Bliss

by Hilary Fields

  “Huh,” she grunted, nonplussed. “Not at all what I expected. Pauline, what exactly were you selling here?”

  Pauline smiled wryly. “Well, not much, really.” She ticked off items on her fingers. “Some self-help books—my own and others’—and some videos. I stocked incense and massage oils, too—you know, the sort of aromatherapy stuff women like to pamper themselves with. We also carried some scarves and local trinkets for the tourists—you really can’t have a business in Santa Fe without ’em. Most months we didn’t even make enough to cover the rent, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of closing the shop. You see, my vision was of a collective or community center where women could come to be themselves, read about issues that pertained to them, have tea, and gossip. I mean, of course, there’s the back room”—Pauline waved dismissively—“but really, Pauline’s House of Passion was always about empowering women and bringing them closer together. Over the years, my store’s been more like a neighborhood clubhouse than anything—a lot of the ladies coming by after hours on their way home from work to chat and catch up, bitch about their menfolk, that kind of thing. No offense, Ash.”

  “None taken,” said their nonchalant next-door neighbor, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. “As I understand it, bitching is the sacred right of women.”

  Sera chose to ignore that comment and the appealingly playful tone in which it was delivered. She was remembering all the causes her aunt had fought for so passionately over the years. When Sera was a teenager, Pauline’s painfully explicit discussions of women’s most intimate concerns had made her squirm and long to flee. Her high school friends, so over the feminist movement, had teased her and made fun of Pauline’s values. As she’d grown up, however, she’d learned to appreciate what her aunt was about, even if her own sexuality was—to quote Pauline—positively Puritanical.

  Pauline Wilde had always believed that women’s strength came from their solidarity. Her work with feminine sexuality had encouraged women to be frank and open about their needs, to explore them with each other as well as with men—and always with a spirit of adventure. She could easily see Pauline making her shop a place of warmth and intimacy for her visitors.

  Too bad she couldn’t see the actual shop as easily.

  “Do you mind…” she asked, gesturing toward the draped-over windows.

  “Go for it, kiddo. I want you to think of this place as your own now. I’ve had my go at it, and I’m ready to pass on the torch. Frankly, it’s getting too much for me. Feel free to pillage as you like!”

  Sera strode to the nearest window and stripped away what appeared to be a Spanish lace mantilla dyed in a particularly purple hue. Light flooded into a quadrant of the store, and she took a relieved breath. She’d always needed lots of light and space to feel comfortable—a condition that hadn’t made living with Pauline’s congenial clutter and preference for what she called “Blanche DuBois style” lighting easy while she was growing up. Sera had often teased her that her lifestyle was more Blanche Devereaux than DuBois, but Pauline had just smiled and kept the lights low.

  Well, Pauline had given her the go-ahead, so go ahead she would. She gently freed the rest of the windows from their shrouds until the full space was revealed. Her breath hitched.

  Wonderful.

  You simply didn’t get this kind of real estate back in New York. Not unless you were Jacques Torres. Sera’s heart lifted as she surveyed the airy, elegantly proportioned interior. Little popcorn kernels of ideas began exploding left and right in her mind, sending corresponding zings of excitement whizzing through her system. There, where the long, low mahogany counter stood, she could install a bank of glass-fronted refrigerated display cases for her hot-ticket items. There, on the far wall, nestled built-in shelves currently holding what looked to be statues of fertility goddesses from various cultures throughout history. In her mind, the shelves began stocking themselves with brass-appointed whole-bean coffee dispensers and high-end espresso machines. Custom-printed cardboard goody boxes with gaily colored rolls of ribbon to wrap around them would lie in readiness for customers’ take-out orders.

  Best of all, she’d have counter space. The shop had a ridiculous amount of square footage. She could even divide off a third of the place for her ovens and fridges, and still not feel cramped. Her customers could stretch out and stay awhile—provided they purchased something, of course. Serafina envisioned her place becoming a hangout where people came for their morning coffee and a flaky pastry, then returned to buy a cupcake or two during the siesta hour. Tourists would line up with their cranky kids for a swift sugar infusion before trotting off to visit local museums or lay down their hard-earned cash in one of the gorgeous, one-of-a-kind boutiques that Sera herself had window-shopped this morning. Perhaps she’d even accept custom cake commissions again, eventually.

