Ahhh, Christmastime at the underwear store...
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There's nothing quite like driving along the sea on a nice, warm day, windows down, smelling the salt and letting the sandy sun soak into the car, driving out the smells of stale coffee and old fast-food wrappers. Today was a delight, one of what had to be the last truly warm days before the winter came. It was weird to see bikinis on the sand despite the tinsel hanging from the bathhouse: Thanksgiving had been two weeks before and so there'd been Christmas decorations out for about thirteen days now.
Runners were loping along the boardwalk, and I let my eyes linger as the traffic lurched past them. The Shore Road was predictably clogged; of course, I hadn't been the only one with the idea of enjoying the scenery.
Bodies. Everywhere, bodies. Every shape and size, every color, all of them free and easy and largely naked. I love the beach. It feels like a cafeteria, especially when I'm horny. Especially today, when I expected to hear Jenn tell us that everything had gone perfecto with Eric, that we were in the money. She'd better have closed the deal, too; the value of our stolen panties was decreasing by the day. The bodies cavorted on the sand, and I watched happily as the crowds drifted by.
Like the guy walking toward me, owning the sidewalk, striding tall and proud with his chin up and his eyes hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses like Goose's replacement wore in
Top Gun
. Good God, but he was fine: a big guy with skin the color of milk chocolate, his pecs sprinkled with dark tattoos, about thirty or thirty-five maybe: it's hard to tell sometimes with black guys. I felt my mouth open slightly as I took in a sublime six-pack, defined like an artist's chisel marks on onyx, the muscles descending in a tasty V-shaped march down into a pair of shorts cut high enough to show the whole long, tempting expanse of his thighs.
There had to be a big, sturdy pair of balls in there. Had to be, the way he was walking, disdainful of everyone else in sight.
The sudden rush of lust surprised me a little. I'm dating a woman right now, a delicious morsel named Fathia, who can do really amazing things to my pussy, but every now and then I just crave the harsh, hot bluntness of a thick cock twisting in my body. The kind of cock that black guy had to have. Just had to. He moved with the kind of confidence that told the whole world he knew exactly what to do with a woman.
For a blinked instant, I thought about pulling over... well, double parking at least, then leaning out the window of my shitty Rav4 and soaking up the stares from the rest of the passersby; the women would hate me for daring to chat up such a fine specimen, the men? Well, they'd just be looking at my tits, shelved on my car door, meant for just one pair of eyes behind some mirrored shades. I'd let him see me check him out, my eyes drifting down his body behind my own Wayfarers, and then I'd lick my lips.
He'd saunter over, leaning down, a drop of sweat rolling over the taut skin of his abs, and I'd reach out a lazy hand to collect it, giving him a smile around my finger after I sucked it clean. He'd taste like the ocean. I'd drawl confidently when I introduced myself, then he'd climb shrugging into my passenger seat; I'd take him to the bathhouse, lock the two of us in one of the dirty stalls, and then I'd shriek as I let him breed me over the toilet.
But no. No way. A man like that? I sighed and drove away, knowing the sad truth: alas, I had insufficient booty for the likes of him. He was a cocky, strapping man who'd want something to grab onto while he took his woman, and me? I had ass enough to be a really, really good underwear saleswoman, but I just didn't have what it took to become this man's bitch.
A big part of success in the sexual sweepstakes is knowing your place.
But he saw me stare at him as I drove by, and he rewarded me with a quick curl of that gorgeous wide mouth of his. That one curl had me damp immediately, and I figured that by the time I got to work I'd need to change. I was pulling a double today, and Secret Whispers didn't need me smelling like I was in heat.
Down along the beach, then, and into the dingy employee area of the parking garage. They kept us in the back corner, as if we smelled or something, the mall management mortified lest the well-heeled Gallery shoppers stain their eyes by looking at the likes of the mere Nametag-Wearing Classes. Ever since The Gallery had opened, following all the cost overruns and the materials shortages and that one big Teamsters strike back when they'd been just about ready for the Grand Opening, we'd been shunted back here among the rats and the sex offenders.
Ah well,
I reflected, checking my lipstick in the rearview mirror once my engine had shuddered to a halt.
Could be worse.
Last Christmas the store had been in temporary quarters in the older part of the mall, the shittier part, and it came to me that it was a lot better to be working in the glitz and parking in the shit, than both working
and
parking in the shit.
The grittiness under my shoes reminded me I needed to be careful: I'd worn the long slacks today, the ones that made my legs look five miles long, but there were puddles down here. I thought a moment about reaching down and actually hiking up my pants, but no: I'd worked hard on the creases this morning, struggling with the linen-blend fabric at my half-size ironing board while my sister brayed in my ear on the speakerphone.
