Chapter 2

"I want to ask you an intensely personal question."

As I unlocked the door to my apartment. "I promise an intensely personal answer."

"Fair enough."

I locked the door behind her and gallantly took her huge down-filled coat and stored it in the entry closet, thereby filling said minuscule closet to bursting. The cat - Drat, who had survived her sibling - madly attempted to (a) mug my ankles, and (b) cause me to injure myself (again) in a reflexive attempt to avoid stepping on her empty little head.

"Are you and Liz now or ever been 'an item'?"

I doffed and hung my coat, squeezed the door shut and turned to Fran. "In my dreams. Liz is lesbian And, more importantly, I doubt I could keep up with her intellectually. But - jeez, isn't she amazing?"

"Yes." Nodding furiously. "Where do you meet friends like that?"

"Here and there. Let's get a fire started."

She followed me into the living room. I crouched and grabbed a DuraFlame log and began loosening the wrapper.

"Just as an intellectual exercise - if I had been one of her 'clients,' what she told me tonight would have cost... ?"

I lit the log. "Possibly more than either of us - or both - can make in a week."

"And she took the time to help me and advise me just because you asked her to?" Fran cocked her head to one side and half-closed one eye. "Does she owe you or something?"

I shrugged. "Not at all. Liz is Good People; she gives of herself." Satisfied that the DuraFlame was well under way, I stood and put in place the fireplace screen to insure that my little apartment did not become a direplace. "She likes to help folks, she has exceptional, uh, 'people skills' and - like I said - she's really smart."

"And really gorgeous."

I gestured toward the love seat, where Drat, comfortably curled, was watching us warily. "Can I get you something?"

"An ashtray?" She held out her hand. In her palm was a joint. I sighed, inwardly; so much for clean and sober. "And a glass of water? She glanced around the apartment. Her gaze alighted on the wood shelves where I stowed my rather limited - and eclectic - CD collection. "Oh, and can I pick some music?"

"I'll get the water and ashtray while you pick a CD. If you tarry, I shall also pour myself some brandy."

"Hmmph." The theatrical expulsion of breath caused wondrous bobbles within that turtleneck. "You know fully well I'm going to tarry." I headed for the demi-kichenette to do my part.

"Mike?" she called as a I drew the water from the Brita. "How does a man with the Academy of St. Martin's in the Fields' recording of 'Four Seasons' also come to acquire all the CDs by Enya, a lot of Vangelis, monks chanting, Constance Demby, the boxed Led Zep collection - "

I delivered an ashtray and glass of water to the coffee table, headed back into the demi-kitchenette.

" - Spike Jones - who is Spike Jones? Never mind - a couple of rappers and Clannad. What's Clannad? Oh, yeah, and John Coltrane with Cannonball Adderly." All as I took down a snifter and poured a splash of Germane-Robaine brandy into it, OFFed the kitchen fluorescents and carried my personal treat into the living room. Drat spotted the snifter and bolted from the love seat to her second-choice hangout: under the corner dining table. The DuraFlame was catching nicely.

"OK. I've made my choice. Want to guess?"

I settled onto the love seat. The only illumination in the room was from the dim wall-mounted lamp over the dining table and the ever-increasing flames in the fireplace. I cradled the snifter in my palms, warming the brandy. A moment later, she settled in next to me, her lithe thigh against mine.

"Nope. Surprise me again."

She gave me a quick, telling glance. The "again" had piqued her. As intended.

She rose, crossed the room and bent to the minuscule sound system, studying the controls, then pushed the panel buttons, inserted the CD, started it and approached the love seat, doobie in hand. Nota bene: I really, really enjoyed watching her bend from the waist in those jeans. Her waist was minuscule, and her hips were very narrow and lithe. But her ass was a minor miracle. Maybe not so minor. I had no doubt that I could cover each of those gentle swells with a hand, slight doubt that a squeeze would fail to compress either and serious doubts that once my paws were attached to those glorious bubbles, Emergency Services teams would be able to remove my fingers.

"Why don't you always use real wood in your fireplace?" As she reached for the box of small, wooden matches I keep on the coffee table.

"Hold off on that for just a few seconds, please?"

She looked at her joint, the matches and then at me. "Sure."