  Next to the horsehair-stuffed armchairs lolling in exhausted postures around the edges of the space, she pictured vintage marble-topped side tables for customers to lay their cupcakes and confections on while they relaxed and sipped a latte. She’d have a stand for newspapers and periodicals. Maybe even offer Wi-Fi, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to go that route. (The laptop-toting student/starving writer crowd didn’t tend to lay down a lot of cash.) She wanted everything elegant, appealing, and absolutely delectable. Fresh flowers in bud vases would add notes of color, while the aromas of chocolate, coffee, and piping hot cake would surround her customers in a sensual web.

  But hold on. Speaking of scents, something didn’t smell quite right around here. Serafina was used to identifying ingredients and judging flavorings by their odors, and this one was… odd, to say the least. Vinegary. Following her nose, her attention was drawn to a large glass jar sitting on a dusty shelf. Was that… She drifted closer, afraid of what she might find. Plucking up her courage, Sera reached out with thumb and forefinger and gingerly drew aside the cheesecloth covering the top of the jar.

  “Yeeeoowza! What is that?”

  Pauline drifted forward to peer over her shoulder. “Oh, that? It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just Big Mama. Hello, Big Mama!” She leaned in to whisper confidingly in Sera’s ear, as though to keep the contents of the jar from hearing. “Don’t mind the smell, dear. She’s just hungry. I’m afraid I’ve been neglecting her shockingly since the… well, since Hortencia…”

  “Big… Mama?” Sera breathed, staring at the enormous brown glob floating in the jar of sickly-looking liquid. “You don’t mean—”

  “Yup,” Pauline confirmed. “Kombucha. It’s my own special culture. Go ahead and taste some if you like, but it’ll be better if we feed her first.”

  Ugh, no thanks, Sera thought. She knew about kombucha, of course. Chefs heard about all the crazy ingestible trends out there in the world. She’d read somewhere that the mushroom-like culture that floated at the top—mostly comprised of a form of yeast—was known as a “mother,” and that these mamas sometimes spawned “daughters” that brewers used to spin off their signature blends for family and friends. In theory, it sounded okay, if a bit unsanitary. But until today, she’d never actually seen the fermented home brew in person. And now that she had, she didn’t think she cared to see it again. It smelled like hippie feet, and it looked like a monstrous, wet, flabby mushroom. Or a dead stingray. Gross.

  “It was very popular with our ladies,” Pauline offered. “A lot of them thought it had special properties, if you know what I mean.” Sera blushed as the meaning became clear, but her aunt must not have noticed, because she continued in a stage whisper, “Sexual properties, dear.”

  A snort sounded from behind them. Asher was staring studiously into the middle distance, but he couldn’t hide the little grin that lifted his generous lips.

  “What, you want some?” Sera flashed, teasing the outrageously sexy Mr. Wolf before she could think better of it.

  “My sexual properties are in no need of enhancement at the moment, thank you,” he shot back with elaborate politeness, and the
blush on Sera’s cheeks bloomed into a full-body affair.

  “Um, right. Moving on!” Sera wasn’t about to discuss aphrodisiac beverages while a hot guy stood around making quips about his sexual prowess. Even if it was secretly kind of fun.

  “What’s back here—the restrooms?” Sera asked as she headed for the rear of the store. A beaded curtain with an image of Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque hand-painted upon it hung across a discreetly placed doorway. Maybe that “back room” Pauline had mentioned so offhandedly a few minutes ago?

  Pauline beamed. “Why don’t you have a look?” She placed a palm on Sera’s spine and steered her through the doorway, flipping on a wall switch as they parted the beads.

  Sera was confronted with wall-to-wall wieners.

  Rubber. Latex. Glass. Metal. In every shape, color, and size—and then some.

  Damn it. I thought I was done with dildos, Sera thought, stomach sinking. The sight of sex toys brought nothing but humiliating memories for her.

