Alice, part four --- sexual content
Sep 24 '08
The Bottom Line Copyright 2008 David MacDonald
She paid closer attention to Susan as the week drew to a close. The student had at least understood that it was much too hot to hide in a sweater, so she came to school in a thinner cocoon. It was a long-sleeved shirt that also hid her hands, except for the fingertips that looked like the legs of a spider deciding if it ought to go out and risk being squished. Was Susan equally afraid?
Alice wanted to talk to her, but she didn’t know how to pry. It didn’t seem obvious to Alice what Susan’s problem was. It wasn’t like she came to school drunk, or high on prescription pills or some other mind altering substance. Her marks weren’t stellar but they weren’t in the toilet. Maybe she’s just cold-blooded and needed warmer clothing. Maybe it was none of Alice’s business.
The school year would soon be over. Alice wouldn’t have to think about her students’ troubles.
And she didn’t want to think about them this weekend either. She called Thomas early Saturday morning. For some reason, she had no reason to doubt he would go out with her if asked. And she was correct.
“Is this going to be our Saturday evening ritual,” he teased over the phone. “We meet up and hibernate in my house for a few hours? Before you go back home and correct more tests?”
“You didn’t like what happened last Saturday?” she asked, playfully tormenting him.
He chuckled. “I guess I shouldn’t complain.”
“Actually... we could venture out of the house this time around....”
“The days are getting longer. People might see us together, and you know how people talk,” he said, seeming to sense her fear of being the subject of attention.
“Hey, so they see us together. Big deal, big deal. Why would you worry about such a thing?” Because she’d do that worrying for them, fretting over the possibility of a group of students stalking the sidewalks in boredom, glimpsing her with some man, and whispering about it in the hallways the following Monday.
“I’m quite secure. If I could once go out in public with my wife, then certainly I could not be embarrassed to be seen with you...”
“Interesting that you would compare me to her.... but... I know a little Italian restaurant. Tucked away in one of those one-way streets without a lot of traffic. Want to go there?”
“Sure. It’s been a while since I had an all-pasta meal.”
“I knew you’d agree to it. You’re so agreeable,”
“So... did you want me to pick you up?” he asked, with some uncertainty, as if he would have considered it somewhat of an effort.
“No, that’s fine. The parking lot is never full. I can take my car and you can take yours - there’s all kinds of room.”
Alice arrived at the restaurant about 10 minutes before Thomas did, which was what she wanted. She exited the car and walked to the front door by herself, not having noticed anyone walking past on the sidewalk.
And she entered the restaurant to see that all of the tables were empty. In fact, the only soul seemed to be the woman who stood behind the cash register, reading a lurid paperback.
“Are you still open?” Alice asked.
“Hi! You can sit anywhere you like. I’m sure nobody else will object.” The woman seemed nice. Deep down she was probably happy to see a customer, even if it meant interrupting the flow of her novel.
When Thomas arrived, Alice had already chosen a table and was served water. “Are you sure this is a decent place, dear? There’s nobody else here.”
“Why, sure it is. Don’t you think it’s more... intimate and calming, when there’s fewer people around? You can eat your meal in peace.....”
Thomas sat down and looked around at the empty room. The lights over all of the other tables were dimmed. “It’s like they had closed down for the night and they forgot to lock the door.”
But the woman, who apparently had time to do everything including holding fort behind the cash register and take orders, approached the table with order book in hand and eager to record her customers’ culinary requests. “Hello, nice to see you this evening,” said the woman, who wore a name tag with ‘Valerie’ engraved upon it.
“Thanks,” Alice said.
“Very nice place you have here,” Thomas said. “Very.... silent.”
“Well, our radio broke and the boss has to get it fixed. I’m going mad in here. I need the music to distract me or else I’ll probably go to the kitchen and eat all the pasta. I don’t need to gain any more weight.”
“Oh dear, you look just fine,” Alice stated. At least Valerie didn’t cover herself up with a bulky sweater in the middle of June.
“Oh well, it’s Saturday night... we’re never busy. We usually close by 8 so you’ll probably be the last ones I’ll serve tonight.”
“So...” Thomas asked. “What’s good here? What do you usually get when you’re here, Alice?”
“Oh....” Alice said nervously. “Everything here is good.....” But of course she’s never actually eaten here before. “.. I’m sure. Thomas, I don’t think I’ve been here before.” She wasn’t able to sustain a silly lie.
Thomas laughed. “Oh, I thought... hey, I’m sure something here is good.....”
