An hour later we were off to the museum. The weather was brisk, and we buttoned our coats against February’s chill. The sun was out now, and the sidewalks had dried, so we decided that traveling on foot would afford me a close-up appreciation for more of the city’s architecture. We walked straight down Huntington Avenue, toward the university where she taught and toward the Museum of Fine Arts. Just before we reached it, though, she hooked her arm through mine and veered us off into another quaint establishment.
“This is sort of a dive bar, but it serves light fare and draws a big gay and lesbian crowd on Thursday nights. And Trish, the resident bartender, is one of us.” The place was empty, tavern-like, but Trish was welcoming, the music was good, and it was nice having the place to ourselves. We settled on raspberry ale, and while we were waiting on an order of buffalo wings, Calvin Harris’s “One Kiss” came on, and I dragged her laughing onto the small dance floor. We held each other’s waist, half dancing, half talking.
“So, is this where you bring all your speed dates?” I asked over the music.
She rolled her eyes. I seemed to make her do that a lot, but more and more those eye rolls were accompanied by laughter instead of the frowns they’d elicited last night. Of course, the idea of Ann speed dating after I returned to New York didn’t make me want to laugh. As ridiculous as I found the whole process of that hurried, three-minute, expedited search for love, it bothered me that she might soon meet someone. Someone who lived a lot closer.
Sensing my concern, or perhaps reading the hint of worry on my face, she said, “I’m giving up speed dating.”
“Really? Why?”
“You’re more my speed.”
All I could manage was a stupid grin as the song ended and we went back to sit at the bar. Neither of us addressed the geographic complications that falling in love would pose. For now, we both seemed content to avoid the subject, to simply enjoy this beautiful day together, to immerse ourselves in the wonder of this deep and unexpected connection we’d made. And then, of course, there was that promise of an overdue kiss.
The museum was outstanding, and it was nice to discover we shared a similar taste in art. We managed to see several outstanding collections: English decorative arts, Native American and ancient Mississippian ceramics, and an Oceanic art exhibit that included tableware, masks, and sculptures. The best, though, was a human-feline effigy vessel from Costa Rica, depicting the transmutation of a female shaman into her jaguar spirit-animal. Ann liked it, too. We agreed we wouldn’t be above taking it home had the opportunity presented itself, then argued over in whose living room it would look better.
We perused a Claude Monet and then a Studio Craft exhibit, and finally came the surprise one she had in store for me: The Phantasmagoria. “Since we agreed that Halloween is our favorite holiday, I knew you wouldn’t want to miss this,” she said. “The Phantasmagoria was a form of theater. It’s where people went for scary entertainment during the 19th century, before the invention of the cinema and horror movies.”
Optical devices, called magic lanterns, were arranged to project a ghostly spectacle of macabre images and spooky illusions in the dark. There were vaporous spirits, creepy skeletons, looming monsters, all of the moving images set to eerie music and sound effects. It was amazing.
“Pardon me for going into professor mode,” she said, “but I did some research after I first read about this exhibit. You might find it interesting that an art-history professor pioneered the use of these magic lanterns to project photographic images during his lectures. Prior to this, the only way to see a work of art was by visiting its physical location or looking at prints and illustrations in books. Magic lanterns became lantern projectors, which eventually became the carousel slide projectors we grew up with. Now we have digital projectors…no small thanks to magic lanterns.”
“This is so amazing.”
We spent a long time reading about and admiring the exhibit, Ann stepping out at one point to call her next-door neighbor, who had agreed to walk her dog at two o’clock and feed both her dog and cat if she wasn’t home by six.
By the time the museum closed it was dark and blustery. The temperature had plummeted, and a bitter wind was blowing. I raised my coat collar. “Wow. What a change from a few hours ago, huh?”
Ann laughed. “Well, as Mark Twain said, ‘if you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.’ It changes that fast.”
“So I see…and I think I see flurries.” We looked up at the white specks whirling in the cold night sky. I smiled and took both her hands in mine. “I know you have to get home to your dog, but it’s only five. Come back to the hotel and have an early dinner with me.” She’d insisted on treating me all day long, and I wanted to take her out. Besides, I’d been admiring those beautiful lips for hours now and was beyond ready to collect that kiss.
