Delta May Crane looked in the mirror that morning for a fraction longer than she usually did. She wasn’t being vain. She just wanted to know who she was supposed to be that day. She was a busy woman with friends and relatives who depended on her generosity and keen business sense. An employer, caregiver and doting auntie to a lovely niece who was her child substitute. Weeks could go by without Ms Crane giving a thought to herself and, as a woman who preferred giving to receiving, this seemed a normal state of affairs.
On this particular morning, the owner of Crane’s Crumpets and Tea in Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne neighbourhood was supposed to be a woman comfortable with her age. All around her, she witnessed middle-aged women experiencing midlife meltdowns. A science teacher in Delta’s Wednesday-night book group mused aloud that lottery winners aren’t the only people who go broke after a windfall. The instructor confessed to having inherited $100,000, only to blow the whole wad on analysis. She was broke in a year but thrice weekly she got to recline on a balding psychiatrist’s Naugahyde couch and calibrate the envy of friends as she imagined her life becoming iconic, like a New Yorker cartoon.
Delta nodded in sympathy but, really, she had little patience with those whose climacteric challenges took the form of profligate spending. She had no rich uncle or patron saint smoothing the way to success. When she started her shop she had to make her crumpets using tuna cans with the tops and bottoms removed; it would require two years of fiscal responsibility before she could afford the stainless-steel pans she’d lovingly purchase from gourmet culinary catalogues.
Satisfied with her work, Delta tried to sublimate her desires by doing for others, and of course renting the occasional sexy French film.
She was through with dating. Delta had a knack for attracting what she called ‘low-resolution’ men for, after the fact of these men had dissipated, the details of them were rarely clear. She once dated a man who, when neither of them felt like cooking, would dine only at Thai restaurants. He’d order the spiciest items on the menu but push them away for being too explicitly hot. Then he’d pick at her dinner. When, exasperated, she asked him why he didn’t order milder food he’d take offence, walk out and leave her with the bill.
No, dating was old news and Delta was more concerned with the fine print, the smalltype that read: Lady, you need to get laid.
Sometimes, Delta’s superstitions made her feel old. Drop a knife – or was it a fork? – and, lo and behold, a man will walk into your life. Of course, the utensil had to be dropped by accident and preferably on a hard surface such as concrete or, in a pinch, linoleum.
Just thinking the words ‘hard surface’ drew her breath up short.
The morning of the day she decided to treat herself to a casual encounter, she had dropped a knife in the kitchen. An auspicious sign.
She knew her friends and colleagues would disapprove of answering ‘Just Sex’ ads on a casual dating web site, but that channel seemed safer than going to a bar. She would meet the guys for coffee first then, if chemistry ensued, the strangers in lust could go from there.
But there was never any lust. The guys didn’t look like their pictures, or maybe they did but the flesh-and-blood versions gave off creepy vibes better left at the door.
She was about to give up when a handsome black-haired lad took a seat next to her at a café downtown, far enough away from Crane’s Crumpets to set up an anonymous assignation.
‘You look exactly like your picture!’ Delta exclaimed, not wanting to add, ‘Only younger.’
Her date’s name was Conor and he was carrying a pile of books with him.
‘Reading material in case you get bored?’
Conor laughed. ‘Just got out of class. I’m in grad school.’
A student. Delta thought: I’m going to fuck a student. She suddenly thought of Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher who made the headlines because she had a sexual relationship with a thirteen-year-old pupil, but that was ridiculous; Conor said he was twenty-six.
‘You are twenty-six, aren’t you?’
The young man gave her a reassuring smile. ‘That I am. And you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen in my life.’
Delta blushed to the roots of her natural (albeit slightly encouraged) blonde hair. She had fretted over what to wear for this meeting. Too mature for a Betsey Johnson dress but determined to stave off muumuus for the dotage days, Delta May chose a nearly diaphanous silk blouse and form-fitting grey skirt.
