“Last night was amazing. Complicated, but amazing.”
“Complicated usually is. I am deeply envious.” Sasha laughed, opened a drawer in her desk, retrieved my paycheck and handed it to me. “Here is your pay, and here”—she plucked a slip of paper from a stack— “is my list.”
Sasha is a foodie, with a knack for knowing all the best artisan bakeries, cheese-mongers and small wineries in a four-state radius. It just so happened that my three-hour drive down to Cape Annabel takes a route that is peppered by some of Sasha’s favorite spots. For a few years I’d been keeping her, and sometimes the club’s tiny bar menu, stocked with pastries, charcuterie and the best micro-brews that Maine has to offer. I took the list from her and looked it over.
“If Torkelson’s has that incredible Pinot Noir infused Salami then get as much of it as you can and just cut half of the prosciutto I listed.”
“Wow, a pretty big haul this time,” I said, looking up at her.
“I put cash in with your paycheck,” she said, shrugging.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Can’t a women buy twenty pounds of salami without the third degree?”
“No.”
She sighed and drummed her painted fingernails on the desktop. “The gentleman I’ve been…spending time with, recently informed me that he plans to run for State Senate.”
“Oh?”
“Our relationship, what little of it there was, has been ended. He feels he’s less likely to get elected if it becomes known that his…inamorata is, as he phrased it, a ‘modern day madam’.”
“Shit, that sucks.” I frowned at her. I wasn’t entirely sure what this had to do with salami, but I was definitely pissed on her behalf. “Fuck him.”
“Not anymore,” she said and lifted her reading glasses to her face. “My two greatest pleasures in life,” she said, sliding a letter opener into the flap of an envelope and dragging it violently down the length of the fold, “are food and cock. I currently have no prospects for cock, hence the list. If I cannot stuff one hole, Jane, I intend to stuff the other.”
“Food and men, huh? Yeah, I think I can agree with that.”
“No, I didn’t say men—men I can do very well without. It’s cock I like, and at the moment I’m in short supply, so I’ll be needing quite a lot of Pinot Salami.”
“Alright then, boss.” I stood up and lifted my hand to my forehead in mock salute. “I won’t let you down. You’ll have your salami dildos by Friday!” I turned and headed for the door.
“Jane,” she called after me, laughter choking her voice.
I turned and raised my eyebrows.
“I’m going to eat the salami, not fuck it.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
“Jane!” she shouted, and I waved her off as I headed down the hall.
“Made you laugh!” I called, and I heard her groan even as she continued laughing.
* * *
The next morning, as I was gassing up my car for the drive down to Mom’s, I remembered what I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten. Again. The third surprise. Good God it was like every time I spoke to this man my brain reset to zero and all sense flew out of my head. I pulled up his number on my phone as I buckled in, and then transferred the call to the Bluetooth speaker in my car.
“Don’t say anything,” I said when he answered.
“Alright, um. For the sake of clarity, are you instructing me to refrain from using that particular word or all words found in the English language?
“All of them. Shush.”
“How about French? Est-ce que je peux te parler en fran?ais?”
“Fuck, that was sexy. I can’t think when you’re being sexy. Shut up.”
“Votre désir est ma commande.”
I squinted at the road, trying to wrestle a translation from the tiny lexicon of French that I still possessed from high school language classes. “Oh! Your wish is my command! Aw, that’s cute. And also sexy. I told you to stop being sexy.”
“Je suis désolé”
“Gah!” I yelled. “Stop!”
There was silence. Well not quite, it sounded less like actual silence, and more like someone holding a hand over the receiver of their phone while they laughed.
“Okay listen, I meant to ask you this when we spoke yesterday and I forgot.”
Nothing; no reply.
“Hello?”
“Je t' écoute”
“Je…je…oh ‘I’m listening.’ Right, sorry. I told you to shut up, didn’t I? Okay, my question is what was the third surprise?”
Silence again.
“You said that I surprised you three times. You explained the first two, but you never said the third. I mean I kind of assume the third was walking into Cloud’s and seeing me gyrating half naked around a pole, but you didn’t specify that. We kind of got distracted by other things and you forgot to say, and I’m really curious.”
He cleared his throat. “Am I to talk now?”
“Yes, please do.”
“Okay, how about the being sexy part? Can I be sexy again?”