Tell Me More

5

“BRING HIM TO BILL’S BIRTHDAY PARTY,” KIMBERLY said.

“Who?”

“The Leprechaun. I can be his rebound girl.” She propped her feet up on her desk and took another mouthful of coffee. It was Wednesday and ostensibly we were meeting to proofread the station newsletter and discuss the fine details of the station manager’s birthday party. She peered at the papers strewn over her desk. “Should this really be the Erotica Symphony?”

“What? No! It’s the Eroica, Italian for heroic. Please tell me there isn’t a T in the middle.”

“Just kidding.”

“And you can’t be serious about Patrick. He’s only been separated a week. Less than a week.”

She shook her head. “My sources tell me it’s been six months since they split up. He’s ready.” She tapped her pencil on her desk. “And when are you going to start dating someone?”

“I don’t really feel like it.” I considered telling her about Jason.

“Dating or telling me?”

At that point the phone rang. “Yeah, she’s here.” Kimberly winked at me with the receiver pressed to her ear.

“What is it?”

“Wait, honey,” Kimberly cooed. “You just sit tight.”

The door to her office swung open and a huge bunch of flowers appeared, almost masking the station receptionist.

“Ooh, who are they from?” they both squealed as I snatched the card out from the floral depths.

Mr. D., please. But these weren’t his style, I hoped, and they were far too expensive to be from Jason. I ripped open the card.

“They’re from Willis Scott.” I stared with disbelief and fascinated horror at the phallic floral exhibition in front of me, while Kimberly and the receptionist made excited, giggly comments.

“What does he say?” Kimberly plucked the card from my hands. “'I owe you lunch. Best, Willis.’ How cute.”

“Is it?” I stared in fascinated horror at the flowers, some of which I was sure had been genetically engineered by a scientist with a dirty mind. Nature could not be so crass.

“Of course. He’s getting ripe.”

“Like a cheese?”

“Ripe to make a major gift.” Kimberly reached for her Rolodex, flipped it over and began typing. “I’m emailing you his number. And his cell. He’ll be a change from those bearded intellectual bores you usually date—”

“Hugh did not have a—”

“Or those muscle-bound rock-climbing types—”

“One, four years ago before I met Hugh—”

“Or those pretty dancers who couldn’t decide whether they were bisexual or not—”

“I couldn’t help hanging out with other dance majors and that was a long time ago, and only one was—”

“So now you can date an adult,” Kimberly said with an air of finality. “And if you give me the Leprechaun’s email I’ll invite him to Bill’s party.”

I scribbled his email address on a Post-it. “I don’t know why I’m agreeing to let you pimp me for the station or corrupt my tenant.”

“I’m sure both of us will behave with the utmost professionalism.” She handed me a paper napkin as I spluttered coffee over her desk.

After six months of housesitting, friends’ sofas and occasional returns to Elise’s bed in a house that no longer felt like home, Patrick thought he should feel relieved to be in his own place. If only. He felt he didn’t belong in this small space, him and the half-dozen humming computers, the clean quiet of it all. Jo was a remarkably silent neighbor—he guessed she slept most of the day. He met her one gloriously sunny afternoon planting bulbs in the front yard.

“Daffodils,” she said. “The squirrels eat everything else.”

“Right,” he said.

“Are you coming to Bill’s party?”

He hesitated. “Maybe.”

“It’ll be fun,” she said, stripping off her gardening gloves. “Liz Ferrar’s coming, probably some other people you know. Everything okay in the apartment?”

“Yeah, it’s great, thanks.” He sounded wildly enthusiastic—he really needed to get out more—as though he were commenting on an orgy.

She usually left for work in the late afternoon and out of curiosity, and by the need to deal with his laundry, he entered the house later that day. The doorway to the apartment opened into the upstairs of the house—polished wood floors, white walls, all very ascetic, like a nunnery.

Except for the bathroom. The half-open door revealed a rack across the bathtub, with expensive underwear laid out to dry. Christ. Was she wearing something like that under her gardening outfit? Classy stuff, too. Sexy and silky and … stockings, too. A far cry from the faded Santa Claus panties, all that exotic lace and silk and satin. Underwear made to be displayed, slowly removed (or not at all), brushed over a guy’s face so he could catch her scent.

