Chapter Four

Chinatown

 

 

 

Miranda tried to act normal as she walked through the Literature Department corridors the next morning. Excitement about her secret find hummed beneath the surface, though. Her step was light and she could not help smiling at everyone she encountered on her way to the student lounge.

Passing a classroom, she glanced through the glass-paned door and saw Mark Anderson in front of two dozen students. She stopped to watch him. Although she could not hear his lecture, his face was animated. He smiled often, laughed occasionally, gave his students complete attention when they spoke. Pacing from one side of the room to the other like an actor on a stage, he moved with lithe grace. He used his hands, gesturing expansively one moment, clenching his fists dramatically the next. Occasionally he ran his fingers through his tousled brown locks, sweeping them back off his forehead.

Miranda found herself transfixed. His performance ran the gamut from the melodramatic to the comic. Just like Dickens, she thought. There was an ache in her chest as she realized how attractive he was, how accessible he seemed. Not at all like the arrogant, mocking gentleman in her dream.

He was totally focused on his class, but suddenly he looked over at the door. Did he recognize her standing on the other side of the glass? She felt the intensity of his gaze, and it seemed that their eyes locked for a long moment. Miranda was embarrassed, as if she had been discovered engaging in some forbidden act. Blushing, she hastened away.

Mark found her fifteen minutes later in the lounge, drinking a cup of coffee, skimming a Xeroxed manuscript and trying to calm the silly beating of her heart. “Miranda!” Pouring himself some coffee, he sat down next to her. “What did you think of my first lecture?”

His manner was so warm, she couldn’t help answering his warm smile. “Actually, through the glass I couldn’t hear anything you were saying. I was just admiring how much you were able to communicate with body language.”

“Ah, yes, the fruit of my years in amateur dramatics. You might not realize that you are looking at the favorite leading man of the Kenosha Community Theatre. Why, everyone in southern Wisconsin had heard of Mark Anderson!”

“You’re from Wisconsin?”

“Alas, yes, but I’ve been trying to remedy that failing. Graduate school in San Francisco and London. Six months working on my dissertation on a remote island in Nova Scotia. Six months ‘sabbatical’ in Thailand. And now lovely Boston, which I am enjoying more every day.”

Miranda somehow got the notion that this comment had a personal dimension. She ignored the discomfort associated with that thought and forced herself to continue with the conversation.

“Where are you living? Have you found a decent apartment?”

“Actually, I’ve got a great place, on Pearl Street.”

“In Chinatown?”

“Exactly. On the third floor, above the Jade Garden Restaurant. It’s an old building, with tall windows and wooden floors. I look out on an alley, so it is relatively quiet. The only problem is, with the cooking smells that filter up from below, I’m always hungry!”

They both laughed, and Miranda felt marginally more relaxed.

“What about you, Miranda? Where are you from?”

“Born and bred in Cambridge. Spent my childhood playing in Harvard Yard.”

“Miranda Cahill—you’re not related to Herman Cahill, the Shakespearean scholar?”

“My father. He’s retired now, living in Florida. Obviously, I couldn’t do my graduate work anywhere but here, in his department.” Miranda sighed. “All the expectations are a bit of a burden. No one mentions it, but everyone knows that I’m his daughter.”

“I’ll bet you were named after the character in The Tempest,” said Mark with a laugh.

“His favorite play,” nodded Miranda. “It is a good thing that I wasn’t a boy, or he might have named me Prospero!”

“So, what does your father think about your unconventional thesis?”

“He refuses to comment. He can be something of a curmudgeon sometimes. In fact, I think he finds it embarrassing, but titillating.”

“Well, I can understand his perspective.” There was an awkward moment of silence. Miranda stared at the bottom of her coffee mug. Mark finally spoke.

“Look, I’ve got to run. I have a student conference in five minutes. But I’d love to talk some more. Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?”

Miranda hesitated, nervous all over again.

“I’m as good a cook as I am an actor, if I do say so. Do you like spicy food?”

