Bliss (23 page)

His intensity should have frightened her. Instead, it only turned her on more.
Come back and finish what you started,
she wanted to plead, even though she wasn't at all sure where that might lead. It had
felt
like she might get there… felt so incredible she couldn't believe he was denying her now.

“Do you understand?” he demanded a second time, those green eyes going gold again. He stepped closer, took her chin between his fingers, and brought that incredible heat of his once more within reach.

Sera gulped, nodded.

“And do you agree?” he asked, more gently and with a touch of his regular humor.

Sera didn't trust herself to speak, so she nodded again, against his hand. She noticed she was running her own hand down the contours of his back, stroking lower to trace his hips, his buttocks. Her hand wanted to grab hold, and
keep
hold of that prime male real estate… but he was still talking, and his expression told her she better pay attention.

“Good. I'm glad. Because I'm going away, Bliss—going home to Israel. I'll be back in a week, perhaps ten days, and then we'll revisit this. But first”—he lowered his head and kissed her again, at first gently, and then not at all gently—“first, I've got to go speak to my wife.”

With one final, brief kiss, he donned his hat and left Sera there, sitting on the counter by the sink, closer to orgasm than she'd ever imagined, and more befuddled than she'd been on her last epic bender.

Speak to his wife?

I
f you're finished ignoring me like a pouty teenager, kiddo, there's someone who wants to talk to you,” Pauline said. She pointed to the phone, which was lying off the cradle on the mosaic-topped telephone table by the sofa.

Sera rolled her eyes at her aunt. She hadn't been
ignoring
Pauline; she'd been
punishing
her for this afternoon's boorish behavior. There was a difference. But she supposed her affronted act had gone on long enough. Pauline couldn't help herself—she was congenitally uncouth—and if her interference was playing merry hell with Sera's love life, well… it hadn't turned out
all
bad.

Maybe. The jury was still out on that one.

The jury, and Asher's wife,
Sera reminded herself. Apparently that mysterious paragon wasn't as out of the picture as she'd assumed—and what it meant for her and Asher, she had no idea.
Asher wouldn't dally with me if he was still married, would he?
Somehow she couldn't picture her landlord as a philandering cheat. She had to have a little more faith in him than that. But still… She shook herself to bring her thoughts back to the present.

“Weird,” she muttered to herself. “Who would call me at Aunt Pauline's number?” Those few folk she kept in contact with from New York all had her cell number—not that it had been ringing off the hook or anything. She approached the old-fashioned, chunky telephone (which Pauline had bedazzled with flecks of turquoise and fossils she'd picked up in the desert) and gave it a tentative “Hello?”

“What's going on over there, Serafina?” Margaret's somewhat nasal, unmistakably New York accent cut through the miles. “Your aunt called me up, all in a lather, and told me I wasn't ‘doing my damn job.' You okay?”

Sera glanced disbelievingly at her aunt, who was leaning against the archway that connected the living room and the kitchen, leg-warmered ankles crossed, shamelessly eavesdropping. “You called my
sponsor?
”

Idly, Pauline began to pick at the unraveling edge of one of her arm socks. “You bet your bippy I did,” she said. “Seemed to me you needed some good advice, and you're too pigheaded to take it from me. Figured I'd give that Margaret woman a try, since you speak so highly of her, and she's supposed to be such a font of wisdom and all.”

“How did you even get her number?”

Pauline plucked Sera's cell phone from her arm warmer, into which Sera could now see Hortencia had knitted little pockets. She waved it demonstratively. “I'm not fooling around here, kid—though I wish
you
would.”

“
Helloooooo.
Earth to Serafina Wilde,” Margaret's impatient voice cut through Sera's irritation with her aunt's meddling. “What the heck's going on out there, Sera? You staying sober? Making meetings? What's the deal?”

“Sorry, Margaret,” Sera apologized, focusing her attention back on her sponsor. “Yes, I'm fine—still sober, getting to meetings pretty regularly, and doing my program reading at night like you taught me. Everything's fine—my aunt's just turned into a busybody in her old age.” Sera shot a baleful look Pauline's way and deliberately turned her back on her.

“Well, since we're both here on the phone, you might as well get me up to speed, Sera,” Margaret said. “Clearly something's got you in a froth, and we both know it's not good for people like us to get too frothy. Why don't you start with why the Wilde-Woman took it upon herself to reach out to me,
ex parte.
”

“I will,” Sera promised. “Just give me a sec.” She spun around and skewered her aunt with a look even darker than the last one. Pauline mugged an innocent expression, whistling at the ceiling and swinging one foot like an overgrown kid. Sera rolled her eyes. Pauline was hopeless—and so was trying to change her. She sighed, her annoyance fading. “You've got me where you wanted me, Aunt Paulie,” she pointed out. “Now how about some privacy?”

