The Search, Part One (adult content)
Jan 02 '05
The Bottom Line Copyright 2005 David MacDonald
http://www.epinions.com/content_4202406020: part one
http://www.epinions.com/content_4202471556: part two
http://www.epinions.com/content_4202537092: part three
http://www.epinions.com/content_4202602628: part four
This is somewhat of an unusual story. Don't ask me why I wrote it. All it originally was meant to be was a story about a woman sitting in a cafe waiting for her friend. But every once in a while, I'd add more stuff, flashbacks to her past, etc. And soon I started talking about the main character's brush with religion, which is odd because I'm one of those non-religious people, and my opinions have not changed after having written this story. I will understand if you don't agree with some of the sentiments expressed here, since it's not excatly pure of thought, and like I said, I'm an outsider when it comes to this subject.
This first part is probably the only part that would have anything really risque, but I thought you ought to be aware of this. Enjoy
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Damn, I should have worn my sunglasses today!
The white, scalding sunlight mercilessly jabs pins into my eyes, even as the impression of the pale blue sky was shimmering.
The September air was calm and clear, but with a frigid spark signaling the emergence of autumn. The cool touch could not cancel out the pain of the sun’s rays against the eyes, which was blinding enough at all months of the year.
I’d have to look down on my lap if I want to fully open my eyes. But damn it, the sunrays still crawl along the shadows beneath the tables and chairs.
Ah well. Looks like I have little choice but to keep looking straight ahead, then.
I’m on the lookout for someone, who is supposed to meet me here at this little outdoor cafe on Richmond Street. Someone who was supposed to have left her job at five p.m., even as it’s now 5:20.
I pictured her lingering around the spacious lobby, listening to idle gossip, perhaps even contributing some, before thinking about sweeping those glass doors out of her way. She probably was never in a big rush to leave, considering how government jobs pay a lot more. Well, those were the rumors I’ve heard.
Carol was often late for these meetings, typically. Ideally, we’d be meeting here at five p.m. every week at Cafe Diem, every Wednesday during the summer months, until this place finally closes up shop for the season sometime in September, or when it got unbearably cold. Whichever came first. Yet the reality was a little skewed.
I would sit here, like I do now, with two hot coffees, and wait for her. And it’s kind of funny, really. You’d think Carol would be forced to come on time, since government employees make a fetish of leaving on time, on taking extended lunch breaks, stuff like that, don’t they?
I, on the other hand, work at a Lebanese restaurant a few blocks away. I’m a waitress, and while it’s true my shifts are technically from such-and-such a time to another, it’s not always possible for me to leave right away, not if a customer takes a few extra minutes before deciding I’m allowed to take his plates of ravaged scraps away.
Yet the reality was that I, weary soul, was always waiting for her.
Don’t get me wrong, the Lebanese restaurant is a pretty good place. It’s not even the only one in Charlottetown. Even in a province as seemingly whitebread as this one, there’s still room for a few token multicultural establishments, to go alongside the Wendy’s and the Burger Kings and the McDonald’s and the Tim Horton’s. Although I suppose to many Canadians, fast food is pretty high class. And Tim Horton’s coffee is a part of our culture isn’t it?
The tips aren’t too bad, I suppose. It does help me get a few extra dollars to go along with the crappy wage I get. But I’m pretty used to it. Jobs aren’t easy to come by sometimes, especially in the winter, when the tourists are long gone, and all we’ve got is ourselves. I heard in those lobster restaurants up near Cavendish and Rustico some of the servers can get more than a hundred dollars in tips per night. Isn’t that great? I could live on that all year round, I’d say.
Carol on the other hand is a government employee so she doesn’t need tips to live on, I wouldn’t think. Even though she often insists she doesn’t make that much money. Maybe she and I can trade jobs for a week.
The other employees are fine. I really don’t have a lot to do with them, most of the time anyway. I haven’t felt comfortable about it. The other four waitresses are older, and/or married. Their have lives separate from my own. They’ve long ago established themselves, while I’m still in my twenties, and I’m not sure who I am.
Well, they have an image of who I am. I’m the cute, working-class single woman. Obviously, someone has to be the one, so it might as well be me. I’m sure it’s what gets me by even during the autumn doldrums, when there are fewer people passing through our doors. Of course, the customers would love to tip the hot young thing bringing out their meals.
A few months back, I suffered a slight but critical mental lapse before work. I arrived at the restaurant wearing not my blouse, but my white tank-top. I didn’t even suspect what I had done until I saw my reflection over the glass door beneath the restaurant's sign. As I hovered awkwardly at the front entrance, I had no will to retrace the seven blocks back to my apartment to change.