“Definitely.”

“Then I’ll cook Thai. Please, don’t disappoint me, Miranda.”

He looked so earnest, so open, and so darned attractive, Miranda could not say no. “What time?” she asked.

“How about eight? It’s seventeen Pearl Street, apartment Three-B.”

“Can I bring something?”

“Just your lovely self,” said Mark. Then he noticed her blush, and made his tone more matter-of-fact. “You could bring a bottle of wine, if you felt like it. Red.”

Miranda smiled, sensing that he understood her ambivalence. “I have a bottle of Côtes de Rhone that my father sent for my birthday. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

“Seems very appropriate.” Mark glanced at his watch. “I really have to go, but I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

“See you tonight,” said Miranda. Then she sat by herself for another ten minutes, waiting for her heartbeat to return to normal.

 

* * * *

 

Miranda took the subway to the Chinatown station. It was a sweet, mild evening. Dusk still glowed faintly above the grimy buildings. She strolled through the narrow streets, past displays of fresh produce and gold-wrapped incense, tanks of live fish, and red-glazed barbecued ducks suspended from hooks. The sidewalks were crowded with home-bound shoppers, their plastic sacks stuffed with provisions. Neon signs in English and Chinese made multicolored reflections in plate glass windows. Miranda breathed deeply. Sandalwood, anise, charcoal smoke, rotting fish, gasoline, garlic. The complex blend made her feel as if she were in some exotic country across the globe, instead of a few transit stops from home.

She had no difficulty finding Mark’s building. The Jade Garden’s bright lights were visible half a block away. He opened the door at the first ring.

“Miranda! Welcome!” For a moment, it seemed that he was about to embrace her. Her body stiffened reflexively. Mark was sensitive enough to catch this. At the last minute, he converted the hug to a brief squeeze of her shoulder. “I’m so glad you could come.”

Miranda looked him over, slightly amazed. He was in costume for the occasion. His high-necked shirt was fashioned of plain white cotton. Below, he wore loose blue pantaloons, belted with a plaid sash. His feet were bare on the polished wood floor. He definitely did not look like someone from Wisconsin. He looked as exotic as his neighborhood.

“That is quite an outfit,” said Miranda. “It’s Thai, I presume?”

“Yes, this is my peasant ensemble. I’ll save my silk costume for some more formal affair.” He led her into the airy living room and offered her a seat on a futon. “I hope you don’t think I’m silly, getting dressed up. I like to pretend, sometimes, that I’m someone else. Hence the theater…”

I can identify with that, thought Miranda. She took a sip of the wine he handed her. The ruby liquid warmed her throat. She felt as though she were glowing.

“What were you doing in Thailand?” she asked. He sat down cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, and was gazing at her with discomfiting attentiveness. “You said that you were on sabbatical?”

“Well, not officially. I was exploring, enjoying myself primarily. And doing some research for a book.” Miranda looked puzzled. “Not a scholarly book. A novel.”

“Really! Can you tell me about it?”

“Not now. Maybe when I get to know you better.” Miranda felt mixed pleasure and fear at his obvious interest in her. She had drunk half her wine now and, despite her nervousness, was beginning to enjoy herself. “But why don’t you tell me more about your research?” Mark continued. “How did you arrive at such an unconventional topic?”

“My first semester here, I took Victorian Literature with Harold—Dr. Scofield, that is. It was a required course. I had pretty much planned a thesis on feminism and Shakespeare’s heroines. We read many of the standard texts—enough Dickens to make me weary—but Harold also introduced us to The Pearl, My Secret Life, and Steven Marcus’ The Other Victorians, the best-known critical work on nineteenth century erotica.

“I was fascinated by the volume and variety of Victorian ‘pornography’, as Steven Marcus terms it. I also found myself getting more and more annoyed by his superior assertions that this work was not literature and had no social or artistic value. The more of it that I read, the more I became convinced that these were not all fantasies, born out of reaction to a sexually repressed culture, but rather, were true or at least truth-influenced accounts of personal rebellions against that culture.”