We grabbed a cab back to the Sheraton and, in a quiet corner of the restaurant, ate and talked nonstop—about our favorite horror stories and movies, about romance, fantasy, magical realism, and how exciting it would be to time-travel back to the 1800s and attend the phantasmagoria as spectators during the age of spiritualism.
“Speaking of the 19th century,” she said when we were done with dinner and finishing a bottle of wine. “I live in a Victorian brownstone. It’s in the Back Bay, a twenty-minute walk from campus. I think you’d like it.” She gazed at me with a flirtatious but somewhat nervous smile and swirled the remaining contents of her glass. “I know you’re checking out tomorrow. Have you given any more thought to my proposal?”
“Of checking in with you and spending an extra night?”
“Uh-huh…”
“I’d like to do that. Yes. But right now, all I can think about is that kiss. So maybe you should end this date properly by seeing me to my door.”
“I’m not having sex with you, Kay. Not tonight.”
“Whoa!” I feigned a gasp of appalled surprise. “I’m not having sex with you, either. Not on the first date.” She could easily have persuaded me otherwise, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “How could you think that of me?”
“I don’t know what to think of you. You sort of came out of the blue, you know?”
“Well, I’m not that kind of girl. But I do have a kiss coming—with interest. So don’t put your coat on yet,” I said as we got up and left the table.
We made our way across the lobby, past the desk where she’d left a note for me last night, and took the elevator up one flight. She was quiet all the way and hesitated when I opened the door. I reached for the coat draped across her arm and laid it with my own on the nearest chair. She was still in the doorway when I turned back. “Have you changed your mind?”
“No…I’m just feeling a little…”
Taking her hand, I pulled her inside, shut the door, and gently backed her up against it.
She stiffened just a little, and her sudden nervousness both endeared her to me and boosted my confidence a bit. I suspected that coming up to a woman’s hotel room after a first date was completely out of character for her, and it was definitely out of character for me to feel such deep affection for someone I’d just met. “I think the ‘pussycat’ in you is fighting the urge to climb that tree,” I said.
“Can you tell?” She tried to smile but her lips trembled. “I’m not so good at physical introductions. Maybe I should slip into my more confident Halloween persona and pretend I’m a pirate.”
“Aye! Come aboard, my lady. My treasure awaits you,” I whispered, slowly running a fingertip across that incredible vermillion line of her lips. Back and forth I traced it before moving in to let my mouth replace my finger.
Ann responded by putting her hands around my waist. I draped my arms around her neck and pressed myself against her body. We kissed slowly, tenderly, deeply—a first kiss that nearly brought us both to our knees.
“Not bad,” she teased me when we stopped to catch our breath, our lips still touching. “Not great…
but certainly worth improving upon.”
“Oh really?” We were back to that rhetoric of insult, and it was turning me on. I smiled against her mouth. “I’ll take that insult as a sign of encouragement,” I said, walking slowly backward toward the bed. “I kiss much better lying down…so if it’s okay with you, I’ll take the next two-thirds of that kiss reposed.”
We collapsed a bit awkwardly and laughed together, but our laughter quickly dissipated as the lady buccaneer, apparently relaxed now that the worry of sex had been lifted, took the lead. With newfound confidence she began kissing me, a kiss so sensual, so consuming that I desperately did want to make love with her. I ran my hands down the length of her back to her thighs. Her fragrance, the feel of her skin, the weight of her body on mine—all of it was so new and wonderful. It was amazing how life sometimes presented us with the sweetest of unexpected delights. But this delight was destined to be short-lived. Tied to our jobs, how could our relationship ever amount to more than an affair?
I could hear Michelle lecturing me now: What, are you crazy or just plain stupid? How many people experience love at first sight? You’re gonna let two hundred and fifty friggin’ miles dictate the rest of your life? Are you really that ineffectual? What a wuss!
“Maybe we should agree not to fall in love.” I groaned.
“Too late.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” I tried to laugh, but all I could manage was a hoarse whisper as she kissed my cheek, my jaw, my throat. “But this couldn’t possibly work, could it?”
“No?” Ann glanced down at me. “Can you imagine it working in a story—a long-term relationship that begins as a long-distance affair?”
It was hard to think straight with her lips roaming my skin. “Distance, timing…sure. Both are popular antagonists in romances.”
Her voice was soft, her breath blowing across my skin like a warm breeze that stirred something deep in me. “If you can imagine it as a possibility in a story,” she said, “then it’s possible in real life.”