Grimly Patrick held on to his laundry basket. There was no way he was going to touch her underwear. Absolutely not. Just because he’d seen her naked once and admired her legs and liked her voice on the radio didn’t mean he had to … No point in touching anything, he argued with himself. They were just scraps of fabric. Now if she, or someone, was wearing them, that would be far more interesting—a nipple poking against taut silk, or a crisp of hair against dampened satin, or. He tried to summon up some good Irish Catholic guilt, and failed.

Something brushed against his leg and he almost dropped the basket. The damn cat, of course, looking at him with solemn, reproachful eyes.

“I get it.” Patrick hefted the basket. “Don’t tell her.”

A bloodcurdling scream came from downstairs. What the fuck. He dropped the basket and ran down the stairs and into the basement.

At first he didn’t recognize her and gave a yell of fear at the faceless stranger who stood screaming in the dim light. She wore a pair of Wellington boots with her jeans tucked into them, a long-sleeved sweater with rubber gloves and something over her face that he recognized, with incredulity, as a fencing mask. In one hand she held a pair of barbecue tongs.

“What the hell?” he shouted, in relief that it was only Jo.

“Get it off my foot!”

“What?”

“It moved!”

“Why are you here in the dark?”

“I don’t like to see their eyes.”

He snapped on the light. “Whose eyes?”

She pointed at her feet. The cat strolled forward and sniffed at her toe.

Patrick squatted to take a better look at the small scrap of fur that lay on her foot. “It’s okay. It’s dead.” He now saw the discarded mousetrap on the floor. “Why not just throw the whole thing out?”

“It’s wasteful.” She said it with a reproachful air. Then she screamed at him. “Don’t use your hand! You get could sick!”

He took the tongs and retrieved the mouse. “What day does the city recycling pick up dead rodents?”

“I throw them in the backyard.”

“Okay.” He unlocked the back door and threw the day’s catch out. “Jo, if it freaks you out so much, I could catch mice for you.”

She removed her fencing mask. “You would?”

“Sure. But why doesn’t the cat catch them?”

“Sometimes he does. I don’t think he’s much of a hunter. That’s real nice of you, Patrick, but you can’t use glue traps and they have their own peanut butter—”

“Consider it a term of my rental. Why do you wear a fencing mask?”

“One time a mouse wasn’t dead and when Hugh found it he let it go and it ran up his leg and bit his knee.”

“Inside his pants?”

“No, he wasn’t wearing … I mean, it was summer. Shorts.” She smiled. “I’m very grateful. Really. I have another trap over there. You’ll need the flashlight. It’s dark in that corner. I just hope they enjoy the peanut butter. It’s not organic, but it’s quite good.”

“Of course.” He found another small corpse with an expression of surprise on its face, or what looked like it. Under her cringing supervision he smeared more peanut butter onto the traps and reset them.

All the while he wondered what she was wearing beneath her jeans and sweater.

“Thank you for the flowers,” I said to Willis.

“I’d hoped you might call me.” He snatched two glasses of wine deftly from a circulating waiter and handed one to me. Around us the party was in full swing, held in the large open space in the middle of the radio station. Once the building had been a small parochial school and this had been the assembly room. I’d lost sight of Patrick, who’d been appropriated by Liz Ferrar.

I shrugged. I’d sent a polite email thank-you to Willis. I wasn’t about to make up any excuses. I took a small sip of the wine—not much, I had to be on air in ten minutes.

“So, lunch,” he said as though I’d made some sort of encouraging response.

“I’m flattered and all that, but you’re not really my type.”

He grinned. “You’re very direct. I like that.”

Oh, crap. I couldn’t win with this guy. So much for honesty. “Oh, I think Bill is going to cut his cake. I’d better—”

“Not for a while yet. So how about it? Lunch tomorrow? I’ll pick you up at twelve?”

Before I could come up with a conventional sort of response about checking my schedule, he grabbed my hand. “Look, I know you think I’m a flake because I’ve cut a few trees down in my time. We have different values. You’re a sort of hippie—”

“No, I’m not. My mother is a hippie. Just because I work in radio—”

“Whatever. I make money. I like money. I like spending money on girls.”