Miranda stopped, on the verge of telling her companion about Beatrice’s diary. The document so triumphantly supported her theory. Something held her back, though. Maybe when I know him better, she thought, with a secret smile.

“And the rest is history,” said Mark, filling in the pause.

“Well, one can only hope. My paper proposal for the AML conference was rejected as ‘too speculative’.” What would they think if she showed them the secret journal? “I did so want to go to London. Despite my father’s specialty, I’ve never been there.”

“London’s a totally contradictory place, simultaneously wild and staid. You would love it.” Mark refilled her wine glass and proceeded to regale her with tales of his graduate school escapades in London.

Eventually, he served dinner, fiery pork with basil and chilies, marinated squid salad, mustard greens in oyster sauce, mangos and sticky rice with coconut milk. Miranda was sure that she had never tasted anything better. Mark Anderson certainly did seem to be a man of many talents.

Afterward, they sat together on the couch with snifters of brandy. He was close, though they did not touch. She could sense the heat of his body. He took off his eyeglasses and looked at her, a frank question in his gaze.

He was beautiful, intelligent, kind, talented, but in spite of all that, Miranda felt suddenly wooden. A part of her wanted to reach out, brush that errant curl off his forehead, trace the outline of his full mouth with her fingertip. But she could not move, could not speak, strangled by nervousness and fear.

Mark saw. “You look tense,” he said softly. “Probably you’ve been working too hard. What if I give you a massage?”

Oh, the thought of his hands on her body! Miranda wanted it, and feared it.

“Lie face down on the futon,” he suggested. “Don’t worry. It’s just a massage. I promise.”

Miranda could not help believing him. He flipped a lever that released the back of the couch, turning the frame into a flat platform the size of a double bed. She lay upon the mattress, fully dressed, her breath coming in little gasps.

She had chosen her clothing for the evening carefully, striving to look feminine but not seductive. She wore a short-sleeved turquoise jersey, a long rayon print skirt that buttoned up the front and heeled sandals. Underneath, a simple cotton bra and panties. She had deliberately avoided Lucy’s closet. Mark looked at her, a little smile playing on his lips.

“I can try giving you a massage through your clothes,” he said. “But it won’t be very effective. Why don’t you take off your top and skirt? Then I can see your muscles, can sense where the tension is hiding.”

His voice was warm, smooth, persuasive. “You can trust me, Miranda. You know that you can.”

Despite her nervousness, she sensed this was true. He wouldn’t take advantage of her. Without a word, she shed her outer clothes and lay down again in her underwear. She was no more exposed than she would have been at the beach, but here, alone in this man’s apartment, it felt different.

Mark removed his shirt. His torso was smooth, tanned, lightly muscled. For the first time, she felt a stirring between her legs, the faintest hint of arousal. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “I just want to get some oil.”

But that was not all that he did. He dimmed the lights, lit a candle or two, and started some music. She recognized the meditative strains of a Japanese koto. The atmosphere was peaceful and non-threatening. Miranda felt her muscles relax slightly.

“Now, Miranda, let yourself float. Give your body to me and let me soothe away all your pain, all your fears.” She tried not to jump as his hands cupped her shoulders, warm and slippery with massage oil. Strong fingers assailed the knots in her neck, symmetric rotary motions gradually dissolving the tension there. She breathed deeply, relaxing a bit more.

He was working his way down her arms now, alternately squeezing and releasing the muscles, milking the tenseness down from her shoulders to her fingers, then out the fingertips. Next, he turned his attention to the muscles of her back, below her brassiere. He used his thumbs to smooth the flesh away from her spine, across her ribs to her sides.

Each time he touched her, she became more comfortable. Aches she hadn’t consciously acknowledged melted away under his fingers. She had a moment’s doubt when he moved to her buttocks, kneading them through the fabric of her underwear. But there was no hint of lascivious intent, only the competent and caring release of all the tightness she carried in her limbs.