“Affairs are one thing. The complex dynamics of relationships are another. There’s no simple mathematical formula for real life, Professor,” I moaned, tilting my head, giving her full access to my neck.
“Some mathematicians believe there is a formula for finding ‘the right one.’ It’s based on the optimal stopping theory, which is used to help solve the problem of knowing the right time to take a particular action.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mathematicians think you have it all figured out. But real life has so many extraneous variables, romantic love many angles. Relationships depend on so many factors, beginning with a calculated distance of two hundred and fifty miles between us.”
She kissed her way back up my throat, buried her face in my neck, and then slid her mouth over my ear. “Never mind all the calculations, variables, factors, and angles,” she whispered, in that intimate voice reserved for lovers. “You just worry about the story. Let me do the math.”
“That’s funny. You’re pretty funny for a math professor,” I murmured, my words almost unintelligible.
She pulled away just far enough to smile down at me, her hair spilling onto my face. “‘My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.’”
“Said Juliet to Romeo. Mmm…a Shakespeare-quoting mathematician. Now that’s romantic.”
“You have no idea…”
“I’m beginning to.” I ran my fingers through Ann’s bouncy hair, took her face in both hands. Her lips were rosier, plumper now, swollen after three straight minutes of kissing. So were mine, all four of them. “Damn, you’re such a sexy math professor.”
“Did you just use sexy and math professor in the same sentence?”
“I think I did. Who would have thought I’d find myself so incredibly attracted to an oxymoron?”
“Never say never.”
“I never will again.” I stroked the side of her face, drinking in the beauty of her lips and all her other fine features. “Do you have a car?”
“A car?” she asked, as if trying to make sense of the question.
“Yes, a car. Do you drive?”
“Oh, you mean…sure, yes. I can come pick you up in the morning.”
“To take me to your home, where I will sleep on a sofa bed instead of this comfortable queen-size one.”
Ann propped herself on an elbow and looked down at me. “You never know. You might get a free upgrade.”
I grinned and she laughed. “Actually,” I said, “I asked about a car because I was thinking you might consider driving down to New York for an extended weekend, maybe next week. I’m sure my dog would love playing with your dog, and I’d love to spend Valentine’s Day playing with you.”
“Valentine’s Day was last week.”
“Was it?”
“You know it was.”
“But we missed spending it together. Can’t we pretend it hasn’t happened yet? Come visit me, and we’ll celebrate it in New York. My house is a few miles outside of the city. I’ll show you around the Big Apple.”
“Valentine’s Day…that doesn’t give me much time to buy the potbellied pig you want. And you better leave town now if you expect to find me a yellow-naped amazon parrot.”
“You said you wanted a parrot. Does it have to be a nappy yellow—what was it?”
“Yellow-naped amazon. And yes. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
I wasn’t exactly prepared to take on a pig right now, and where the heck was I going to find one of those parrots? “All right.” I sighed. “Whatever makes you happy. But how about we save the animal presents for next year? It’ll give us more time to shop.”
Ann just stared at me, looking quite bemused, like she couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact of having met me. “Where on earth did you come from?”
“I told you, the Big Apple.”
She made a face. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant. Don’t you think I’ve been wondering the same thing about you all day long?” I smiled at her. “Now about that 1.618 percent interest…”
Perhaps it was too soon to adore her, but I did. I was beyond enamored, absolutely besotted. After tomorrow night it was likely I’d return home lovesick. Already I felt a bad case of her coming on. The only antidote might be finding a way to make this relationship work.
Right now, though, I had interest to collect on that kiss. I ran my thumb across that arousing vermillion line and drew Cupid’s bow to my mouth once more.
About the Author
Karen Williams is a New York based writer who divides her time between the city and the Berkshires of rural Massachusetts. She enjoys reading, theater, music, and the energy of the city, but her heart is in the country. She does most of her writing there and depends on a pack of canine buddies to let her know, usually every hour on the hour, when it’s time to leave the computer for a walk on the wild side.
In addition to her novels and short stories, she has published articles on nature and the human-animal bond, and was awarded the Maxwell Medallion by the Dog Writers Association of America. Her most recent novella, Meeting Ms. Roman, was a Goldie finalist.
Ms. Williams loves hearing from fans. You can visit her at www.karenfwilliams.com or drop her a line at [email protected].
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