Jake & Mimi

by Frank Baldwin

  And now it’s time. I turn onto Amsterdam at 9:55. She will be closing up in minutes. I stop in front of the bookstore next door, pretending to look at the same five fiction titles that have sat in the window all year. I take a breath.

  She won’t recognize me, probably, but when I say my name, it will land deep. Ours was a small community, and the ties strong and lasting. The Clays, I knew, had retired to a small Baptist town in the South years ago, so Melissa would have been cut off from the country where she was raised.

  Through the glass I see her in the back, folding blouses at a small counter. She wears a sparse white dress, the impossibly thin straps just visible under her open red sweater. I walk inside and she looks up at the sound of the bell.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi. I need scarves,” I say, walking to a rack of them, “and I’ve got no eye for them. Can you help?”

  “Sure.” She smiles and comes from behind the counter. Her dress comes just to her knees, and her legs are bare — bare — underneath. She wears a thin anklet and clogs. “You must have done a good deed today — we’re having a sale.”

  She steps into the light, and I see her full for the first time. She’s all I’d hoped. Beautiful, still, but working at it now. Aerobics, probably, and eye cream, and even so, just months, maybe weeks from the start of the long, gentle slide.

  “Melissa? Melissa Clay?”

  She looks into my face, startled. Smiling still, but caught between her store manner, her natural friendliness, and the reserve this city gives every woman.

  “Yes. Do I?…”

  “Japan. The American School. I’m Jake Teller.”

  “My God.”

  She puts her soft, white hand quickly on my shoulder. I see the ring.

  “I was Shana’s year,” I say.

  She steps back and laughs, quiet and friendly, the kind you don’t hear often in this city.

  “This is New York,” she says. “It had to happen, right? I can’t believe it. Teller… the lake, too, right?” I nod. “You weren’t church?”

  “IBM. They let a few of us heathens in, remember?”

  She laughs. “I remember. We envied you — you could swim on Sundays. Jake Teller. You were…”

  “Fourteen when you were eighteen.”

  She looks me over.

  “Yes. You never left the Boathouse.”

  I laugh. “That was me.”

  “And you recognized me?”

  “You stood out, Melissa. Still do.”

  She smiles easily and touches my shoulder again.

  “Thanks. Jake Teller — all grown up, and a charmer. I’ll tell Shana. She’s in North Carolina now.”

  “Doing well?”

  “Yes. Two kids.”

  “Wow.” I shake my head. “Have you been back? To Japan?”

  “Not once. You know us missionary kids: When we leave, it’s for good. You?”

  “I was back last summer. And I made it to the lake.”

  “Last summer! Jake, what is it like? The same families, still?”

  “A lot of them. It’s… hey, do you want to… how about a drink? I’ll fill you in.”

  She pauses just a fraction of a second, looks down, then back up at me.

  “I’d love to.”

  “When do you close?”

  “Two minutes ago. Let me get my things.”

  She walks to the back counter and takes her purse and a light coat from a chair. I help her into a sleeve.

  “Well, thank you, Jake. Across the street is P. J. Clarke’s. Is that all right?”

  “They’ll let us in? You’re wearing a ring and I’m not bald.”

  “Is it like that?” She laughs. “I’ve never been.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  She locks the door behind us, and we cross the street and step into P. J. Clarke’s, a dark, upscale singles bar, all mahogany and mood music. I’ve seen a few last calls here. I walk her to a seat in the corner, where the bar meets the window and you can see out into the street, see the shops and the walkers and, a block up, the green entrance to the park. A big ex-athlete in a pressed white shirt slides two coasters in front of us and smiles.

  “Absolut, straight,” I say.

  “A sea breeze, please,” says Melissa. She laughs at the look I give her and touches my shoulder again. “Since college,” she says.

  “I thought even caffeine was a no-no. Do the folks know?”

  “I broke it to them at the reception. What could they say?” She offers her left hand and I take it, raise it, and give her ring a long look.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. It’s been a year.”

  Our drinks come, I clink mine against hers, and we take our sips. Her sweater is only pulled round her, and I can see the tops of her golden breasts.

  “So, the lake,” she says. “Tell me it’s the same?”

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “What?” Her blue eyes crinkle with worry.

  “The Boathouse.”

  She puts her hand on my chest.

  “No.”

  “It’s coming down. This summer or next.”

  “It can’t.”

  “The prefecture wants to build a boardwalk. With shops.”

  “How awful. They must be fighting it.”

  “Trying to, but it doesn’t look good. It is their country.”

  “But the Boathouse…”

  Her soft eyes look down at the bar for a moment, and she sips from her drink. I motion with my eyes at her ring.

  “Is he one of us?”

  She shakes her head.

  “A New Yorker, believe it or not.”

  “Will you take…”

  “Steve.”

  “… Steve over? To see it?”

  She pauses. “I don’t know. Someday…” She looks for words and I wait. “It’s… hard, you know?”

  I nod.

  “You belong, but you don’t,” I say. “Just like over here.”

  “Yes.” She looks at me quickly, a little more in her eyes now. “It’s hard to explain to people, isn’t it? The community. The…”

  “Innocence.”