She breathed slowly, deeply, letting her mind wander. What a remarkable man he was, so sensitive, so controlled. She hardly noticed that her nipples were taut and that her sex tingled slightly. She floated, lulled by the wine, the music, and his magic hands.

He was working on her legs now, digging his fingers into the backs of her thighs, stroking and kneading her calves, squeezing her heels in his palms, pulling on her toes one by one. She felt detached and yet at the same time, she had never been so fully aware of her body. I’m drunk, she thought, drunk and a bit turned on, but that’s okay. She felt wonderful, cherished. Safe.

Vague, sensual images claimed her mind, rounded limbs, warm flesh, anonymous, welcome. She lost track of things. He was no longer touching her. She opened her eyes, and in the dim light, saw that he was touching himself. He had loosed his erection from the pantaloons and was stroking it with the same single-minded, loving attention that he had given to her body.

Her composure fled. “No!” she said, looking around wildly for her clothes. He reached for her, and she shrank away.

“Miranda, I swear, I thought that you were asleep. You looked so beautiful, and I didn’t think you’d mind, didn’t think you would even know…!”

As she pulled on her jersey and buttoned her skirt, she tried not to look at his naked cock, sagging now in response to her obvious distress.

“Miranda, please!” Mark reached for her, almost desperate, as she bent to slip on her sandals. “Please, forgive me.”

She felt a surge of lust as he touched her. Then suddenly, she was ice. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “Thank you for dinner and the massage.” She looked at him and was lost, wanting him, afraid of him, seeing that her coldness hurt him, unable to help herself. “I’m sure that I’ll be seeing you around the department. Good night.”

She closed the door quickly, to shut out the sight of his stricken face.

It was past eleven. The shops were shuttered. As Miranda stepped into the mostly empty street, the Jade Garden’s neon characters crackled a bit and faded away to darkness. A half-moon rode high above the rooftops. It and the occasional street lamp lit her way to the subway entrance. A handful of people, all Chinese, waited on the platform.

Miranda felt guilty and miserable. Mark had been so gracious, so generous, and she had repaid him with cold rejection. It was an involuntary, almost reflexive, reaction on her part. The more she was attracted to him, the more she pulled away.

I’ll speak to him tomorrow, she told herself, apologize and try to explain. He seemed to have some sense of her ambivalence. She had to make him understand that her behavior didn’t reflect her true opinions or feelings about him. He’s so sweet. And I’m so messed up. But maybe he’ll understand.

A train finally pulled into the station. Miranda rode one stop then transferred to the Red Line at Downtown Crossing. The second train was even more deserted.

The car held one other passenger, a young Japanese businessman who sat across from her. His thick, shiny black hair was expertly styled. He wore fashionable wire-frame glasses and a beautifully-cut dark blue suit. He was reading a paperback. However, when she entered the car, he stuffed that in his jacket pocket and stared at her in a manner completely out of keeping with the reputed politeness of his culture.

Annoyed but somehow fascinated, Miranda stared back. The man’s eyes narrowed. A slow smile curved his surprisingly full lips. He deliberately removed his eyeglasses, folded them precisely, and deposited them in his expensive attaché case. Then he resumed his scrutiny of her.

The train stopped at Park Street and the doors creaked open then, after a few moments, they clattered shut. No one got on or off. The Japanese man remained focused on her.

Miranda could feel the sexual charge in his gaze. She knew her taut nipples were visible, poking out the fabric of her top. Her skirt was only half-buttoned, she noticed. The man was focusing now on the shadowy area where it fell open, just above her knees.

Suddenly she felt hot all over, her cheeks, her earlobes, her fingertips, her breasts all flushed with blood. The cotton of her panties bunched damply between her thighs. The young executive watched her reactions, stroking his own thighs with pale, well-manicured hands.

