I stand at her door. I note the tell-tale silhouette on the upper right part of the jamb where the mezuzah was meticulously pried off. I smile and nod.
That's my girl.
I notice these things. For, love is in the details, my friend. I push the doorbell. From behind the door's baroque density I hear a dreamlike (and hopefully prophetic) "I'm coming" accompanied by the clak clak clak of her exquisitely sharp heels skittering across the marble floor. I puff out my chest, flare my nostrils and bite down hard on my molars, making sure to present myself in the most virile light. For this specimen of woman is a demanding one. She brooks no impostors, no approximates. She likes the Real Dealissimo, savvy? I continue.
The door opens...and there she is. My Sweet Coult. Her long blonde mane has the metallic sheen of St. Joan's armor and her eyes flicker and glint as though reflecting light from a distant, blazing pyre and she says simply, deceptively "Hello". I enter.
"Nice place", I say.
"Faggot" she says.
I smile and nod again. The minx. She's working her magic early. She must sense that I am The One For Her and she's pulling out all the stops, just like an organist does when he or she wants to get the loudest, most resonant, most effective tones out of the instrument, the "stops" being those knobs that line the front and sides of the organ. You pull them out and it makes everything louder, bigger, more booming.
"Do you have a vase for these?" I extend the bouquet of roses to her.
"Oh, Towel Head?" she cries out and suddenly, what can only be described as a shirtless, stooped Middle Eastern man of about fifty enters the room, his body posed in perpetual flinch. Towel Head looks at me with mute, hollow, pleading eyes and a slack jaw, holds out his hands and grips the roses firmly by their thorny stems, seemingly inured to the pain. I note traces of what looks like dried, encrusted blood at his mouth, nostrils, nipples and crotch. Like I said, love is in the details. He slithers away.
"Lift your feet, dogwater!" she hurls after him. "And put a little sugar in the vase---" She turns to face me. "It keeps them blooming longer..."
My stomach makes a twittering sound, like I swallowed a terrified wren and the unquenchable desire begins in earnest now. I feel the heat emanating from her slinky frame and I practically see the air shimmering off her taut, pink dermis. She wears a green off the shoulder cocktail number, her golf-ball sized deltoids glistening under the track lights, her crisp nun's bosom securely encased beneath the emerald fabric---my God, is it cotton? She leans over a small mirrored table to reach for a pre-poured glass of champagne, giving me a chance to spy her decolletage for the briefest of moments. Oddly, the fleeting glimpse of breastbone puts me in mind of matzoh, the kind my grandmother used to buy. She had a ritual involving lightly moistening the pocked cracker best known for having been baked upon the backs of bondage-fleeing Hebrews. Taking the moistened treat in her calloused immigrant's fingers, she then placed it in the oven for a about a minute until it re-achieved its crispness, robbed from her inexplicable wetting of it in the first place. The fucking nut.
She kicks me in the balls. Oh, my sweet Annie. I go down like a sack of rolled oats. "Traitor", she mutters through her glass darkly, taking a long, loud sip. A tiny, sweet bird of a burp escapes her lips. "'Scuse me" she says and she walks to a black leather sofa.
In the echoes of my addled consciousness I hear a light but steady tapping. Buh-buh-de-bum. Buh-buh-de-bum. I look up, my vision starting to clear and I realize the sound is her fingernails, freshly French manicured, rhythmically rapping out a beckoning beat on the stiff leather of the sofa cushion, like a five-legged Bojangles dancing in the gutter for nickels. Taking a deep breath to stay the creeping nausea brought on by her well aimed toe, I crawl to the couch on all fours and, with some difficulty, pull myself up next to her. "I'd like to assassinate you", she murmurs and leans in close. No fool I, I take the hint and lean in myself. As the distance closes between our lips I become acutely aware of an acrid, medicinal aroma. I'm a details man, as I said. But I am here for one thing and one thing only: to tame this Terror Tessie. To break this wild mustang, wrench her from the adoring grasp of her rabid public and make her mine. She needs me. She craves me. I kiss her. Our mouth-meats meet. My heart races. The phosphenes in my tightly clenched eyelids swirl and dance. This is what I've dreamed of! Heaven! Valhalla! Ann, I am yours! I succumb to you, insatiable succubus!
*****************************************
My physical therapy is progressing nicely, thank you for asking. I finally regained the feeling in the left side of my face and all my finger and toenails have grown back, although their matrixes have been somewhat warped, so they are a bit wonky and bent. But I am alive, at least. I mostly watch TV, eat soup, sit outside and chat with Ann's other exes. It's funny to have been so drawn to someone who, at the end of the day, was just not the gal for me. But that's love. You get smitten, you get involved, you sustain a lethal dose of something scientists haven't found a name for yet and you go on. I try to remain optimistic. But it's going to be hard to forget her. It feels like she's in the very air I breathe, the very water I drink. She's elemental. I wonder if she thinks of me?