Bliss (16 page)

And then his lips took hers, and her wits took off.

W
ell, everything
looks
perfectly normal down here,” said the voice between Sera's thighs.

Paper rustled, metal instruments blessedly retracted, and Dr. Flores, Sera's brand-new gynecologist, wheeled herself back on her stool and into visual range. “You can sit up now,” she instructed briskly.

Sera did as bade. (There was nothing like a speculum to make a girl feel subdued.) She sat cross-legged on the exam table, disposable paper gown gapping in all sorts of unflattering ways, trying to tuck everything tuckable back into place.
I can't believe Pauline did this to me,
she thought for what had to be the hundredth time.
And I can't believe I
let
her. Hell, my last pap smear was less than a year ago. This
so
wasn't necessary.
But Pauline Wilde would not be denied. She'd spent the entire weekend peppering her niece with probing questions, poking her and eyeballing her like she was some sort of exotic specimen, then tut-tutting and exclaiming, “Why didn't you ever
say
anything?” at least once an hour. And come Monday morning, she'd been on the horn first thing, getting Sera an appointment with her personal gynecologist, whether Sera liked it or not.

“I don't see what the emergency was, frankly,” said the doctor. She was a steel gray woman from top to bottom, neat but not militarily so from her wiry, short-cropped hair to her starched doctor's coat and gunmetal pantsuit. “The way your aunt made it sound, I thought we'd be admitting you to the ER. I don't usually offer appointments in this big of a rush. It normally takes weeks to get in to see me,” she said with a hint of pride.

“I'm very sorry, Dr. Flores. I don't mean to waste your time,” Sera said. “It's just that Aunt Pauline was very concerned, and I…”

Thought this would shut her up.

“Fine, fine,” said Dr. Flores. “You're here now, and of all my patients, Pauline is probably the one I'm happiest to let call in a favor. So let's get to your symptoms, shall we?” She didn't wait for Sera to continue. “Are you having any burning sensations when you urinate?”

Sera shook her head.

“Pain during sexual activity?”

How to answer that? “Um, not exactly…”

The doctor pinned her with a slightly impatient look. “
What,
exactly?”

“Well, no, no pain, but also… no sexual activity.”

The doctor's expression didn't change. “For how long?”

“Over a year,” Sera whispered.

The doc made a note in her chart. “And over a year ago, when you
were
sexually active, did you experience pain during sexual activity?” she asked impassively.

“No… ah, not exactly.” Sera looked wistfully over at her clothes.

The doctor cast her stainless steel watch an equally wistful glance before leaning back on her stool and studying Serafina from under knotted brows. “
What,
exactly?” she repeated.

“Not pain, but… not really pleasure either. And, um… you probably know how Aunt Pauline is about, um… pleasure.”

Was it Sera's imagination, or had Dr. Flores's lip quirked?

The doctor scribbled another note, then slapped her hands down on her thighs decisively and rose to her Aerosole-clad feet.

“Okay, Miss Wilde. I'll send out the usual pap smear and do a urinalysis, but as I said, I can find nothing physically wrong based on your exam. Come into my office as soon as you're dressed,” she invited, “and we'll have a little chat.”

She might have said “chat,” but Sera heard “firing squad.” She gulped and did as ordered, wishing forlornly that she hadn't given up smoking along with drinking as she dragged on her T-shirt and jeans and slipped into her beat-up Dansko clogs. Now would have been a great time to smoke 'em if she'd got 'em.

Inside the doctor's airy, peach-walled office, O'Keeffe prints confronted Sera at every turn. She squirmed down as small as she could into the doctor's little beige love seat, averting her gaze from the flowery vulvas and focusing instead on the anatomical models of ovaries and uteri that littered the woman's glass-topped desk.
I'll take anatomical over artistic any day.

The doctor unfolded a pair of neat, wire-framed bifocals and propped them on her nose, glancing at Sera over them. “Now, Miss Wilde, how about you describe the
exact
nature of the problem that's brought you here today?”

Was it her imagination, or was Dr. Flores making fun of her, just a wee tiny bit?

Serafina took a deep breath.
Enough wasting this nice lady's time, Sera,
she chided herself. “I guess I better just come out and say it, huh?” She sighed, twisting her hands in her lap. “But that's the problem. I can't. Come, that is.”

“Meaning, you can't experience orgasm?”

Sera nodded glumly.

