You Have To Kiss a Lot of Frogs

“Right! So we figured why break up? This was an omen for everything to change.”

“What were we fighting about again, hon?” he asked.

“Oh, your career, my career, competition, money, marriage, religion, children. The usual.”

“I knew it wasn’t anything important.” Jack moved into me and put his arms around my waist. He rested his chin on top of my head. His lower lip was slightly chapped and his red scarf hung loosely around his neck.

“This is new,” I said as I untied and retied it.

“Yep. My mom made it for me. Remember. For Christmas. This was the gift that wasn’t finished that she said she’d send. She made one for you, too. She sent it even though I told her we broke up. You know, just in case we got back together. Mom’s a real optimist.”

“How’s your dad?” I asked while I pictured Jack’s mother sitting in her kitchen, shucking oysters for her famous oyster dressing.

“Good. Still a gentleman farmer. He also sent a book for you on Jews for Jesus.”

Oy gevalt, I thought. “So, Jack… You’ve got a lot of stuff for me in your apartment!”

“I guess I do.”

We took a breather. We let it all sink in. Whatever it was, and looked at each other a long while before we kissed. My lips brushed his cheeks inside his right dimple. They moved down his straight nose and back up to his green eyes to gently tug on his long lashes. Jack’s breath felt warm on my neck. His hands were inside my hair.

“Let’s get a cab home,” said Jack, and before I could blink we were sailing through the park going west on 79th Street. We were silent until we got out of the cab on Amsterdam Avenue. I turned to Jack, put my hands in my pockets and started to walk to my apartment. He took my left hand out from inside my orange coat and held it tightly as he walked, quietly, alongside me. Saying anything would spoil the moment. This moment was swell. I didn’t want to spoil it about thinking about what would happen next, because it was “the moment after” I was afraid of. I thought I had come too far in the healing process to blow it all just for one night of delicious, passionate, uninterrupted, erotic love.

Then again…

Actually, I hadn’t healed that much. Quite frankly, I had been pining. Obsessing. I’d practically been carrying Jack around in my pocket. If I spent the night with Jack, I would still wake up with yearning as I watched happy couples stand in movie lines, but at least I would have a memory of a nourishing, tactile and filling night.

And what if I got hit by a truck on the way to my audition tomorrow? Then I would have given up the last Valentine’s Day of my whole entire life with my best male friend and lover, to date, just because it wasn’t permanent. What was permanent in this world? Hardly anything. This was the moment to take and to seize. Spending the night with Jack Whitney was not only the smartest thing I could do, in fact, it was my only option.

I turned to him as we passed an open deli.

“You want me to get those Chips Ahoys you like?”

“I’m cutting back on sweets,” said Jack, placing his free hand on his stomach.

“Oh. That’s nice.”

I took out my keys and opened the double door leading into the lobby.

Gomez, the super, was wheeling out a barrel of garbage with a hand truck. He was wearing a red bandana around his neck and used it to periodically wipe his moustache.

“I fix the kitchen sink for you, Miss Karrie,” he said. “It won’t be leaky anymore.”

“Thanks, Gomez.”

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Jack. You been away making people laugh?”

“I like to think so,” he said, opening the elevator door for me to get in.

He pressed the button numbered three, with the assurance of someone who knew where he was going and where he had been. I stood on the other side of the elevator. Leaning against the banister I took solace in deciding that I really wasn’t in my life, I was just watching the dailies.

Jack unbuttoned the big, black buttons on my coat. I unzipped his leather jacket and slipped my cold hands up the back of his sweater. His skin felt warm against my palms. He pressed close to me and filled the gap between us.

With a sudden burst, I jumped onto Jack, straddling his waist with my legs. He fell backward, me on top of him. Our bodies made a loud thump as we landed. I fell all over him, my body pressing into Jack’s under the canopy of my fake fur. Jack pulled me toward him, massaging my shoulders as my breasts dangled over his face. Our mouths seemed to search each others for reasons why they had been apart these weeks.

“Not that I care, but I don’t remember the elevator being so slow,” Jack murmured as he nibbled on my upper lip.

“It isn’t.”

“It is,” he said while expertly moving his hands under my sweater to unhook my bra. Jack knew all of my bras hooked in the front, except for the strapless, which hooked on the third set of clasps in the back.

I waited to feel his fingers cup my left breast before I spoke. I knew you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out if didn’t take more than forty seconds to ride from the lobby to the third floor.

“We’re stuck,” I said, allowing my body to move into the swirling motion of his hands. By this time his two hands had successfully located my two breasts.

“I guess we are,” Jack said. “I love your body. Let’s put our differences aside tonight. You’re right. We’re stuck with each other.”

“Not us. The elevator. We haven’t moved in a while.”

“What do you mean?”

I removed my tongue from Jack’s ear and whispered, “I think we did something when we fell. We’re not moving. The elevator is stuck.”

He looked up at me, his brown eyes dancing.

“You’re kidding.” He laughed. “This is great. Let’s not call for help. Let’s do it here.”

He went to unzip my jeans.

“Wait,” I said, stopping him. “Gomez will be back to get more garbage any minute. He’ll find us. I’d be mortified.”

“Well.” Jack tried to salvage the idea. “Maybe just a quickie. Under your coat.”

I didn’t want that. “I like when we have time for a whole, you know…”

“We can have another session in the apartment. But how many times can you say you had sex in an elevator?” he asked.

“Six hundred fifty-three. At least.”

“This will be exciting. Come on. Let’s do it fast. Before Gomez gets back.”

We unzipped each other’s pants. He slid his right hand beneath my pink lace panties.

“Wait. We can’t.” I stopped him again. “We don’t have anything.”

Jack’s face lit up. He reached into his coat pocket. “I’ve got,” he said, pulling out a brand-new package of three lubricated latex condoms.

My body came to an involuntary halt as I stared at the man and woman embracing on the misty blue box. The Natural Way To Love That Special Someone, it read.

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