Stolen Moments (23 page)

My reverie is interrupted as the train glides to a stop at the Smithsonian station. As usual, she gets on the last car, something I discovered early on in the commute. She either arrives at the last minute to board, or for some odd quirk, she likes riding in the final car. It’s my lucky day, because she finds an empty seat across from me on the opposite side of the doors. I am sitting in a seat facing the rear of the compartment, she in one facing the front. She looks at me and smiles. Perhaps there is the faint recognition on her part that she has seen me before. Whatever the reason, I smile back. I would love to hold the eye contact, but she glances down at her watch, and in reaction, I check mine. It is 5:37, a little early for both of us to be getting home from work, but somehow fate has decided to bring us together again.

After a few minutes of riding, I am astonished to see her get up to stand in front of the doors; she is going to disembark at the next stop. This is not part of her normal routine and arouses my curiosity. She turns her head to look in my direction, but it can’t be me, so I search over my shoulder, wondering what lucky individual has attracted her attention. When I turn back around, she is still gazing at me and I see what appears to be an invitation in her eyes. I must be hallucinating, but as I stand up, she smiles more seductively, an encouraging sign. The train comes to a complete halt and the doors hiss open. She steps off and I follow.

Aboveground she heads up Twelfth Street, her brief case swinging from one shoulder with a newspaper shoved haphazardly inside. Her gait is purposeful but unhurried and I wonder where she is leading me. At E Street she turns left, and as we pass by the National Theatre, I don’t even glance to see what’s showing. After crossing Fourteenth Street, she turns and enters the Willard Hotel. I follow her down a short hallway off the lobby to the bar, where she sits at a table near a window. Hesitating, I take a place at the bar next to two bureaucrats drinking bourbon and debating the last election. She orders a white wine while I order a Manhattan.

I sit and watch her drink. Occasionally she glances out the window at the passersby but I can tell she isn’t really seeing them. Her neck, like a prima ballerina’s, is impossibly long and her hair is gathered up in a French twist, although a few wisps dangle loosely about her face. I want to reach out and brush them away and fantasize that I’ll have the opportunity to do just that. She finishes her drink and leaves cash on the table. When she begins to rise, I throw some bills on the bar as well and follow her out.

I lose sight of her for a moment when she rounds a corner, but somehow I know she is heading to the hotel elevators. Sure enough, I catch up just as she enters one and I walk in after her. The doors quietly close and we begin the ascent. She doesn’t speak to me, nor does she even look in my direction. Surely she knows I am following her, or have I misinterpreted her intentions? When the car eventually comes to a halt, she steps out and I once more obediently follow.

She stops in front of a room, where she pulls out her hotel card. As she inserts it into the slot, the newspaper in her bag falls to the floor. I see this as my opening and gallantly step forward.

“Oh, thank you,” she says as I pick it up and hand it to her. “Won’t you come in, then?”

“I would love to.” I swallow hard, knowing the game has been leading up to this moment.

When the door closes, she drops her bag on the floor and grabs my wrist, spinning me around. I find myself pinned with my back to the door, trapped beneath the weight of her body and the firm grip she has on both of my wrists. She forces her knee between my legs, pushing them apart, and then presses her mouth to mine. She bites my lower lip, not hard, but not gently either. I wince from the pain but then feel her tongue reach out to soothe it away. Just when I begin to enjoy this delicious attention to my lip, she forces her tongue inside and assaults my mouth. When she finally allows me a gasp of air, she lets go of one hand to reach into her pocket.

“Don’t move,” she commands.

I stand there, intimidated by this abrupt and unsuspected change in her behavior. It is so out of character for her, or rather what I had envisioned her to be like, that I begin to tremble; partly out of fear, and partly out of fascination of the unknown. I am already wet.

I feel cold steel encircle my wrists and realize she is cuffing me, a realization not entirely unwelcome.

“Being a cop comes in handy sometimes, don’t you agree?” She laughs throatily as I hear the click of the handcuffs locking in place.

She pulls me by my wrists to the bed, where she yanks the sheets and blankets down. After pushing me back onto the pillows, she quickly removes her shoes and stockings and is on top of me before the last stocking hits the floor. She tears at my clothes in her haste to remove them, all the while humping my right thigh. In short order, she has my shirt completely unbuttoned and my trousers and briefs pushed down around my ankles. My shirt won’t come off with the handcuffs on, but apparently she doesn’t care about that. She takes my manacled wrists and extends them over my head, then she attaches them to the headboard with the scarf from around her neck. My hands are immobilized, and with my pants around my ankles, she has effectively subdued me. She stands on the bed in triumph and strips quickly, then crawls up to my head.

“I need your mouth now,” she says urgently as she straddles my face.

She is hot and ready and just the smell of her arousal makes me hard. I begin by teasing everywhere but where she wants it, but she is too far gone for foreplay.

“No, suck it now,” she insists and takes hold of my head to keep it where her need is greatest.

I acquiesce willingly and take her fully into my mouth. She rocks against my face, coating my nose, cheeks, and chin with her essence.

“Yes, keep doing it like that, yes, that’s got it.”

Within minutes a low rumble emanates from deep within her chest and I listen as it ascends to the top of her head. Needing an outlet, it erupts into one long volcanic groan as her body jerks spasmodically over my face. Afterward, she slides down my stomach and collapses on top of me. Breathing hard from her efforts and still moaning softly, she manages to grind her hips against me, working a thigh between my legs. I raise my hips in an effort to relieve the pressure and she presses down harder.

“Please, I can’t wait any longer,” I beg. The pressure feels good, but I need something more direct. She responds by tugging on my nipple with her teeth.

She descends to a point between my legs where her face can rest on my inner thigh. I feel her blow gently against my clit and the pain is exquisite. Without thinking, I try to reach for her, but the tug on my wrists reminds me of my incapacity. The ache below increases and I need her to make me come.