“Jesus, Willis, listen to yourself. I’m not a girl.”

“Woman, then. Women.”

“And I don’t like the idea of being some sort of money pit. What’s in it for you anyway?” I almost hoped he’d say fucking but even he wasn’t that crude.

“Jo.” His thumb caressed the back of my hand and to my astonishment it made me feel … well, probably more the way I should have felt during a night of fucking with Jason, the permanently erect. “I’m interested in you. I know you’re going to say I don’t know you, but I’d like to. We have different values. So what? It keeps things interesting. I have money and I guess you don’t. So let’s pool resources.”

“And what do I bring to this interesting relationship?”

“Willis! So glad you could come!” Kimberly bore down on us, deftly reorganizing her wineglass, plate, purse, napkin and various other odds and ends to kiss Willis’s cheek without pouring zinfandel down his pants. “Jo was just talking about y—”

“No, I wasn’t,” I interjected before Kimberly encouraged him any further.

“We’ll talk soon, okay?” And she was off in a cloud of social fairy dust, leaving me fuming and Willis in firm possession of my hand.

“We’d have fun,” he said.

My instinctive retort was to say I wasn’t into fun but I hesitated. Some fun might be good. I had a serious sort of job with strange hours and a very odd sex life—and I could seduce the pants off Willis and tell Mr. D. about it. I took another look at the clock on the wall.

“Time flies?” he said.

“I have to be in the studio. Watching the clock is a major part of my job. Okay, then.”

“Okay to lunch?” His face split into a huge grin.

“Sure. Pick me up here.” There was no way I’d let him know where I lived.

I made my escape to the studio, where our early evening announcer signed off and I pulled a few CDs, annoyed that I might miss the cake. I went online for the latest weather report and local news and closed the studio door but left the light on. This was one of the occasions when Neil or Bill would give guests the grand tour so they could have the pleasure of staring through the window at me.

I lined up a short piece to begin with and glanced at the phone. It was too early for him to call, but. I wasn’t sure he’d approve. And that raised some uncomfortable questions. Did I need his approval? Was I using Willis the way I’d used Jason? (Except that had been entirely spontaneous … hadn’t it?) And we’d parted on good terms with no expectations and … Willis was just so unlike the men I usually dated, but according to Kimberly I made bad choices in that area. I pulled out my cell phone and texted her to save me a piece of cake, and then watched the countdown on the music currently playing.

Cake was nice and simple and not sullied by issues of morality. Unless you were concerned about your weight or a wannabe dancer obsessed with keeping yourself to bone and muscle (and probably planning to barf it up anyway), cake was a pleasure, pure and simple.

The music ended and I came on air and made a short announcement. My philosophy was that we did not have personality announcers, but a smooth flow of music and if our listeners noticed the voice had changed, that was fine. But it was the music that kept them listening.

When I flipped the mic off someone knocked at the door and I got up to answer it. To my surprise it was Patrick with a plate of cake.

“Kimberly told me to bring this to you.”

“Great. Want to come in?”

“Sure.” He came in and looked around. “So how does all this work?”

I gave him my usual semitechnical explanation and offered him a seat. “Stay while I talk on air, if you like. Try not to sneeze.”

“I won’t.”

“You’d be surprised how many visitors have a coughing fit.” I took a quick bite of cake and put my headphones on.

This time I talked a little longer, giving a weather update and mentioning the music that would be coming up later, aware that I issued an invitation to Mr. D. This is when I can talk.

Then I hit the play button for the CD, faded the mic down and switched it off and removed my headphones.

“Do you get nervous?” Patrick asked.

“No. Some announcers imagine they’re talking to one person, or their pet. I don’t. If you think about how many people might be listening it’s unreal, intimidating. So I just talk.”

“And you like being here late at night?”

Well, yes. “I’m not always here late. I can put a show together by downloading music and recording the announcements, and that’s what I usually do if I want an early night. An intern comes in to make sure everything is okay and can step in to broadcast from the other studio if something goes wrong. But generally I work live.” I forked more cake into my mouth. “Thanks for bringing me this.”

