Maybe I should blame Coleridge and his bizarre poem for what happens next.
Marisa and I are hunched forward in our chairs, as if conspiring over the poem in her hand. I finish talking, and for a few moments neither of us speaks. Then Marisa leans forward, and when I look up from the poem, her face is perhaps a foot away from my own, her eyes on mine. Everything pauses, like the universe is holding its breath. This close to her, I can smell some sort of underlying spice, a blend of vanilla and pepper. Her lips are barely parted, her eyes wide.
In a low voice, almost a whisper, Marisa says, “Do you want to kiss me?”
“Oh,” I say. My brain feels like someone just unplugged it and it’s slow to reboot, but it’s trying to throw up barriers like it usually does. “I … I mean, do you?”
Something flickers across her expression—disappointment, embarrassment? She withdraws a bit, increasing the distance between us. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I mean, if you don’t want to, that’s fine; I just thought—”
“No,” I say. “That’s not—I mean, yes. Yes. I would like that. It’s only …” I take a breath, let it out. This is stupid. But those damn walls always rise up, boxing me in. “We work together,” I say finally. It is a statement of fact instead of an argument.
Her expression relaxes and she smiles shyly. “You’re my coworker, not my boss,” she says. “And I’m an adult. Consenting.” She hesitates, then leans forward. “And if you want to keep it quiet at work, I won’t talk to anyone.” She holds me in her gaze. “Anyone.”
If I was surprised earlier, now I feel like I’ve been clubbed over the head with a railroad tie. Marisa is wearing an ivory camisole underneath her navy blouse. I think about how the silk would feel in my hands. I try to remember how her mouth tasted, and I want nothing more than to find out again.
“I’m on the pill,” she says. “And I’ve been tested. No HIV, nothing.” She lifts an eyebrow. “How about you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean, no. I mean, yes, I’ve been tested, but … I don’t have anything.”
Marisa reaches over and drops my pen back into my shirt pocket, her face only inches from mine, and then withdraws, but then she pauses, resting her fingertips on the inside of my wrist. “If you don’t want to,” she says, “I’ll walk away and never mention it again. It won’t be a problem.” She lightly strokes my wrist. “But I think we would both regret it.”
Her eyes are gray washed with green. Athena had those kind of eyes, according to Homer. Bright, all-encompassing. I want to swim in them, in her. And why not? Why the hell not? The walls crack, their foundations crumbling.
She leans forward, hesitates for the briefest moment, and then kisses me, a deliberate, soft pressure of her lips on my mouth. She pulls back and considers me. “Not bad,” she says, and then grins, triumphant.
I reach out and cup my hand to the back of her head and return that kiss properly, fully, like I am drinking her in, the last wall collapsing under the spell of that kiss, the taste of her lips, her pepper-vanilla scent twining around us.
THAT SATURDAY WE have a dinner date, and I get to the restaurant about ten minutes early. It’s a South African place with a good wine list and spiced chicken and beef dishes that wake up your mouth, just cool and different enough to be impressive without breaking the bank. Susannah, thank God, left earlier to go to a concert downtown with a coworker and said she was going to spend the night at her coworker’s apartment in Midtown, so while I was getting ready I didn’t have to explain where I was going or answer questions about why I was dressing up for a date.
Right on time, Marisa arrives at the restaurant in an Uber. She didn’t want me to pick her up, which is a little odd. I know she moved back home to take care of her mother, and the one or two times she’s mentioned it she’s seemed upset by it, so I let it go. I wonder if she’s embarrassed by her parents. But when she steps out of her Uber, all those thoughts are blown away like so much smoke. Marisa is an attractive woman, but tonight everyone—the valets and the two guys going into the restaurant and even the two girls with them—is looking at her. She’s wearing a short black dress that shows off her legs. Her dark hair falls to her bare shoulders, framing her face. “Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say reflexively. I don’t swallow, but it’s a near thing. “Wow. You look amazing.”
She smiles and kisses me on the cheek, sending a pleasant thrill up my spine. “Why, thank you,” she says, taking my arm. “You don’t look half bad yourself.”
We are seated at our table, and our waiter comes and delivers the standard patter about specials and house specialties. Marisa listens to him with a half smile, the candlelight softening her face, glinting off her hair.
“Do you like wine?” I ask, picking up the wine list.
“A day without wine is like a day without sunshine,” she replies, and for a second everything skips a beat. A memory as clear and bright as a new coin drops into my head—sitting at the dinner table with my parents, Susannah in a high chair, a box of takeout pizza on the counter, my father pouring my mother a glass of wine. A
