Chapter 3

I could empathize with that. I kissed her on the forehead again. "I'd love to," I said.

Presently, we got ourselves off the couch and moved toward the bedroom. Mrs. Nguyen flashed me a brief smile and went into the bathroom. When she'd finished, I took my turn.

When I entered the bedroom, Mrs. Nguyen was lying supine on the turned-back sheets, nude, with her eyes closed and her legs spread just about enough for me to fit between them. Her hands were closed into fists by her sides. In the dim light filtering in from the living room, with her diminutive size, her small breasts, and sparse pubic hair, she looked so innocent, fragile, and young that I felt a rush of guilt even though I knew better. And I was puzzled by her odd pose.

"Why are you lying there like that?" I asked.

"I thought you might want to have sex with me," she said.

That seemed to me to be a strange way to put it, but I didn't have to be asked twice. "I'd love to make love to you," said, as I started skinning out of my clothes.

I lay down beside Mrs. Nguyen and kissed her. On the lips, in the usual way. She kissed me back like a child, with her lips shut. I tried again, with the same result. "Can you feel what my lips are doing?" I asked gently.

"Yes," she said.

"Then see if you can make your lips do the same thing." When I kissed her the next time, her lips relaxed and softened, and moved against mine. I slipped my hand under her back and held her close, and on the next kiss, I tickled her lips with my tongue. I was immensely relieved and gladdened to feel the tip of her tongue touch mine. She got the hang of French kissing quickly, and we began kissing as lovers do. When I started moving my lips around her forehead and her ear and down onto her neck, she said, "Do you find me unattractive?"

"Of course not," I said. "I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

"Then why aren't you making love to me?" she asked, near tears.

"I am," I said, utterly perplexed.

"No you're not," she said. "You're not inside me."

"We're not ready for that yet," I said.

She pushed me back and looked down at my penis. "It looks to me like you're ready," she said.

"I suppose I am," I said, cupping her pubis, "but you're not. You're still all closed and dry."

"I'm ready," she insisted. "You can put it in me now."

"I don't want to do that," I said. "It would hurt you if I did."

"I don't think it will hurt much," she said.

That did it. I just had to ask. "I don't understand," I said. "It shouldn't hurt at all. Why do you want to go ahead now?"

"When Nguyen Vo wanted to have sex, he would tell me to get myself ready, and I would wait for him like I waited for you. When he was ready, he would push himself into me. Most of the time, it didn't hurt too much once he got started."

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. "You've been to movies and read books," I said. "Surely you must have known there was more to making love than that."

She looked at me sadly. "Yes and no," she said. "I saw people making love in the movies, and I read about it in books, yes. But none of that had ever happened to me, and I couldn't be sure it was real. Ultimately, I decided it was just another element of the fiction, and let it go at that."

"You didn't experiment any when you were dating?" I asked.

"I never dated," she said. "When I was in high school, I was so focused on my goal that I didn't have any desire to date. By the time I got into college, I was engaged to Nguyen Vo and I was taking a course load that would let me graduate with two bachelor's degrees in five years. I guess I should remind you that there was no love between Vo and me--and he's the only man I've ever been with."

My heart ached for Mrs. Nguyen, to have been deprived of love for so long. The words "I love you" were right on the tip of my tongue, but I didn't think we were ready for that yet. I didn't want to take the chance and be rejected. I pulled her back close to me, and just held her, rubbing her back and nibbling along the top of her ear.

After some minutes, I laid her back down on the bed. "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever known," I said, "and there's nothing in the world I want to do more than to make love to you and bring some joy and happiness into your life." I kissed her again, and set about gently touching and kissing all over her body.

When I took a nipple between my lips and licked the tip of it, she put her hands behind my head and pressed me to her breast.

I kissed around a foot, and when I sucked her big toe, she giggled.

When I lifted her leg and kissed behind her knee, she sighed.