Her voice was husky from the mountains of cigarettes she smoked in her first youth when many females of her generation believed the only way to a svelte figure was through a carton of Marlboro Lights. She hoped she sounded to him like a sultry cabaret singer and not a prison matron.
They talked until it was time to order refills. Talked circles round the reason why they were really there until Conor flattened his palm under the hem of the horny blonde’s skirt.
She could have jumped him right there. His fingers moved incrementally towards her crotch just for a tease of sensation and then his hands were gone and his fingers steepling over his ceramic mug.
The young know when they’re in control but, if an eager fellow wants to get some action, he knows when to stop teasing and get serious.
‘Delta,’ he said, and just the way he murmured her name was like being given a chance to lick frosting from a spoon.
He leaned close enough so she could feel the intensity of him, the weight of his desire hammered with every breath. ‘How badly do you want to go down on me right now?’
From another man this question would have been cause for alarm. She looked at him. He had a face she would summon in a dream. His hair thick and black and skin pale from the great indoors. She was conscious of an unremitting hunger and wanted only to sup on this perfect paradigm of maleness.
As if from a great distance, she heard herself say, ‘I wouldn’t mind.’
They hailed a cab to Conor’s apartment on Capitol Hill. Even on the way to getting his manhood sucked to oblivion, the handsome Irish lad expounded on the specialness of his brick building dating from the 1920s, the apartments soundproofed with double interior walls, hint, hint.
‘You planning on playing a trumpet while I go down on you?’
‘No, just, you know, in case we want to move on to other things.’
Delta arched her brow and smiled; she hoped she wouldn’t have to remind him this was a one-time-only thing.
Conor went to the kitchen to search the cupboards for something cordial to offer his guest but she stopped him in his tracks.
‘I don’t need anything to drink,’ she said. ‘I just need you.’
She unzipped his tweeds and caressed his cock with her hands.
‘I hope this doesn’t interfere with your homework,’ she couldn’t resist saying as she kicked off her skirt and led him to the nearest horizontal surface.
She straddled him and kissed his entire face, lingering at his sweet sensual lips. She kissed his neck and collarbone, bussed him all the way down his chest until she was a pillow covering his groin.
She felt weightless and ageless at once. She was a vamp and a co-ed, a vulpine vixen masquerading as the girl next door.
Delta let her tongue tickle the glabrous head of his cock before setting it loose like a pinwheel, her gloss aswirl, constantly in motion while her lips paid homage with tender care. It was as if her tongue was gloating, finally able to strut its stuff after a dearth of appreciation.
And she could tell her lover was appreciating such lavish attention by the way he ran his elegant fingers over her scalp, pausing to caress her temples even as she inhaled with the fullest measure of deep throat.
His cock throbbed and bobbed with the urgency Delta brought to her palate and when he came on her chest it was with a thunderous clap of glee.
He was so handsome, so inordinately good-looking that she wanted to run from this beacon of hope, lest she get caught up in something too fragile and beautiful to hold.
She stayed for dinner. Conor offered to make omelettes or stir-fry but Delta took one look at his platoon of non-stick fry tubs and suggested take-out or delivery. How she longed to replace the scarred culinary combat ware with Le Creuset saucepans! This is why she could never get serious about someone so much younger; there’d be too much temptation to do a makeover and then of course the one being Eliza Doolittled would start walking a fine line of resentment until that line became no thicker than a razor’s edge.
No, this was just for fun. Just this once, Delta was determined to think about her own pleasure, not the needs of her employees, customers, vendors or relatives. Tonight was all about satisfaction without expectations.
They perused some take-out menus, finally settling on a large, overpriced gourmet pizza.
‘Pizza!’ Delta said with a laugh. ‘I haven’t ordered pizza in ages. Just promise you won’t light a clove cigarette afterwards. And no smoking a doobie or we won’t be satisfied with one pizza. People either don’t see the cost-prohibitive side of smoking pot or they’re too stoned to care. If you grow marijuana plants in your spare time, I don’t want to know.’