The two ordered their food. As the two waited for their supper to arrive, they began to carry on a conversation. Alice thought there was something spooky about the whole thing - the two of them sitting in an empty, lifeless restaurant, as if they were exchanging ideas about a disturbing and illegal activities they would get involved in later. Nobody but the waitress would have known they were there, and if she were to squeal, they would have to kill her and dump the body into Charlottetown Harbour.
“So what would you have done if we hadn’t went here tonight?” Thomas asked.
“Me? Oh, I probably would have watched TV .... or pulled out some great ancient tome, just so I could brush up on it in the hopes I can put it in the curriculum next year.”
“Another wacky book nobody but you would understand, huh?” Thomas said.
“Oh come off it Tom,” Alice laughed. “I’m sure you must read a book once in a while.”
“Well, one time I was at my brother-in-law’s house and he had this enormous book written by Conrad Black about one of the American presidents. I couldn’t understand how my brother-in-law would have the patience to read that.... it must have taken him months.”
“And could you imagine the weight of the book Conrad would write now behind prison bars.... all that time to develop all of those thoughts.....”
“You almost sound like you want to be in prison yourself!”
“No. I need the real world occasionally.”
“You do. Sometimes the real world isn’t what you expect it to be.”
“It never is,” Alice said. She was expecting Thomas to start a lament over his past - he seemed to be the type of guy who would. Complain about how much of a bitch his ex-wife was and how he’d never get married again.
“The Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup in years - I’ve learned to accept that.” he smirked.
“Aww, poor bastard, you!” Indeed, that would be tragic, for some people.
And soon the food arrived - hot, steaming pasta. The two both enjoyed the food, but by the end, the pasta felt heavy in their stomachs, and the two felt so lazy they could have stayed at that table all night.
“Well .... this will keep me down for a little while,” he joked.
“It ...it was filling, that’s for sure. I’m sure I’ve done well enough for the next 24 hours.”
She leaned back on her seat, no longer concerned about the silence of the restaurant. She was far more concerned about her stomach.
And about herself and him. It was as if they had a space all of their own, where they could talk and share things in the way they wanted to, without the pressures of the outside world.
“It’s a good night out there....” Alice said. “It’s pretty dark now. It must be past your bedtime.”
“I’m all grown up....” he smiled.
Alice returned the smile.
Valerie returned with the check. “So did you enjoy your meal?”
“Yes, we did,” Alice said. “You did a great job.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t have much time for you tonight - you can see how swamped I am here.”
“No doubt. Your manager should give you a raise.”
Valerie gave out a small grunt, not quite a laugh. “A raise. The way things are going, I’m surprised he doesn’t give me a pay cut...” she mumbled.
“Things will get better in the summer,” Alice said.
“I hope. I certainly don’t want to be sitting around the pool all summer, reading trashy crime novels, not making any money....”
Alice, on the other hand, expected nothing else every year. It would never be a shock to her. It was a perk of the job.
*
“.... obviously she wasn’t a teacher, was she?” Thomas joked, as the two went back to his house. “Worried about losing her job for the summer.”
“You’re funny,” Alice teased. “Why don’t you ask for a summer leave? I’m sure they’ll not fire you once you suggest it to them....” She pulled off her shoes and pushed them with her foot to the wall near the front door.
“Ask for a leave - when I’m the most important guy there?”
The two walked into the living room. She turned to face him. “What time is it?” she sighed.
“Getting close to 10.”
“Anything good on TV?” she asked, putting her arms on top of his shoulders.
“Could be....”
“Well - let’s find out.... I’m still feeling full and ... I’d like to relax.”
The two sat on the couch, flipping through channels and never quite striking anything they wanted to watch for very long. It was a Saturday night after all - the TV stations knew there would be few people watching, so why bother putting on any good programming?
The night grew longer, with the TV becoming nothing more than a disjointed series of scenes without any coherency. “Is Brittany coming here?” Alice asked.
“No... I think you asked me that earlier... she’s not coming back until tomorrow night.”
“Wild on the town?” Alice teased.
“No.... if she’s at her mother’s, she’s probably there. She may have a friend over but she definitely wouldn’t be out of the house. Her mother would put her foot down, and Brittany would listen...”
“I see....” Alice turned to look at the TV, which at this moment was a rerun of one of the more insipid reality programs that had aired earlier in the week.
“Are you staying?” he asked.
Alice was not expecting the question. She had been pretty full for the past couple of hours anyway, and would not have been adverse to staying, if only to let her body digest supper. “Do you want me to?”
“Well ... it’s 11:30 pm and I’m closing up shop for the night, and there’s nobody here to cover for me and chauffeur you back to your place.”