  “Yes.”

  The bartender stands before us.

  “One more?” I ask her. She pauses, then nods. “Should you call Steve?” I ask. She hesitates.

  “It’s okay. Some nights I do inventory.”

  Our drinks come; I raise mine, she raises hers and waits.

  “To the Boathouse,” I say.

  “Amen.” She looks at me and shakes her head. “Jake, you’ve been a shock. I haven’t thought of those days in…” She looks into her glass and, maybe, back through the years. “Do you remember the dances?”

  “You used to dance with Tim Crockett.”

  She puts her drink on the bar and looks at me, amazed. Her hand goes to my shoulder again, this time with a little pressure.

  “Tim Crockett… there was a randy one.”

  “He kept moving his hands up your shirt, and you kept moving them down.”

  “Yes, and I wasn’t…” She looks over, sees me blush, and laughs. “It’s true what they say about junior-high boys, isn’t it?”

  “All of it,” I say.

  I finish my drink and she does the same, struggling with the last long sip.

  “Do you miss it?” I ask.

  “When I think of it. They were special days.”

  I stand and reach for my wallet. I look at her.

  “The crossover?” I say. “You made it okay?”

  She looks at me, then down, pauses, and lifts her purse and jacket from the chair. The crossover is what we ex-pat kids call the move back to the States. Most aren’t ready when it comes, and some — girls, especially — it marks for good.

  “Pretty well, Jake,” she says. She fingers her ring and smiles. “But this is my second.”

  I pay the bill, and we walk out and back across the street. A taxi corners too fast, before we quite make the
curb, and I take her elbow until we reach the sidewalk.

  “Which way are you?” I ask, and then, before she can answer: “The scarves.”

  “Jake. You never got them.”

  “My sister’s birthday is tomorrow,” I say. We’re silent a second. “I can come back. What time do you open?”

  “Come on.” She smiles. “It’ll take two minutes. I know just the ones.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course.”

  She unlocks the door and we walk in, the sound of the bell loud now in the quiet, dark store. She quickly turns on the light, and we walk to the rack of scarves. She flips through them, stops, unclips a silken yellow one, and holds it up with one hand while smoothing it out with the other.

  “What’s her complexion?” she asks.

  “Like yours.”

  She slips it over her neck and the two sides fall evenly over her breasts. She tosses one around her neck again with a flourish, laughing at the gesture.

  “It’s perfect,” I say. “I’ll take two.”

  “Two of the same?” she asks.

  I nod. She pauses. “Let me get the other one from the back.”

  The only sound in the place is the rattle of the hanging beads as she walks through them into the back room. I wait one minute. Two. I walk to the doorway and look in. The small back room is filled with clothes, dresses and blouses hanging along the wall and sweaters and leggings stacked neatly on the counter. Melissa stands at a small folding table, looking down at the two scarves she has folded and laid in a box lined with soft tissue. She doesn’t look up, though she knows I’m in the doorway, and I see that her small hands are not in the box but gripping the edge of the table. I walk to her and stand behind her. She turns slowly, her eyes rising to mine, and in one smooth motion I pick her up by the waist and sit her on the edge of the table. Her lips open in surprise and her palms go to my chest, but her eyes give her away.

  “You don’t have a sister, do you, Jake?” she asks quietly.

  “No.”

  I turn and walk back into the front room and to the door. I turn the lock. I switch off the lights. I step back through the beads again. She hasn’t moved. I hit the switch in here, too, and she is a vision on the small table, lit only by what little light from the street filters through the beads. I walk to her and whisper into the back of her neck.

  “You have five seconds to tell me to leave.”

  I can hear just her breathing and the last gentle click of the beads. One. Two. Three. Four.

  “Leave.”

  I lift her sweater off her trembling shoulders. She closes her eyes and grips the edge of the table tightly, at first resisting against my hands, then letting me pull her down onto her back. She closes her legs and holds her dress to her knees. The narrow table is just wide enough for her, and I lift her hands off her dress and let her smooth, golden arms fall over the sides. I take the yellow cloth from the box and, kneeling, tie it in a tight knot around her slim wrist, then pass it under the table; she gasps as I tie it around her other one. I rise, take the second scarf from the soft tissue, and lay it across her eyes. She is shaking.

  “Jake,” she whispers, but she is with me now, and she knows I know it.

  She lifts her head and lets me knot the scarf. I slide her hair-band off and run my fingers hard through her long hair. She wants to come up off the table, but the strong silk holds and all she can do to slow the surge in her is bring one knee up to her body and then down again. I walk around the table and take a long look at her before touching her again. I take off her clogs and run my hands up her calves and back down. I can see under her dress now, all the way up her legs to the white mound of her silk panties. They are wet already.

  I lift a pair of scissors from the counter, and she gasps again as I start the flat edge of the blade up her legs and over her dress. At her shoulders I cut first one thin strap and then the other, then pull the dress down and off her and let it drop to the floor.

  It isn’t pleasure but the promise of it that takes women to the edge. She is in just bra and panties now, and desperate to be touched, but I step away and slowly undo the buttons on my shirt, watching her as she strains to listen, her lips parting as I pull my leather belt through the loops.