“Please.” I hear myself whine, but the agony is too great to be embarrassed.

She understands the urgency in my plea and, without warning, plunges three fingers deep inside. Shocked, I come instantly. Behind closed lids, bright molecules dance erratically across an endless void before erupting into fireworks at the periphery of my vision.

I awake to the sound of water running. Within seconds, it shuts off. She steps out from the bathroom, one towel wrapped around her body and another around her head, turban-style.

“Hi, honey.” She smiles warmly at me.

“Hi, baby.” I smile back. “I missed you so much.”

She laughs. “I couldn’t tell.” She leans down and kisses me slowly. “I missed you too, baby. The next time they send me to Peru, you’re going with me.”

“Okay by me,” I say emphatically. “But will the museum agree to cover my expenses?”

She shrugs. “Sure, I’ll just categorize them under ‘Meals and Entertainment.’ Speaking of which”—she eyes me hungrily—“I’m ready for dessert.”

The ancient grandfather clock by the wide wooden staircase thumped and whirred, then sounded out the three o’clock hour in a slow, deep cadence. Martha echoed each strike with her index finger, tapping the smooth page of
Orlando
while her eyes lingered on what she thought might be the longest, most lyrically written sentence in history.

Sighing, she lifted her bookmark from her lap and slid it in place. It was an odd bookmark, she supposed, but it continued to find its way into each volume she read. The woman in the photograph grinned up at her, windblown dark hair half in her eyes. The cleanly scissored edges of the photo, originally in the campus newspaper, had started to fray before she thought of laminating it, and now, years later, it was a touchstone.

The photograph had been taken the day the university field hockey team had won its division, and the woman in the photo had been carried off the field on her teammates’ shoulders. Martha had seen the game. She still remembered the cold November wind slicing through her. She was shrieking encouragement from the sidelines when Eleanor the Great ran by, a thunder of long legs and gasps for air as she cut off an opponent’s pass. The dark eyes had lifted, just for a few seconds, making contact with Martha’s. It was as if a door deep within Martha had shuddered open and yawned wide, exposing her awakening soul. Then Eleanor had looked down, gathered up the white ball, and sent it to a teammate with a crisp, hard crack of her stick. In a blur of strides she was gone. And Martha had been left with a question.

How can she make me feel so much just by looking at me?

Martha had been a lowly freshman, then, and Eleanor Watson had been a senior. Martha was a library major, a bookworm, and though she could hold her own in many recreational games, she was no school athlete. Her ripples in the pond that was campus life never lapped over into the waves surrounding Eleanor. Never had a crush been more unattainable.

Five years had passed since then. Martha shook her head at herself. The photograph was more than a bookmark. It was in reality a torch whose embers would not die.

Warm late-September sunlight was pouring through the tall window behind her like butterscotch, pooling across her jeans-and-sweatshirt-clad body like syrup on a sundae. She was comfortably ensconced in a plush but battered brown leather armchair, with her legs hanging over the armrest, close enough to the scarred information desk to look as if she were on duty. Martha had decided several years back that she would only endure the desk stool while under direct supervision. When faced with the choice of spending a six-hour shift luxuriating in a 1950s stuffed-to-the-max armchair or perched on a hard-as-hell Shaker stool, there was really no contest. Thank heaven her boss Charles had decided he valued her willingness to take extra shifts enough to look the other way on the few occasions when he’d caught her enjoying her luxurious leather throne.

The separate 1970s glass-and-steel architectural monstrosity that was the main library was located behind this graceful little building. Constructed of green-hued serpentine stone, with white marble columns rising above a flight of wide entrance steps, the century-and-a-half-old library was set aside for specialty information. Hundreds of legal and medical texts were housed downstairs, under the supervision of Charles and two other library aides. Up here, where she was, were the rarer archives and century-old books. This was where the college and local counties histories were kept, where all the secrets lay.

In the locked rooms at the rear of the second floor, Martha had seen the original, handwritten parchments detailing the Continental Army’s retreat at Brandywine, had read the passionate account of the wounding of Lafayette as told by the doctor who had treated him beneath a tree that still lived in a park not ten miles from here. She had examined the letters of local farmers who had been part of the underground railroad, helping runaway slaves make it to the port city of Philadelphia. She had scoured the confessional letters of women who had met with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony when their husbands had told them not to, giving pin money and brainstorms in the cause of women’s suffrage, risking their marriages and financial security for a right some modern-day women failed to exercise.

The second floor of the small F.  H. Green Graduate Library was an isolated, mahogany-paneled, oak-shelved mausoleum for most of the library aides in the university’s student staffing program. Martha looked around, smiling faintly, then closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of waxed wooden floors and hundreds and hundreds of hardbound books. To Martha it was a little slice of heaven.

No one came here except the graduate students. And they were another breed altogether: quiet, orderly, businesslike in their approach to research. By the time you became a graduate student, you knew how to use the computers, the microfiche, and even the wonderfully musty card catalogues for the really old texts. They came in with their laptops and legal pads and briefcases, and set themselves up at long tables like they were making camp. Then they prowled from one row of shelves to the next, searching the stacks for something they had illegibly scribbled on a sticky note, pulling out tomes, leafing through them, and then lugging the massive volumes to the copier. Rarely did they trouble her for information.

Which, Martha knew, was sad, in a way. A grad student herself, and only a thesis away from a Master of Library Science degree, Martha knew in incredible detail the contents of the second-floor grad library. She knew the relationships of each area of knowledge to the others. And she knew where the unexpectedly rich little nuggets of intellectual gold lay. However, rarely did anyone ask her for help, and so she never got to exercise what she thought was her greatest talent: her limitless retention of minutiae.