Without conscious thought, still holding him with her eyes, Miranda began to undo the other buttons on her skirt. She lingered over each one, building suspense. Her companion sat still, composed and patient, but Miranda sensed his underlying eagerness. Her own arousal grew each time she released one of the buttons. The Japanese stranger adjusted his position, moving his legs a bit, and Miranda could clearly see the bulge in his crotch. Her own sex felt just as swollen, the need for stimulation almost painful.

Leaving the button at her waist still fastened, she slowly pulled the two halves of the skirt to each side. Now her white underwear was clearly visible. Her traveling companion sat entranced as she slipped her hand into her panties and lightly fingered her clit.

Then she shut her eyes, overwhelmed by her body’s reaction to this barest of touches. Ripples of pleasure flowed out from that sensitive center, until she was tingling all over. Tentatively, she slipped a finger into her vagina, marveling at the wet heat she found there. He was watching every move, she knew. That knowledge magnified the pleasure a hundred fold.

The back of her hand brushed against damp cotton. Of course, he could not actually see what she was doing, in detail. Miranda felt sure that he would want to. She opened her eyes again and found that her partner’s gaze had not wavered. With the same deliberate pacing she had applied to the unbuttoning, she raised her bottom from the seat. She removed the obscuring panties, sliding them smoothly down her legs to her ankles, then bending as gracefully as she could to pick them up. Dangling them from one finger, she let them drop beside her on the bench.

Now the stranger opposite could see Miranda’s dark thatch, with the pink lips protruding, swollen and slick. Miranda spread her thighs wide. Using both hands, she parted the curls and began to frig herself in earnest. She slid the first two fingers of both hands into her vagina. Meanwhile her symmetric thumbs briskly massaged her clit.

She saw delight and disbelief on the face of the Japanese man. His suit trousers were hugely distorted by his erection. Miranda felt outrageous and powerful. She placed one sandaled foot on the seat, opening herself further to his view. His eyes never left her nimble fingers, sliding in and out of her cunt. But what she watched, as she edged ever closer to climax, was his face, inflaming herself by the lust she saw there.

The train lurched to a stop, startling them both. Miranda realized that they had reached Charles Street station, her stop. Acting far more composed than she felt, she removed her hands from her crotch. She stood, picked up her purse, turned her back on the stranger, and walked out of the train without looking back.

Still, she was intensely aware of his presence. She knew he’d paused to retrieve her sodden panties. His breath caught as he slipped out of the car just before the doors closed. His footsteps echoed on the stairs behind her as she descended from the platform to ground level.

As in Chinatown, all the businesses on Charles Street were dark. The gas lamps made pools of golden light at intervals along the street. Miranda could hear her heels clicking on the cobblestone sidewalk, and a few paces behind her, the muted sound of the businessman’s leather soles. A mild spring breeze stirred her skirt and touched her naked privates underneath. She shivered at the touch, delicate but intimate, the fingers of some ghostly lover.

A few blocks from the station, Miranda reached the alleyway that led to her apartment. She ducked inside and stood with her back to the brick wall, breathing deeply.

Overhead, the moon shone cold and distant. Halfway down the alley there was a lamp, but the area near the entrance where Miranda lay in wait swam in darkness. It seemed a long time before the Japanese man reached the narrow passageway. For a moment, Miranda thought that he was going to pass right by. But no, he turned abruptly as he caught sight of her. Before Miranda could move or speak, he seized her in a fierce embrace and had his tongue deep in her mouth.

Flirting, playing, teasing the man on the subway was one thing. His sudden physical presence was something else, shocking and foreign. He smelled of some men’s cologne, brash, almost bitter. He tasted faintly like licorice. His tongue was agile and his mouth demanding. She was no longer in control. Miranda gave herself up to the kiss. It sent electric sparks shuddering down her spine to her sex.

He sucked her earlobe into his mouth, nipping at the tender morsel of flesh with sharp teeth. The brief pain was immediately overwhelmed by delicious spasms between her legs. Now he was nuzzling at her neck, his coarse, thick hair tickling near her collarbone. He held her with one arm and with the other, pulled up her jersey, reached behind and deftly unhooked her bra. The night air caressed her bared breasts as he pushed the bra out of the way and fastened his mouth on one swollen nipple.

