Best Women's Erotica(65)
“I’m going to pull out,” he says after what could be three minutes or thirty. You want to protest, because once he’s gone, the emptiness will be so huge you know that sex will never be enough to fill it. You reach for his wrist and he lets you take it, lets you half sit up and keep him there. There’s a stillness to all this; a calm, Zenlike focus combined with the way it makes your pussy take over everything. You can feel him shaking, are sure he is sweating, and you take your fill of him, then lie back and let him leave. The silence is not deafening, but awe inspiring. You break it by leaning against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. You manage to block out all the noise outside the closet.
In a few minutes, you will emerge, splash some water on your face even though it’ll ruin your makeup, take a sip of seltzer, and, unnoticed, quietly put on your soft, padded, pink and black coat amongst the chaos on all sides. You won’t have it in you to say good-bye to the woman in the slip or the journalist, certainly not to him. You will ease out into the icy night and feel a rush of pride and power you didn’t think he could possibly inspire. You will walk in heels the ten blocks to the subway and sit with your legs crossed as the heat he’s left you with warms you from the inside out.
Before all that, he pulls you close, and you melt into him, just a little. You are no longer on an espionage mission; there’s no pretense of haughty glamour and detached coolness. You are just a girl listening to a man’s heartbeat: tick tick tick tock. You let the rhythm lull you until your heavenly minutes are up.
ABIGAIL’S ICE CREAM
Janine Ashbless
The important thing to remember when making ice cream is to keep stirring the custard as it freezes; otherwise, the whole lot goes to icy lumps. When I first started making my own I used to churn the mix by hand, but these days I have it done by machines. Three or four batches can be on the go at once in the old dairy that now houses Abigail’s Ices. Keep it moving: that’s the trick. Break up those ice crystals as they form.
Turkish Delight: past and present combine upon the tongue as it melts. The taste recalls the sticky sweet bars eaten as a child, but up against that rears the dark and powerful chocolate of my adult palate, perfectly balancing the summer-garden nostalgia of the rosewater. I pick the pink rose petals myself and candy them before stirring them into the cream. Sweet and bitter, floral and earthy, light and dark, it is a glacé of sublime contradictions.
“I’m going to need some help getting the freezers out of the van,” I tell the steward.
She looks down at her clipboard, frowning. “Did you give notice when you booked your pitch?”
“Yes—and I rang up last week to remind you. I spoke to a Mr. Addleman; he said there’d be no problem.”
She snorts down her nose. “Well, he didn’t write it down here. Still, we’ll manage. I’ll go find you someone to help.” And she goes off, leaving me to haul the tent frame out of the van on my own and start putting it together. I think Mr. Addleman’s going to get it in the neck. She looks like the sort who’s used to telling everyone on the town council what he or she needs to do to be properly organized: she’s wearing a tweed twinset on a summer’s morning. It’s all a bit like that today—a town fête writ large and run by optimistic amateurs who are slightly out of their depth. Not that I’m surprised. The fair marks the 360th anniversary of their castle’s surrender to the parliamentary army and, well, that’s not the sort of thing you practice every year.
I do a lot of shows in the summer months: agricultural shows (green Wellington boots, horsey women and hard-mouthed farmers); game fairs (guns and spaniels and camouflage trousers); craft exhibitions (well-off suburbanites). The one thing they all have in common is food. The punters want to eat. They want to try something different, a little luxury: spit-roasted pig and hot waffles and venison burgers…and Abigail’s ice cream. Even at the Strawberry Fair in Cambridge, which is the tattooed alternative crowd and beer in plastic glasses and loud live music, I can easily shift two full freezer-loads on a hot afternoon.
Me? I’m actually a bit of an aging hippy-chick, though I try and hide the fact for some venues. Since Indian prints are finally back in fashion this year, today I’m wearing an embroidered, sleeveless dress I first bought when I was at college back in the Eighties (oh, no post-punk grunge for us: ours was a fine arts college). It still fits me, after twenty years and a child; there are some things I can be proud of. Its soft cotton swings with each turn, making me feel good about myself, and I don’t think I’m out of place here. This particular fair is a combination of local celebration—they’ve got a historical reenactment group in: Roundheads and Cavaliers poking at each other with pikes—and charity stalls and family entertainment. It’s an easygoing crowd and it looks like the sun’s going to come out, which is great for my sales. It’s going to be a doddle, if I can get someone to help me shift those freezers full of ice cream out of the van.