Small Town

“Forget it,” she’d said. “I don’t want a baby. For God’s sake, I’d rather have fibroids.”

And it was true, the last thing she wanted was a baby, she didn’t even trust herself with house plants, but the clock was ticking all the same, and it wasn’t her fertility that was running out, it was her life. She didn’t really expect to die soon (though people died whether they expected to or not, they got on planes that crashed or worked in buildings that planes crashed into). But the same friend who’d advised her that her clock was ticking had brought news of a classmate who’d died of breast cancer, and another struck down by one of the more virulent forms of multiple sclerosis. She was young, she was in the fucking prime of life, but that was no guarantee of anything, was it? Because there were no guarantees, and there never had been, but it took you a while before you realized it.

How long before she wouldn’t want to have sex? How long before nobody much wanted to have it with her? She looked great, people looked at her on the street, and not just construction workers, who looked at everybody, but men in suits, men with briefcases.

If there was anything she wanted to do, now was the time to do it. If there was anything she was curious about, now was the time to satisfy her curiosity. That was what had moved her to crawl under the table at L’Aiglon d’Or and surprise Maury Winters with a blow job he’d be a long time forgetting. She’d always wanted to do something like that, she’d always wondered what it would be like, so what was she waiting for?

And if someone saw her, so what? So fucking what? The management wouldn’t ask her to leave. They were a French restaurant, and hadn’t a president of France died that way, carried off by a stroke or a heart attack, leaving some terrified little cupcake (or an éclair, s’il vous plaît) trapped in the well beneath his desk?

So why shouldn’t she get her nipple pierced? How painful could it be? If she didn’t like the result, she’d take the ring out and let it heal up. And if it really made you feel excited all the time...

She said, “How come you don’t have any piercings?” And, when Medea put a finger to an earlobe, “Besides that. I mean, everybody has pierced ears.”

“The others don’t show.”

“Your nipples?”

“Would you like to see?”

There was the slightest smile on Medea’s full lips, and Susan sensed that the woman was playing with her. She could resist, or she could let herself be played with. And what on earth would resistance gain her?

She nodded.

Medea reached behind her neck, unfastened a clasp, and let the white shift fall to the floor. She stepped out of it, and she was the same golden brown color all over, and Susan was sure that some of the color came from the sun, because she could smell the sun on Medea’s skin.

The woman’s figure was exquisite, slim at the waist, just full enough in the hips to be feminine. Her breasts were as firm as a girl’s and of a size to fit the hand, and both nipples were pierced, and sported gold studs identical to the ones in her ears.

She felt lightheaded, felt a tingling in the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. She had never been so moved by the physical beauty of another human being. She was responding to Medea as to a work of art. She felt foolish staring at her like this, but sensed the woman was willing to be stared at. And this was confirmed when Medea raised her arms over her head and pirouetted slowly around, like a slave girl displaying herself in an Eastern market.

The woman had no body hair at all, not on her legs, not under her arms, not at her crotch. There was the faintest trace of sun-bleached golden down on her arms, but that was all.

“I’d recommend studs,” Medea said, touching her own for illustration. “Certainly at first, and for general wear. They don’t show until you want them to. And you can always switch to hoops for special occasions. Do you like the way they look?”

“Very much.”

“There’s more, if you’re interested.”

“More?”

“More piercings.”

But she’d seen the woman, front and back, top to bottom. How could there be more piercings?

A tongue stud? But wouldn’t she have noticed it? And wouldn’t she have simply stuck out her tongue?

No, it wasn’t a tongue stud. Of course not.

“Are you interested?”

She nodded.

“You have to say so. You have to ask to see it.”

“Please,” she said.

“Please what?”

“Please show me.”

Medea backed up, sat down on the carpeted ledge, a pillow beneath her bottom. She opened her legs to reveal gold hoops half an inch in diameter affixed to her labia. The sight was not a surprise, by this point Susan had guessed what she’d see and where she’d see it, but there was something so intimate about the display that emotion flowed over her like a wave. She thought she might cry, or cry out.

“Rings,” Medea said, “because studs would sort of get lost here. And so you can do this.”

And she took a ring between each thumb and forefinger and opened herself up.