Miranda’s knees grew weak. She loved his force, his strength. When his hand moved below her waist, she spread her legs wide, silently offering him her sex. But instead, he unzipped his trousers, releasing his straining penis.

He stood back for a moment, so that Miranda could see it. Smooth and pale, it seemed almost luminescent in the moonlight. His cock was elegant, slender and straight with a glans scarcely larger than the shaft, and totally hairless. Like ivory, Miranda thought. Then thought disappeared as the man roughly pulled her legs apart and, with a single upward thrust, buried himself in her depths.

He was as hard as ivory, or bone, or stone. He worked her cunt with fast, furious strokes, leaving her little time to breathe. Miranda could only moan and clutch at his shoulders as his unyielding rod slid in and out of her. Her eyes closed. Other sensations mingled with the exquisite roughness of his thrusts. She smelled his sweat, dampening the armpits of his business shirt. The brick wall scraped her back. She heard a siren, blocks away, and it seemed like its keening rise to crescendo matched the progress of her arousal.

She was soaked, so wet that at one point he slipped out of her folds. He uttered what sounded like a curse in Japanese. With both hands, he grabbed her buttocks and raised her off the ground, settling her firmly on his erection. Miranda instinctively locked her legs around his waist. Their bodies thus linked, the stranger resumed his thrusts, his penis now firmly embedded in her hungry cunt.

In their new position, Miranda had more control. She rocked her pelvis back and forth, seeking deeper penetration. There were always those aching places, too deep for any cock, that craved stimulation. Her partner growled and dug his nails into her hind cheeks. Wonderful pleasure-pain. She clamped her thighs more tightly. At the same time, she tensed her cunt-muscles, gripping the ivory rod inside her and grinding down fiercely. She teetered on the edge of orgasm, screaming inside for that one perfect thrust that would push her over.

As she clenched around him, he exploded. As he came, he rammed her against the wall, tearing her jersey. Oh, that was what she wanted and needed, to be torn open! His cock pierced the balloon swelling inside her, and her climax took her like a hurricane. The gale rang in her ears, bore her aloft, battered and blessed her.

When the force of the orgasm faded, she found she was still entwined with the body of the Japanese man. She looked at his face, for the first time since the subway. He smiled, a bit sheepishly, and helped her to stand.

Miranda felt dizzy. No, giddy, overwhelmed and amazed by her own audacity. She pulled her bra and her tattered shirt down over her naked breasts. Brushing brick dust off her shirt, she watched the businessman stuff his now-limp penis back into his pants and close the zipper. She smiled, a secret smile that she knew the stranger would not understand.

He had straightened his clothing and retrieved his briefcase from the pavement where he’d left it. With the same care he had used on the train, he extricated his eyeglasses and put them back on.

Then he surprised Miranda. He stood very straight, looking conservative and affluent, and bowed low. “Arrigatou gozaimasu,” he murmured. Picking up his case, he turned and left the alley. Miranda could hear his soft footsteps on the sidewalk as he disappeared from her life.

Lost in thought, Miranda wandered up the alley to her building. Heathcliff came running to the sound of her key in the lock, then sniffed her suspiciously. “Yes, I must smell quite strange,” she told him. “I’m not sure I’d even recognize myself.”

In the shower, she lingered over her body, which felt lush and fragile. Such a tangle of emotions. Remorse and regret over Mark. Excitement, even after satiety, when she remembered the fierce stranger. Confusion as to how she could be two such different people, a nervous prude one moment, a shameless wanton the next.

It was late, but she was too wired to sleep. She opened the drawer near her bed, where she had stored Beatrice’s diary, and removed the compact volume. She sniffed the rich pages. It seemed that she detected the faintest hint of some perfume, under the smells of leather and age.

I wonder what Beatrice would have thought of me, Miranda thought, opening to the spot where she had left off. Her sex was damp with anticipation before she even started reading.