that window and you thought he was my boss?'
Stupid didn't quite describe my feeling. 'He's not?'
'You gotta' watch those stereotypes, Mr. Dublin. I own The Chocolate Dream. Zach is an artist that does work for me. He was one of my teachers in art school.'
She flipped on the radio to a beautiful rendition of Sarah Vaughan moaning about 'ain't misbehavin, savin' all my love for you. So I asked Allegra to dance. I don't know what I was doing dancing this young woman around the back room of a bakery when I should have been at my desk meeting old Mrs. Carey to discuss how to safeguard the millions from her estate, but there I was. And she was with me all the way. Fred and Ginger. Or maybe I just dreamed it.
'Tell me about what you do, Allegra.' I know I was at least much closer to her, like up on her desk with my thigh pressing against her bare one while I surveyed her high-tech back office. A couple of computers in one corner and a constantly buzzing fax in the other implied a little more business going on than just wedding cakes.
'Ah, Bret, I make dreams come true. Of the chocolate variety. Most of my business is mail order — custom chocolates for any occasion.'
Have I mentioned I love chocolate? Allegra was talking about chocolate dreams like they mattered, and I vaguely remembered having my own dreams once.
'Marry me, Allegra.'
'What?'
'Marry me and give me back my dreams. I'll solve all your problems.'
Some girls would have walked away. Allegra hugged me. And then she told me I was crazy.
'Come see the kitchen, Bret baby.'
I knew I could fall deeply in lust, or even love, with a woman who would call me 'baby' ten minutes after she'd met me. I put my arm around her waist and she didn't take it away. Visions of bare thighs coated in melted chocolate filled my mind as I followed her to the kitchen.
Candy molds were everywhere. Sports shapes, holiday symbols, and every erotic image possible. Dildos, cocks, nipples, pussies, couples intertwined, little handcuffs, and slinky gartered legs.
'We make everything here. I've never turned down an order. I just call Zach and he fires up a mold in his studio. People love the sexy chocolates the best.”
'So, what happened?'
'It's a long story. It started when I got a letter from that 'Moral Superiority' group. You know, the ones with their noses in everyone else's business? Come home with me tonight and I'll tell you the rest.'
Waves of lust overtook me as I sat in Allegra's kitchen and watched her at the stove. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pressed up against her while she talked and cooked.
'So,' she said, pressing back against me and letting me pour wine from my glass into her beautiful mouth. 'The letter comes in one day. It says that city laws prohibit pornography businesses within 700 yards of houses, schools, or churches. We're downtown, right? And there are no churches within three blocks. But it turns out that almost empty building on the corner with a couple of little shops upstairs used to have a small private school on the ground floor, and is still licensed for it. Now, I don't think I traffic in pornography, I traffic in food and dreams. But it scared me enough to take down the display and start worrying about the back room chocolate-toy business. They just want to shut me down.'
'Hmmm, ' I answered with my lips heading down to her bare neck, 'You do need my help.'
She turned and kissed me. 'I do.'
'But,' she added, 'I asked my own business lawyer and he just said that technically they're right, and I should take away all visible signs of anything anyone could consider obscene. I've never had one single complaint about my shop from anyone before this. People love the display.'
'Why do you think I can do anything for you, Allegra?' I knew exactly what I could do for her, and I wanted to do it right there on the kitchen floor.
'Truth?'
'Of course.'
'Because every day when I watched you watch me through the window, I thought you looked like a man with imagination. I always wondered who you were. And what your hands would feel like on my bare skin.'
Love. This couldn't be just lust. My hands traveled quickly to her ass and cupped it and lifted her up toward me. 'Turn off the stove, Allegra.'
She obeyed and turned back to me and I lifted her up and wrapped her legs around my waist. I kissed her deeply and spun her around, ending up by her big black leather sofa. I whispered what I wanted while I started to unbutton her blouse. 'I want to bend you over the back of this sofa, baby, lift your skirt, and spend all night traveling from your toes right up to your heart.'
She kissed me softly and said, 'No, Bret baby. Not yet.'
I knew what she wanted. I had listened to her story about how her grandfather opened his bakery in this building in 1925, and how it was failing when Allegra took it over from her mother. This location was her life. She lived above the shop in a refurbished loft and planned to stay there forever.
I stayed awake at night searching for a solution. I knew they would frown on pro bono work for dildos in my office.
Allegra made me dinner every night for a week, and we talked about what she could do to fend off the problem. She lit candles and played soft jazz and she put her hand on my thigh during dinner and said, 'I know you can figure it out.'
She was a tease, this Allegra, but an honest one. The night I came up with the absurd yet creative idea about how to hide the erotic chocolates as religious symbols she offered to show me what a woman could do with a chocolate dildo. She raised her skirt and leaned back against the pillows on the floor and spread her legs. I watched from the sofa above as she teased herself with a chocolate dildo that closely resembled my own hard cock. When she slid the chocolate into her pussy I felt like a teenager about to come in my pants.
'Dessert?' she offered afterward, handing me the chocolate for a bite. Chocolate never tasted quite like that before. I don't know why she trusted me so much to control myself, but she said she could read my character, and she was right. Plus, the waiting was powerfully intense.
The night we drew up the detailed blackmail plan she invited me to spend the night. The plan included a lengthy list of conservative women, and men, who had made purchases through The Chocolate Dream, complete with addresses and credit card numbers. I still have this list somewhere, with the title 'Conservatives for Chocolate.' In the end it smacked up against both of our ethical standards, but she still invited me to sleep with her. No sex, but wrapping my arms around Allegra's naked body and spooning her close and whispering each other asleep still rates as one of the all-time best erotic moments of my life.
I researched every possible angle. We laughed about the law. No porn near churches? 'Right,' she said, 'they're some of my best customers.' But I knew she was scared about losing the whole thing.
I met with several lawyers wise in the ways of pornography, and they said she was out of luck. The statute would never be repealed, because who wants to agree to thrust porn on innocent children or churchgoers? And there were no exceptions to the statute. All anyone had to do was subpoena her records and chart out just how much of her business came from dildos and nipples, and she would be closed down.
In the meantime I was fascinated watching her orders come in. A woman in Iowa placed an order for a private fundraising party-I looked at the fax as it came in:
4 dz dildos
3 dz mini-handcuffs
6 dz white chocolate cherry nipples, individual pkgs.
1 8' dark chocolate dildo, ribbed
Allegra was nonchalant about these orders; I was either on the floor with laughter or deep in erotic dreams at night picturing this secret world of chocolate kink that I had never known existed.
We considered moving the shop, the obvious answer. But to be legit, she would have to file a statement with the new community that she was in the business of selling pornography, and she refused. I couldn't blame her. She also refused to locate anywhere near the known porn strips. The truth was that the 15th Street location was her heritage, all she had left of her grandfather, and she was going to live out her dream right there one way or the other.