“I see.” The doctor jotted down another note in Sera's file. “Is it an inability to experience arousal, or is it more like arousal with anorgasmia—that's when your body experiences sexual pleasure but can't achieve climax,” she added when Sera looked blank at the word.

You'd think I'd know all the words for my condition by now,
Sera thought.
Blake
certainly had enough of them, and “frigid” was one of the kindest.
“Ah… the second one, for the most part. I can get in the mood”—her kiss with Asher on Friday night had amply proved that!—“but I, ah… I've never quite gotten ‘there.'”

“Never achieved climax.” Dr. Flores looked a bit impatient with Sera's discomfort using the clinical terms. “Not even alone? When you masturbate?” the doctor clarified.

Yeah, I got that from the whole “alone” thing,
Sera thought, blushing. She shook her head mutely. She'd given it a fair try—Pauline had practically given her a mandate to, once Sera had reached her mid-teens—but though things would start off well, they'd always end up the same way.
Failure. Frustration.
Eventually, the shame over her inadequacy had been too much, and she'd simply given up trying. “No. Once or twice I got pretty close—or at least I think I did—but, um, there was a definite failure to launch.” Having no frame of reference, and a distinct lack of desire to watch porn, Sera had had to rely on her friends'—and Pauline's—descriptions of what the climactic moment felt like. And based on their rhapsodizing (in Pauline's case, endlessly), she'd definitely missed the boat.

Dr. Flores steepled her fingers and frowned over them—not in a judgmental way, but rather as if pondering a perplexing puzzle. “If you had to guess, what would
you
attribute your sexual dysfunction to?”

“The lady in your waiting room,” Sera blurted out.

“Your aunt Pauline?” One gray brow rose, Spock-like.

Sera nodded, wishing she hadn't spoken.

“What does your aunt have to do with the situation, if I might ask?”

How to explain this? “You know how Pauline has this Ourgasms movement, right?” She rushed on when the doctor nodded. “Well, I, um… I sort of watched one of her instructional videos once, when I was fourteen…”

Behind her shiny steel-framed bifocals, Dr. Flores's eyes widened just a tad.

Sera's cheeks flamed, and she felt just this side of nauseated. She didn't want to imagine what the doctor was thinking. “It wasn't my fault—the tape was in our
Princess Bride
video sleeve—but once it got rolling, I couldn't look away. And, um, it was pretty graphic, you know? And after that, whenever I'd get close to orgasm, I'd have a vision…” Sera couldn't finish.

“A vision?” The doctor looked vaguely alarmed.

“Not like a hallucination or anything,” Sera hastened to explain before the woman could summon the men with straitjackets to come haul her away. “Just, um, in my mind, I always end up picturing Aunt Pauline. She pops up like a bogeyman just when I'm most in the mood, and… I, ah, lose it. The moment, that is.” Serafina swallowed. “Sometimes I'll see what I saw in the video”—
so gross!
—“and other times, it's like she just shows up in my head and does one of her signature ‘Helloooooo, Bliss!' greetings right when things are getting hot and heavy.”
And now that I've seen Pauline in that fuchsia belly-dancing outfit, she'll probably be wearing
that
next time. If there
is
a next time.

Now Dr. Flores showed some spark—a spark of asperity. “Let me get this straight. You're saying your aunt is to blame for your difficulty achieving orgasm. Your aunt, who has spent her entire life empowering women to do exactly the opposite.”

“That's about the size of it.” Sera squinched down lower on the sofa. “I mean, I'm not
blaming
her, I'm just saying she, ah… kind of gets in the way.”

Dr. Flores set down her shiny steel Cross pen and squared Sera's folder on her desk with exaggerated precision.

“Miss Wilde, I sympathize with your position. However, I can personally vouch for Pauline's methods. That woman's got a pelvic floor like a trampoline.” From her tone, Sera gathered this was a good thing. “She's my best patient, hands down. I wish they could all be like her—knowledgeable, responsible; hell, she's taught
me
a thing or two about female genitalia. Simply put, your aunt is a bona fide sexual guru. I recommend her unreservedly to many of my patients who need counseling in this regard. And I'm sorry, but if
she
can't help you, I don't think
I
can help you with your problem.”

The doctor rooted through her desk drawer and came up with a business card. “However. If I might make a suggestion,” she said, offering Sera the card, “I'd say give this person a call. It might take years to see results, but it's worth a try.”

Sera stood, accepting the little rectangle of reinforced paper, as well as the doctor's handshake.

“Good luck, Miss Wilde. And give my regards to Pauline.”

Sera didn't have long to wait to obey.

