Rendezvous With a Stranger Read Online Free PDF

at my fucked smudged flesh.   Instead, his expression is serene.   I imagine mine is too.  
           I wait for clues from him to move.   Not thinking it wise to take the first step in restoring my clothes, I let the warmed metal at my back be a small comfort.   I’m humbled, such satisfaction rare.  
           Before he says a word, his cock is tucked inside his jeans, the zipper is up and he’s redone his ponytail with a quick swish of his hand.  
           “You want me to stay naked until you leave?” I guess.
           “No,” he shakes his head.   “But I want you to kiss me.”
           I think it intimate that our lips can meet now.   Our bodies have shared a great deal while our affections have shared little.   I remember the mint and the scent of him as he pulls me up enough to sit.   And when his face comes close to mine I tremble, nervous as a young girl in the hands of a far older man.   I think of him as a master, someone who knows me, who gives me gifts, while demanding his use of me.   I feel small in his presence, overwhelmed that he has this power, and I realize that I’ll do anything he asks.   He knows this too.   He owns me that completely.   Knowing all this about myself, I realize I have much to accept.
           His lips linger long on mine. They’re full like the two I offer him as I bend my head back to meet his descending face. I taste a bit of salt with my tongue. My nostrils pick up a minty aroma. Soft against mine, his lips press firmly, but not without tenderness. I relinquish again.   As scared as I was to strip naked in this alley, that seems easy now compared to what I feel with his lips on mine.   Such intimacy takes us beyond these brief interludes in lust to something I can’t yet define.
           This kiss seals the moment, like freezing the image of this alley so it’s indelibly imprinted into the framework of the universe, never to diminish or fade with time.   So potent, I can’t imagine bringing it to mind without this wealth of feeling arising too.
           I believe this fixed picture is instilled in him as well, though what he feels in his heart is a secret to me.   I may be nothing more than spare change in his pocket, or I may be as priceless to him as this back alley moment is now to me.  
     
           “Put on your clothes,” he tells me when the kiss is finally gone.   He hands the pile to me and looks as though he’s about to leave.
           “You know, I don’t know your name,” I say.   “I don’t know what to call you.”
           “How do you think of me?” he asks.
           “As a stranger,” I say.
           “Then that’s good enough.”
           “But it’s not a name.”
           “And none is necessary, Ellen Laurey,” he retorts.   I wonder if he’s mocking me.   If he knows the truth about the poet’s name.   I’d never ask, and I suspect he wouldn’t tell me if he did.
           “Will I see you again?” I ask.
           “I’m sure you will,” he says.
           “When?”   I have my bra and sweater covering my breasts.   Then my skirt quickly hides the rest of me.   It’s little more to restore my underwear and shoes.
           “When I want you again,” he says.
           I have a million questions I’d like to ask him, but then I realize that I don’t really want his answers, just him—just like this afternoon, again and again.
     
    g
     
           I’m at Isaac’s minutes later.   When the stranger and I parted, he went one direction, I went the other.   For a few minutes on the street before I entered the building, I turned to watch him vanish into a sidewalk of people just getting out of a theatre matinee.   Once they dispersed, he was gone, not even a glimpse of the ponytail wagging behind him.   Rushing upstairs, I find myself collapsed on the couch in front of the TV almost