As the other women greeted me, they recognized my peculiar smile, and why it was so riddled with embarrassment.
“Hey, Sandra, nice shirt.” one of them would say.
I unwittingly indulged their teasing with the continuation of my shy grin. I couldn’t help it.
“You could get a lot of tips with that!” another waitress would say.
The cook deepened that theory a little further.
“If you were my waitress, I’d bus my own table and give you a fifty per cent tip!”
The remarks tickled me like scalpels against my skin, unwilling to puncture but panicking me all the same.
It’s funny, being a woman. How many guys would receive similar comments if they wore a casual shirt. Unless maybe it was unbuttoned, or torn just so, and if the shirt were on the right sort of guy......
Okay, okay, then maybe I’d look. Maybe I’d make comments too.
..... that tank-top. Well, all those comments would suggest it was a startling piece of fabric. But all it was, was a white, colorless item. What it did was accentuate all the attractive and not-so-attractive parts of my upper figure. Yet I’m sure if I were serving customers in this outfit, they’d notice my breasts, which were, to be fair, a pretty acceptable size, and not the curve of my back.
I thought my upper back was hunched over. If I walked at a certain pace, I think I’d appear as if I were leaning forward slightly. I’d always look as if I were about to bend over. But maybe that’s just me.
But I think any dissatisfaction a customer may have had with my posture, or indeed my service, would have been canceled out by my cute little-girl voice and my boobs. Two out of three ain’t bad.
Oh, and then there were my eyes. You see, for quite a long time I conspicuously avoided wearing my glasses. I still don’t wear glasses. Which could explain my frustration this afternoon as I sit on the side of Richmond Street feeling my eyes about to burst from the sun. I never even thought to buy sunglasses for myself.
But at least today I’m wearing contacts. Back then, I had real glasses. I just wouldn’t wear them.
Women are strange creatures, I should know. I should have known to be smart enough to wear my glasses, considering I’m very nearsighted. But for some reason, even though I’m cute, so I’ve been told, apparently I wouldn’t believe I was cute enough. So I would often go to work with naked, aching eyes.
Naturally, if the pain got too great, I’d resign myself to wearing the glasses on one odd day or another. One of the other women would make a comment in surprise. So of course they weren’t going to see those glasses again any time soon after that.
It was the same when I used to go out to the bars on the weekends. Sometimes, I used to go with Carol, and I never would wear my glasses. Carol knew I needed to wear them, and she wondered why I wouldn’t wear them. I told her, I don’t look good in them. It’s true, I look bad. All that wire around my eyes, like someone was trying to obscure a half-decent photo. Yuck.
If I ever was with an interesting guy, or indeed, any guy, I really didn’t want to have my expression buried by bifocals.
This even applied to the time I actually was foolish enough to go on an outing with the cook. He didn’t get a chance to bus his own table for me. But who needs to bus one’s table when the individual is the one who’s being served?
This was around the first part of July. We went to Dooly’s, the local pool hall on Kent Street. He seemed like a decent guy, but I really didn’t get a chance to talk to him nearly as much as I did the other waitresses. I think there must be some sort of class divide, between the servers and the kitchen. There seems to be some invisible stereotype which says kitchen help, looking a little more unkempt than the waitresses, standing in the hot kitchen getting stained and dirty from food and other products, are somehow lower than we are.
Makes no sense, really, since all of the employees here were pretty much in the same boat, money-wise.
His name was Bruno, but he didn’t quite strike me as a Bruno. When I think of a name like that, I picture its owner to be particularly brutish, the sort of greasy guy you see in stupid movies with occupations such as “mechanic” or “garbage man.”
He didn’t look that sketchy, which was good. He was a few years younger than I was, I think. He was French, although he sounded pretty English to me, until he told me otherwise. His family lived here all their lives, after having moved from northern New Brunswick before he was born. His family was French, but he was able to learn English right from the start of his life, therefore his accent was fine by me. Actually, perhaps a little too fine, because he actually learned the language properly, unlike the rest of us, tainted by local accents and lingo.
“This isn’t really a good place for you, isn’t it?” I ask him, as we sat on one of the sofas near the artificial fireplace.
“It’s only smoking I’m trying to quit, not drinking!”, he jibed.
“Oh yes, I forgot,” I smile.
“Only one sin at a time, now, okay?” he said.
