The Taste Of Her Lips

She had nipples like maraschino cherries. I could see them from all the way across the bar as she came from the heat of sunset into the happy hour cool. She paused in the doorway as her eyes adjusted to the neon and gloom, and her sleek, white dress vanished in a back-lit glare of dying sunlight. It was so flimsy and clinging it was as if she were nude, her body clothed only in smoke. It was slit to her hip bone and fell open over her cleavage, like the slinky gowns Myrna Loy would wear in the Thin Man movies. Her breasts were like honeydews.

Her hair was white, with a tint of cotton candy pink and chopped short in ragged, artful chaos. She had to have felt my hungry eyes on her as she studied the room, seeking an empty chair. There was only one and it was beside me at the end of the bar. There was always an empty stool beside me. She moved down the bar with the heavy-heeled clog of a runway model, her breasts bouncing with each stride. A bounce, then a delectable quiver. The faces at the bar turned to follow her as she passed. The look on her face said she knew that they would. Her dress clung to her covered thigh as she walked. It clung to the mound beneath her flat belly. Plainly there were no underthings to spoil the line of the dress. Just as plainly, there was no fuzz on her peach.

She took the seat next to me, her eyes passing over me like I was a mounted fish on the wall. She ordered a whiskey sour. While she waited, she twirled the cocktail napkin on the bar with an elegant finger. The polish on her long fingernail was tomato red. I watched the muscles move under her bare shoulder. Her skin was the color of honey and as smooth as whipped butter.

When her drink arrived, she took the cherry in it by the stem and used it to stir the lime green liquid. Then she lifted the cherry to her mouth. Lips painted candy apple red parted and her tongue slid out to receive the cherry and deliver it in. Her teeth closed on the stem and she pulled it free with a pop.

I wanted to disappear. I always took the seat around the corner end of the bar to hide myself from the beautiful ones. No one ever took the seat beside me, as if to be so near would taint them somehow, just as my presence now tainted the delicious creature who had foolishly come so close. I could feel the greasy sweat begin to seep from my pasty skin. I knew it would give an oily sheen to my swinish face. The folds of my chins began to itch, but I dared not dab at them. The thin paper napkin would dissolve in my sausage fingers and shred against the grey stubble of my beard. I became painfully aware that the fat roll of my enormous gut rested on the bar and the buttons of my shirt strained to hold in the trout-belly flesh of my womanish breasts.

She turned away from me, drink in hand, and rested her elbows on the bar. Her breasts stood proud. She had nipples like maraschino cherries, tempting as Halloween candy under the sheer cream of her dress. Her caramel-colored eyes swept the room, looking for someone younger, someone slimmer, someone who didn't reek of hot wings and beer and loneliness. And they watched her, the slim ones, cutting glances at her from the sides of envious eyes, hoping their dates wouldn't notice. They glared at me, hating me for filling the seat beside her. She finished her drink and turned back to the bar. I summoned the pinch of courage that lived in the thin man inside me.

"Why don't I buy you another?" I asked.

She looked at me like I was a slug on a picnic table. Her candy-apple mouth pulled into a liver-lipped grimace.

"Why don't you bite my ass?" she sneered.

My face reddened like shrimp in boiling water. I could feel the heat in my face like I had opened an oven to check on the pies. I could see them, the slim ones, rock back in their chairs, wincing with lemon-puckered lips. They nudged each other, mouthing words of false sympathy for the fat man, the shot-down man, the hopeless bucket of lard who had dared to speak to one so far above his station. I had to speak to her again. I had to.

"There's no need to be rude, is there?" I asked. It was almost a plea.

"Eat me," she said, and slid off her stool.

She tossed a five on the bar and strode to the door. I watched her sumptuous rump as she walked away. I felt a rumble of bile in my gut. I couldn't just sit there, could I? I couldn't just sit in a room of ridicule, hearing the whispered jokes and the braying laughs, knowing they were aimed at me. I followed her out the door.

She had nipples like maraschino cherries. I had them on French Vanilla ice cream with chopped walnuts and a swirl of chocolate sauce. The blood that dripped down from them was like strawberry syrup, only sweeter.