Lisette's Backthere Adventure, a fetish romance novella
CHAPTER THREE (first half's the romance, second half's the fetish)
It's the crack of dawn on Saturday. Lisette's in her kitchen waiting for her tea to steep. She opens the freezer and gets one of those premade nuts-and-chocolate ice cream cones, unwrapping it on her way to the front of the house.
Lisette lives in the rear upstairs of a camelback, and the ground floor sticks out farther toward the street. There's two big sash windows that look out toward the street over the ground floor's roof, and she calls that her 'balcony'.
Never mind that it's sloped on two sides and nothing at all like a balcony. She also calls those two big windows 'French doors', never-minding that they open up-and-down and aren't doors at all. If other people lack imagination that's their problem.
Lisette takes a lick, pulls up a French door with her free hand and stoops through to her balcony. The shingles are warm and gritty on her feet and she lifts on her heels and wiggles her toes. She takes a deep breath (jeez it's hot out _already_!) and looks at the sliver of waxing moon rising over the house across the street. She takes another breath (jeez it only gets dark, it never cools off!) and licks melted ice cream off her knuckles.
It's thick and white and slippery and a little salty from her sweat and it reminds her of her first handjob. She knew the whole point was for him to spill, but she hadn't thought about what to do after. So when he came she just licked the stuff off the back of her hand.
Turns out there wasn't much 'after' anyway - he wouldn't kiss her and pretty much lost interest in the whole thing. But the memory (and the mouthful of goo she has right now) gets her going, both her spit glands and her Bartholin's glands. She's putting her mouth back on her ice cream when she hears a thunky-clunk noise from out on the street.
There's a pedicab rolling along, a pedicab decorated like a carnival float. That's not so odd, even this time of year, or even this time of day, not in THIS town. But it's the kinda thing that gets your attention, for sure. As Lisette watches it get closer her phone starts buzzing.
"Good morning, Lisette! It's Joel Fenimore. If you look outside right now you should be seeing..."
"A pedicab decorated like it's Mardi Gras," Lisette finishes.
"Oh good," Joel says. "So you're already up and about." She's putting a weird accent on her voice. "We've sent over breakfast."
"Mmm-hmmmm," Lisette says through a mouthful of ice cream. The bike's stopped in front of her house. She watches the rider double-check the address, hop off, bend over to grab a package from the rickshaw's floor. He's got nice calves and a pretty butt, the kinda thing gets Lisette's attention, for sure. She says "mmm-hmmmm" again.
Joel, all accent-y, says: "I hope I've not overstepped my bounds..."
Even distracted by the view, Lisette twigs the weird voice and the 'Simpsons' reference: Joel's talking like Karl from the Dimoxinil episode. Lisette's coming up with a clever response when her call waiting goes off.
Now the cute guy is looking up at her. And what he sees is a girl standing on the roof, one foot on either side of the peak. She's a very pretty and very tall, with very long and very pretty black hair. She has an ice cream cone in one hand and a phone to her ear. He gives her a 'this call is from me' finger-point from his phone to hers.
Lisette waves back, then beeps over to Joel's line. She wants to tell Joel that she _gets_ the Karl joke, wants to know just what the heck is going on.
She says into the phone: "Look, I think I missed my cue for the Romeo & Juliet Balcony Scene. I gotta run," and beeps back over to the boy's phone line. She says: "I'm on my way down, be there in a sec."
Lisette dashes down the stairs, the pointy, finger-sweaty end of the cone sticking out of her mouth. She can feel ice cream dribbling down her chin, and as she opens the door she's licking thick white goo off her face.
"Benedicite!" the cute bike guy says. "What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?"
Lisette goes blank, blinks, her mouth full of sugary spit. Whu...?
"Good morning Miss Emerson," he smiles. "I think it's *me* that missed *my* cue!"
Whu...? Then a lightbulb goes off and Lisette gets it: That's a line from the play! She must have goofed up that call-waiting phone line switch, and the Juliet-on-the-balcony gag she meant for Joel got misdirected to this rickshaw Romeo.
Lisette chews the rest of the cone, tries to answer while swallowing: "Mo. Yer zhusf im hyme." She can feel her face flushing.
He recites: "Beauty's ensign yet / Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks," all iambic-y and Elizabethan-y.
Lisette is charmed. She eyeballs him up-and-down. All that and quick-witted, too!
**
The plot, however, does not thicken. This boytoy's all business.
"A basket from Miss Fenimore," he says, leaving the pentameter one foot short.
He holds up a wicker thing. Lisette's thinking of something to say or do, thinking her her mouth is probably bobbing open and closed. She's tapping her hands over her front and her pockets.
"Oh, no tip." he says and heads back toward the street. "Miss Fenimore's taken good care of me."
...which is when Lisette realizes 1. she has nothing to tip with anyway because 2. she has no pockets because 3. she is in her dagwood bumstead summer pajamas and 4. oh shit my hair probably looks like dagwood bumstead's.
She covers her goofy-lookin' self with the basket and skips back upstairs.
And of course, on the way up she thinks of a million clever things to say.
**
There's a note in Lisette's basket:
good morning!
here's some pinhead oats to spurtle
come up to dana's around noonish
(it's the blue creole cottage with white trim and a red swing on the porch)
