“Forget it.”
“I’m horribly sorry, Harvey.”
“Don’t be.” I extended a hand plaintively and she put a fresh cigarette between two of my fingers. I let her light it for me. She sank down onto the couch, her rear nestled neatly on top of the long legs that she folded under herself. This pretty process made her dress ride a little higher, so that it was roughly halfway up her thighs and all bunched from hem to waist. She leaned forward, her eyes soulful, and her breasts leaped at me.
“About the proposition—”
“Forget the proposition,” I said.
“You mean you’re not really interested?”
“I’m interested, Jodi. But let’s get to it chronologically. Not too long ago I came floating through your door. You let me in, and I said something inane like Long time no see, and then Al slapped me back to the land of the living. Now, something happened in the middle.”
She waited for me to say something more. This was awkward, because I was waiting for her to say something. Rather lamely I said: “In the middle. What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Not a bit of it, woman. Fill me in.”
“Why, you silly! We made love, Harvey. What did you think we did, you silly?”
“That’s what I thought. It seemed painfully logical. But I don’t remember it.”
“Well, I do. It was kind of fun.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s a shame you don’t remember.”
“More than a shame,” I said, hanging my head. “The memory is half of it. Now it’s as if we never did it at all. Of course there are pictures to prove it, but no memories to warm my later years.”
“Poor Harvey.”
“Did we do anything unusual?”
She wrinkled up her forehead, thinking back. She threw her shoulders back, and this only pushed her breasts out at me a little more dramatically. I let my eyes take a guided tour of her, let myself get mesmerized by the way her perfect body was shaped and molded by the loving hand of a benevolent God. The body was magnificent.
And yet magnificence of form was less than half the story. The sensual appeal of feminine curves cannot be measured in inches or feet, in pounds, shillings or ounces. In her own unpleasant way, my good wife Helen had a body not overwhelmingly dissimilar to Jodi’s. The breasts were smaller, but hardly miniscule. The thighs were not so plump, not so well-muscled, but they were by no means bad. There was something else — an aura of excitement, an artistic quality to the twists and turns, the curves and planes. Something that told you at a glance (provided you knew what to look for) that Jodi was a potential source of delight, while Helen could set ice floating in the Caribbean.
“Nothing too unusual,” she said, dragging me back to our conversation. “Nothing we hadn’t done years ago. In college.”
“That doesn’t rule much out.”
“I know.”
“And it was good?”
“Kind of, Harvey. Except you were pretty stoned, weren’t you? You didn’t exactly know what you were doing. And then I knew Al was there, snapping his silly camera. That took some of the fun out of it. Poor Harvey.”
“Poor Jodi,” I said.
She uncoiled like a striking serpent, came to her feet and stretched her arms to the skies, or at least to the ceiling. She stood high on the tips of her toes and my eyes were with her every glorious inch of the way. This had been mine once, I remembered. This had brightened college days, this had taught me what my manhood was. And now, because in those long-lost days I had confused success with happiness, Jodi was a whore who loved her work and I was an ad man who hated mine. Now, when I did make love to her, I could not even remember it.
“The proposition,” I reminded her.
Slowly she pirouetted, turning her back to me. Slowly her arms descended from the ceiling and she leaned three miles over and touched her toes. I let my eyes focus on her rear. This they did of their own accord.
“The proposition,” I managed to say. “With Al.”
She straightened up again, slowly, and she turned around, slowly, and her cheeks were roses in bloom, her eyes huge and shining, her lips parted and moist.
“I’ve got another proposition in mind,” she said. “And we can leave Al out of this one.”
Her green knit second-skin buttoned down the back. I would have gladly unbuttoned it for her but she did not require my help. Her hands stole behind her back and toyed expertly with buttons. This did more things with her breasts. They leaped across the room at me.
“One button at a time,” she said. “There are a lot of buttons. You’ll have to be patient, Harvey. You don’t look patient at all.”
The room was a steambath. After four years she finished with the buttons. She stepped back, suddenly, and the dress fell off. That’s precisely what happened — the dress fell off. One moment she was clothed, and the next moment the dress was a green pile upon the carpet, and all that had been under it was my Jodi.
I’ve mentioned her body, haven’t I? Her body of college days, and how perfect that body was, and how the breasts jutted and the waist tucked itself in and the hips flared and the buttocks quivered? How the thighs reached up to the universal V, V for vigor, for vitality, for vim, for voom? I’ve mentioned all this, haven’t I?
I have; I’m sure I have. And I’ve mentioned, too, how that body had filled out with time, how time did not wither nor custom stale her infinite variety I had seen the old Jodi nude, and I had seen the new Jodi with clothes on, and now I was seeing the new Jodi nude, a flawless combination of old and new retaining the finest features of each.
She did not walk to me. She flowed to me, her body a symphony of fleshy poetry in motion. She came in like the tide, and her voice was a panther’s purr.
“Harvey,” she said. “You don’t remember the last time, do you?”
“Don’t you even move,” she said now. “I undressed you before. Did you know that? And then dressed you again when we were done. Now you just sit there without moving and I’ll undress you again, honey.”
I sat there, as motionless as possible, and she did just that. Her hands were cold as Dexter’s Frozen Dinners. I was not. She took off my shoes and my socks and my slacks and my shirt and my underwear. She ran those soft hands over my body and I reached for her.
“Not here,” she breathed. “Not on the couch. The bedroom is right this way. A bed is more comfortable than a couch, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I gulped. My mouth was dry. Now why on earth should my mouth be dry?
“This way, Harvey.”
Then we were in her bedroom. I could describe her bedroom — the kind of furniture, the type of carpet, the prints on the wall. But why describe her bedroom? It had a bed in it. Enough? More than enough.
“This is my office,” she said. And she giggled then, and we were both naked, and I needed her now far more than I needed her years ago. Our arms went around each other, and her big breasts bundled themselves up against my chest.
“Harvey—”
“Jodi—”
Uninspired dialogue at that. My mouth was dry again, and then my mouth was no longer dry because we were kissing and her wet tongue was a long drink. Breasts and belly and thighs, and all there, and all close, and all warm.
As Dempsey hit Firpo, so did we hit the bed. As Cortez explored Mexico, so did we explore each other. I filled my hands with her breasts. I kissed those breasts, and I touched those buttocks, and my hands shouted Open Sesame, and the command was heeded.
Well, it had been a long time. A good many years (or a bad many years) since college and Jodi. A bad many years of Helen, whose hips had sunk a thousand ships. In that length of time a man can forget excellence and accept mediocrity as the normal course of events. Then, if you are very, very fortunate, the spectacular happens upon you.