Finding Picasso Ch. 09:
A talented tongue gets it done
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the concluding chapter of "Finding Picasso."
If you haven't been keeping up, no problem. Just search for one of the phrases below. They will take you straight to the good stuff:
On our last night
Violet is waiting
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Perhaps because during the Cold War, no one lived in more immediate danger than West Berliners, my aunt Bea had a special love for the city and its residents.
Her first visit was in the mid-1960s. Just 20 years earlier, Hitler's Berlin had been the center of the most toxic political philosophy the world has ever known. Somehow, in two post-war decades, while still in the crosshairs of Cold War tensions, West Berlin reinvented itself as a center of global avant garde art and culture.
I wanted to renew acquaintances with a pair of Bea's favorite art dealers as well as attend a large showing of student art work at the Konferenzzentrum Berlin. Lysa added an arousing new prospect on the eve of our arrival.
Emma had sent a text inviting us to stay at her flat while her roommates were on holiday.
Emma's place was stunning. Located on the 40th floor of an ultra-modern skyscraper, there were views of the river Spree, the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Plaza and even the green hills of Saxony-Anhalt on the horizon.
But the view that intrigued me most was Emma herself.
During our revelry a few nights earlier, I'd made love with Emma. We were surprisingly compatible lovers with an intuitive sense of how to please each other. The thing that left me feeling unfulfilled was nothing to do with the sex, which was beautiful, but that in the chaos of that night, I never got to see Emma in the nude.
I never had the opportunity to study her breasts, the texture of her skin, the turn of her stomach, or the pale V between her thighs.
I knew Emma was beautiful, but only in a general, I'll-defined sense. I needed to fill in the visual blanks and memorize the intimate details of her body before I could feel completely fulfilled. Strange and bizarre? For sure!
My own perverse fetish? Absolutely!
Perhaps it was somehow connected to my obsessive-compulsive relationship to art. I'm sure Lysa had seen an academic study on the topic, but for the moment it was a secret I'd rather keep to myself. Besides, I was damn lucky Lysa was willing to share me with Emma in the first place.
"She's infatuated with you," Lysa says apropos nothing, except her ability to read my mind.
"That won't last, once she gets to know me better," I reply. "Does her infatuation bother you?"
"Not as long it's me riding alongside you when we depart for Prague," Lysa tells me. Like poor Paul Junior, Lysa sometimes seemed constitutionally unable to tell a lie, or even to put a socially acceptable spin on her feelings.
"I doubt Emma could survive an afternoon on a touring bike," I tell her.
"Exactly what I'm counting on," Lysa answers with a mischievous grin. "By the way, it's probably a good time to ask as any. Who is the girl in Prague?"
"My, God, Lysa!" I exclaimed, caught completely by surprise. "How on earth did you know?"
"Call it intuition. What's her name?"
"Violet," I answer, showing Lysa some photos from Paris. I recount how we met on the flight from JFK to Charles de Gaulle, as well as our video rendezvous with Runa and Raven, which requires another explanation of its own. Fortunately, there was no reason to mention Zoe, the bewitching photojournalist I'd fucked on the trail from CDG to central Paris.
"Violet, Runa, Raven, Lilli, Lysa, Emma," she went down the list, her voice amazingly judgement free. "You really have been busy, Lover Boy!"
"I'm not usually so promiscuous," I retort. "Besides, I don't think Lilli really counts."
"You got her off, didn't you?"
"I suppose, technically, yes."
"Then Lilli counts. Anyway, when it rains, it pours," she laughs. "I'm not sure that Emma is prepared for so much competition."
Just then, the door swings open and Emma rushes into her apartment, wearing denim cutoffs, a spaghetti strap top, and carrying two shopping bags that contain one head of lettuce and four bottles of wine.
She hugs Lysa, and gives me a long, deep tongue kiss. Then turns her attention to the fully loaded bikes parked in her living room.
"The doorman didn't give you any trouble about the bikes?" Emma inquires in German while Lysa translates for me.
"He asked us to use the service elevator, but he was very polite about it," Lysa answers in English for my benefit, then in German for Emma.