“But I brought my own car,” she said, not letting his humour sink in for a few seconds. Then she laughed. “Oh....”
Alice moved her body upward, and walked toward the television. “I’ve had enough of these narcissists myself - let them remain in the dark,” as she turned the TV off.
Her heart began to beat faster, but she did not feel nervous. Her body felt like something that broke away from the shackles of repetition, of the ordinary and expected repetition, while wanting to sink into a more seductive kind of repetition.
She walked herself around the living room and along the hallway into the bedroom. Thomas seemed a bit more casual - after all, it was his house. He got up from the sofa as if he were just about to grab something from the other side of the room. He walked to the kitchen so he could get a glass of water.
Alice stood in the darkened room, wondering why she didn’t go out and get a glass of water herself. Maybe it would have been rude, if she hadn’t asked. She stood there, her hands not quite touching her sides, waiting for him.
He entered the room. “Hello, Alice,” he teased.
“Hello....” The two embraced, as if they were about to dance. Their kisses were slow and careful, as if they had only just met and wanted to be sure of everything first.
He pulled the hem of Alice’s shirt from underneath her slacks before pulling the shirt from her. She reached her hands to her back to unsnap her bra. The fabric slipped from her arms and onto the floor. Her naked skin felt soft and alive against him as he brought her back into his embrace.
“Did you and your wife have these type of nights... just sitting around watching stupid TV shows and then going to bed?” she whispered.
“I can’t recall. The kids were growing up. There would have been no time....”
“I had lots of time.... but no one to share it with....,” she sighed. “Isn’t that funny?”
“Were you laughing... when you were alone?” he asked, spreading his fingers across her back, squeezing the soft skin.
“It was so funny... that I forgot to....” she smiled.
She felt his hands surrounding her body, as his mouth touched her on her own lips and across her chest. She unbuttoned his jeans, and pulled up his shirt as well.
She went on her back when she placed herself on the mattress. She unsnapped the button on her slacks, loosening them while Thomas reached over to pull them and her underwear away from her legs.
Thomas observed her, as she placed her hands on her stomach as if she didn’t know where to put them. She gave a shy grin as her breathing grew a little more stronger and restless. “You see.... now I’m not forgetting to smile.”
He took off the rest of his clothes, adding to the pile on the floor. The clothes were wrinkled and tangled amongst each other when he kicked the pile to the other side of the room.
He put his body beside hers on the bed, close enough so their skin would touch, before he wrapped his arm around the upper part of her frame to draw her body closer.
Alice helplessly murmured as Thomas kissed her face. The fog drifting within her mind obscured the words she would have otherwise wanted to speak, even while making love. She continued to rest on her back, melting ever so slowly as her lover absorbed her physical presence.
She may have thought to herself that her body was rather drab, certainly not the figure of a 20 year old. While she wasn’t a large woman by any means - her face and her arms were pretty average - Alice would have commented on her hips, thinking they swelled up with age or perhaps from eating more than she should have.
But her lover didn’t pass judgment on her perceived flaws. He simply touched her, his hands gliding along the wrinkles and lines around her stomach, the soft pear-shapes of her breasts. He crushed his mouth against her soft stomach, the skin weeping with balmy sweat.
Alice’s eyes closed, and she felt herself entering a dream. She could feel herself opening up to him. She could sense his touch as he found comfort in the achingly tender flesh of her sex. Her body could feel a muted shudder, as her lover’s tongue roused her clitoris before it gently penetrated her.
She pushed herself against his face, her body wanting him to somehow lap her up and swallow her whole. Her mind began to think of water as it flowed along the river the two of them drove over as they came from the restaurant to Thomas’s house. She felt a sense of helplessness as she saw in her mind the water as it rushed from the mouth of the river and into the endless sea. She would have begun to laugh, if the other parts of her brain hadn’t been occupied.
“Mmm.... touch me... touch me there, Tom....” she whispered.
“Where....?” he asked. He raised his head up slightly, watching her mouth as it made her request.
Alice brushed her hand along her pubic hair, its strands soaked from her arousal, with her fingers gently opening up her sex. “I want you ... I want you to search for me... to find my hiding place....”
Thomas smiled. He couldn’t make much sense of her words, but he was more than willing to submit to her wishes.
She felt herself swallowing hard, when Thomas slid two of his fingers inside of her. He felt his heart jump from within his ribcage as he touched her.
“You touch me .... like you’re afraid of it,” Alice whispered, her voice retaining sympathy for the moment. “Please... don’t feel that way, my friend. I want you to touch me .... like you really mean it.”