Conor fossicked around a byzantine wine rack until he found just what he was looking for. When he held up a bottle of Pinot Noir for her approval, she nodded, duly impressed.
‘You don’t take me seriously because I’m a twenty-something grad student.’
Delta thought: I don’t take you seriously because you placed an ad in a casual sex pickup column. This wasn’t supposed to be serious! Still, she knew what it was like to be objectified (she was young once herself) and didn’t want to make anyone feel bad. This adventure still had a lot of feel-good potential.
‘Conor, you’re obviously serious about your studies. I admire that. It’s just, well … the way we met.’
‘People meet – and find love – in the most unusual places these days.’
Love? Was he kidding? ‘Conor, I’m old enough to be your –’
Cutting her off while deftly handing over a glass of wine, he said, ‘Unless you started menstruating at eleven or twelve, you are not old enough to be my mother.’
‘I’m old enough to be your doting auntie,’ Delta reasoned, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘I could have bought you your first baseball glove.’
‘Let’s change the subject,’ Conor said, which was easy to do because just then the pizza arrived with all its garlicky distraction.
After they had fed each other slices and finished another bottle of wine, Delta realised she wanted to go down on this perfect specimen of maleness again.
‘Are you serious?’ he asked, tracing her lips with his thumb.
‘I am seriously enjoying myself with a serious young man and, yes, I seriously want to go down on you. If you’re assigned an essay for this assignation, you can call it “Blow Job Redux”.’
Conor pulled her to his chest for a long, sweet kiss, deep and joyful. Before he could lose sight of her mission, Delta was all over his cock again, sucking with a vim that could have pulled a fitted sheet off a bed and turned it into a scrunchie.
She was down on her shins stroking his cock with every persuasion of her tongue, drawing a velvet curtain round the base of the shaft, when he lifted her up and took her by the hand, took her to the bedroom.
They started out with her on all fours, no need for foreplay; she had been a steady stream of surrender from the moment Conor asked her how badly she wanted to go down on him.
With his hands commandeering her hips, Conor leveraged his cock until he was halfway in, enjoying a moment of exquisite control even as Delta reached back to squeeze his hamstrings, propel him forward.
Slippery as she was, she was tight too; he had the sensation of a silk cord tying a knot round his member and he had to quickly think of something sobering. He imagined himself forced to live in a yurt or, no, better yet, an igloo, lest he explode before the rapture even began.
Finally, he pushed and pumped his way to her most vital core as she beckoned his cock to a place of submission so sweet and so uninhibited he felt exalted at the point of orgasm rather than drained. There would be no tristesse with this giving, sensual female. He would live for the moment when he could fill her vulva again, fill it with his love.
A few beads of sweat had gathered at the small of her back and he kissed those away before encouraging her into a supine position.
They spooned and murmured endearments in their post-coital bliss. When Conor began to caress Delta’s breasts and belly, she was liquid again, her loins sleek with desire.
‘Touch me,’ she whispered.
He touched her, awed by her want. He penetrated her snuggery with agile fingers, pumping her mound and engulfing her clit, bringing her to orgasm that way over and over.
Eventually, she came so hard she was trembling and that’s when he mounted her in the missionary position, drew her legs up into a vigorous V and pinned her to the counterpane with the sure deep thrusts of his cock. He looked into her eyes and kissed her brow and told her how much he needed her.
She needed this possession, this singular act of carnal devotion, but she didn’t dare allow herself to think beyond the moment. She twined her arms round Conor’s neck and they rocked each other into riotous joyful fruition.
After love, they took a long, hot shower together and fell back into bed. She loved the way he smelled before and during sex; now she breathed in the fresh, clean scent of his youth. A sensitive youngish male with his whole life ahead of him. How many pretty co-eds were dreaming of Conor right now?
He must have assumed she was spending the night for he mentioned a new coffee shop on Broadway where they could breakfast together in the morning.