He had been off the cigarettes for quite a while. Everyday I would see him chewing nicotine gum, and I knew of a nicotine patch, although I never seen him wear it. He would often tell me any time he saw someone smoking outside, he’d quickly pop another piece of gum in his mouth.
“After a while,” I laugh, “you’re going to have to go to a monastery for a Friday night, because you’ll be giving up all your sins!”
“So.... what do you like to do?” I asked.
“How about another drink?”
“Sounds great!”
I stood up and began to walk towards the bar. My foot caught itself underneath the edge of the sofa facing ours, and I fell as far as my hand landing against the sofa’s cool plush arm.
“Maybe you ought not to drink another one, huh?” he joked.
“Oh!” I would pretend. “Don’t you know it? But I’m one of those women who’s reflexes improve with drink!”
“Don’t tell that to the wrong people!”
“I sure won’t!”
Carefully winding around the objects and people in the dimmed room, I saw a permanent film, a dull blur across my eyes. Me and my damn insecurities! I’m truly amazed I didn’t suffer any critical injuries on the Friday nights I used to go to the clubs.
I couldn’t see if his eyes were wandering to the front window, and the people walking outside, the only place they were legally allowed to smoke, if they desired it. For all I know he was being tempted yet again, and was pumping stick after stick of gum into his mouth, and overworking his already fatigued jaw.
But when I returned with another pitcher of beer, his mouth was empty......
..... later that night, after a few more drinks and some bad pool, I took him back to my place. Now, I was feeling tipsy on top of my blurred vision. My plan was to make him forget about smoking a little bit longer.
“What other sins have you disposed of?” I asked.
“No others, fortunately......” He placed his hands along the indent of my spine.
“Well, you’re in luck... because I’ve not been rid of any sins either.....”
I kissed him, pressing my body against his. It was enough to get him into a different frame of mind. His erection pressed against my thigh. But it was okay; I felt myself melting into a puddle of anticipation.
He pulled off my shirt, dispersing my hair all over the place as he did. Strands got into my eyes, making my blurry vision even more cloudy with a curtain of dark-brown ribbons.
A rift sounded from the front of my bra, as he peeled it away from me. He gripped my breasts. I could tell he was impressed with them. I wasn’t sure what was so special about them, but to each their own, I guess.
He plucked my erect nipples like they were strings. I grinned as he played them. I was amused at my own arousal.
I took off his shirt. As I placed my hands on his body again, I saw a gray patch on his arm. It was that elusive nicotine patch. It seemed like a dark band-aid, but it was healing a wound far less tangible yet more greater in scope.
I slide my fingers over his upper arm, feeling nervous to let my fingertips touch the patch.
“So.... will your skin taste like I’ve just chewed a whole jar of tobacco?”
“I don’t know... nobody’s mentioned it to me before.”
“So I’m not the only one, then......” I rub my face on his chest. Hmm, seemed all right.
“... maybe....” He sank his fingers within my bed of hair. “.... but does it matter right now?”
“.... not really........”
We went into the bedroom, and occupied the bed. For a while, we were content with embracing each other and getting deep into our kisses, but soon it wasn’t enough, as he bent around to my back, and began tasting it.
He soon found the path beneath my skirt, sliding his palms over the backs of my legs until he found the elastic of my panties.
I giggle helplessly. “Don’t snap it! It’ll hurt!”
“Don’t squirm around then, and I’ll actually... be ... able... to ....” He was struggling, I think. “.... take these off......”
But he eventually did.
He burrowed his head within the tunnel of my skirt. I felt his face against my ass, as his tongue tried to find my vagina.
Everything was still pretty fuzzy. But I could just close my eyes and lie loosely as he tasted me. Sex was still good even without perfect sight.
I raised my ass higher, so he could find it a little easier. He had no problem after that.
Eventually, he escaped from the confines of my skirt, stretching his body over mine. I heard the tearing of zippers behind me.
“Do you want me... to go inside....?”
“Please....”, I sigh.
I roll over on to my back, to face this eager soul above me. I hiked my skirt up and opened my legs, inviting him.
His fingers indelicately splayed across my sex before he went inside. I think he wanted to believe I was really there, that I was really this woman who wanted to have sex with him.
“I’ve been waiting ....”, he pleaded, “... to find myself here.”
“Were you?”, I smile.
“Yea... every day you came to work, I’d think about you. I wish I had you on the pastry table....”
Huh?
“... instead of ... all the pies and rolls and biscuits ... I’d squeeze my hands over your soft body....”
“Yea... keep talking!” I panted. He moved faster.
“... I’d put whipping cream all over your body.”