Thomas wondered if he truly knew how to make love to a woman, if he really ever felt comfortable with another person’s body. Alice seemed to be the only woman who actually wanted to encourage him to learn, to feel at ease.
He pushed his fingers further within her, tickling the raw sensitivity inside. He could feel her body begin to change, to soften. It fascinated him, to be able to feel with his fingertips something approaching the essence of a woman.
He observed her, as her body began to quietly and softly sigh. An image he had no longer associated with his ex-wife by the time their partnership had become unsalvageable.
The intimacy he and his former spouse were obligated to share had become nothing more than a distant memory. There had been a day when they had met, when she was a fresh-faced teenager, someone who was as attractive as he felt he deserved. They dated for a while, made out, went a little further, grew up and believed they were meant to continue, as many couples did. They thought life, and their feelings, would never change.
But then she grew older, gained a few pounds, had a couple of kids, and was no longer that fresh-faced teenager. There was nothing she did wrong. Only the unpitying hands of time were to blame.
But Thomas didn’t possess the insight or the empathy needed to understand this. He saw her changes, her maturity, as a form of betrayal, although he could never speak it in words. It was as if after 20 years of knowing each other, she had slipped out of his life and replaced herself with a different, less appealing woman. She suddenly became a stranger to him, an antagonist who lived in his own home and shared his bed.
But Alice was somehow different, despite the fact she was four years older than Thomas’s ex-wife, and also appeared as weathered with time as she did. In Thomas’s eyes, Alice hadn’t changed. She was a still life, who was the same person he met as she was at this moment. There was no similar betrayal.
Alice didn’t want to give much thought as to why Thomas and his ex separated. He said a few fleeting comments, and she had been worried about what his true feelings were, but those comments could easily be force of habit. Give him some time and he would not feel as angry and resentful.
She had considered one thing: was she the new woman, the woman who conveniently came along when he needed a distraction from a tedious life of a divorced man without a partner? Was she nothing more than a placeholder in his life?
But Alice couldn’t muster up any objection, not unless she wanted to lie to herself. She no longer expected a romantic storybook tale at her age. The pages of the book were torn, and what was left was a story that had a lot to be desired. She could no longer relate or sympathize with the tale.
Physical sensations was something she could relate to. Those feelings weren’t open to ambiguities or interpretations. She knew what they were, and how they felt, and how they made her feel.
She felt her body rise from the bed, as his hands clenched the curve of her back, pulling her lower body towards him. He was on his knees facing her, as he brought her body to him. He felt her fingers touching him, guiding him, allowing him to go inside...
Thomas’s fingers dug gently into her hips, provoking an exasperated smile along her face, misty from sweat. Thomas wanted to tell her, as he felt her body stirring him, that he couldn’t remember the last time his eyes saw this kind of sensuality, the kind he thought evaporated after a certain age, after everyone had grown up and settled into the expected routine.
Alice’s whispers and murmurs fascinated him. Her eyes grew wide, her mouth agape as if quietly surprised, as she felt her body slowly approaching orgasm. He felt her contractions, like the opening and closing of a fist, grip his sex, and witnessed her face shimmering with something close to relief as she exhaled.
The two clung to each other in a drowsy embrace, before falling to their sides on the mattress.
“Well, I think I forgot all about that pasta weighing down my stomach,” Alice whispered. “I didn’t think I’d be able to make it when I got home tonight.....”
“.... yea..... me too....” he said, his voice raspy.
The two cuddled for a while, letting their fingertips linger around each others bodies in a dreamy embrace. Alice usually didn’t miss the deeper meanings, but this time, she couldn’t read the subtext that lay hidden beneath her lover’s responses. Her presence of mind was too foggy to realize that Thomas wasn’t merely fascinated with her as an individual who he was having sex with.
“I’m happy you decided to stay tonight,” Thomas said.
“I wanted to be here,” Alice said. “We had a great night.”
“It was just like being young again. Recapturing a time I thought was lost forever,” he smiled.
“My, I guess now that smoking after sex is no longer socially acceptable, we decide to get philosophical,” she laughed.
“It’s not philosophy. It’s something I should not have let escape from my life.”
Alice thought Thomas was fooling around - he seemed as if he was aware of the drama of his words, and made them sound as if he were doing nothing more than teasing her. “So you misplaced your sense of fun?”
“Yes. I thought when I married Janice, we’d always have nights like this..... why did you think I married her in the first place?” He began to speak quietly, as if he were relating the mundane events of his day.