In the waiting room, Pauline leapt to her feet at the sight of her beloved niece. Her hair, barely confined in a messy braid, bounced down her back, trailing ribbons and tiny bells. Her breasts, even less fettered, jiggled gently against the worn green and yellow T-shirt she wore, emblazoned with “Hot Stuff” and an arrow pointing straight down. Her skirt was a calico tribute to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her expression was anxious.

“So what'd Dr. Flores say? Isn't she great? I knew she could fix you up, kiddo.” She patted Sera's shoulder gingerly, as if her niece were a terminally ill patient who would shatter at the slightest hint of rough treatment. “What'd she recommend? I can lend you my Kegel exercisers if you want, but really, I should just buy you a set. I don't know what I was thinking, I should have gotten you a whole array last Christmas!” Pauline was babbling a bit, clearly anxious.

Wordlessly, Sera handed over the card Dr. Flores had given her. Pauline took it, then blanched. “This can't be right,” she muttered. “It says this guy is a clinical psychiatrist, specializing in Freudian analysis!”

With short, jerky movements, Sera gathered up her jacket and steered her aunt toward the door. “Not another word about orgasms, Aunt Pauline,” she growled. “Or I'll scream. And not,” she threatened, “in a good way.”

I
t was just one kiss, Sera,
she reminded herself as she drove the short distance from Pauline's house to the shop.
One kiss, no tongue, no reason you should have spent the last three days in a frenzy of breathless anticipation.

But she had.

And don't forget, he practically dropped you like a hot rock afterward.
If one could drop a hot rock
politely.
Asher had pulled away after leaving her lips in a state of emergency, his eyes shuttering and expression turning, if she had to describe it, rather mortified. He'd thanked her gallantly for the dance, even kissed her hand in a way that would have been utterly cheesy coming from another man, and promised to see her at
Placita de Suerte y Sueños
on Tuesday as agreed. And then he'd beat a hasty retreat.

Leaving Sera to wonder what it was about her that left everyone involved so unsatisfied.

The weather seemed to mirror her glum mood this morning. It had been showering intermittently since dawn—she'd been surprised to learn it did, in fact, rain in the high desert—and the air had taken on a distinct autumn chill. Clouds scudded across the sky, turning it a tumultuous gray as she pulled her aunt's crappy Subaru into a parking space just outside the little shopping center. Her rental car had become too expensive to keep, and Sera hadn't had a chance to look into a car of her own yet, though she, Hortencia, and Pauline had discussed shopping for one later this week. (Sera, who had never owned a car, was having mixed feelings of dread and delight over the prospect.) In the meanwhile, Pauline had been kind enough to lend her the shitheap, though she hadn't come along for the ride.

Sera had wondered why Pauline had refused to join her at the store today—she'd expected her aunt to be ecstatic at the chance to wade waist deep into the plans for renovations. When Sera expressed her surprise to Hortencia that morning, the older woman had given Sera a bit of insight. “She's letting you make Bliss your own, dear. She's afraid that if she comes with you, she won't be able to resist sticking her beak in your business and you'll feel obligated to go with her ideas rather than your own. The only way she can keep her trap shut is to plant her old butt at home while you draft your plans.”

Touched, Sera had given her aunt an extra big hug on her way out, accepting Pauline's return squeeze and “Go get 'em, kiddo,” with eyes that were just a shade misty. “I'll be really careful with your stuff, Aunt Pauline,” she'd promised.

“Eh, junk it all, what do I care? Shovel that shit outta your way and get crackin', cutie. Just don't forget the back room—we agreed you'll be leaving that alone for now, right?”

“Right, Aunt Paulie. Let the boners be. Got it. Love you, see you later!”

Now it was time to beard the boners in their den.

Sera let herself in through the wrought-iron gate and walked through the short covered arch that opened out into the
placita,
dodging between droplets as she emerged into the open courtyard. She nodded a friendly greeting to the earth mother fountain, whose basin looked a little fuller this morning, and breathed deep of the morning air, trying to center herself. It smelled like damp dust, if such a thing were possible—rain on dry earth, piñon and sage, and a hint of Asher's flowering plants. Always, something of Asher seemed to find a way to insinuate itself into her awareness.

