CAFE: cook (& busboy) sketch

[Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>]

Having passed the cafe material along to my friend Zoe Velonis, she penned
this. Comments will be passed on to her.
**

She had the kind of body that clothes couldn't contain.  It wasn't that
she was so fat that she burst out of whatever she wore, that her flesh
strained against the warp and the weft, but that she had the kind of body
that clothes just shouldn't confine.  Her bra straps were forever falling
down:  she'd go about the kitchen tugging at one absentmindedly as she
stirred a concoction.  Buttons would fly off at a moment's notice, turning
up later in a bowl of soup.  The zipper of her jeans had to be anchored
with a safety pin else it would slowly creep down, leaving her blushing.

Her naked  body was voluptuous, repslendent, Rubenesque.  Never of the
personality to subscribe to the feminine beauty myth, she exuded both
femininity and beauty, from her thighs to her belly to her gloriously
round and pendulous breasts.

He would come to her at night, creep into her bed and bury himself in her
warm, soft flesh; nestling his face between her thighs and reaching up for
huge handfuls of her breasts, marvelling at her bounty as she tossed her
head and moaned with pleasure.  She surrounded him, took him in, made him
feel complete.

In the daytime she never gave any sign that she knew of his nightly
visits.  She was the cook, he a busboy, and there was no hint of affection
or shared pleasure, much less gratitude, in her voice as she thrust dishes
at him, giving him instructions in a firm, clipped voice that bore no
contradictions.

He'd worshipped her beauty for weeks, in the beginning, longing for her,
his flesh aching for her, his mind consumed by the demands of his loins.
He'd sneak outside the cafe' at night, stare up at the window he knew was
her room as she turned on the light.  He'd watch, hypnotized, as she
languorously disrobed, brushed her hair, leaned out of the window to
breathe deeply of the night air.  Her breasts shone like twin moons as she
drank in the night, erasing the scents of garlic and rosemary, butter and
tomatoes from her nostrils.  Once, as he watched, she laughed, a low,
quiet chuckle, and opened her arms in an embrace.  "Come up then, why
don't you," she said, her voice rich with a melodiousness off nuance that
it never had during the day.  His breath caught in his ribs, clung there
until he remembered and opened his lungs again.  "Me?" he asked,
desperately grateful that his voice didn't display that annoying habit it
had lately, of cracking when he particularly wanted it not to.  "No, the
other people who are out there watching me every night," she said, the
laughter still in her voice.

So he went back into the cafe', past the night janitor who whistled as he
wiped down tables and mopped the floor, who gave him a knowing wink
that made him all the more nervous.  He went through the kitchen and
paused at the foot of the stairs, put, finally, one foot on the first
protesting step.

Thirteen stairs, he counted, and crossed himself.  He turned down the
hall, past the head waiter's room, the manager's to her room.  As he
stood outside, breathing heavily, his pants distended with his desire, she
opened the door.

Her nakedness was more than he'd dreamed of.  Not perfect:  he could see
the silvery stretch marks on her breasts and thighs, the moles and
freckles, the pits and scars of age.  But her imperfection only made her
more achingly real, more desirable, and his genitals throbbed against his
jeans.  Breath came in short gasps.

"Have you ever been with a woman before?" she asked.

Mute, he shook his head.  It was the truth:  his absentminded penetration
of his sister's best friend when they were all playing doctor behind the
abandoned barn didn't count.  She took his hand and led him into the room,
whose walls were covered with tapestry bedspreads that exuded odors of
frankincense and patchouli.  She guided him to the bed and undressed him
carefully, opened herself to him and then, when he had spent his first
desire in her, taught him how to pleasure a woman as well as himself.

He realized, at one point, that he didn't know her name, that she didn't
know his.  Somehow it seemed desperately urgent that she whisper his name
at her climax, but when he told her, she only laughed.

And now she was just another part of the day to him, the thing that he
escaped to when his shift was over each night, threading his way through
the tables and up the stairs to her soft, endless flesh.  She was always
the same, never cried or wept or showed that anything touched her emotion.
 Her laughter, though rich, was only amusement, never joy or happiness;
and he wondered if the walls would echo with her moans of pleasure without
him, if she even needed him.  So one night he stayed away.

She looked the same the next day, but the one after, her face seemed
drawn.  He watched her carefully, but she never said anything to him or
to anyone, and although for a month she grew paler and thinner, stopped
tugging at her bra straps, and although her cooking grew bland and
tasteless, the decline finally ended.  Her color came back and her
voluptuousness was even more irresistible.  He thought that she had found
a new lover and, jealous more than he had thought himself capable of
being, he mounted the stairs one night to see.

There were no sounds from her room and he had almost turned away when he
heard her low rumble of a laugh.  He opened the door quietly and peered
into the darkness.

The window was open, making the tapestried bedspreads billow in the air,
sending out whiffs of their scent like tendrilled ivy.  And she...her bed
faced the window and on the ceiling was a mirror.  She lay, legs spread
wide to the night, looking up at herself, and laughed a laugh of joy and
happiness.  As he watched, she moaned and tossed her head in that way he
knew so well, and then she cried out, syllables that formed what he knew
must be her name, and wept, tears of release and happiness as well as pain
and emotion.

He crept out, closing the door softly behind him, and tried to blank out
the emptiness inside him with alcohol, tried to forget that the night and
the mirror and her own hand had done what he never could.

It was then that the cafe' began to become very popular, then that its
cook began to acquire her reputation for food with the indefinable
passion, mer'aki, for being a chef unparalleled by any before.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nick S. Nicholas,                      "Rode like foam on the river of pity
CogSci & CompSci student,               Turned its tide to strength
University of Melbourne, Australia.     Healed the hole that ripped in living"
nsn@{munagin.ee|mundil.cs}.mu.oz.au           - Suzanne Vega, Book Of Dreams
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