"Do you know who does the soundtracks for DuraFlame TV ads?"

She shook her head. "I don't watch much TV. It's so trashy."

"Not if you're picky. I'll stack 'Law & Order' and 'The Sopranos' and most episodes of 'ER' against anything. Not to mention some episodes of 'Third Watch' and a few of 'Enterprise' Anyhow, the soundtracks for the DuraFlame ads are by Enya. I have that particular collection of CDs - "

At which moment, the CD player kicked in with the opening strains of Vangelis's "Themes" collection of movie soundtracks - specifically, the credit music for "Bladerunner" - he'd written. Good timing.

" - because I consider them masterpieces combining original visions, labors of passionate love and excitingly groundbreaking work that actually works. Rap is a new art form, a kind of poetry of the streets, and in that particular recording of 'Four Seasons,' you can hear the juices flowing. Those musicians were digging it and - "

"Clannad?"

"Enya's family group; Clannad means 'family' in Irish. In 'Harry's Game,' which most people first heard in the soundtrack of 'Patriot Games,' she broached the barriers with her own, new style of Celtic music, and she created a genre that I call 'Celtic Soul.' Which she does not, in my humble opinion, write or record with sufficient frequency. Her music haunts me."

She lit her joint and took a deep hit, then offered it to me. I shook my head and smiled: Not for me, but feel free. And I sighed, again, inside.

"You are - " Pause. " - even more complicated than I thought you'd be with music."

"Not more complicated; just a lot older. And don't get me started on literature." I sniffed the brandy. It was almost at the right temperature. You don't drink a really good brandy or cognac; you inhale it - literally. Most of the enjoyment is in the bouquet.

She took another deep hit, held it for a few seconds.

"You find me attractive."

"Be serious."

"Well, I mean, the last time I was here... "

Another hit. The doobie was about a third gone. Her pupils had changed. The fireplace was bright with flames reflected in those captivating eyes.

"The last time you were here - ?" I prompted.

"I kinda came on to you."

I recalled the feel of her nipple under my palm. The feel of her hug in that 32^nd-floor reception area. My reaction to both. And I nodded.

I sipped the brandy before I sniffed it.

"I mean, didn't you want to... "

I smiled. "Desperately. Do you remember what I said?"

She nodded, slowly. "You said, 'Fran, say that to me - do that with me - when we are both clean and sober, and I will be on you like white on rice.'"

I was again impressed. "I also said, 'No offense meant.' I think. Or hope. Or should have."

"You did say it, actually." She took another deep hit. "Don't I inspire 'lust in your heart'?"

"And in other regions far south of my heart, which you well know. What I want to know is: Why me? Why am I the object of your affections? For cryin' out loud, woman, I am old enough to be your father!"

She took another big hit on her marijuana, then carefully stubbed it out. "Don't toss this one into the fire, OK?"

And then Fran focused those dark beams on me and said, softly, "Because you don't just want to fuck me; you want to know and make love with me. Do you have any idea how precious and rare that is for me?"

"... Yes." Because I knew it was likely that to the vast majority of people who hit on her - and isn't that just the loveliest expression? - Fran wasn't a person they wanted to know or even fuck with so much as a trophy to whom they could point or a trinket to flaunt. For many of them, it wasn't even a matter of straightforward lust; it was totally self-centered ego-boosting, as in: See what I have? Isn't it gorgeous and exotic? Isn't it sexy and compelling? And it's with me. Always the key word: a first-person pronoun.

I was watching her eyes closely, watching the grass change her gorgeous pupils, watching the relaxation spread through her.

"What was that 'again' about?"

Sooner than I expected. I stalled, sipping my brandy.

"You're stalling."

"You're right." Another sip. "Because I don't know exactly how to phrase this."

"Try bluntly."

Another sip. "OK. I've got a few personal rules to which I try to hew. I do not seek involvement with anyone in a seriously committed relationship. I will not go to bed with a lassie, no matter how attractive or willing, who is clearly not in sufficient possession of her faculties for whatever reason to say, 'Yes.' I pay forward without any expectation of return. There's other stuff, but it's not really relevant. The brandy is starting to hit me."

