Is This Seat Taken?

“Is this seat taken?”

I swivel in my barstool, turning from my cold Armadale gimlet to the man leaning into my airspace. He’s exquisite for sure, tall and sleek, his hair like black silk, his voice a tinge Teutonic, the fine threads of his bespoke suit a portend not only of black AMEXs, Porsche Carreras, and Dom Perignon, but of rumpled sheets and lengthy sighs, all tied up in one ergonomically-designed package.

He smiles and lights the room, a shiver radiating through me as I imagine a fevered night followed by a glistening morning after, lingering over coffee and torte as he tells me of his childhood in Bern, his estate in Bordeaux, of how very good the world of finance can be, though how very lonely it’s left him. A yet unscathed corner of my heart squeezes as I reach for him across the breakfast table, our caress a weave of bone and flesh and sentiment, his face an odd mix of gratitude and longing as he brings my hand to his lips, kissing it.

I imagine many more nights and dazzling days, the heat steaming off his skin, lime-scented and dizzying as ether. Then he reaches to the rail and half-cages me, his muscled chest straining the confines of its cotton casing, and all at once I feel protected and safe, and ferociously, shamelessly aroused. In that split second, in that moment when I finally decide to answer his question he beckons to the barkeep as his gaze latches onto mine. Suddenly I’m struck by the fact his eyes are as green as the C-note pinched between his fingers, fingers long and slim and fashionably tanned, except for a white indentation on the fourth-finger of his left hand, freshly-liberated from an inconvenience so unsuitable to our purposes.

Well, maybe only to his, when again he asks me, “Is this seat taken?”

I smile most graciously as I get up, and sweeping my hand over my now empty seat, say, “Not anymore.”

© Copyright Gwen Jones 2017