Chapter 11B

At ten o'clock Fiore, looking me over with his hands on his hips, grinned at me from his big ruddy face. "So! Still with smoke on your breath, heh? You're lucky you have only light work today! Every other day, we do the heavy work! Today you work light. You are going to learn to stretch and bend like a rubber band! I will show you! Now -- onto the table!"

Again, Fiore flipped and kneaded me on the massage table, showing me how to detect which muscles and tendons were too tight and required either more work or more rest. Then he showed me the stretching movements that the dancers in his gym performed. I strained and grunted through all of them. Then: "On the bicycle! And don't fall off!"

"This is light work?" I remarked, climbing onto the exercise bike. I started pedaling.

"No!" Fiore exclaimed. "You destroy your knees moving that way! Remember what I told you! Start again!"

By eleven o'clock, huffing and puffing, I was tired but definitely awake. I took Fiore's advice and stopped in a shop on Madison Avenue to buy a pair of first class workout shoes, then walked downtown to 32nd Street to meet Ronnie in the building where she worked.

She appeared at exactly noon, hurrying across the expansive lobby of the building, wearing a gray business suit. She carried a wide cardboard artist's portfolio. Ronnie had a woman's face whose slightly squared jaws and narrow nose might have been considered a liability were it not for her overall quality of soft femininity and her dark, pretty eyes. Not one to smile constantly, her normal expression was a serious, reflective, older one, with a hint in her eyes of some unspoken sadness. When she did smile it was an easy, playful, contagious one that brightened her whole face. I smiled at her as she approached, aware that her winning grin and friendly blue eyes were beginning to affect me warmly. She greeted me with a lilting "hello-ooo" and a flitter of raised fingers.

She asked, "Did Fiore leave anything for the rest of us?"

"I'll be okay, as long as I can sit at lunch."

"No problem," she said, chuckling. "No extra charge for chairs at this place."

We walked quickly along the crowded street toward a restaurant on 35th Street. She asked about my workouts with Fiore. I described the special movements Fiore taught me and the diet he assigned.

"Uk," she said, making a face, "Brewer's yeast. Yeah, he made me take that stuff once. Three tablespoons a day, right?"

"Me too."

She eyed me skeptically. "You don't cheat, do you?"

"Nope."

"What dedication. I had to lay off that stuff. It made me so healthy I stayed horny all the time. Couldn't stand it."

We sat at a small table near the window of the second floor of the restaurant she took me to. There was no lack of material to talk about. We shared many interests. I found Ronnie to be quite easygoing, despite her occasionally self disparaging remarks.

"I can't believe," she said, salting her food, "that you worked for two years day and night to come up here. You must be very determined." She was interested in every detail of what it took to keep a paper route, a subject I considered tedious, but she wanted to know about it anyway. Then she asked about growing up in the Lauderdale Courts. "You know," she said, "Elvis Presley grew up there, too." I told her I'd seen Elvis in the neighborhood and that he still visited my stepdad's supermarket now and then, accompanied by a string of pink Cadillacs.

She winced. "Oh, the Cadillacs! Almost as bad as his movies, and some of his stuff is just too teeny. But I love it when he gets into the old rhythm and blues stuff." Pouring cream in her second cup of coffee, she sang lightly, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog... ," She concluded with a droll, "Am I awful, or what? Wanna see me wiggle?"

Out on the sidewalk, she asked me to hold still and put my glasses on. I balked, but she insisted, "Oh, come on, let's see what we have to work with. We'll still be friends."

I donned my glasses and let her have a look at me. She gazed at me, studying. I began thinking she was actually quite cute, with a casual, girlish charm and an easy acceptance of me as I was -- a far cry from my carping relatives.

"Yeah," she conceded, "Martha's right. New frames will make a b-i-g difference. Come on, we're going to a place that not many people know about."

On the way, she asked me about my theater work. She was awed that I had gone onto the stage before I was a teen. Teasing, she wanted me to perform a bit from one of my former roles. By the time we arrived at the frame vendor's place on the fourth floor of a building near Macy's, I felt easy and comfortable with Ronnie. I didn't wonder that she was a close friend of Martha's. And she was the first young woman I knew other than Martha who expressed a serious interest in and knowledge of the arts I'd left behind for my paper route.

In the frame shop I tried several designs, with Ronnie giving her impressions of each. "Really," she said, "I like every one you picked out. But you tell me which one you like best." I put on my favorite and she looked me over carefully, and then nudged her lips approvingly. "Right. Thin, dark frames look really good on you. They're drop-dead gorgeous, Steven. You look seriously like a New Yorker."

The frames cost forty-five bucks -- a pretty sum in those days, considering that my originals cost a mere fifteen. The salesman behind the counter told me I could have my lenses mounted on the premises for eight bucks if I would wait an hour. I agreed. Ronnie and I sat in a corner and chatted until she was due to return to work.

"You get involved in so many fascinating things," she said, sitting beside me and looking pensively down at the floor. She had a slim figure and a slinky, easy manner of sitting and moving. "I'd give anything to have brains and endurance. I just slug along. Don't even know where I'm going yet. Feel like I'm twenty-two going on sixty."

"You've got a start in the design business, though. Back in Memphis, women don't even know such jobs exist."

"Yeah, Martha told me about Memphis. Minimum Wage Capital of the World, right? God, Mom, and apple pie?"

I nodded. "Home of the red, white and blue -- Red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer. Memphis would be a waste of your talent and personality."

"Awww. Shucks. But those Southern accents are so cute. They never get it right in the movies. Yours is faint, but just right. Martha's is almost gone."