After the knee, I kissed up and around her thighs, along the folds where her legs met her body, and over the top of her pubic mound. When I finally slid my tongue between her labia and wiggled it up to her clitoris, she said, "Mr. Wynn, what are you d--EEP!" and grabbed my head and held on tight. It wasn't long before she slammed her pelvis into my face and let go with a long sigh. When she'd relaxed, I raised my head and looked: her maroon lips had become shiny pink petals. She was ready.

I scooted up on her body, lined myself up, and slipped into her, slowly, gently, and easily. "Oooooh," she exhaled.

"Did that hurt?" I asked.

"Oh, no," she said. "Not at all. It feels very, very good."

"That's the way it's supposed to be," I said, with a kiss.

Once inside Mrs. Nguyen, I was no longer making love. I was no longer having sex. I wasn't fucking. I was giving my soul over to Mrs. Nguyen's care. My entire universe was right there beneath me and around me and reaching for the stars.

When I wasn't running my lips across Mrs. Nguyen's forehead or kissing her eyelids or tasting the hollow of her shoulder, I was looking down at her face, watching the subtle movements rippling beneath her skin. As I moved in and out of her, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes pausing deep inside, sometimes rotating my hips, her eyes tightened and relaxed, her forehead wrinkled and smoothed, her lips pursed and loosened, her mouth formed an astonished "O."

After some indeterminate period of time, I began to feel my climax building, and automatically started the long, deep strokes that presage the end. Mrs. Nguyen's eyes suddenly flew open and were looking directly into mine. Her being reached out of those dark pools, and I fell, a long floating descent that splashed me into a fountain of exquisite, selfless release. Mrs. Nguyen's face reflected astonishment and wonder, then she flew horizontally off the bed and wrapped her legs and arms around me with astonishing strength. Though it was probably only seconds, it seemed to me that she clung for a long time, then dropped back to the mattress, still with a look of wonder on her face.

"Oooooooooooooh, Mr. Wynn," she sighed.

"Yes, Mrs. Nguyen?" I asked, licking at the moisture above her eyebrows.

"I think you'd better call me Mai now," she said, and we both collapsed into laughter that grew from nothing but delight.

"Only if you call me Mike," I gasped.

We held each other in our post-coital glow; I kissed around Mai's face and traced the contours of her ears and chin with a fingertip. When I'd softened to the point that I was squeezed out, we rolled and turned until I was spooned behind her, with one arm around her chest, holding her close, and we drifted into sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, my penis was wrapped in wet velvet, and I thought at first that Mai as giving me a blowjob--but, no, it didn't feel like a blowjob. It felt like I was having sex--but, no, there was only the sensation on my penis. I couldn't feel Mai against me. When I opened my eyes, I saw that she was squatting over me in that knees-up, butt-down way that I think only oriental women can do, raising and lowering her hips, occasionally putting her fingertips on my chest for balance. The sensation was both strange and exquisite.

"God!" she exclaimed when she saw my eyes open. "I wish I'd known about this twenty years ago." Then she dropped from her feet to her knees, laid her chest against mine, wrapped her arms around my neck, nuzzled against my chest, and hummed with pleasure.

After that night, Mai and I were rarely apart, and it was almost as if the wall dividing our duplex units had been removed. We shared almost all our meals and almost all our nights, whether at her place or mine made no difference. I was head-over-heels in love with Mai, but scared to death to say anything about it. The evident happiness we shared was real, both as a state of mind and as a way of living, and I was more than reluctant to threaten that status quo.

One afternoon in June, after we'd spent the better part of the day weeding our garden and lavishing tender care on our burgeoning seedlings, we made long, slow love. After we'd lazed together for a while, I raised myself up on one elbow, looked into Mai's face, and said, "You know, almost every day, I give thanks that I just happened onto your street last December and that you were asking such a low rent for your duplex." As I watched, Mai turned red from her face almost to her navel.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm as thankful as you are for whatever forces led you to my door," she said, "but about the rent," she continued, avoiding my gaze, "I guess I should fess up.

