Long Overdue

Marion Davies sighed, straightened her shoulders, and pressed "enter" to complete her latest business memorandum. Precise, measured, prudent, she was all those things. Yet, with a moment free, her mind wandered lonely as a cloud. She tossed back her long blonde hair and began to wonder how long it had been since her last passionate interlude.

As she pondered, weak and weary, suddenly there came a tapping on her window. She glanced up, expectantly, wondering if she was stark raven mad. But, no, it was just the rain. The rain, drumming on the glass, almost teasing. She raised a delicate hand, ran it along her graceful neck.

Marion glanced down at the open desk drawer beside her. There was the shoebox filled with overdue book fines. And, next to the shoebox, was another, closed shoebox. The second box, of course, contained her Blue Venus vibrator.

Did Marion feel guilty at having a Frequent Shopper's Club card to sex toy web sites? Mais non. Marion knew that her job was a tense one, seeking to further the march of human progress via books. Moreover, the years since September 11, 2001, had been tension-filled in many ways.

Marion coped with these stresses by means of Exogasm, her own personal theory combining aerobic exercise and frequent orgasm. Did she first plan to deliver her plan to a waiting world as a freebie? Yes, she did. But she understood the role of capitalism, so she contacted a venture capitalist and obtained financing for her own program of fitness and fun, a program she felt would make the world a healthier place.

Were there costs? Of course. She knew that leaning against a clothes dryer for hours at a time elevated both her blood pressure and her electricity bill. She knew that the old gentleman at the drugstore had his own suspicions as he saw her purchase two dozen batteries every week. But she remained true to her vision. She would become the Joan of Arc of Exogasm.

Her left hand idly caressed a Stephen Hawking book as she thought. She loved the feel of new books, adored the smell of them. She recalled the first time she had read The Sensuous Librarian. She recalled the clumsy efforts of her first boyfriend, Dewey. As time passed, however, Dewey's digits learned to decimate her demi-bra. Yes, Dewey had a decimal system.

But that was long ago. Dewey converted to radical Islam. There were rumors -- all unsubstantiated, mind you -- about Dewey's relationship with a camel. But Marion paid them no heed. The sea of romantic faith had once been at its full, but for Marion there was left only its melancholy long withdrawing roar. That and her comprehensive collection of sex toys. Marion believed, modifying Nora Roberts, that a day without an orgasm was like a day without a baked potato.

Marion began to shut down her computer. While she waited for it close, silently cursing Bill Gates, her arm accidentally brushed the silky fabric of her blouse. Even that slight touch caused her nipples to swell. For Marion hadn't enjoyed a baked potato yet that day, or anything else.

She walked out of the library into the cold February afternoon. The rain immediately drenched her cotton blouse, plastering it to her supple breasts and making her turgid nipples completely evident to the startled, yet deeply appreciative, passersby. The rain plunged in rivulets down her creamy skin, tracing undulant paths only a lover's fingers should know.

She turned to dash back into the library for her raincoat, but her horn-rimmed glasses were splattered with raindrops, and she ran headlong into an erudite yet hunkalicious man in a tweed jacket. He was just exiting with The Backpacker's Guide to Hiking and Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood tucked under his leather-patched sleeve. The hunk steadied Marion, saying, "Here, let me," as he helped her back through the door, his eyes never straying below her finely sculpted clavicles in what must have been a effort of iron self-control. "I just need to get my raincoat," gasped Marion, but he was already through the door with her and back into the darkened building.

As she turned to thank him, she became intensely aware of the insistent sound of the drumming rain, the dark stillness of the deserted library, and the warmth of the man emanating from his tendoned body in enveloping waves. Images from the Kama Sutra she'd perused during her coffee break flitted through her mind, and she brazenly let her fingers move to the buttons of her soaked blouse, peeling it off and tossing it to the floor, where it lay forgotten for the next few hours.

Marion was dimly aware of books falling off shelves as they kissed. A book fell near her and she read: "Call me Ishmael." As her eyes began to glaze with passion, another book crashed nearby and she inadvertently read: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Marion parted her lips and the embrace became deeper, more intimate; the hunk pressed her against the bookshelves as she clung to him, losing herself in his kiss. She felt rather than heard the library heating system come on, as the rush of warm air from the floor vents lifted her prim black skirt slightly, caressing her still rain-chilled thighs above the tops of her stockings. Dimly she realized that the stranger's hands had followed, stroking the long, taut muscles on the outside of her thighs, toying with the strap of her garterbelt.

She longed to wrap her lithe legs around his waist, but with the last shreds of her reserve, she broke the kiss and looked into his eyes. She gasped, noting his uncanny resemblance to a younger, cleaner-shaven James Brolin, a resemblance that had led her to give him the nickname "Doc". The resemblance was further deepened by his habit of roaring around on a motorcycle like the young Dr. Kiley of Medical Center. "Doc?" she whispered in amazement. Flustered, Marion reached randomly for a book and clutched it to her chest like a security blanket. Doc smirked. Looking down, Marion saw that she had grasped The Way of all Flesh by Samuel Butler.

"I..I thought you were embedded with the 87th division in Irag now," she said, confused. "No, that was just a temporary assignment," breathed Doc in her ear. "I got my doctorate in Mideast Studies, so I spent the past couple of years writing my dissertation on the Kama Sutra, and every time I saw the diagrams of Flower in Bloom position, I couldn't get you out of my mind." But, she gasped, "Isn't it too early in the day for a baked potato?"

He began kissing her urgently again, putting a stop to Marion's confused but unnecessary questions and sending the blood swirling through her body in pulsating rhythms. She let the logistics slip away and was carried on the waves of yearning, her delicate fingers clutching him closer to her, pressing her body all along the length of his, feeling every bone and muscle. As his hands traversed every inch of her body, Marion pulled off his jacket and felt the heat of his skin through his starched white shirt. She wondered if he was still as dexterous in unhooking her bra, especially since she was wearing her macramé triangle demi-bra and it had some pretty complicated knots.

As she looked at him, his resemblance to Jean-David Levitte seemed even more remarkable, and she felt her control retreating faster than a French soldier. She forgot Herman Melville, forgot Samuel Butler, even almost forgot Charles Dickens, upon whom she had written her thesis. The clocks in the library seemed to freeze at twenty till nine, and Marion felt like a sensuously wicked Miss Havisham with great, no, mind-blowing expectations of orgasms. She hoped their rainy afternoon interlude wouldn't somehow find its way into Geraldo's communiques.

C'est fini, oui?