  Pauline moved deeper into the room ahead of Sera, turning on more lights.

  It was a temple devoted to the Big O. Every tool the imagination could envision in service to this laudable objective existed in some form or other on the shelves and in the display cases in the windowless room. Images ranging from the instructional to the downright lascivious papered the walls, with geishas, Greek figurines, and Kama Sutra postures at every turn.

  Sera’s blush burst into flames, especially when she felt Asher’s presence filling the space behind her. She wanted to back up, but was already perilously close to connecting with his sinewy frame as it was.

  Yikes, did he see me ogling that… wait, what the heck is that thing?

  “I suppose you’ll want to shut it all down now,” Pauline said glumly, interrupting her niece’s horrified/fascinated reverie. “I know you’re—forgive me, dear—but you’ve always been a bit of a prude in this regard.”

  Sera shot Pauline a look that would have quashed a more sensitive woman. But Pauline just patted her on the arm as if to say, None of us is perfect, dear.

  Sera wanted to sink through the floor with mortification. Just what I needed to start out my new life in Santa Fe, she groaned inwardly, a reputation for having a stick up my ass. Er, maybe not such a great analogy—eek, anal-ogy!—to think of when surrounded by butt plugs. Her blush was physically painful now.

  “Well, I… I mean, what I had in mind for the store doesn’t exactly, um, dovetail with this, ah…” At a loss for a descriptive adjective, Sera gestured lamely at a series of strap-ons.

  Behind her, Asher made a rumbling noise that sounded suspiciously like stifled laughter. At the sound of his merriment, Sera’s spine experienced a shiver of awareness that wasn’t a bit unpleasant.

  “I understand, dear.” Pauline sighed. “But I must tell you, the contents of this room were an invaluable resource for the women of this community. What income we did draw from the shop mainly came from sales of these pleasure enhancements. I can’t tell you how many times we received thank-you notes from ladies swearing we’d revolutionized their sex lives. Saved a lot of marriages, too.”

  “I’m sure,” Sera murmured, eyeing what looked like a nubbly pink jellyfish attached to a series of elastic straps. Where do you put tha… oh.

  “I can personally vouch for that one, dear,” said Pauline, following Serafina’s scandalized gaze.

  Now Sera did retreat a step or two, but the heat from her next-door neighbor brought her up short. As she peeked over her shoulder, she saw he was braced casually with one arm on either side of the door frame in a posture that showed off his physique to mouthwatering advantage. She could feel his warm, minty breath on the sensitive juncture of her neck and shoulder.

  Sex toys ahead of me, boy toys behind. It was certainly not how Sera had envisioned her afternoon unfolding. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh, pray for a teleport to whisk her away, or pass out from sheer sensory overload. Having spent the past year burying all thoughts of a sensual nature, devoting herself to work, recovery, and little else, Sera was unprepared for the effect the back room, and Asher’s presence in it, was having on her.

  With an effort, Sera turned around. Her head was barely level with Asher’s neck, he was so tall. But that was fine—it meant she didn’t have to look him in the eye. “Excuse me, please,” she muttered, gesturing politely for him to stand aside. “I think I’ve got the gist of the place now. Quite a dichotomy between what you see in the main room and what’s in stock in the back, that’s for sure!” God, I must be nervous, she thought. I couldn’t sound more like a Victorian schoolmarm if I strapped on a bustle and started rocking the granny boot look.

  Asher was more colloquial, though perhaps his command of English was a tad questionable.

  “That’s Pauline’s House of Passion for you. Prim and proper up front, orgasms in the rear,” he commented innocently.

  A voice channeling Beavis and Butthead giggled sophomorically in Sera’s mind. Heh-heh. He said “orgasms in the rear.” Her face flamed. Get a grip, Serafina, she admonished herself. Grown women don’t freak out at the sight of a few vibrators.

  Since Asher seemed to be taking his time moving out of her way, Sera ducked under his arm and squeezed by, taking a welcome breath of nonsexualized air when she reached the main space. Pauline trotted up behind her, hands on hips and a hopeful expression on her face.

  “So what do you think, kid?”

