10 Written by Thomas Miller

    Bruce recalls walking Georgeanne home, escorting her up four flights of stairs to her room.  How she flopped down on the couch and he crouched before her, unlaced her wet boots, spattered around the ankles with white salt stains, and pried them off.  Her socks beneath were wet thin black anklets, no good for mid-February and he pulled those off, too, took her feet in his hands and chafed them.  The heel and the sole cold to the touch, the toes colder still, pale and wrinkled.
    “This is a seduction,” he whispered.  “I’m undressing you and taking you to bed. Georgeanne giggled.  “That’s sweet.  The foot thing I like that you’re allowed to continue.” The walls of Georgeanne’s room were hung with Van Gogh prints, the couch draped with a bright red and yellow patterned sheet of satiny cotton that looked like a sari.  There was a doormat.  Throw pillows.  A coat rack.  Niceties Bruce would never have thought to put in a room.
    “A seduction,” Bruce repeated, running a fingernail over Georgeanne’s arch.  “When the ocean formed Venus from sea foam, it looked through the ages for a model and settled on you.  Measured your dimensions, charted your leg from ankle to hip as the most perfect example of its kind: ample, succulent, polished smooth.”
    “I think I just got called fat.”
    “I want to pour you over me like a cup of hot coffee,” Bruce whispered.  “Your hair blacker than licorice, your legs rich and firm as flan topped with a sprig of mint.  Your lips on the verge of melting, like scoops of pink gelato.”
    “Seriously.  What’s with the food?
    “I missed dinner.”
    “Well, I’ve got a box of crackers and a couple of apples.  Eat something before you embarrass yourself.”
    “Don’t want to eat something.  Take you into the shower and turn the water hot until the steam blushes your face scarlet that color so much redder than anything the human body can do except bleed to death from the carotid artery.”
    “We’re putting that on the list of things you’re never allowed to say to a woman again,” Georgeanne said.  “I’ve got to write an econ paper for tomorrow.” 
    Bruce talked on and on, slowly working his hands beneath the cuff of her jeans, moving up the warm flesh of her right leg.  Reached her knee after what seemed hours, his arms stuck fast between denim and skin.  Then Georgeanne began to giggle.  She laughed until tears ran down her nose and dripped on her sweater.

Posted on February 9th, 2009 in Fiction