“No problem.” He cleared his throat in the way men do when they are about to get personal. “Kimberly seems nice.”

“She is.”

“You’ve been friends for quite a while, she said.”

He was asking for a character reference, in other words. I thought I’d move things along a bit for him. “She’d probably appreciate a ride home, if you’re driving, that is.”

“Good to know.” He nodded in an emphatic sort of way. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Unless you’d like more cake?”

I told him I was fine and he left me to the quiet of the studio. Now and again a group of visitors came by, and I put my headphones on and looked properly busy at the console even if I wasn’t at that moment.

I was watching the clock. I was waiting for the moment when everyone left and my time with Mr. D. began.

“I’m worried I’m turning into some sort of fuck-bunny monster,” I said to Mr. D. before he’d barely had a chance to say hello. “It’s as though every guy I see, I’m eying up as a possible sexual partner.”

“Everyone?” I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

“Well, not everyone. Not Gerard Morgan. He’s one of our major supporters and I think he’s about eighty. I’d probably get his wife, Marilyn, as part of the deal, too—she keeps him on a short leash. On the other hand she’s a nubile seventy-five-year-old. They’re both pretty frisky, now that I think about it. I’m talking myself into it. See what you’ve done?”

“I’m not sure people aren’t eyeing each other up as sexual partners most of the time. Perhaps you’re being more honest than most of us.”

“I accepted a date tonight with someone I think is despicable.”

“Why?”

“My friend Kimberly—I’ve talked about her—persuaded me it would be a good idea, and she’s cultivating him for a gift to the station. She thinks I don’t date the right men.”

“I think she’s right.”

I twisted the phone cord. “And I accepted so that I could fuck him and then tell you about it. No, I know what you’re going to say. It’s my decision and all that. I don’t have to fuck him and we can talk about something else. I know. So why am I doing this?”

A silence. “There must be something you like about him.”

“He’s physically attractive. Not my type, but he’s handsome. And there’s something about him—he’s crude and materialistic but he doesn’t pretend to be anything else and I admire him for it. No, the real reason I find him attractive, Mr. D., is that I want to have sex with him and then tell you about it.”

“And this makes you feel—what? Guilty, sad?”

“Are you a shrink in real life?” I grinned. “No, it makes me feel excited. It makes me feel powerful and sexy, and I like that. But at the same time, it worries me.”

“I don’t ever want you to feel obligated to me. I love to talk with you. We can talk about whatever you like. You don’t have to describe your conquests to me unless you want to.”

“But I do want to.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. How long do we have?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

“I’d like to have you talk on air seconds before you come. I’d like to hear that roughness in your voice and know you’re speaking to me, something you and I share. Will you do that for me, Jo?”

I hesitated. My next recording was cued, and the notes I’d use to make my next announcement lay ready on the console. I could do it, but what would his next demand be? “If I do that, will you ask me to come on air next?”

“No. That moment is for me. I don’t want to share that with anyone.”

I squeezed my legs together. I was alone in the station—I’d made sure of that—but I wondered if he’d delayed calling so he could specifically ask me to do this. In which case, I’d put him on the spot, too.

“Unzip yourself,” I said. I put the phone on speaker and heard a rustle, the slide of his zipper. “Are you hard?”

He gave a soft, sexy laugh. “What do you think?”

“Describe your cock for me.”

It was something of a test. I didn’t want bullshit about his hard eight inches because in my experience eight inches, or more, was something that existed only in men’s imaginations.

Besides, who wanted a dick the size of a baseball bat pummeling their insides?

“It’s hard—I mean, hard in the sense of difficult—to describe something I’ve seen so many times. It has a slight curve to the right—I suppose because I’m right-handed. My pubic hair is dark brown with a few gray hairs, quite tightly curled. My cock is brown, darker than my skin, but the head is dark red. It’s very smooth. I’m running my fingertips up and down the ridge on the underside. Teasing myself.”

“Go on.” I traced my fingers lightly over my breasts. My nipples tightened.

“Now I’m cupping my balls with my other hand. They’re warm and heavy. Tightening against my palm.”