Pauline looked like she would protest, but at Sera's scowl, she decamped to her bedroom, muttering about finding the sweater that matched her knit extremities, as it was getting “a wee bit nipply” outside.

“Okay, sorry,” Sera said into the phone. “So what's happening is, Pauline's decided to take a stab at running my love life, and she gets testy when she doesn't get her way. I liked it better when she was only worried about her own O's and left mine out of it.”

Margaret laughed. “When did she ever do that?”

“Never,” Sera admitted. “Anyhow, it looks like I've gotten into a bit of a romantic entanglement, and Pauline just doesn't know when to quit pushing.”

“Hm,” said Margaret. “What kind of “romantic entanglement” are we talking about—the good kind, or the Blake Austin kind?”

Sera sighed and rubbed her temples, where a rather fierce tension headache was gathering. “The kind that
could
be really good—or
would
be, if I were the right woman for this guy.” She proceeded to spill the whole story—all about Asher (whom she deliberately hadn't mentioned in any of her previous calls to her sponsor), how attracted she was to him, and how, unbelievably, he seemed to like her, too. She finished by spelling out how disastrously their dinner had ended the other night and detailing a rated-G version of their subsequent encounter in the kitchen today. She skipped the part where she'd confessed her broken hoo-ha, but did tell Margaret about Asher's promise—or was it a warning?—that he wanted to take her out when he returned.

“So anyway, Maggie, I don't know whether to jump the guy's bones or hold back in case the whole thing blows up in my face. I mean, after all, I'm supposed to be opening my dream store in a couple weeks, and I really ought to be a hundred percent focused on that. Plus, apparently right now Asher's winging his way to Tel Aviv on some mysterious mission to make things right with his wife, and he wants to take me out for what he calls ‘a proper date' when he gets back—” Sera would have kept rattling on, but Margaret interrupted.

“Wait a minute, Sera,” Margaret commanded. Sera could almost see her making the “roll that shit back a bit” gesture she always did with her hands. “Go back to the part where you told this Asher guy you were no good for him. You really said that?”

“Uh-huh,” Sera said, mentally preparing for a lecture. She twirled the old-fashioned phone cord between her fingers.

“Let me get this straight. You told the guy—this guy you describe as practically perfect, and hotter than New York in July—that you didn't deserve to be with him because you were an addict and a failure?”

“Well, ah…” Sera chewed on a lock of hair. “Yeah, I might have said that.”

“If you were here, I'd give you such a smack on the ass right now,” Margaret swore. “
How
many times have we read the Big Book together?
How
many meetings have we sat through? You calling all those people in the fellowship failures?”

“No, of course not…” Sera said meekly. Her fellow alkies were some of the folks she admired most. Hearing their stories of how they'd scraped themselves out of life's gutters and pieced themselves back together into some of the kindest, most responsible people she'd ever met had inspired Sera herself to stick around and give living sober a chance.

“Damn right, Serafina. As well blame the cancer patient or the diabetic for their disease. You—well, you may have drawn the short straw when it comes to addictive propensities, but it's what you've done to
overcome
that condition that defines you, not the addiction itself. I mean, how many alcoholics do you know who
couldn't
get sober?”

Sera had to admit, she knew a lot. Only a small percentage of addicts ever managed to get—or stay—in recovery.

“And of the ones you know who did succeed,” Margaret continued relentlessly, “how many of them had it easy?”

“Um, none?” Sera forced herself to stop chewing her hair and twisting the old-school phone cord around her fingers. Both were nearly in knots, just like her guts. But Margaret was right, she
had
come a long way, and she had a lot to be proud of. She couldn't let this absurd insecurity left over from the Blake years continue to cast a pall on her life. She felt herself standing straighter. “So if I get you right, what you're trying to say is that I should be proud of my past, not ashamed—or at least, proud of my progress.”

“That's right,” Margaret said, satisfaction coloring her voice. “You can't control the way you were born, but you
can
control how you handle life's challenges. Now you… you've done a pretty damn fine job, if what Pauline was telling me before she put you on the phone is true. Your store's nearly ready to open. You've met a nice bunch of gals. Apparently you even got yourself some kind of badass monster truck. You're really making a life for yourself out there. Why
shouldn't
you have a gorgeous guy in it?”

Because I'm a dud in the sack,
Sera wanted to say, but she'd told too many people about her no-O issue and she really didn't want to go over it again. She had enough people out here hovering over her and monitoring her erogenous zones as it was.