As she headed for P-HOP—
gotta remember to start calling it Bliss now
—Sera studiously avoided peering through the junglelike foliage covering Lyric Jewelry to see if her neighbor was around. It was early, but not too early for him to be at work.
Not too early for me to start
focusing on my own business either,
she told herself firmly. They weren't scheduled to get together until closer to noon, and she had buckets of work to do before then. She hitched the bundle of moving boxes and cleaning supplies higher over her shoulder and made a beeline for her store. She needed to clean out the space as best she could before Malcolm arrived this afternoon, as she was hoping to have a clear plan, at least in her mind, for where the appliances would go, and what renovations she'd be asking Malcolm to make.

For indeed, she would be employing Mr. McLeod as her contractor. His references had checked out. What little time she'd been able to steal for herself between fending off her aunt's probing questions about her substandard sex life and trying to shut out the displays of lovey-doveyness from the recently reunited couple, she'd spent researching contractors. While there were several qualified companies in the area she could call upon, most were prohibitively expensive, and all had daunting wait lists before they could take on any new work. None could match Malcolm's offer, and few had had a better rep—at least where it came to the quality of the actual work—than the irascible Scotsman had turned out to have.

The people she'd contacted had had quite a lot to say about McLeod himself. “Grumpy bastard,” “impossibly rude,” and “breathtakingly arrogant” were just a few of the epithets she'd collected. However, each of them had to admit, he'd done the job as promised, fulfilling even the most persnickety of requests and finishing every little detail with a professionalism that had surprised them all. “McLeod's an evil genius,” one woman had quipped. “He renovated my entire gallery from floor joists to rafters in half the time and with half the crew anyone else could have done it. Even helped rehang the paintings afterward. And then proceeded to insult every single work of art in the place.” The woman had laughed. “I didn't know whether to thank him for the good work or sic my dog on him!”

Sera wasn't worried—about McLeod, at least. About hot, quickly regretted kisses with Israeli artisans… well, that was a whole other kettle of fish—one Sera didn't intend to stir endlessly for the rest of the day. She dug Pauline's keys out of her bag and threw open the door to her dream.

Which looked a bit of a nightmare at the moment. Kombucha cups, crumbs, and leftover leis were strewn about the place, victims of last Friday's BRB conclave. Sera sighed, flipped on all the lights, flung the drapes wide, and grabbed a garbage bag. Then she fished her iPod out of her denim jacket and started scrolling through her playlists for the peppiest, most obnoxiously clean-inspiring music she could find.

Ear buds securely screwed in, iPod tucked in back jeans pocket, Sera lost herself in the work.

A couple hours later, she'd managed to pack up most of Pauline's knickknacks, and she'd developed a light sheen of sweat from powering through the task with help from the Ramones, the Clash, and the Specials. Her spirits had lightened with the physical exertion, and her head was wholly focused on the job at hand and the future it promised,
not
on her neighbor. She'd pushed the furniture to the sides of the room until she could deal with what would stay and what had to go—a few of the armchairs were vintage cute, but most were vintage mausoleum—and she'd managed to scrub down most of the surfaces.
Why I'm bothering when we're just going to be tearing up the place, I'm not sure,
she thought ruefully. But she wanted to see the space as close to pristine as possible so she could start over from scratch. She was just looking around trying to determine what to tackle next when her eye was caught by a UPS box that had been left by the front door—probably the one Asher had mentioned the day they'd first met. “Might as well see what's in it,” Sera muttered to herself.

She grabbed her pocketknife and headed for the cardboard container. For all she knew, it could be kombucha food, or maybe matching belly-dancing outfits for the rest of the Back Room Babes.

But no. It was weenies.

Knife in one hand, packing tape sticking to her fingers, Sera stared into a carton of cock. There were glow-in-the-dark vibrators shaped like Japanese manga figurines. Glass wands Glenda the Good Witch would have blushed to wave. Double-duty probes that looked more like Joshua trees than something one ought to be filling one's happy crevices with. Dildos, vibrators, and strap-ons packed the box to capacity. A note taped to the invoice read, in flowing cursive, “Dearest Pauline—Hope these keep you humming! (Batteries included, of course!) Love to the Babes—Your friends at the Ecstasy Emporium.” The tagline beneath the wholesaler's logo read, “Premium Pleasures. Down and Dirty Prices.”

“Dildos,” she muttered. “Why did it have to be dildos?”

Abruptly, Sera was back in high school. Tenth grade, to be precise. Friday night, the night of the Spring Semi-Formal.

