For a change of pace, I’m sitting on the couch in Wally’s living room. Usually, it’s Rowdy Hall or the Maidstone Arms or some other bar in East Hampton. I’m wearing the black dress with the bare back, high hem to show my best feature: long, pale, shapely legs. Reveals as much décolletage as I’ve got. The junior "Vogue" shape is less the point that my gamin face, with lofty cheekbones, dark eyes, nice nose, full lips. As a teen, I made spending money modeling for mags.
My signature is smoldering brown eyes and jet-black pixie-cut hair.
I can’t figure out Wally’s lust. I’m available most weekends, but not to put out. Drink expensive chardonnay, talk dirty, and look cool on a stool.
Wally is early 50’s, divorced, lawyer, house south of the highway but not on the beach, strong-type handsome, fit and trim because he craves action, generous. Well, generous because what he spends is lunch money, for him, even when he gives me a $7,500 bracelet. (I'm thinking of once, at Christmas. Just for him, I gave a spontaneous one-woman performance of “The Trojan Women,” which ended with 'soldiers' shoving me to my knees, hands tied behind me, bare tits out, face pushed down onto Wally's cock).
He wants to fuck me, marry me, anything me, but I can’t see life as his wife. It challenges him. I try to go easy on the cock teasing. He enjoys telling me about his latest sex, which is constant, and, I would say, imaginative. And kinky.
Okay, on the couch, my chardonnay and his Jack, close but not touching. What is Wally’s latest?
“You know those Jehovah’s Witnesses women who go door to door?”
“Yeah, you feel sorry for them, slogging door to door in the freezing cold, but if you invite them in…”
“I invited them. Two black women carrying brochures and copies of Awake.”
Dear God, don’t tell me…
As though he heard my thought: “No, they loved being asked in. I sat right here beside one. The other one was over there. I gave them coffee and cookies.”
I glanced from under my lashes.
“So, yeah, we talked. The cute one…”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, mid-forties, gleaming ebony skin. Dark eyes sparkling, so alive. And those lips! Wearing knockout red lipstick with gloss. With her coat off..."
"Oh, you got comfortable…”
“Right away! The other was the same age, lighter, fuller face, round. Sweetest smile, not quite as cute..."
I nodded.
“Laughing, so pleasant! What is it about these women? Do you think it has to do with faith?”
“What did they talk about?”
“Mostly, a new app on her cellphone. Can’t recall the URL, now. But everything about the "Bible," “science,” “answering questions,” you name it. You know what?”
I sipped chardonnay and raised my eyebrows.
“The "Bible" is on there in something like 150 languages. She was showing me…”
I knew he would get to the story.
“Ellen, you know I’m not religious, right? I respect religion, but I can’t believe.”
“Did they argue with you?”
“They tried the argument from design. You can imagine how ‘hot” that pitch is: God’s creation, everything fits, perfect. And now, we are screwing it up with carbon emission, global warming. I bet they’re getting mileage out of that!”
“You hit on her?”
Wally shrugged. “Well, yeah, I did.”
I said, with gravity, I hope: “Wally, I truly cannot imagine what that was like.”
“You know, Ellen, I just leaned toward her, smiled, and said: “I think the most beautiful thing in all creation is the body of a woman.”
“You need more Jack?”
I had stood up. I couldn’t sit still. I try not to be a prude. And I like Wally. What was this? Something inexpressibly desperate. Like stealing from the church’s poor box at Christmas.
“Sure, I’ll take some.” Wally ran his eyes up and down me and grinned.
I came back with Jack. I asked: “Did they both?”
“Giggled like mad. The one I was sitting beside, Grace, is a nurse. She does this Jehovah’s Witnesses gig like twice a month. I found out…”
