Tom dawdled at the elevator, uncertain of himself. On the surface this Benoit dame was arid as the Mojave. It was her scent that hinted her secret moisture. He met her on the way out and they rode down together. The confines of the steel cube increased her attraction.
Immediately he engaged her with small talk. His tongue acting as flipper, the bon mots rolled like pinballs inside his brain. He found himself talking more than listening, and she was telling him something.
It will have to be today, Squire Tom.
"Why?"
"Because I am leaving New York tomorrow. Where should we meet?"
He told her Washington Square, a place any cabby could find.
*
There was a tony sidewalk cafe with a view of the Arch. A raggedy-andy vagabond dressed in army surplus olive and khaki played a banjo, actually riffing the melody made popular by the Village Stompers. He was no Bela Fleck, but folks tossed coins into his open banjo case.
Tom arrived early and took a ringside seat.
Meanwhile, Solange was sitting in a Starbucks, peering over rimless reading glasses at the postmodern self-absorbed ambulatory denizens of Greenwich Village. Her Tazo tea tasted of pomegranite and made her think of her young squire. Why she did not know. He actually smelled of the gymnasium and manly deodorant.
This place reminded her of her of another java hut. It too had been jammed with New Yorkers obsessed with their elusive goals. Instead of Starbucks lincoln green that one sported linoleum, chrome and Formica. Its brew was rich and smooth and proletarian, costing less than a buck.
Chock-Full-Of-Nuts.
She was in New York to visit her old lover Kit Pico, whose play "Zafra" was to be staged inside a rat cellar vamping as a theatre. A gift would be appropriate. Kit loved Lyonel Feininger. She had been told of an art shop owned by an orgre who delighted in haggling. She would see who could strike the best deal! It was there she met that achingly intense mystical Jew, Artie Hoffman. Amateur art historian and part-time guide at the Whitney.
Moody brown-eyed Artie Hoffman. Siddartha wearing an NYU sweatshirt.
*
The first time Artie Hoffman showed her around, he took her to the miniature Arch of Triumph and she thought it was cute. At a bookshop he bought her a copy of the love letters between Nelson Algren and Simone de Beauvoir. Such a quaint and sentimental lover, her Artie.
She was late for her date with Squire Tom!
Climbing breathlessly into the cab, she gasped, "Washington Square!"
They crossed the Avenue of Americas, and she recalled the Bristol Hotel and her room there, with a window she could open to the snappy fall breeze. Looking out, she inhaled a scent like no other. Manhattan. Below she saw a crowded street unrolling into the distance like a slick black carpet. Her block retained a 1950s neon glow. Brownstone niches and oblong glass facades. Jackson Pollack had flung his paint upon sidewalk and curb.
On that first night in New York she took a solitary stroll and found a jazz club with an open door. She glimpsed a black man gleaming in purple light. Like Shiva with multiple arms flailing the air, he beat drums with the rhythms of a thousand hearts.
Retracing her way home she lost her bearings. Finally she saw a man loafing in a doorway. She asked him, "Do you know where the Bristol Hotel might be, Monsieur?"
He cocked his head and laughed, and thumbed upward to the overhead sign.
Bristol Hotel.
They laughed together.
By the next night she knew her turf well enough to lead Artie Hoffman up to the room. Later, but not too much later, the snappy fall breeze lifted the bedside curtains.
*
Tom had never known a woman to be early. Some had been on time, but never early. That was how his mind worked.
Slats of his chair pressed into warm flesh, and he asked himself: what the hell was he doing? what was it about this older-than-the-hills Benoit woman?
A few yards away three college girls sat at a similar table, sharing a carafe of white wine. Each had a copy of the same textbook. Open to the same page. To the same illustration of a set of healthy breasts. One girl fingered her breasts just forward of her armpits. Tracing over the cotton wale of her Abercrombie & Fitch tee-top. The other girls spoke in low conspiratoral voices. Tom sought for a metaphor.
"Cherchez la femme, Squire Tom?"
"Madam Benoit!"
"C'est moi."
To hide her crow's feet she wore aviator shades from Michael Kors. That anti-aging glycolic peel kit had not done the job. It had been a long time since she was forty, adorning herself with kohl, in the manner of Nazimova in "Salome" to lure young men. Tom noticed everything. Her firm ivory calves when she crossed her legs. The flatness of her tummy and the wonder of her Wonder Bra.
She handed Tom an envelope. "Would you care to escort me to the opera tonight?"
Tom looked at the tickets. "Sure--"
He hated opera. And his knowlege of Richard Strauss was limited to the music in "2001: A Space Odyssey." However, he had seen a review of this one. And the prospect of seeing Karita Mattila naked at the conclusion of Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils was most alluring.
"This ought to be great," Tom said. "I love Strauss."
Tom's idea of a blue ribbon date was taking a babe to Radio City for a show and a movie, then to a smart bistro for a light bite and a micro-brew. From that point, who knew? Once he had landed a babe in the sack by chancing upon a tattoo parlor and talking her into being inked below the bikini line.
"I study the Kabbala," she had said. So she chose a miniscule Chesed. For Tom, viewing that shiny shaved pussy was the perfect aperitif to mad monkey love.
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