As I lean in to take her order, the gentle curl of her raven hair brushes innocently against my face, shooting shivers of sinful delight down my spine. Her scent, a subtle sweetness not unlike that of a perfectly ripe apricot, intoxicates my already stimulated senses, and I can feel the roar of ratchet heat and carnal thirst stretch it's way from my armpits to my loins, crescendoing with the indomitable force of a sprawling, unbidden yawn. Her contralto voice is the musical murmur of the undiscovered natural spring, unadulterated by the mundane and unintimidated by the mighty Adirondacks that surround her mossy shores.
“Coffee, black please" she hums, with an enigmatic smile. It's as though she's daring me to contemplate the world's mystical secrets, casually unlocking the most Byzantine of conundrums in quietly announcing her morning beverage of choice. I'm mildly disgusted. I'm mesmerized.
She's a college kid, maybe 20 or 21, off for the summer probably. Maybe she's here on vacation with her family with the rest of them.
With their yachts and they're kayaks, and their upper crust accents. With their toy dogs, and spoiled children. With their demands for chichi lattes that they swear they were able to order LASSSTT summer while on holiday. With their gracious shaking of the head when we fail to deliver service at the break neck speed their used. "Really," their condescending faces seem to say, "what can one honestly expect from a country establishment such as this?"
I guess I used to be one of them. One of the rich kids whose parents, too entrenched in professional success, send their children away to be raised by nannies and boarding school and the like. I'm not bitter, it's just a fact. When I was really young, I, along with my younger brother, was sent most weekends up to the country, to stay at the family cabin. Our Swedish au pair, Vika, would take us.
Vika. With her brazen blond hair, and her muscular Nordic build. Her clipped almost-British accent, and her sometimes severe admonishments. One thing I'll never forget is the tremendous size of her hands. She possessed a vice grip that was startling and good and reassuring. When I was with her, I always got the sense that she could withstand any disaster, natural or otherwise.
But it was her creative spirt that I really loved. We could spend hours sitting in front of the fire, spinning the flickering images of flaming fantasies into fanciful fairytales that were frighteningly vivid. Vika would start the stories, always in the same way, her husky voice and pointed accent seeming to be one with the crackling fire:
“There were three heroes in the land that was quickly falling into the hands of penetrating darkness..."
The heroes' names and powers changed, along with their adversaries and and challenges, but there was always darkness.
When we came up for winter break, we'd go iceskating on a nearby pond, and my brother and I would rough house out out in the cold open air. One year, when Vika was feeling particularly adventurous, we even ventured across frozen Lake Champlain, walking half the distance from New York to Vermont.
Summers were equally idyllic. I'd run out in bare feet and chase my little brother through the long wild grasses that seemed to stretch indefinitely to the mountains that were topped off with clouds that resembled drizzled of whipped cream on a ponderous Ice-Cream Sundae. We would construct our own forts in the nearby woods, and live in an expansive fantasy world where zombie savages were coming to invade our territory. We were the teenage mutant ninja turtles and Batman and Robin. We were the Power Rangers and the Autobots. We were the the heroes of our own stories, saving the world from the ever encroaching darkness. Darkness threatening to snuff us out.
But that was all so long ago. Before Vika was abruptly sent away for making untoward advances at my father. Before my parent's real-estate firm collapsed along with their marriage. Before my brother was killed in a car crash while on a New Year's joyride, a few miles away from where he and I used to explore the expansive north country. Before I started my meandering...
“2.26," says this beautiful dark girl whose mystery radiates in her Mona Lisa Smile.
“huh?" I sputter.
“My change," she laughs, shaking her gentle curls, “I gave you a ‘5' "
"Oh...Sorry," I mumble, feeling my heart flutter in embarrassment as I fumble with the cash register. I've always been a space cadet, soaring in the nether regions of my own mind.
“Hey, let me ask you a question," she says, casually oblivious to my awkward manner.
“Where do you, like, chill out around here,?"
On most days, her tone would have aggravated me. It was a manner of speech that endowed every word with innuendo and sexual suggestion that a lot of rich girls think is sophisticated. It reminds me a lot of my adolescence in Scarsdale.
But as she's leaned in close, tantalizingly close, my reservations are muted, arrested by dimples that dent her delicate cheeks.
Butterflies seize my stomach. I curse the thin line of lecherous sweat making it's way down my crotch, and the corresponding fire stirring there. I want to say something to her, but I can't trust that my voice won't be choked with wild desperation that cannot be contained, shouting against all semblance of propriety "FEED, ME I'M STARVING FOR LOVE! I HAVEN'T GOTTEN ANY IN ALMOST A YEAR!"
I shrug.
“Ah," says this attractive girl with a sigh that was much greater than the occasion warrants, “so, after work, you don't ever... go out? Get a drink? Let loose?"
Her pretension manner is nauseating but hell, dignity is overrated. Somehow, I find my voice.
"I-Sometimes-Hang-Out-At-Champ-bar-Around-The-Corner," I spew, in a burst. Idiotic.
An awkward silence spawns millennia as she stares at me quizzically.
Finally, she smiles, that cryptic, cynical smile.
"Champ bar," she chortles as though delivering the punchline of some well known joke, "Nice." And then she was gone.
It's only until she's out the door that I notice that she's left a dollar bill on the counter.
Arianna---914-588-2858.
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