“There's no guy in the world so great you don't deserve him,” Margaret continued. “I'm serious, Sera. Don't blow your chance at happiness because of some outdated idea you have of yourself. You're a new woman, and you've got everything it takes to achieve the life of your dreams. Just don't let your disease talk you out of it, and you should be okay.”

Sera smiled. “Thanks, Margaret.” She was starting to feel better. Maybe, just maybe, her two favorite female advisors had a point. She should stop assuming she knew what was best for Asher, stop assuming she wasn't good enough for him, and just let things play out. Asher was no Blake Austin. No matter how badly things went, he would never be deliberately cruel to her. The worst that could happen was that Sera would wind up humiliated—and she was no stranger to humiliation. The
best
that could happen, however… well,
hell.
The best would be very good indeed.

She forced herself to listen to her sponsor, who was still talking.

“You want my advice, I think you should lighten up, like your aunt says. That old broad's got a lot of wisdom in her. Listen to her, and I think you'll be happier for it.”

Serafina knew better than to argue with her sponsor—a formidable woman who just
might
come out to Santa Fe to deliver that ass-smacking if she wasn't satisfied Sera was following her suggestions.

“Yes, ma'am,” she said. “I'll take that advice.”

Which was how Sera found herself spending the next two weeks on a bona fide Orgasm Quest.

I
can't believe I let you talk me into this, you guys. I
hate
sweating.”

The four women sat around a brazier in the dim light of a mud-brick Navajo torture chamber. Pan flute music was being piped in from some unseen corner. Clouds of sage incense wafted to their nostrils, while waves of heat billowed from the brazier, like cushioned fists thudding against their overheated skin.

You better believe you're in New Mexico now, girl.

Sera felt as though the walls of the sweat lodge were closing in on them.

“Just relax, Baby-Bliss,” Pauline advised. “Try to focus.”

“I
can't
focus, Pauline,” she snapped. “I'm
naked
here.”

“Naked is natural, dear,” put in Hortencia. “Look at me. I'm perfectly at ease with it.” She gestured languidly. Her plump, seventy-year-old frame was nearly boneless with relaxation, parked against the log-and-mud-brick wall of the lodge like she'd grown from it. Her white hair had gone a bit limp, but soft tendrils curled charmingly about her apple cheeks, which were rosier than ever. She'd brought along a home-knitted throw cushion for her bum, Sera saw, protecting her from the ground.

Beside her, Aruni settled her well-toned legs more comfortably into lotus position in her own corner of the hut. Her back was ramrod straight, but her curls were kinkier than Hugh Hefner. “Me, too,” she piped up.

Sera fought the urge to stick her tongue out at her friend. Sure,
she
had no problem being naked, because
she
had a perfect, years-of-yoga-toned body. And she had nothing to stress about—Aruni already
had
an orgasm totem. A fox, she'd said. A nice, fluffy red fox.

What am
I
gonna get?
Sera wondered.
A beaver?

Aunt Pauline had been adamant they attempt this adventure. “We're going on a vision quest, kiddo,” she'd said that morning after rousting Sera out of bed and tossing her a towel. “Nothing else has worked, and Asher will be back any day. Forget all that other stuff we tried. I don't know why I didn't think of this before! What you've got to do, Bliss, is find your orgasm totem. And there's no better way to invite a visit from your orgasm animal than a nice, naked sweat ceremony. Once you find it, I'm sure it'll show you the way. God knows
I've
tried,” she'd muttered. “But you, my darling niece, are one tough nut to crack.”

So here they were, two weeks into the great “quest for the holy wail,” as Janice had laughingly dubbed it, and no closer to climax (at least in Sera's case) than they'd been a fortnight ago. Aruni, Hortencia, and Pauline were her fellow pilgrims today—the others had wanted to come, but the only time Pauline could reserve the sweat house up at Ghost Ranch had unfortunately conflicted with most of their work schedules.

Ghost Ranch, Sera had learned as they drove, had been expatriate New York artist Georgia O'Keeffe's spiritual home. And as they'd arrived at the vast, empty space north of Abiquiu, she'd thought she understood why. Red sandstone cliffs rose out of the desert floor, painting the land with stunning color. Swaths of flat terrain were broken by mesas and rock formations that seemed carved by a capricious hand, bold and fierce. There was a hush surrounding the place, as if the very earth knew it was sacred. Here, O'Keeffe had let her creativity spread wide as the horizons, fearlessly exploring her artistic limits as well as her frank sensuality. If ever
she
was going to find hidden depths of passion within herself, Sera had thought, it would be in a place like this.