“I see....” Alice no longer felt relaxed lying close to him. She was reminded that Janice had once held a spot in this bed. “What happened?”
“Oh.... oh, nothing really. She ... we... just drifted apart. She never stopped nagging about every aspect of my life before we broke up. It was like she wanted some perfect guy who would be whatever she wanted him to be, and I didn’t satisfy her.....”
“Sounds... sounds like she was tough to live with,” Alice said. She didn’t look at his face as he spoke. She couldn’t. She thought she wanted to know all about his past, but now she wasn’t so sure.
“Tough? Makes it sound like I was some grunt under the command of a four-star general with a bad temper. May very well have been true.”
Alice wondered what sort of personality would his ex have to be to be compared to such a figure.
“Alice... I want you to promise me, you’re not going to call me seven times a day on my cell phone just to ask me where I am and what I’m doing. Promise me you won’t visit me and wonder why I’m sitting down and watching the TV instead of doing some household chores.”
Alice would never have done those things, but hearing Thomas demand those promises of her made her feel as if maybe there was a reason to call him seven times a day to inquire on his whereabouts. “No Thomas, I won’t be doing those things. It’s none of my business. I’m way too lazy to use the phone seven times for anything, and besides I thought you had an imaginary maid to do those chores for you anyway.”
Alice moved her head so she could see his face. He didn’t look bitter or angry. He seemed to be rather casual about the whole thing, as if he knew she wasn’t the type of woman he wasn’t looking for. “You must know... well, you probably know that I’ve never married.”
“I guessed.” He wasn’t surprised. He didn’t believe a married woman would make love in that way.
“I can’t understand what you’re feeling right now, or what you’ve felt in the past, or why you want me to make these promises to you. I... I couldn’t imagine trying to adjust after getting used to something for so many years.”
“I never asked you to understand.”
“I just hope you won’t expect a lot out of me. I don’t want you to think I’m something I’m not. I’ve always lived life as a single woman. I’ve had men in my life who came and went. They didn’t always expect much....”
Thomas started to project the idea of her moving from man to man in an indiscriminate fashion. He knew her as a passionate woman, but hearing these words somehow made her appear otherworldly in his eyes, as if she were some strange and peculiar creature.
“There were a few close calls,” Alice continued, laughing. “But I’ve not yet been infected by the influenza of holy matrimony.”
Alice did not want to reveal more. She suspected he had some harbouring prejudices formed from years of marriage, from traditional cohabitation with one person, from the similar actions of his peers. In his world, men and women sewed their wild oats as quickly as possible before voluntarily becoming dormant for a lifetime, as if they had a deadline to reach.
She never kept track of the number of lovers she had during her lifetime. But few of them were like Thomas. They didn’t have the same disappointments about life. They had long ago figured out things didn’t last forever, and they no longer had the energy to complain about it.
Thomas, however, seemed to have that lesson thrust upon him.
“Really? I figured you would have cast your harpoon and stabbed some unexpected sucker and reeled him in a long time ago,” he smiled. Yes, he smiled, as if there was something funny about slandering an entire gender.
“No.... I have a fear of sharp things,” Alice responded.
“But I’m happy that you reeled me in,” Thomas said, as this type of experience was closer to what he liked. No fear of having to commit, except perhaps to the occasional date and the release of sexual tension. The very basics.
“You better be. You know I can drop you back in the sea and watch you drown.” She lightly dug the edges of her fingernails in the skin on his side, just enough for him to feel the pinch.
“Ow,” Thomas teased. “You’re cold.” But he would have went right back to making love with her, if he hadn’t already felt drained from this first go-around, if he hadn’t been used to just making love once in any given evening.
Alice, on the hand, would have made love more than once, twice, three times, if she had wanted to. But tonight, right now, she no longer had her heart in it. She didn’t want to go to bed with someone who casually dished out cruelty toward a critical part of his history. Did he think she would be impressed that he was no longer in love with this other woman, and possibly hated her?
And besides, it was late, almost 1 am, and Alice could use the excuse of needing some rest. “Hey, Tom, let’s get under these covers... we had a long night,” she said. She kissed him on the lips, quickly and without the passion of earlier.
The two bodies remained close together as they fell asleep. Alice’s arms were draped across Thomas’s chest, and her face rested inches from his own. But she paid more attention to the soft, warm blankets that covered her skin, with the resulting comfort lulling her into a sleep which made her forget everything for a while.
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Member: David Macdonald
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About Me:
Alice, a story in nine parts, posted on Sept 24, 2008 - http://www.epinions.com/content_5241348228
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