She had no intention of spending the night. This was just ‘a bit of craic’ as Moira, an energetic and lovely Irishwoman in her reading group, would call it, craic (pronounced ‘crack’) being Gaelic for merriment. Yes, she and Conor had had a merry time but there was nothing but folly in dating a younger man. Delta blinked away the memory of her Grandma Lil. Lillian Crane was active well into her nineties with a boyfriend thirty years her junior. She drove a marshmallow-white Cadillac, combed her hair up into a beehive and listened to rock music. Delta always smiled thinking of her gran: the original cougar.
But Lil was what everyone in the family called ‘a character’ and Delta was cut from a different cloth, cheesecloth perhaps, given the voluptuous blonde’s love of all things culinary. Delta couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have to weigh every decision with its sobering outcome. She paid her dues in the food service hierarchy and that alone was reason to be grateful for the respect she now enjoyed as a mature, successful businesswoman. She didn’t ‘marry up’ to get where she was and never accepted favours she couldn’t pay back with the luscious fruits of her own labour. She got where she was the old-fashioned way: she baked and cooked for it.
It still gave her indigestion to recall the more humbling moments of those early catering days. She had often heard people from other professions bemoan their ‘salad days’ but cooking professionals must survive the spanakopita and chicken satay circuit.
Delta had a catering gig the week after her thirtieth birthday. One of the bridesmaids asked her if maybe she wasn’t a little too old to be serving hors d’oeuvres.
‘I’m not old,’ the caterer intoned.
‘What I mean to say is: you’re attractive. You should try to marry before it’s too late for you.’
Delta kept her mouth shut. There is no adequate rejoinder to those who employ your services; a sharp-tongued ‘touché’ or barbed comeback will typically lose you your job.
Six months later she took out a small business loan and started her crumpet shop, which also did outside catering. She had a reputation for being a fair and generous employer. If an employee turned thirty or hit any other milestone on her watch, he or she received a paid day off and a picnic basket filled with food and wine.
Delta yawned. After all that delicious sex and Pinot Noir, she was having difficulty keeping her big blue eyes open. It was 1a.m. according to the alarm clock on Conor’s night stand. The black-haired blade was fast asleep and snoring lightly. Her shop opened at nine but she liked to get there an hour early, make sure the day could begin without a crinkle. Also, if someone were to call in sick, there would be a message on the office machine and she’d have time to call round a trusted roster of folks looking for stopgap work.
She had to go. She was grateful for the chance to feel desirable again but, for women of her sort, life revolved around work. She had plans to expand and had already made a bid on a location in West Seattle. She stroked Conor’s cheek and gave him a light peck goodbye before searching in the dark for her shoes and clothes.
She retrieved a notepad from her purse but was nonplussed: what do you say to a sexy young man who just boffed your Botox out? ‘Good luck with your studies!’ seemed ridiculous as did ‘Thanks for the pizza!’ She settled on ‘I had a wonderful time – xox, Delta.’
She called a cab and reached her condo in Queen Anne where she tumbled into her own bed to catch four or five hours of fitful sleep.
A dream woke her out of a reverie long before the alarm buzzed. She and Conor had just enjoyed marathon sex. She was going down on him in what she hoped to be a prelude to more marathon sex. She interrupted her role as fellatrix to sit in Conor’s lap and say, ‘I’ve waited all my life to feel like this.’ Then she parachuted back to where she needed to be.
She woke up shaking her head. What a crazy dream! She was blessed – or cursed – with the ability to always remember her dreams. Well, this one would have to remain tucked like a sheet with hospital corners into her subconscious because she had no intention of repeating last night’s encounter. Why set oneself up to play the fool?
Not bothering to wait for the alarm, she brewed a pot of coffee and set her workaday wheels in motion. I’ll just bake that man right out of my hair, she said to herself with a chuckle.
