Wanted

        Teddy was the first man who ever told her he loved her before they’d gone to bed together. Before they’d even kissed. It happened after their sixth date. He’d taken her to the Music Box on Southport, a grand theater from the 1920’s that showed art films and revivals. They went to see In Cold Blood, the original version from 1967 with Robert Blake as one of the killers. It wasn’t the sort of movie Susan would have chosen herself but she found it riveting, its dark noir suggestion far more chilling than the sort of graphic violence modern filmmakers tended to rely on.  

        During the scene where the killers were crossing the desert, planning to kill the driver who had picked them up the tension was too much for her and she grabbed hold of Teddy’s hand. The driver was spared by pure chance when he stopped to pick up another hitchhiker but even after the climax of tension had passed, Susan she continued to grasp Teddy’s hand.

She held his hand, and he held her’s, through the trial and execution of the murderers.  She held it after they left the theater, as they walked to his car in the snow and on the drive back to her house.  Neither of them seemed to want to let go.

        Finally he pulled up in front of her house.  He got out and walked around to open her door for her. His car was so old and battered the passenger doors didn’t open from the inside. Standing in front of her he took her hand again, kissed her palm and said so softly she could barely hear, “Mrs. Hollander, Susan, I believe I’ve fallen in love with you.”

*

        Her husband had left her three years before. He told her the life they had built together was hateful to him. That living in their house, dealing with their children, seeing her face was day by day moment by moment choking the life from him.

        After he left she threw herself into running the bakery, being there for the children, for Gracie and Paul. The part of her life where she flirted and blushed, stole kisses, made love that part of her life was over and she was glad. She didn’t think she would ever want a man to touch her again.

        When she first met him, Teddy had seemed like the least likely person to change that.

        She owned and operated a little Italian bakery on Division Street, between Damen and Western. Teddy started coming in that fall, stopping every morning for coffee on his way to work. He was a shabbily dressed, tense little man but always very polite. It was the heavy southern accent that caught her attention, made her curious. She made it a point to speak to him.

        It wasn’t easy; he was so timid, so painfully shy he resisted all efforts of conversation at first.

        “Are you new in town?” She would ask.

        “Yes ma’am,” he would murmur taking his coffee. “Thank you ma’am.” She wondered if other people found her this frustrating when she evaded them. It was like making friends with a stray cat. Slowly, making no sudden moves she coaxed him nearer and nearer.

        She learned that he was from Alabama that he was working as a medical records clerk at St. Elizabeth’s hospital across the street. He lived to the West, past Humboldt Park.  He didn’t know anyone in Chicago; he missed his family in Alabama. Why he had left Alabama for a strange, cold city he never volunteered. She never asked. There was small tattoo like a wedding band around his finger. She was fairly certain that someone had broken his heart.

        One morning she showed him a picture of Gracie and Paul. “You have a beautiful family,” had told her. Then he disappeared. Morning after morning he failed to appear. She found she missed him. She assumed she would never see him again then on the tenth day, he reappeared and asked if she would have dinner with him.

        She was a little shocked. She had in a way she had been pursuing him but the idea of dating him, of dating anyone had never occurred to her. Still, she said yes.

*

        On their eighth date he kissed her and she realized she had been starving for the past three years. After their tenth date she asked him if he could come over on Saturday evening. Gracie and Paul would be at their Grandmother’s.

        Dinner was a blur. He was more relaxed then she had ever seen him, so charming, so attentive. They both drank too much wine, made their way up the stairs giggling and necking. His hands explored the contours of her body, at first with hesitation then with an almost frantic passion as if he couldn’t clutch her close enough.

        When they reached the bedroom she pulled off her dress, sat on the bed in her slip and he, he fell to the ground in front of her, knelt their removed her shoes and began kissing her feet.

        “Oh pretty, my pretty you’re just like an angel,” he moaned. “I don’t deserve you, I never deserved anyone like you.” He ran his tongue up her ankle, eyes closed tasting mouthfuls of her calves, kissing her knees, licking along the inside of her thighs his forehead pressed between her legs against the light barrier if her panties which she pulled aside too, too eagerly, wriggled free of and kicked away.

        She lay back and his tongue moved over the hidden folds of her finding that one spot, that one spot that everything bloomed from, finding a rhythm like the beating of a second heart. A burning ember gathered in her belly that spread, outward further and further until her whole body was consumed. She convulsed under his touch, her hips thrashing, clenching and unclenching, groaning and it went on, on and on and on.

        “Stop Teddy, stop.” She cried out, sinking her fingers into his hair, raising his face. He looked frightened.

        “Am I hurting you pretty, did I do something wrong?” He asked. She stroked his hair.

        “No, no Teddy, nothings wrong. It’s just I need you inside me now.”

        “Thank you Susan, thank you.” She though he was trembling still on the floor before her, he seemed to be waiting for her, as if he did not know what to do next. She began to undress him, it some how made her think of when she had undressed the children for bed. She pulled off his sweater, the static charge making his fine, soft hair stand out and up in all directions, unbuttoned his shirt. When it hung open across his narrow chest she started to unbuckle his belt. Only then did he move to help her, to undress himself. As he did she stripped off her slip, her bra and they faced each other naked.

        She had never really seen his body before. The gauntness of his face had not prepared her for how painfully thin he was, how his ribs and spine and shoulder blades jutted through the skin. His chest, his thighs, his arms were criss-crossed with scars, some deep like seams of purple red, others fine and white. It hardly seemed like the body of a timid medical records clerk who went to the library every weekend and always tipped too much. It was the feral body of a starving animal, but didn’t she know all about starving.

        She went to him, touched him, kissed him. His meager chest, the nubs of his spine, the knives of his collarbone, his narrow hips and small straining cock. Her touch said, her kiss said and maybe she said it aloud I accept you Teddy, I accept your rawness, your secrets, your fear. I want you. I love you.

        She lay back on the bed, drew him to her. She opened to him, guided his cock between her legs then arching upward enveloped him. For a moment they lay still, joined together and she wondered how she had lived without this for so long as he licked her lips and slowly began to move then faster, harder as she clutched his shoulders, her legs locked around hips to drive him ever deeper into her.

        Afterward she was elated as they lay wrapped around each other. “Will you come meet the children?” She asked. “I should have introduced you to them sooner. Gracie will love you, Paul might be hard but the sooner he gets to know you, the sooner he’ll accept that you’re part of my life now. You can some to dinner Monday, and the next day and the next day…” She realized he was crying. “Teddy, what is it?” He nestled against her, more like a child then a lover.

        “Pretty,” he whispered, “I think you’re the only one that’s ever wanted me.”