"Because I live here, this building is considered my home rather than an income property, so I'm not subject to fair housing laws when I rent the other unit. I can reject a prospective tenant for no reason at all, and I can charge whatever rent I choose." She sat up, leaned against the headboard, wrapped her arms around her knees, and gave me a rather sheepish look.

"This duplex is one of the rental properties Nguyen Vo maintained. He and I were living in a house not far from here, and after he died, I didn't want to live in that house any longer. The next time this front unit was vacated, I moved in here and put the house up for rent. The tenant in the rear unit," she said, winking at me, "felt uncomfortable having his landlady living right next door, and moved out a couple of months later.

"At that point, I didn't really feel like having a stranger so near to me, so I let the that unit remain vacant while I took care of the bureaucracy that accompanied Vo's death, continued to manage the businesses, and spent time thinking about what I wanted to do with my life now that I was free of a twenty-year commitment. My parents were gone, Vo was gone, and I felt very alone in the world, my activities no longer dictated by the desires of others. It was both a heady and frightening feeling.

"After about a year, I decided that it wasn't good for me to be so alone, so I rented the rear unit to a young professional woman, Marie--whom I selected very carefully--and that was the right thing to do. She and I became friendly and chatted over tea or coffee from time to time. I got exactly the amount of company I needed. Roll over and lie on your back."

I did, of course, and Mai slid back down, rolled over, and laid her head on my chest.

"Last July, Marie decided to accept her boyfriend's proposal of marriage, and moved out to live with him. I wasn't in a hurry to get a new tenant, and, as it happened, I'd just put out the for rent sign the same day that you came to inquire."

Mai ran her index finger in circles around my nipple while she paused to choose her words.

"When you told me that you'd been living at Vida Libre, I had a pretty good idea how much rent you'd been paying," she said in a small voice, "so I, ah, adjusted my rent accordingly." Then she gave my chest a sharp nip.

"Ow!" I said. "So what did you learn when you checked my rental application?"

"Don't ever play poker, Mike," she said. "Your face is an open book. Your manner of speaking when you told me why you were moving was so ingenuous that I didn't think for a moment that you weren't telling me the absolute truth. I didn't check your credit or anything else."

"So why the day's delay, then?" I couldn't help asking.

She nipped me again, and thumped my chest with the side of a closed fist.

"I didn't want to appear too eager to have you as a tenant," she nearly whispered.

I wrapped my arms around Mai and hugged her until she squeaked. Actions speak louder than words, but words count, too, and that was the first time she'd anything to hint that she'd wanted me in the same way that I'd wanted her.

Toward the end of July, we began bringing in the first of our zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, white summer squash, and string beans. The tomatoes followed in August. The garden-fresh vegetables were delicious, and every meal at which we ate them was a celebration of the day we planted them and the night we made love for the first time.

By early November, the squash plants were getting dry and rustly, the tomatoes had stopped turning red, and the beans and peas had quit producing. On a windy Saturday, we pulled and dug up the dead plants. I went to U-Rentz for the rototiller, and as I followed it up and down and back and forth, I wondered if I'd be there for a planting the next spring.

Even as Mai and I were enjoying our time together, our closeness, and our intimacy, I continued my daily routine of pounding the virtual pavement, emailing out resumes and getting nothing in return. Software engineers, who had been the pampered darlings of Silicon Valley for a decade, were unable to find work, which meant that the chances for a technical writer were somewhere between slim and none. Probably less than that, even.

When I wrote the December rent check to Mai, I saw that, just as I'd calculated a year earlier, I was nearly out of money. I could probably manage one more month's rent, as long as I didn't want to buy food or anything. I thought about what my real options at that point were: a blue plastic tarp tent under a bridge over the Guadalupe River, trying to sweet-talk my ex out of free lodging until the job market improved, taking my chances at one of the homeless shelters around the valley, seeing if I could find a job at McDonald's or Starbucks, and petitioning Mai for rent relief (and asking her to feed me). I didn't think much of any of those choices, but I had to say something to Mai.