"It was so fucking crazy!" she'd announced in that spazzed-out Sunday voice. "I'm telling you, I'd never seen anything like that."
"Seen what?" I snarked back, not in the mood to be nice. She was a lawyer, and I didn't need her tossing it into my face that she could still go out and get wasted on Saturday nights. "A penis?"
Her silvery giggle came floating out of the speaker and I bit my lip, the crease disintegrating in my hand again. Fuck. "Oh, honey," she sighed, "no. Just no. Penises, I've seen. This?" I heard her pause as her lips ruffled the surface of her coffee. When she went on, I heard reflection. Thoughtfulness. Awe, even. "This was an orgy, Chels."
"An orgy." I found that hard to fathom. I knew the bride, and doubted she'd have let her bachelorette party go that way.
Eve laughed at the disbelief in my voice. "I'm telling you. It was the maid of honor setting everything up. Kathleen D'Arrico?" I vaguely knew the name. Beth didn't do any of the planning. You'd have been blown away." She paused. "Literally, maybe. The strippers were fucking hung, and they weren't shy about going down."
Wait. "On the guests?" I bit back a cry of exultation as I nailed my crease, finally getting the iron to get it all started. "They didn't just, you know, dance?" She chuckled, a very grown-up sound, like a grandma who's just successfully hooked her granddaughter up with a doctor.
Another slurp of her coffee. "Beth sucked one of the strippers' dicks," she announced loftily, as if she was reminding me she'd just won a case. "Seriously. It was really hot. And, uhh..." She dragged the pause playfully out, my iron ascending the pants leg quickly now, the clock by the stove reminding me I'd need to get a move on if I was going to drive along the Shore. "Well, Beth wasn't the only one."
I hesitated, the iron pausing, and I'm sure Eve could see my eye-roll through the phone. "Jesus, Evie."
"I know." She did not sound contrite.
"Fuck. I mean, did you even know his name?" The silence was all the answer I needed. "Tell me you didn't swallow, Evie."
"What was I, raised in a barn?" she scoffed. "I've got manners. I'm hardly going to take a load all over my boobs with all my friends watching." Her voice trailed off in the face of my obvious disapproval, and when she spoke she sounded just a bit uncertain. Finally. "I brushed my teeth, Chels."
"Oh, well then." I started in on the second leg with a vengeance, but I had the rhythm now and I tamed that crease with much less trouble. "Thank God. Because, you know, fluoridated toothpaste is known to prevent transmission of oral herpes from, say, giving blowjobs to anonymous male strippers." I frowned, the pants no longer at the front of my mind, and then decided I could ask the obvious question without seeming to approve of Eve's conduct. "So. How big was he?"
"Fucking massive," she giggled. "Huge balls. Like, really huge." She hesitated. "You're still a lesbian this month, right?"
Fuck her. "Bye," I hissed, hanging up, the double-entendre only hitting me later. I was still muttering to myself as I strode toward the elevator bank at the bottom of the parking garage, now at last in the well-lit areas where the shoppers parked. The perfect sign-off. Bye, bi; I was sure Evie had missed the joke, but then so had I. So I couldn't even mock her with it.
I was convinced, as I got onto the 'vator, that everyone else in the whooshing, closetlike space could catch the smell of pussy wafting up from under those laboriously-ironed pants, courtesy of that hot black dude by the beach, but I snarled to myself that I was being silly; it had just been a little squirt, just that slight thrilling little trickle, and since nobody was pivoting their bodies to look accusingly at me, I decided I was probably okay.
Good. Another selling point of the WhisperSoft Control-Waist Thong (model 4336), with its synthetic-chamois gusset. I'd have to tell my crew to start letting the customers know, with a whispery giggle, that this model did a good job controlling the rich stink of pussy.
Stepping from the 'vator into the shiny, tiled glitter of the mall was always a weird experience for me. Since the renovation, they had the elevators coming up in the old Marketplace, with the glitzy mirrored-neon entrance to the Gallery over next to the old food court, the shitty one with half its stalls vacant. Life was much better in the Gallery; it had given the whole mall a shot in the arm, but its many real restaurants had also shot the food court in the foot. People just didn't like eating dry General Tso's chicken with a side of corn dogs anymore.
I flickered my eyes left and right as I strode across the tiles, looking and feeling chic, scanning for people staring at me. I like it when I draw glances. I'm not hot, but I know how to look like I am, and I prefer a little bit of positive reinforcement before I show up for work. I like daydreaming, too; I liked thinking that maybe, just maybe, the black guy from the beach might have jumped in his car and followed me, maybe slid into a nicely cut suit, and that he was now waiting by the door of Secret Whispers to pick me up and whisk me away, just like the end of
An Officer and a Gentleman,
complete with my coworkers looking enviously on.