  I leave her dressed that way for ten minutes, tracing my fingers from her face all down the length of her and then back, and so lightly that when at last I put true pressure on her taut belly, I think she’ll come apart. Her skin smells better than any I can remember, the faintest trace of light spring perfume on her neck and wrists.

  Her strapless bra opens in the front, and the click of the clasp brings another gasp from her. I’m careful not to touch her hard, beautiful breasts as I gently lift the soft bra off her and pull it out from under her back. All those years ago, at the lake, I’d seen only the outline of her nipples through that wet top. Now they are just beneath me, soft and pink, and when I breathe gently on them, she turns her cheek hard into the table. Her eyes, I know, are shut tight under the silk.

  “Please,” she whispers.

  Still I don’t touch them. I look down at the small white triangle of cloth that covers her softest spot. It is all she wears now, and it is soaked through. I roll it slowly down her thighs, over her knees, past her calves, and off her ankles, then trail it back up her skin and swipe it back and forth across her breasts, watching the nipples harden into the silk.

  “I can’t take it,” she says.

  But she must. Because these are the minutes each week that I live for. The edge, I call it, and Melissa Clay is about to hit it. If she knew how long I will ride her along it, she would faint dead away.

  I run my fingers between her breasts and just around them before finally taking both in my hands and pressing them hard together.

  “God!” she gasps, her small hands fists now, jerking against the taut scarf.

  She wants to grab her hair or beat the table with her hands. To release, somehow, some portion of the pressure I’ve built in her. She can’t, and then I put my lips on her, her neck first and then hard on her breasts, and all she can do to hold herself off is lock her ankles and squeeze her thighs tight together. It is her last defense, I know, against the pleasure coursing through her, so I take even this away, lifting her left ankle off her right and holding them, a foot apart, to the table. “Damn you!” she gasps. She is helpless.

  Women almost never lose themselves completely. Even in sex, they show you what they want you to see. Until you get them to the edge. At the edge they are past all that. Past any scheming. Past all reserve, even. Their social side vanquished. Melissa is reaching it now, a sheen of sweat on her cheeks, her breathing all soft cries. If Steve walked in now, she wouldn’t recognize him.

  And I’ve barely started on her.

  Guys reach our mark and that’s it, but women — handled just right — can crest and crest. Melissa has reached the edge, so I ride her along it, touching her, finally, where she needs it, but not with the pressure she requires. A little pressure, then none, then more pressure, then none, then still more, then none again. Thirty seconds of this, forty-five, a minute. She hangs in only because she can’t believe what she feels. Still I keep on, watching her soft face slam from side to side, and only when I see that she is at her end, truly at her end, when I’m afraid I’ll lose her or someone will hear her from the street, only then do I grab her thighs, pull her down to the edge of the table and lift her thin ankles up onto my shoulders.

  “God, please, God, please, God, please,” over and over from her now, and still I take my time. I’m past ready, too, but I lock her legs against me, holding her still, and as she cries out, arching her back in one last effort to stem the rush, to survive just one second more, I drink in the full measure of this night.

  Melissa Clay lies beneath me. The first crush of my adolescence, my first true fantasy, and not just beneath me but at my mercy, helpless with pleasure and begging to be finished off.

  I ease into her.


  Her first cry is of relief. She can give in at last, surge and feel the hard answer she needs. Just a few seconds of this, yes, a few seconds and she can die in peace. She is in spasms now, but I keep a firm grip on her and build to a rhythm, and as I step into it, I hit something in her and she gasps. It can’t be, she won’t believe it can happen, not after all this, but yes, she starts to come back at me, then to arch again, and then she’s got it, moving in time with me. It can’t be, but it is — she’s not finishing at all, not set to collapse but rising again, rising and turning back, back toward the edge for one final, crimson ride.

  Her sounds are magic now, and her face, even with the silk over her eyes, so beautiful that it takes all my training to stay steady. And then I break one of my rules. I close my eyes. Always I watch a girl until the end — always. Watch her face, note every last detail of her finish so the memory of it can carry me through the week to come. Tonight, though, I close my eyes. Close them and go back in my head to the lake. I’m fourteen again, watching young Melissa dancing barefoot, watching her small feet and smooth arms and watching, too, Tim Crockett’s hands as they rise up her belly. I can see her so clearly, see her just as she was, even smell the lake air, and feel in my spine the weight of all those nights, the nights in the cabin dreaming of her, the crushing innocence of us both, gone now but mine again — for an instant — when I close my eyes.

  We live first in our heads and only then in the world around us. Well, I’m living in both, and right now I’m having them both, too. Both Melissas, the innocent princess of the lake and, opening my eyes again, the thirty-year-old beauty in the last golden hours of her looks. She’s peaking now, outside herself with pleasure, and her cries and her sweet fucking take me to the turning point and past it, until finally I lean hard into her one last time, put my hands on her breasts, the same beautiful breasts denied Tim Crockett all those years ago, and join her, at last, on the edge, along the edge, and then over.