I leaned toward her, and she leaned closer to hear me. "Tell me," I asked furtively, "all the salesmen in this place... why are they wearing those little black caps?"

"Those what?" she asked, leaning closer.

"Those little black caps."

She widened her eyes and covered her mouth with her hands, grinning broadly behind them. "Those little black... ?" she began, then she bent over with soft laughter as I watched, confused. She straightened up, and took a few seconds to calm down. "Oh, that's precious! I have to tell Martha about this!"

The little black hat, she whispered, was a yarmulke; the salesmen there were Hassidic Jews. I blushed, feeling like a complete country idiot again. She chuckled over it until she left for work. "You're such fun, Steven. I can't wait for us to get together Wednesday." She gave me another of her innocent pecks as she left.

Soon my frames were ready. I put them on, bought a new hard case for them, and headed for the street. The new frames felt better. The city looked better. I had made a friend of Ronnie. I wasn't wearing those loathsome horn rimmed gadgets. Instead of taking a bus to Martha's, I stuffed my old tennies in my shopping bag and laced on my new workout shoes. I broke into a slow jog up busy Third Avenue. As I huffed along in the breeze, I was surprised that no one on the street took notice. I could like New York, I thought; I didn't seem so uneasy about myself in New York.

I streaked up the stairs to Martha's apartment and looked at myself and my new frames in the mirror. Not bad. The frames were very thin, barely visible. In the kitchen I swallowed my midday ration of yogurt, pills, and yeast. I took an extra dab of yeast. The food made me helplessly drowsy. It was sultry in Martha's place. I took off all my clothes and plopped onto the bed and slept for almost three hours, dead as stone.

In the late afternoon I awoke and took a shower and dressed. Settling onto the sofa with my New York Times, I awaited Martha.

She returned late, around five-forty-five, looking cheerless and enervated in the brown two piece suit in which she had been so fresh and pretty a few hours before. I opened the door for her and grinned, wearing my new frames. Unsmiling, she entered sluggishly and plopped her purse onto the dining table.

I stood behind her, waiting, my new frames sitting squarely on my face in broad daylight. "Whaddya think?" I asked the back of her bobbed head.

She turned around and looked directly into my eyes, and leaned close to me, and then put her hands on my shoulder and, gazing intently at my mouth, pushed me backward against the wall and pressed full length against me. She held my face in her hands. "What do I think of what?" she asked distractedly, her lips coming closer to mine, her eyelids lowered sensuously.

"The frames," I said.

Ignoring the frames, she raised one hand and gently touched my lips. She murmured throatily, softly, "Outstanding."

"You didn't look," I said.

"Yes I did, they're lovely. Steven, I hate the New York City education establishment. I hate the politics, the shortsightedness. But I love your mouth. I've been thinking about your mouth all day." Still pressing against me and watching my mouth, she unbuttoned her suit jacket.

I had not expected her to be so direct, willing, and ready after a day of work. I cleared my throat. "I learned what a yarmulke was."

"You did? You gonna start wearing one?" She slipped the jacket off her shoulders and let it slither to the floor without looking.

"And had a nice talk with Ronnie."

Gently she wedged one leg between my thighs. "Fiore didn't wear you out, did he?"

"No, it was okay."

Her voice was soft, sultry, whispery. "Steven, I demand that we fuck immediately."

"Right here? Now? Standing up?"

"Hmm... I didn't think of that. Can we do it standing up?"

"I guess. Horses do, don't they?"

"Not face to face."

"Well, they're horses, what do they know? I bet we could. We've both been very resourceful so far."

"Resourceful, yes. Not necessarily lucky."

I looked at her face and she looked at my mouth and I gathered the hem of her skirt and ran my hand up her leg.

She whispered, "Careful, hon, don't tear my hose. They're so expensive." I cupped my hand between her legs over the hose and panties, my thumbs negotiating their way through the garter straps. She was warm and humid.

"Here," she whispered, "I'll pull them off. You get your pants off."

"Lucky? Why did you say 'Not necessarily lucky'?"

I heard things snapping under her skirt, and her shoulders jerked as her hands moved under her suit, and I guessed that as we spoke she pulled her panties down and kicked them away somewhere. She stayed against me, looking into my eyes and at my mouth, her lips nearly on mine.

"I think, " she whispered as she worked, "that the parts have to fit in a particular way, you know, for intercourse to be conducted between standing humans."

"But we're the higher species, we differ from lower animals in our ability to stand upright." I was joking. Surely we weren't going to really fuck like this, now. Again!

"I think we stood up to hunt, Steven, not to fuck -- No, don't do that."

"... Just reaching for the table lamp, so we can --"

"No. No seeing. Just hearing. Feeling. There's just enough light from the window. I wish it were darker."

"You realize, you're seducing me."

"I thought standing was your idea."

"I was naive and innocent. I didn't know it would lead to this."

She gulped when I raised her skirt and my cock grazed her bared cunt.

I said, "Look, you're already wet. I got you wet, didn't I? Hm, this is getting you hot. Isn't it? And you thought it was a silly idea. You're a fraud, you're as wicked as I am."

"You're one to talk, look how hard you are. Come on, get in me... in me, hon... Mmm. Push. Push. Wait, I'm not wet enough. Wait. Here, rub it on me, rub... Rub your tip."

"Ah."

"Hmm, he likes that, I felt him jump. Mm, don't move, no. Stay still. Stay still. Rub, I'm getting wet. Mmm." Her eyes closed, concentrating, and she breathed heavily. "Ooohh, yes. Yes. Now. Push now. A little more... A little -- oh, darn, I don't believe this."