"I guessed," she said, and slammed me with that smile, that supernova smile, the smile that could light Charon, Pluto's rogue-asteroid moon.

Then the smile softened. "You still haven't told me the origin of that 'again.'"

I had to look away. She reached for the afghan, then turned, lithe as a cheetah, and somehow flowed down onto the loveseat until she was on her back with her head on my left thigh - the one farthest from her torso. With a quick movement of her arm, the afghan was covering most of her and my legs and lower body. I suddenly realized that the afghan was older than she was. The dead joint was in her other hand.

"Please tell me."

I took a deep breath. "Your perception is beyond your years and - I hope - your experience. You think about what you have observed, and when you have something to say, you speak in complete sentences; few people do. You are, as you know, breathtakingly beautiful and incredibly, compellingly sexy. Your mental processes are so well-ordered and even, well... disciplined, that you can be stoned out of your skull and remember exactly what was said to you and how you replied. And you're here, with your head in the lap of a man older than your father... pulling his hand to your perfectly gorgeous left nipple that I have been aching to - "

"I want you to. Not because of the smoke," she sighed, eyelids shuttering to conceal those stunning orbs. "The last time I was here, it might have been the relief of feeling so comfortable for the first time in so long, so long... "

I felt that wonderfully hard nipple beneath my palm again. I watched the bulge of my hand being moved by hers beneath the afghan. I took a sip.

"I considered for a long time, OK? I decided around three this afternoon that I wanted to spend the night with you. Maybe many nights. Maybe all of them. How does that sound to you?"

Her eyes opened.

I stared at her. She had shocked me.

"Why me, Fran? Why me? You could have any guy you want."

She looked away for moment, and when she looked back, I knew what she was going to say before she spoke.

"It's my choice. And that is what is most important to you. Do you remember the first time we spoke?"

I nodded.

"Wellll..." She re-lit the joint from a Bic I hadn't known she had, took a deep hit, swallowed the smoke. "OK, I'm gonna tell you something - but only if you vow never to repeat it."

"Do you want to tell me?"

She immediately nodded too vigorously, too slowly.

"I won't spill it."

"When I approached you, it was after I'd watched you for a week. I'd been working mostly as a PA." Photographer's Assistant; a gofer. "I'd asked some of the other PAs - " Who tended to be young and nubile. The art directors at that agency were notorious horndogs " - about you. And they said you were pleasant, friendly, courteous - "

"And always prepared. The overgrown Boy Scout."

She grinned almost impishly. "And they said you never hit on any of them, never tossed a double-entendre, but you were always helpful. And always courteous, treating them as equals. They all felt comfortable around you." She pressed my palm against her breast. "Did you know a couple of the harem had a crush on you - at least, the hots?"

I shrugged. "I suspected."

"And those were the ones you showed the pictures of your granddaughter." Statement.

I sipped and nodded. What had happened to savoring the bouquet?

"You meant to deter them. It had the opposite affect." The cat mewled piteously, jammed her face into her Iam's Savory Mystery Food for a few loud and disgustingly enthusiastic chomps and returned to her hideout. "Suddenly, you were not only were this big, fairly goodlooking guy who was pleasant and friendly and nice and comfortable to be around, you were grandpa-bear. See Jane. See Jane melt. Melt, Jane, melt."

"It's good to know that." I'd have to find something else as a shield against the affections of nubile young women who happened to be colleagues.

"How come you never showed me those pictures?" Clear and direct as a laser.

"For one thing, I never really got a chance. For another, I saw you and your sweetheart walking together, and I always considered you someone in a committed relationship."

"I loved him very much. But he was just such a wuss..." She took another toke. I could feel her inhalation, because my hand - Hey, I'm not as dumb as I look - was still on her generous, sublime breast. "After a while, that really bothered me, and he didn't seem to care that it did."

"For a third thing, there's this significant difference in our ages. Four: We were colleagues at the time." She sat up, smooth and fluid and graceful. Fran again stubbed her joint out carefully, then glanced at the fireplace, where the DuraFlame was blazing beautifully. She somehow morphed herself into kneeling with her butt resting comfortably on her lower calves.

"Don't you want me?" Half-kneeling on the love seat.

