows her head and smiles too widely when he does this, a young schoolgirl’s smile, one that is both abashed and thrilled. She asks him what he is doing out so early and he casually says that he just happened to be up and thought he would swing by and say good morning. “So,” he says, “good morning.” She smiles warmly and says it’s good to see him. He asks how she’s doing and she says she’s doing O.K. and asks how he’s doing. In his nervousness, he responds with the rote geniality “Good, how are you?” absurdly volleying the question back to her. He immediately feels the heat of embarrassment on his face, but she mercifully overlooks his slip-up, though she does pull away. She turns to the kiosk and scowls, muttering something, half in another language, about forgetting her keys. He clicks his tongue and sympathetically groans, arranging his face into an expression of shared frustration, unnecessarily since her attention is squarely in the other direction. He is still holding the flowers behind his back. He has been waiting for her curiosity to kick in; there is no reason it shouldn’t since he obviously has something for her, posed as he is in the instantly recognizable semaphore denoting the possession of a concealed gift: standing straight, awkwardly balanced, arm bent out of view, a game of guess-which-hand with only one choice. Still, she doesn’t seem to notice. And suddenly he gets very nervous about the fact that she hasn’t noticed him standing there clearly wanting to give her something. It doesn’t seem to be a simple oversight, and she also doesn’t appear to be intentionally ignoring what can so plainly be seen. An aperçu flashes through him like a bolt from the sky, hollowing out his insides in the process. She neither craves nor dreads what he has behind his back because, for her, there is nothing there to feel one way or another about. It’s more than a lack of observation. It’s that what’s behind his back is a void, a big fat null set that precludes consideration. His mouth goes dry. She is literally devoid of anticipation. For her, there is nothing behind his back; she is not able to envision anything behind his back, and never will. Despite blood being pumped rapidly through his body, he feels cold. She does not expect what he has come to unleash, to spring on her. To surprise her with. Her obliviousness is symptomatic, more effect than cause. It’s not that she has missed the portents or failed to recognize that the consecution of their interactions would naturally lead to him standing where he is right now, with flowers in tow. It’s worse: she’s indifferent. Now she’s looking up but still away from him, down the street, and even though it is now bright enough for the day not to be mistaken for night, he does not need to follow her gaze to know she is looking at nothing. She has not thought enough about him to even begin to fear he would pull this stunt. He is beneath consideration, always has been. She has no interest in him. He himself might as well be behind his back. If presented with the option, she would not want to sleep with him and would not be able to say why; he is such a blank to her, she has not even registered his flaws. He feels his deodorant failing. He wants out, he wants home, he wants away. To thrust flowers at her now would be out of the question. She would be stricken, dazed, shocked. Forced to have excruciating reactions. Put in a bind. Faced with a catch-22. Caught between a rock and a hard place. Caught with her pants down, up. He looks at the sky and holds his breath. Even though it is getting brighter every minute, the light is still coming from an invisible source, as if God is incrementally turning the dimmer knob. He ruefully thinks that he should have made his move that storm-ridden day in the kiosk, after the foot massage. Now the appropriate time has passed, and now it is past the 11th hour . . . there is no turning back. More than his dignity is at stake, and mortification is not the sole consequence he faces. She does not know him. She thinks she does; she does not. Only he knows that he stands as a stranger in front of her. He is now forced to reveal himself to her, the real him, and in doing so destroy the person she thought she knew. Literally wipe out that persona—him, but not him. Something about the precarious nature of what exactly would be effaced if he were to present her with his gift makes him wobble a little on enervated legs. He feels a total annihilation waiting behind a fragile partition, a bomb about to explode. Even if he isn’t the target, he is fearful of being caught in a decimating blast. It’s that close and that nebulous. Both everything and nothing would change. He hears her sigh and looks up. She is still looking away, her lips drawn tight in a thin line. “So. How is your life?” she asks. He automatically tells her it’s good and asks how hers is. She responds, “O.K.” She wraps her arms around herself, tugging at the sleeves of her coat, and says “I have to tell you something.” He is locked into position. He manages to croak “What’s that?” She finally turns to him. “I’m getting a—” She freezes, staring at him. It’s obvious that, for the first time today, she sees him, really sees him standing there. Lines appear on her forehead, her eyes are blank. Her mouth stays open on her words. He tenses, ready to reveal everything at her slightest move. The sound of a car door shutting breaks the silence. She looks to the side, turning her head into profile. She closes her mouth. He sees a square of light in her right eye. He watches her. His hands clench. The cellophane crumples and forms sharp edges that cut into his hand. He feels seized up, glued to the spot. Immobile. The helpless feelings of childhood. He sucks on dry skin. The ground feels both there and not. Everything is impossibly close. She’s still looking away. He lolls his head to the side, sees two legs approaching, and is not able to lift his gaze above the man’s swinging hands and the ring of keys he’s holding, the keys jangling, making a slightly abrasive sound as they lightly hit against each other, a sound like crystal shards being ground up, and he can’t turn away and he stands there and he watches and all he can hear is wind hitting his ears and all he can feel is that his insides are reaching a point he doesn’t know if he can take and then that point passes and he is still there.