  “Think?” Sera was finding it rather hard to think at the moment, actually. “Well, the space is amazing,” she said when she’d gathered her wits. “What we can make of it—well, I have some ideas, but I want to hear what you think first. I don’t want to railroad you out of something you love, Aunt Paulie. I can see how much this place has meant to you, and I want to honor that. As far as I’m concerned, you should make the final decision on what happens with the shop.”

  Pauline’s sharp brown eyes softened and her face glowed. “I raised a wonderful niece,” she trilled. “Didn’t I, Ash?”

  Asher hopped up to sit on the mahogany counter and grinned, arms bracing his weight behind him in a way that emphasized his broad shoulders and corded arms. “Indubitably,” he affirmed.

  Sera shot him a suspicious glance, but there was no trace of a leer on his face, and he seemed quite sincere—even detached. Inexplicably, disappointment flared within her. Though she had no intention of becoming distracted from her dream by another charismatic male, she found herself wishing that this one was flirting with her. But if there was any trace of chemistry in the air, it was apparently one-sided. He was being charming—engaging even—but definitely not suggestive.

  “Well, kiddo,” Pauline continued, “the sad fact is, since Hortencia, I’ve lost a bit of my customary mojo. And I ain’t getting any younger. I haven’t got the energy—and let’s face it, I never had the business savvy—to keep P-HOP going the way it should, but I’d be sorry to see my dream die out entirely.” A hint of deliberate mystery colored her voice, telling Sera she had something on her mind.

  Her aunt might look like a Grateful Dead camp follower, but Sera was beginning to suspect the old gal hadn’t lost her edge.

  “Spill it, Pauline,” she commanded.

  “We-lllll,” Pauline drawled, enjoying the moment, “your specialty is giving people pleasure, right?” She waited expectantly, like the retired professor she was.

  Sera was willing to bite, despite her awareness of the interested audience observing their exchange. “I guess that’s one way of putting it. My desserts are definitely made to invoke all the senses and delight the palate.” She hoped she didn’t sound like too much of a prima donna. Still, her confections did deserve a certain gravity. They were that good. Modest Serafina might be about her own attributes, but her baked goods were out of this world.

  Pauline wasn’t put off by Sera’s hesitance. She beamed at Sera and Asher alike. “The way I see it, I’ve been doing the same thing, just working in a different medium. So I thought,
what if your new shop included both sinful desserts and earthly delights?”

  “You mean… cupcakes in the front, climaxes in the back?” Sera asked incredulously.

  “Chocolate produces the same endorphins as sex, I’ve heard,” Asher put in helpfully from his perch on the counter.

  “Oh, is that what you’ve heard?” Sera shot back, a smile quirking her lips when Asher mugged an innocent expression. But only half her mind was on her new neighbor, for a wonder.

  She was beginning to see the possibilities…

  Considering her “shortcomings,” Serafina had never had the slightest inclination to frequent a pleasure palace, let alone become the proprietor of one, be it ever so genteel. But now… Ever since her aunt’s distress call, Sera had sensed she was facing another crossroads in her life—not as dramatic as her decision to get sober, certainly, but perhaps even more profound. Her life in New York was unsatisfying, to say the least. She had gotten her one-year chip just a couple months ago, and was only just beginning to see the “promises” spoken of among the recovery community come true in her own life. She’d stabilized, sure—but in a lot of ways she was still the same scared, insecure girl she’d been before she’d picked up the bottle and lost so many years to it. One of the things she had learned, watching others who had the sorts of lives she wanted for herself, was that those who were happiest were the ones who were open to life’s possibilities, and who challenged themselves to accept new things, however scary they might be.

  Maybe it was time to live up to her surname and do something wild. Something totally out of character. Never mind that she was hardly one to speak on the subject of orgasm aids—Pauline could take care of that aspect. Sera had absolutely no intention of letting Pauline retire, gracefully or otherwise, and she suspected Pauline herself wouldn’t have it any other way. They’d be the dynamic duo of sensual gratification! And Sera would be someone who proudly owned a streak of mischief, instead of someone who buried her joie de vivre beneath a stifling blanket of timidity.