"Be serious," I repeated. I'd had enough brandy at that point to behave impetuously. I grabbed her hand and led it to my groin. "You are quite possibly the most spectacularly beautiful, sexy and alluring woman I've ever met - and I've met a few. You are intelligent, literate and speak in complete sentences. You care about people. I want you so intensely that the last time you were here I had to... relieve myself... after putting you in that cab."

She giggled. "You... jerked off - because of me?" Impossibly, her nipple hardened even more. In fact, I think it throbbed. I was intensely flattered.

I felt the blood rushing to my face. And elsewhere - because she was squeezing and tugging on me. "Yes."

"I can't believe how hard you are. For me." Pause. "You still didn't explain that 'again.'"

I sighed. "OK. I didn't expect you to want to see me for purely social reasons again. I figured the first time was, well - because you feel comfortable here, with me. I figured the come-on originated in the weed... and gratitude. And that with the offer made, though declined, you'd feel the gratitude was satisfied and really want a more platonic relationship. If any."

She frowned at that. "What do you mean?"

"I thought that once you'd been here a few days, you'd meet up with some interesting people closer to your age and - "

She was shaking her head. More raven strands had escaped her ponytail holder.

"What?"

"Stop trying to figure out what someone else is thinking or feeling. Listen to the other person." She took a deep breath. Oh, goodies. "Remember when you suggested I also look into thinktanks and the like in D.C., Cambridge and L.A.?" She had stopped squeezing and tugging and withdrawn her hand.

"Yeah..." Another sip.

"I chose New York for a couple of reasons, including knowing a bit about the city, the U.N. is here, having friends here - and you. I wanted to see you. I like you. I trust you. I want you."

I could only blink.

"Yes, you. Accept it - you are desirable, grandpa-bear. Not just for being a nice guy, but for being sweet to everyone, respectful and pretty damn goodlooking. Even sexy."

I hesitated and replied, softly, "That's probably the first time I've blushed twice in one evening since my eighth-grade prom."

She suddenly leaned forward, took my face in her hands and kissed me. Not a deep, hungering, tongue-dueling kiss; a sweet (and sensual) and very moist and soft kiss that lasted no more than 10 seconds and left my lips a-tingle. Something else tingled anew.

"Still gonna throw me out?" She mouthed the words more than enunciated them.

"I am buzzed," I said, "and you're stoned."

"Yes." Grinning. Those lips.

"I want you. I want you to stay." I reached for the snifter - When had I set it on the end-table next to the love seat? - "And I'm very much afraid. I could get quite attached to you."

Her expression was unreadable, but she was - at that moment - completely focused.

"And I never thought I'd ever be in this position." Deep breath-time, Mike. "I told you about my personal rules - for me, not meant to be imposed on anyone else."

"So... 'clean and sober.'"

"Yes."

"How clean?"

"The bottom drawer of the end table is a file drawer. It contains, among other things, the results of my last check-up, two months ago. The folder is labeled, 'MEDS.' Feel free. And I had a vasectomy."

A quick shadow passed over her face. That had some implications, to be sure.

"I had some frozen."

Relaxation. Did I mention how gloriously beautiful she was? Oh; sorry. "So I'm definitely clean. Not sober."

She actually looked away. "I'm a Latex freak, when it comes to one part of the anatomy."

"How many?"

"Three. One was my older sister."

Victims of the Plague.

"So, aside from that - clean and sober?" she asked, putting on that brave, beautiful face. so glorious that it could make me capable of ignoring the outrageous curves beneath the sweater.

"But neither of us is sober."

That impish smile. Oh, heavens above - those lips, that face, that body! I wanted her so badly that I literally ached.

"How about... " Sip. "How about this: I will put a couple of real wood logs on yonder fading DuraFlame, you re-light your joint, I get another splash of brandy, and we sleep here: You on this love seat and me in the bed, because I'm old and don't fit well on this thing. And if, in the morning, you have changed your mind, we can be purely platonic pals while I prepare breakfast - fruit and cereal - "

"And good coffee."

" - for you. Since it is Saturday morning, grandpa will have bacon and eggs and english muffins."

She was glaring at me.

"What?"

"Stop referring to yourself that way. I know how old you are. Do you? Alan Shepherd was 64 when he piloted an Apollo mission to the Moon."