“... ah yea....!” Suddenly I was picturing work to be something a bit more hedonistic than it really was; with so many opportunities for naughty distraction.
“... and eat you up like a lemon cream pie.”
“Oh, baby......that sounds great!” Anything sounds great during the heat of passion.
“Oh, shit!” , he sighed.
I felt his body jerk as he came. My walls rippled over him.
He eagerly wanted to continue, but it was no use. He slipped out. We just lay close to each other for a while, before we slowly eased ourselves into separate bodies again.
Once I was my own body again, I involuntarily smoothed my skirt down. I looked at him, he with a very satisfactory expression on his face.
“You look tired,” he said.
“Y.. yea, that’s true.”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel fine,” I said.
I slept with a coworker. I just realized this now.
“Are we going to act weird around each other now?” I asked.
“Why do you say that?”
“Just wondering......”
“I see......”
He pulled his pants back up, and then continued resting on the bed, more relaxed.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, as I step up to go to the bathroom. I felt all of his stickiness over my thighs and needed to clean it up. Sex can be so messy.
Once I returned, he asked me a question which would haunt me for quite a while.
“Do you wear contacts?” he asked.
“No... no I don’t.” I was fearful, inexplicably.
“Oh, just because I see these glasses.” He picked up my glasses from the counter. I completely forgot they were there.
Oh shit! He found my secret shame. This spontaneous evening suddenly felt so dirty. The night degraded even further when he actually tried them on!
“I can’t see a damn thing through these things,” he scoffed. “You must be as blind as a bat!”
“Oh, give me those!” I was furious but I did my best not to let it show. I curled my mouth in uncertainty. I had to make sure he was fooled into believing I was just teasing him.
I felt like such an idiot, as I tore the glasses away from his scalp. One of the hinges bent the upper lobe of his ear as I carelessly removed the glasses. I’m sure he felt a tremble from unforeseen bending of cartilage.
“I didn’t intend for you to see those,” I said.
“Oh, come on, I was only fooling around.”
“I know.”
“Now I understand why you were stumbling around at Dooly’s.” he laughed, as if I were just a little fool.
“Sure.” I grimace.
“I’ve never seen you wear them at work. How do you take people’s orders?”
“I write in really big letters!” I growl. My voice was no longer the pure honey everyone thought it was, although Bruno was still in a positive frame of mind.
He lay his hand on my stomach. “You’re quite the gal!”
“Sure, I am..... a blind waitress who can barely see what she’s doing. I’m a real catch!”
“Hey, I had fun.”
“I know you had fun.” I could tell the fact I needed glasses didn’t bother him too much. He loved me for my body, anyway. He’s probably still waiting for the day he’d be a customer just so he could bus my table, although it probably would no longer hold the same fascination for him as it did when I was merely an acquaintance.
“Let’s have some more fun......” he said, lightly touching my forearms.
I wasn’t feeling it anymore. I picked up my shirt and put it back on. He wasn’t going to be seeing these breasts again any time soon.
“Nah.... I’m feeling tired. Squinting all night gets on my nerves.”
Bruno’s mouth twisted with cynicism. He wasn’t very convinced.
“Besides....” I said, “.... I... I’m going to church early in the morning.” Would this be a turn-off... or a turn-on?
He laughed. “Church! I didn’t think you went to church.”
“Yea, I am. I started going before the summer started, actually.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s all good for some, but not for me.” He stood up and put his shirt back on. “Besides, I’m too busy worrying about getting by with my salary as a cook to worry about the next life.”
“Well, the fact you quit smoking means you’ve got more time to fix yourself up for that next life.” I was trying to lightly torment him.
“You’re quite optimistic after sex!”, came his sarcasm.
I close my eyes and nod my head as I quietly laugh. “Sorry...... I... I’m just feeling a bit weird at this moment.”
I was only feeling weird because of the glasses, but his gaze suggested he believed my behavior was related to my plans for tomorrow morning.
“...... are... are you okay?” he asked.
“It... it was just a long evening.......”
“You shouldn’t......” He paused. “..... keep your glasses off if you can’t see. You could hurt yourself,” he smiled.
“Thanks for your concern......”
He was now ready to leave. “Well.... I’ll see you Monday....”
“I’m sure you will.”
He left me, and I felt like an idiot.
http://www.epinions.com/content_4202471556: part two
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Member: David Macdonald
Location: Prince Edward Island
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Alice, a story in nine parts, posted on Sept 24, 2008 - http://www.epinions.com/content_5241348228
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