She'd continued to think so up until they'd arrived at the hexagonal hut they'd reserved on the back end of the sprawling property. Looking at the squat, crumbling structure with its weather-beaten door and bare-earth base, she'd begun to have second thoughts.

Now she was having third and fourth thoughts—most of them about how she could escape without upsetting her aunt and her well-meaning friends. Sera dug a stone out from under her butt, trying to shift in such a way that she could conceal as much of her nakedness as possible. Even among other women, all this bareness was giving her the heebie-jeebies. And the heat! She'd baked bread in cooler ovens.

Oblivious to Sera's distress, Hortencia ladled water from a bucket by the brazier onto the hot stones it was warming. Immediately, the heat in the hut intensified, and with a sizzle, more clouds of steam erupted.

“Seriously, guys, is it supposed to be this hot?”

“No sweat, no sex life,” Pauline said peaceably.

Sera moaned.

Aruni giggled. “I'm
so
resisting the urge to make a joke about chefs not being able to stand the heat in their own kitchens.”

“Try harder,” Sera advised, panting. She'd broiled steaks under cooler conditions than this. And she hadn't been nude. “You probably do that hot-lava yoga all the time, don't you?” she accused.

Aruni fluffed her hair, which had curled so tightly in the humid air that it resembled uncombed sheep's wool. “Of course. Bikram is about the most cleansing feeling you can experience without a colonic. I'll reserve you a spot in our next class if you want, Sera,” she offered.

“I don't think I'm going to survive that long,” Sera gasped. She curled up on her side, laying her cheek against the packed earth floor. The ground was mercifully, if only minimally, cooler, and she'd take what she could get. Besides, fetal, she felt slightly less naked.

“Try to envision your totem, Bliss,” Pauline encouraged. She was sprawled indecorously across the dirt floor, wearing nothing but a string of marigolds around her neck and a serene smile. “Just imagine yourself inviting the spirit to join you, with kindness and love, asking for its guidance but demanding nothing in return. Remember,” she teased, aware of her niece's discomfort, “the sooner you see your orgasm spirit, the sooner you can put your clothes back on.”

I think I
am
seeing visions,
Sera mused dreamily a short while later, cheek sticky with sweat and dirt. But it wasn't some animal guide come to take her to the brink—either sexually or otherwise. Instead, what Sera saw was a nice tidy recap of her failures over the past two weeks.

Thanks, brain. I needed another reminder of how hopeless I am.

Pauline had called upon the BRBs for assistance, and they'd been more than glad to help—especially after they heard about Sera's upcoming date with Asher. “Honey, you don't wanna hook up with the Wolf until you've sorted out your hoo-ha hiccups,” Janice had advised, and the rest of the women had nodded wisely. They'd compiled a list of “orgasm encouragers” a mile long, and they'd been determined to guide Sera through each and every one of their dubious schemes. Sera, equal parts touched, intrigued, and skeptical, had agreed to play along.
What's the worst that could happen?
she'd figured.

She'd found out the hard way.

First, there'd been the “sensual hiking.” According to the Back Room Babes, nothing was guaranteed to boost one's confidence—as well as bring blood to the extremities—like a nice, brisk walk in the woods. After gasping and wheezing her way up a trail whose undeniable beauty Sera might have appreciated more had she been able to breathe, Sera had joined Pauline and the others on a ridge to spend an uncomfortable half hour rhapsodizing about how connected to their physical bodies the exertion made them feel, how the trees and the earth and the sunshine brought them closer to nature and their own natural urges. Sera, a Manhattan girl to the core, had spent the time scanning the underbrush for mountain lions, squealing every time a bee buzzed by, and wondering if she was going to be able to make it down to the parking lot without needing a medic. Orgasm had been the farthest thing from her mind.

After the hiking, there'd been the sensual bread baking—Pauline's idea, naturally.

“C'mon, kiddo. If you can get a loaf to rise, you can get a rise out of anything—including your libido.” They'd come together in Bliss's half-completed kitchen, the scent of fresh plaster in their nostrils and identical wads of basic hearth bread dough on the counter before them. It was just the two of them, as it had been when Sera was a teen and her aunt was teaching her to love the alchemy of baking in Pauline's cramped Washington Square kitchen. “Have you never noticed how baking bread and making love are very similar skills?” Pauline had continued, in her happy place as she mused about her favorite topic. “It's all just kneading and fondling, coaxing and rising…” She demonstrated, shaping her dough into a long, thick loaf with deft strokes of her floury hands. She even gave it a nice, bulbous head so no one could mistake what she was crafting. “Just close your eyes, imagine you're in bed with Asher, and let the feelings flow…”