In her new flower print Betsey Johnson minidress, fishnet stockings, and favorite beat-to-shit fourteen-hole Doc Martens, she was about as fashionable as her grunge-meets-Goth sensibilities allowed her to get. She'd been primping for hours, listening to an old Alanis Morrisette CD while she tried on liquid liner (disaster) and dithered over whether the dress was too much or too little. (The way it rode up the backs of her thighs made her self-conscious, but it was that or her empire waist velour, and she'd gotten
that
stained with ganache when she'd foolishly chosen to wear it while baking for a class fund-raiser.)

Sera
had
to look her best, because tonight would officially be her first real date.

She still couldn't believe Robbie Markham had asked her out. Robbie was
cool.
Robbie was an upperclassman and played for practically all the varsity teams. Robbie had a coif of floppy black hair that shaded one soulful brown eye, and when he flipped it back in that signature Robbie Markham way, all the girls would sigh. What's more, Robbie Markham had, until this week, never deigned to notice Sera was alive. When he'd asked her to be his date to the semi-formal, Sera, who'd planned to boycott the event in favor of a night spent attempting to break the hard-crack boundary on her so-far-spotty candy-making efforts, had literally looked around behind her. But she'd had a wall of lockers at her back, and Robbie, smiling his crooked Robbie Markham™ smile, had filled her field of vision, waiting for her answer with the cocky assurance of a guy whose face was likely to appear on nearly every page of the upcoming yearbook.

“So, um… Sarah, right?”

Sera had nodded, not daring to scare him off by correcting him. Her palms felt sweaty, so she hid them behind her back, pressed flat against the cool blue-painted metal of the lockers.

“You, ah, wanna hit the semi with me?”

Sera had felt like she'd been hit
by
a semi. She honestly wasn't sure if she wanted to go. She didn't know Robbie. Dancing made her queasy. And damn it, she'd really been looking forward to seeing if she could get those caramels to firm up properly. But one didn't say no to a date with Robbie Markham. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience; even Sera could see that. Caramels could wait.

“Sure,” she'd croaked. She'd really, really wanted to throw up.

But she'd said she would
show
up, and now Robbie would be meeting her at the school in less than half an hour.

Wonder if Pauline will notice if I take a nip from her liquor cabinet,
Sera thought as she made ready to leave. Pauline kept some Kentucky bourbon and a bottle of single malt around somewhere, she knew from previous raids. While a shot of sour, fiery Maker's Mark was more likely to set her stomach roiling than settle the butterflies currently occupying it, Sera was willing to risk it.

Pauline, unfortunately, was blocking the booze. When Sera emerged from her small bedroom into their living room, she found her aunt sprawled out on her settee, a big Victorian affair draped in lace doilies and tassels, reading her tattered copy of Simone de Beauvoir's
The Second Sex
for the fourteenth time. Seeing her niece decked out in gay cotton print and dark, dramatic makeup, she leapt to her feet.

“Rite of passage!” she cried, throwing her hands to the sky and planting her bare, toe-ringed feet in a wide stance. “Don't move a muscle, kiddo. Let me get my camera. I gotta record this for posterity.” Pauline dashed to her bedroom, returning almost instantly with the battered Nikon she'd toted across four continents in her days as a cultural anthropologist. She fiddled briefly with the lens cap and the focus. “The lucky man's not picking you up?” she asked, pouting, though Sera had already told her as much at least twice.

“Guys don't
do
that anymore, Aunt Paulie,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We're meeting in front of the school.”

“Shame,” Pauline continued, clicking her tongue. “I'd have loved to get one of those cheesecake prom night pics of the two of you, even if it is horribly 1950s of me.” She sighed and shook her head. “Oh well. This'll have to do. Strike a pose, Baby-Bliss. Make like it's the luckiest night of this young fella's life—because with you as his date, he damn well better think so.”

Sera managed a pained grimace for the camera.

“Um… Aunt Pauline?” she ventured when the Nikon was safely stowed again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Baby-Bliss, anything,” her aunt replied, giving her a squeeze as Sera reached for her denim jacket and checked her reflection one last time in the mirror by the front door.
Is my
eyeliner still crooked?
she agonized briefly, but decided she couldn't afford to start all over again. By the time she was done, Robbie would have given up on her and gone inside, and she really didn't want to look like the lonely dork wandering the halls seeking her date when he'd probably already be hooking up with somebody more popular. Still, her uncertainty was so paralyzing it was hard to get her feet to move. She needed help. She
wanted
her mother like never before, but her mom had been gone for three years, and she couldn't help Sera now. Now there was only Aunt Pauline, who tried hard but who had the maternal instincts of a burlesque queen.