I had to laugh. "Fran, I knew Alan Shepherd - " True; I had interviewed him. " - and I can tell you, I'm no Alan Shepherd."

She looked for a moment as if she would burst, and then she did - with laughter. "Thank you, Lloyd Bentson." When she calmed, she quietly asked, "And if I haven't? Changed my mind, I mean."

"Ummm, I'm sure you'll think of some way to let me know."

She made a great, theatric show of thinking it over before nodding slowly. "Sounds like a deal to me."

"Wait - one more thing."

Fran looked at me as if suspecting she was betrayed.

"If you stay, you'll have to indulge me in my regular Friday-night activity."

"Which is - ?"

"I'm going to watch a 'Sopranos' tape followed by a 'Law & Order' rerun on A&E. Followed by another 'Sopranos' tape, optionally. Yours and mine."

Her lips quirked, fought, finally surrendered to a smile. "You're pretty confident I'll want to see more, aren't you?"

Sip. I lumbered to my feet. "See? Perceptive beyond your years." I made my way to the firewood rack.

We finally turned off the VCR and TV just about the time the dawn birds began to sing. We had watched several hours of "trashy" television.

"Just one more? Please? What happens to Uncle Pussy?"

"That's up to you." I tossed a pillow to the love seat, along with an extra blanket and the afghan. Then, with the embers subsiding behind the direscreen (_not a typo), I dug an oversized blue tee-shirt from a dresser drawer, tossed it to Fran, staggered into the bedroom and fell on the bed. I was very grateful it was Saturday morning.

Sometime around 7:30, I was (semi-)awakened by the weight of a lithe young form quickly pulling back my bedcovers, climbing into my bed and pulling the aforementioned bedcovers back into place over both of us. And then snuggled against my back. I rolled over and urged a reversal of positions, so I was spooning her.

"That feels so good," I whispered.

"Exactly," she breathed. "Would you mind if we just kinda snuggled for a while?"

"As long as you like."

Pause.

"Mike?"

"Mmmm?"

"Where have you been all my life?"

"Waiting for you. Sleep."

I nuzzled my face into the back of her neck, into all of that wonderfully fragrant raven hair, which had been freed of its ponytail holder. I held her in my arms - the left arm already going to sleep - and savored the warmth and sinuous press of her against me... and, no, not just the feel of her compact butt against my cock or her racially ridiculously oversized breasts against my forearms. I think, at that point, feeling her relaxed in my embrace, that I had to admit to myself something basic: I was falling for her - hard. I could only hope and pray that she it was reciprocated, at least for the morning. The alternative terrified me.

I think I stifled a sob. And held her while I could.

Morning in Murray Hill is not exactly what most will find "On Walden Pond." But it does have its moments. Songbirds do come to Murray Hill, the area between 30th and 39th streets, from Madison Avenue to the East River. They perch on the trees (which help convert CO2 to O2) - many planted thanks to funds from the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association -

"Are those birds I hear?"

I nodded between her shoulder blades. "Blackbirds, sparrows, starlings, a few jays and even the occasional cardinal." The tee-shirt, which had reached to mid-thigh on her, was now around her waist

She shifted and took my hands in hers, and she led them from her abdomen to her breasts, placing them over her abundant tits and hard nipples.

"I want you inside me so much," she moaned. A plea, as if that was necessary. She pressed her perfect butt back against me and flexed her warm, velvety but exceedingly tight ass cheeks around my raging hard-on. "I want that connection, that communication."

"So do I," I breathed as I reached down between us with my left hand and guided my aching connection to her communication. "I want to say something I don't say much but - "

"I know," she sighed as I pressed into her.

I groaned. It wasn't just the pleasure of her tightness on me, or even the intense heat of her - more than I'd ever experienced before - but it was the... well, "oneness" comes to mind; also: "completion."

"I - Uh! - didn't expect - Uh! - you to be so - Uh! - thick."

And I hadn't expected her to be so sopping wet. "Uncomfortable?" I wheezed.

"It's great - Uh! - once I - Uh! - get used - Uh! - to it!"

