"Great dress," he said to the woman at the party.
They were in an Oxford college. Everyone was mingling and laughing at bad jokes. There was a lot of faculty, senior students, and a handful of undergrads. It was a hot summer's evening. In the grounds of the beautiful seventeenth century quad outside crickets chirped and a fountain tinkled. The party was in a large low ceiling'd room, dimly lit by standing lamps. There was finger food and over-warm wine. The women wore elegant summer dresses, the men were mostly in dinner jackets.
*He*, however, was in a black polyester business suit. He was younger than the faculty staff, older than most of the students. He was handsome, lean, white, mid-thirties, average height, clean shaven two days ago.
*She* had been on the other side of the party to him, staying near the entrance the waiters came in and out with trays of drinks. She was on her own, getting through the champagne flutes at a fair pace.
She was short, slight, with striking features that were attractive if you liked striking and were probably a bit severe if you didn't. Jet black hair. There was Romany blood in her. Late twenties so probably a PhD student.
Her dress was tight fitting and black with dark grey lines embroidered down each side. If you weren't looking closely you might not notice the embroidery. They made shapes. Patterns. Must have had some silver thread in them because sometimes they picked up a glint of light.
She did not look like she had much patience left for the gathering.
He had been trying to make small talk with people the host had introduced him to but hadn't been getting anywhere interesting. So he had excused himself and gone over to her.
"What was that?" she said.
"Great dress," he repeated.
"Thanks," she said and turned half away from him. Not exactly rude but not interested.
"What does it say?"
She looked back at him, with curiosity this time, head cocked.
"You think it says something?" Her accent was mid-Atlantic, more American than British. Possibly one of those country-less exiles you saw in Oxford; maybe born in England, moved around the world with diplomat father from one American school to another, returned to the mother-country for a really snobby final touch to her education.
"I assume it says something," he said.
"Why? What do you think it says?"
"Well," he said, "that's the cuneiform for... uh... under, under a king. No not king. Or is it king?"
She let him hang for a minute then she smiled. Her smile was like watching a glacier melt into a mountain stream and drinking from it. "You're warm."
"Boiling," he said, "but that's just this stupid suit and no air-con here."
She smiled again. "Want a clue?"
"Please, ma'am."
"Its in a later script."
"Its not Sumerian?"
"Akkadian."
"That's me stumped then."
"Don't give up now. That would really piss me off."
"What?"
"Explain later. If you win."
"Err. OK. Another clue?"
"It didn't evolve that much. Of course there are key differences but if you know some of the ways early Sumerian evolved you could probably derive----"
"Oh, is it... something... under dominion? And that's wife. Or woman. Wife, umm, under dominion..."
"Nice. Not far off. Next bit?" she said, turning her body with a gay twist that made his heart leap, so he could read the embroidery down her other side.
"I don't know, but you can keep doing that. Maybe a twirl?"
"Eyes on the prize, boy."
"Yes ma'am. Right. Something, relating to, to... I've seen that before, to do with a... with new grain, with the harvest?"
She looked hard at him for a while. He looked down and focused again. At the curves down the sides of her lithe body... No, at the script.
"Its fertility," he said, looking back up at her.
"That's definitely close enough, Cuneiform guy."
She took him by the wrist and dragged him away into a dark corner far away from the rest of the party and pushed him up against a wall.
"OK handsome. I am *not* asking you if you are single because I doubt you are and I don't want you to have to admit if you're not. But either way, if you're not too hung up for some fun, just stay there don't do anything or say anything."
He thought his way through the clauses and double negatives for a second, then he did nothing and said nothing.
She kissed him.
She broke off and said in his ear, "Have you heard of 'slut for Akkadian'?"
"I think I've got their third album in vinyl."
"Ha."
"So... that's you? Or is that meant to be me? A slut for Akkadian?"
"Uh huh. Its me. Could be you too, I guess."
"You starting your own social movement? How's it going?"
"Just me so far."
"Tough going."
"Probably because I've not told anyone about it yet. Except you."
She kissed him again and he took her waist in his hands.
"Why tell me?" he asked.
"You got it."
"Hardly."
She took his face in her hands and looked intently at him.
"I've been in this miserable college for four months. Four. Months. The town's not much better. There are some cute girls but the guys? Everyone's so up themselves. I might not be super sociable or be easy to talk to, but Christ.
"Ancient Mesopotamia is my field. I got so bored I stitched this into the dress. And you you know what? No-one else has even noticed it was cuneiform. I don't even know if anyone in this supposedly amazing college even knows what cuneiform is. I told myself, first guy that gets it, gets me. So long as he's not a pig. Literally, the first."
She let go of his face and looked away. "Or maybe they just didn't care to look close enough. I'm not exactly a super model."
"Their loss if they didn't," he said.
She smiled up at him again.
"You're passing all the tests tonight, aren't you? First: you actually notice me. Second: you read my message. Third: you let me get weird."
She reached back and discretely pulled the dress up to her waist and took his hands and pulled them back to hold her arse through her tights. She felt hot under his fingers.
"She strengthens my hands for war, my fingers for battle," he said.
"I said slut for Akkadian, not slut for Psalm of David."
"It just came to me." He kissed her again.
After a minute they broke the kiss.
"Are you a history post-grad?" she asked. "You don't look very Oxford, no offence."
"None taken. No, I'm a guest of one of the professors."
"You do history though."
"No, just something I read a bit about. I'm just a self-taught engineer. I do energy things. Experimental wave energy tech. We're working with the college on some industry-academy partnership grant."
She pushed one of her knees between his legs and rubbed her thigh against his groin. "I was expecting a scholar to get it. I was going mad. I'd have even slept with that sixty-something ancient history lecturer, but even he didn't see it. You beat all these bullshit thesaurus windbags, and you're cute, which is a relief. Do you even have a degree?"
"Nothing worth the paper. I don't even know how to spell thesaurus. is it theo-, t, h, e, o, or the-, t, h, e?"
"The-, t, h, e. Can you take me somewhere?" She was still rubbing her thigh against his groin. It was getting a response and she could feel it.
"Are you a student?" he asked.
"PhD. Can you take me somewhere? I want your hands touching more than my nylons."
He moved the fingers of his hands so they were inside her tights, under knickers, on the skin of her arse. She nibbled his ear.
"Here? Naughty," she whispered.
He ran his left hand around the inside of the band of the knickers, over her hip, slowly, a tease, until it was resting against her Mons with his fingers brushing her pussy lips.