Business was brisk that day and Delta managed to stay focused, envisioning Conor’s naked torso only a few hundred times.
When she got home that night, she sat down at her computer and willed herself not to turn it on. She put on a CD, poured a glass of wine and flipped through some magazines. It was no use; her mind kept circling back to the monitor with its persistent Turn Me On button.
So she plugged into cyberspace to revisit Conor’s ad. It was gone. Well, that didn’t mean anything. A guy that handsome could easily pick someone up at a bar, though he told her he wasn’t into the bar scene.
On Mondays she opened the shop at noon and closed later in the evening. She had just thanked her last customer and put out a CLOSED sign when she saw a familiar gallant figure striding through her humble establishment.
He was carrying a bouquet of flowers. He dropped it, picked her up by the waist and swung her round like a girl at a rodeo.
She laughed and curled into his embrace.
‘Let me show you my office,’ she said, grabbing him by the sleeve of his fleece jacket. She didn’t care about the age difference anymore. She was as young as he wanted her to be. They could have been lovers on a beach, tugging hearts like kites on a string.
‘I didn’t expect to see you again,’ she said, unzipping his fly.
‘I gathered that by the laconic note you left. At least you didn’t write, “Thanks for the pizza” and skedaddle. An “xox” gives a guy reason to hope.’
She had his cock in her hand and was about to suck it like a lozenge when he pressed her to the wall and took her face in his hands.
‘You have to let me kiss you before you do that,’ he said. His mouth covered hers and she melted; she could feel liquid sensations dropping from her thorax through her abdomen and past her sex until they reached the spaces between her tingling toes.
She had found someone who made her tingle; that was a first and it didn’t feel silly. It felt wholly and completely necessary.
It also felt necessary to fuck like nymph and satyr in some primordial forest of love. She guided her young lover to an ergonomic chair, apologising for the material that was sure to chafe his bum. What followed next would hopefully take his mind off any discomfort.
From the moment her tongue lazed round the tip of his cock, she was wetter than she had ever been. When her lips engulfed his cock like gift wrap she was squirming with desire. She could have sucked him until it was time to open the shop again in the morning but there he was pulling her up, filling her moist mound with his fingers and guiding her torso in a prime fucking position.
‘Guess you don’t need lube,’ he mused, with a smile as big as the sun.
‘No,’ Delta agreed. ‘I need you inside me.’
He kissed her again before she straddled his cock, holding on to the back of the chair as he fucked her into a happier realm, fucked her into that primordial forest where wetness and dew lined every tree, every blade of grass.
Her world expanded with every thrust and he held fast to her spine as she arched her back for a rip-snorting come.
‘Oh, Conor. Conor, what are we doing?’ It was a few minutes before she could go vertical after the finale of their chair humping. Now Delta was standing, peering through a space in her venetian blinds. Good thing she had remembered to lock the door.
She spun around and said, ‘This is crazy.’
‘Why is it crazy?’ Conor asked, running a hand along her exposed thigh.
‘It can’t lead to anything,’ she reasoned, not meeting his eye. From the core of her heart, she didn’t want this to be true.
‘You don’t know that,’ he said, giving her a reassuring hug and a kiss to go with it. ‘Look, I won’t deny I was looking for something casual. So were you. But we found each other and there’s obviously a connection here. Let’s see where it goes.’
Delta smiled at him. He bestowed the look of an earnest scholar even after surviving an older woman’s fit of ardour.
‘Right now I need to go home; I haven’t eaten anything all day. No need to point out the irony of a crumpet-shop purveyor going hungry. I’m just so busy serving and totting up accounts, there’s no time for a bite. I sure wouldn’t mind nibbling on you a little more, sweetness.’
Delta and Conor left the shop. From that point on they’d both find crumbs in their sheets because no one could resist Delta May Crane’s crumpets, especially when propped against a palisade of pillows while watching late-night movies.
But there were no more goodbye notes. Every day the lovers found new ways to say hello.