After about five minutes of sloughing in and out, she wordlessly urged me onto my back. This required disengagement; no good. Then she crouched over me and took me into her again, with her feet widespread over my hips and her sitting up so the only contact was one prick (mine) inside one wet, clasping and shockingly warm pussy Anyhow: Good. Make that: Outstanding!

She rocked her lissome hips up and down, back and forth, around and around. There was no way any man with a body temperature approaching 98.6 could withstand it for long.

And she knew it. From the expression on my face - I think the word is "rictus" - and the way my hips suddenly began ratcheting at her.

She didn't cum, though. I wish I could say she did. When I pulled her wee hips up to straddle my head and lower her sparsely haired cunny to my mouth (while I gasped for breath), she did, and I kept slobbering. After her second or third, I pulled her down against me, to cuddle and nuzzle her.

"Wait." She raised her pelvis, reached down to my still stiff - but not throbbing - dick and slid herself onto it. I watched her face slacken momentarily.

"That was good, Mike." Sighed, almost breathless. Against my collarbone. "It felt like you came a lot in me."

"I usually do. Did that feel good?"

She nodded against my flesh. I tingled.

"When I was younger - "

"Miiiike... "

"Truth. When I was younger, I came a lot more. This is biological reality. The woman destined to become my ex-wife - to steal a phrase - sucked me off once and was overwhelmed by the amount of my ejaculate and - "

"'Ejaculate'?"

"Cum, semen - "

"I know what it means." She laughed, which I felt. "I mean, you still have your dick in me." She laughed again. Which I also felt. "It's just such a strange word to use."

"She was overwhelmed and - "

"Puked. Vomited. Tossed her cookies," she completed. Fran raised her head to stare at me. After a moment: "That really upset you, didn't it?"

"I have only once cum in a woman's mouth since. I keep remembering her retching..." I shook my head. My insides still went chilly with horror at the memory of her discomfort - as a reward for trying to gift me with pleasure.

She shifted to raise her head and look at me. "And that one time, it was a woman who said she liked it." Pause. "Liked the feeling of you pulsing in her mouth, swelling." Pause. "Enjoyed the heat and the force of it." Pause. "And, while she wasn't crazy about the taste or bitterness, it was the fact of it, the doing of it, that turned her on."

I nodded.

Fran put on an evil grin. "I get that urge, too, sometimes. There are moments when feeling my man lose control and just - " She shivered. Her face went blank for a moment. I felt her wee pussy contracting for a few seconds. Not wildly, mind you; just a bit. But she had clearly just cum again. "Some time, you'll see." She purred - literally - against my chest. And my dick, always pensive, began to stiffen anew.

"Know what I'd like right now?"

I tried to shrug, failed, replied: "What?" Creatively.

"Breakfast. I'm famished."

"Of course you are. You did all the work."

She clenched on me in reply.

"Lessee: fruit, cereal and good coffee. Right?"

"Right."

"And this being Saturday - "

" - with Fran, you'll have the same."

"Almost snatched the words out of my mouth."

She clenched again, giggled - honestly: giggled - and unplugged herself and scampered through the living room to the bathroom and the shower.

I was ready for her squeal: "This water is COLD!"

"Let it run."

She chewed on a slice of cantaloupe, swallowed. "I couldn't believe how thick your dick is."

"And what did you think of the civil jury's decision in the O.J. lawsuit vis-a-vis the criminal verdict?"

She blinked at me, coffee mug halfway to her wonderful lips. "Huh?"

"Just making breakfast conversation, the way you were." I bit into my (microwaved-) bacon and fried egg on a toasted english muffin breakfast sandwich. I masticated and waited. "It's called a non sequitor."

A moment of contemplation, then: "Oh. I think I see." Chomp. "Do I?"

"You will learn more, or you won't. I think you will."

She nibbled at a kiwi slice. She was wearing one of my bathrobes, the purple one, which was an absurdity on her. It was much too long, and there was no way to belt the waist and keep the top from flashing glimpses of snowy hillocks at me.

"That's much of what I find so attractive in you. You are like a sponge in your quest for learning. Your unbelievably gorgeous face, your undeniably alluring body, your radiant sensuality - and sexuality - Yes, they are an important part of it. But your desire to learn and understand are compelling to me." Another bite of the sandwich. I reached for the OJ.