The next day, Friday, we didn't see each other. She left directly after her class to go home and get ready -- that was the plan, at least. Myself, I just stayed in my apartment, biting my nails.
When the clock reached 7pm, I was dressed nicely in slacks, button-up, tie, and jacket, and a 'man-purse' filled with stuff. I left the apartment, got on the subway, and went to Grand Central Station.
I was tense. I stared around the broad open space with the Mission Impossible music in my head. On or around 8pm, Carol would enter the main hall of Grand Central --
or she wouldn't.
I'd sent the email, so she knew the plan for tonight, she knew generally what we'd be doing. If she showed, then she was okay with everything... if she didn't show, then I knew I'd pretty much lost her.
Of course she'd still be my 'girlfriend,' but I knew even then nothing in a vanilla relationship would compare to our first few months. There was, really, no going back. We could accelerate, or smash into a wall and stop, but we couldn't slow down.
I stood on the floor overlooking the sunken main hall, staring down at the massive tidal flows of commuters passing through the station. There were day laborers, business people and students, all hurrying through the open space, all hurrying to busses, cabs, subways and trains. Every single person represented a unique set of hopes and dreams, eyes, libidos, personalities, outlooks. If Carol appeared, it signified that she was willing to stand in the middle of the flux, to let them see her, to take all this humanity
into
her.
8pm -- she wasn't there.
8:05 pm -- she still wasn't there. I willed myself to be calm. The subways are hit and miss, you can't time them to the minute. I'd even wait until 9pm, I decided, bleakly. 9:30pm.
8:15 pm -- I caught a glimpse of someone dressed in white at the far end of the great hall, the opening through which her her subway train would disgorge its passengers. I craned my neck, straining to see more. There was a crowd streaming through the entry, and I couldn't see any one of them clearly.
My attention paid off. There she was, striding through the crowd, dodging clumps of people reading train schedules. I let out a breath -- I hadn't noticed I was holding it. Carol was mine, at least for a while longer. She'd read the email, and she had appeared anyways.
I knew she'd read the email, because she had a single rose in her hand. That was the first rule of the night. I'd written: "If you agree to everything, show up at 8pm in your sexiest, smallest dress, and carry a single rose in your right hand."
There she was, and there was the rose. She'd read everything I'd sent in the email. She
knew
. We were still on the same page.
As she moved through the crowds towards the information stand in the middle of Grand Central Station, she peered this way and that, looking for me. In a moment, I'd go down and join her. But for now, I simply enjoyed the sight of her.
She was looking around, and so she had to notice all the heads turning towards her. She was making eye contact with every person she looked at. How daunting for her -- that every person she glanced at was staring at her, prying her open with their eyes.
And people
were
looking. She wasn't naked, or even slutty looking. She was, simply, beautiful and elegant. Her hair was made up and piled on top of her head, with tendrils of curly hair hanging down and brushing her cheeks. She had little make-up on, that I could see, and pink lipstick.
Her dress was white, and she was tan. She looked incredibly fit and healthy, under the negligible little dress. I realized suddenly that I'd never seen a real tan line on her -- I'd have to ask her about that.
Her dress was a wrap-around. It had long straps that started halfway up her breasts, went over her shoulders, and down to her waist in back. It closed in front like a bathrobe, one side over the other, and the only thing fastening it shut was a heavy, silvery brooch over one hip.
That night, before leaving her house, she'd consciously decided where to place the brooch: if she closed the dress too tightly, there were
no
secrets -- it would slip off her pointy parts too easily, or let everything shine through its semi-opacity. If she closed it too loosely, everything would flap open. Just thinking of her frame of mind, as she experimented with the brooch in her room, made me hard.
It looked to me like she had decided to err more on the side of looseness than tightness (and err is all you could do with that dress). The split down her chest went to an inch or two below her sternum. The split up her leg went to an inch or two below her crotch. With every step she took, the light white fabric -- silk -- split easily up her leg, revealing long stretches of her upper thighs. When she paused, and threw out her right leg, the dress split higher than with her left leg.
I started down the stairs towards her, my eyes consuming her, noticing how the inside of her right thigh looked so smooth and powerful in the light. Under the silk, which slid willingly over her curves, you could see all the way around her thigh, almost to her hip bone. When she twisted to look over her shoulder for me, you could see under the curve of her right breast.
And, apart from her dress, the rose, the brooch, the elevated clogs she wore on her feet, and something in her hand -- that was all. I'd told her to carry the flower, one subway token, and her fake driver's license. She had nothing else in the world with her.
As I came up, she'd already aggregated a small crowd of people around her. Mostly men, trying not to stare at her, but ogling whenever they could. I imagined her trek to Grand Central, and all the other men who had seen her. Attractive women are plentiful in New York, but only a few times a year do you come across a show-stopper like this. And when you see one, you try to drag the encounter out.
She finally noticed me as I came up. A smile grew on her face, and she reached up to kiss me.
"You look --
lovely,
" I told her.
"Thank you! I wasn't sure," she said. I took her hand and walked her through the station, unable to help noticing how her breasts rocked back and forth with each step. I couldn't stare from so close beside her, but I had the next-best thing: people staring and making way for us. You would have thought she was painted blue, or that she was Hollywood royalty, from all the attention. We passed, in effect, through a corridor of commuters, everybody side-stepping to watch her go past.
She continued, "I could have gone with something more transparent, and also pretty small. But, I remembered how you said that loose clothes are better than tight clothes, because there's more of a chance to see something."
"And did you think about loose clothes when you decided where to fasten that brooch on your hip?"
She giggled. "How are you able to read my mind like that? I spent ten minutes finding just the right spot for it -- and it was still too loose. I didn't factor in 'walking' or 'wind', or even 'shifting my weight.' The dress was
flying
open as I walked down the street. It was just
sliding
off me as I walked through Queens. I had to fix it. So as I was waiting for the train, I refastened it again."
"You were in the subway, and you took the brooch off, and then put it on again?"
"Yes," she said. "I was holding my dress shut with my pinky. In your honor, I made sure I was standing among a bunch of guys. I fiddled with the dress for thirty minutes, bending and twisting, throwing a leg out. Staring down at myself. When I sit, you can stare down my cleavage to my
crotch.
I started getting advice from the guys."
Yowza. "You can loosen it again in the cab. Now that you're with me."
"Okay," she said. "Are people really staring? Do I look that cute?"
I glanced sidelong at her, a little surprised. But no -- she was perfectly serious.