All those years she was teaching me to bake, she was really preparing me for
this… Instead of “flowing,” Sera found herself squishing her loaf into a pasty splat on her end of the stainless steel counter. She, whose utterly perfect
boules,
baguettes, and
bâtards
were the envy of half of Manhattan's French bakeries! She loved the feel of living dough under her hands, the tender give, the saucy resistance… yet none of it made her feel horny. In fact, to Sera, the whole exercise felt vaguely as though they were profaning her still-unfinished kitchen. She sighed. “Sure, there's fondling and coaxing. There's also punching, and slapping, and slashing… and pinching and deflating… Come on, Aunt Paulie, it's not the same thing at all.”

Pauline heaved a huge sigh, setting her perfect loaf to rise again under a damp towel and wiping her floury hands on her apron. “Maybe not
exactly
the same, kid. But you can't tell me baking bread isn't about the most sensuous thing you can do outside of the boudoir.”

Sera sighed and chucked her own mangled wad of dough into the waste bin. “Enough already,” she'd said. “Not to hurt your feelings, Auntie, but I don't want to be battling visions of your penis-shaped hoagies every time I use my own kitchen.” She'd let Pauline bake up her cock-shaped loaf, mainly to test out whether Malcolm's ovens were as good as promised (they were), but she'd refused her aunt's offer of a hot, steamy slice slathered in butter and dripping with honey. “Bread and bootie just don't mix,” she said firmly, and nothing Pauline said was going to change her mind.

After the bread, there'd been the hula hooping. Aruni had been responsible for
that
travesty, inviting all of the BRBs out to her studio one evening after regular classes and passing out plastic hoops to the women. In full teaching mode, she'd called out suggestions for them to improve their form through her headset, demonstrating technique and urging them all to feel the sexual vibes in their pelvic regions.

Janice and Crystal had gotten into a competition to see who could keep their hoops spinning the longest while Hortencia cursed up a storm, claiming her “dang hooie-hoop” must be defective since she couldn't get it higher than her knees. River Wind had done respectably, until she'd pulled her back out and had to call it quits. Pauline, naturally, maintained perfect rhythm, whizzing her hoop about her old hips with proficiency and an occasional exclamation of gutsy delight.

Sera, somehow, had given herself a fat lip. Which hadn't been much of a turn-on.

About the midnight moonlit drum circle, the less said the better. With unerring skill, they'd managed to cop a squat right on a red anthill, and then, once they'd managed to sort
that
stinging situation out, the BRBs had woken every dog in the neighborhood with their bongo slapping and drum whapping. It was a wonder no one had called the police, what with all the ruckus. Sera, who had the well-developed aversion for drum circles of someone who had oft attempted to relax in Central Park's Sheep Meadow, had not changed her mind about the milieu.

And she hadn't come a whit closer to climax.

The next week, Crystal, that evil wench, had dared them all to a chile-eating contest. She and the others swore by the aphrodisiac properties of the local hot peppers, so they'd tromped out to a famously sadistic dive called the Horseman's Haven for some burgers smothered in nuclear meltdown chile, washed down with kombucha they'd snuck in themselves. There'd been a fair amount of gasping and wailing with that activity, but most of it had been Sera bemoaning the loss of her taste buds and the time it would take to regrow them.

The worst part, for Sera, had been disappointing her new friends. They took such joy in their excursions, be they silly, sweet, or utterly unhinged. These women just let it all hang out, whooping with laughter and living in the moment, even when it made them look goofy or exposed their weak spots. But Sera just… couldn't. The harder she tried to let go, the tighter she got wound up. And the more she saw the crestfallen expressions on the BRBs' faces after each failure, the more conspicuously “broken” Sera felt. But she couldn't bear to disappoint her aunt, and so she'd pasted on a smile and sworn to keep on trying.

Yet her lack of progress was straining even Pauline's vast reserves of optimism.

In the end, Pauline had clapped a stern hand on Sera's shoulder and marched her into Bliss's back room, which Malcolm, true to his word, had not touched. “Look, kiddo,” she'd said rather grimly. “I know you're kind of a prude. So I tried to think outside the cocks. I thought maybe we could find a gentle way to ease you into things. But maybe the ‘hard' way is the only way.” She'd ordered Sera to pick out a selection of machinery, imagery, and “facilitating lotions,” then take her loot back to the house. Then she and Hortencia had taken themselves off, loudly announcing their intention to take in a new German art-house film at the Lensic—a
three-hour
German film.