Midnight Lunch: An Erotic Story about Microwave Omelets (3 page)

“You and your metaphors,” she shakes her
head. She looks amused but the tight line of her mouth is
defensive. “Here’s one for you. If we all have to climb our way
from where we are to where we want to be, I might as well start
climbing now.”

“You’ll reach the first ledge and wish you
had anchored a line first.”

I leave Georgia and her record shop dreams. I
go home and try to sleep but I keep replaying my clumsy goodbye to
the beautiful girl with the bleached hair.

When I wake up, the sun has already set. I
eat breakfast on the floor with my phone in my lap and my cereal
bowl balanced between my feet. My roommates are still up, but I
keep to myself. Talking to them right before they go to sleep isn’t
a great way to start my day.

I put on a jacket, even though the day’s heat
hasn’t fully faded. The train gets me to the movie theatre at 8:50
pm and Lenny is already at the door with tickets. We watch some
grey-and-blue-washed action movie and I daydream like I’m still
asleep.

In this dream, she’s on her back on my couch
and we’re home alone. I push up her skirt and kiss her thighs. I
look at my short fingernails on her skin and pause. I think, I’m
just a gullible clerk at a Mini Mart. She’s this beautiful girl,
this apparition, who lies like it’s nothing. She floats in and out
of this store I’m chained to, she wafts, she glides, she—

One night wouldn’t be nearly enough time to
do everything I want to do for her.

—————

I get to work early on Friday. I throw away
my food-court-dinner food wrappers in the back and tuck my shirt in
as I walk to the front. Parteek tells me he wants to sell more
fruit. I say that’s a great idea.

He asks, “But would they buy it?”

“I would buy it. I would buy all of it. I’d
go through like five, six bananas a night,” I say.

He laughs, “Okay, okay.”

She shows up twenty minutes past two in the
morning.

I walk out from behind the counter, “So what
do you really do?”

She calls back without looking at me, “I take
care of a baby.”

“No,” I shake my head, “I know that type. You
don’t have the bags under your eyes for that.”

She says, as if in reply, “I take care of my
grandmother. She just had surgery and she needs my help.”

“Really?”

“No,” she looks at me, “I told you I was
working.”

“So tell me.”

She shakes her head, “It’s not that
cool.”

That one snags on something personal. I walk
up to her. “So what? Is this cool? I work at a Mini Mart. Come
on.”

She laughs.

I lean against the shelves. I’m torn between
asking her name and asking, “So…” I scratch my nose, stalling, “We
should hang out.” It doesn’t come out like a question because I
don’t know what to ask. Do you want? Would you? Can you give me a
chance?

I expect her to laugh. At me. Or the
graceless come on. Or the stupidity of making plans at a Mini Mart
at midnight. But she looks startled. Her eyes are wide and unsure.
She says, “When?”

I smile crookedly, trying to put her at ease,
“Well you’re ‘working,’ so when’s your lunch break?”

She says, “When’s yours?”

“I don’t have one,” I shrug. “The boss is a
cheapskate. There’s no one to watch the counter for me. Upside is,
I can eat anything in the store for free.”

She laughs and I want to kiss her.

She says, “My break is right now.”

“Oh!” I turn away from her and toward the
fridges, camouflaging the flush of excitement in my stomach, “Then
let’s get you something to eat. On the house.” She walks around the
store with me, carrying everything I hand her. Cheese and crackers,
yogurt, chocolate milk, eat-out-of-the-can noodle soup, and a can
of Orange Crush.

I lead her out the front doors and we sit on
the curb. I’m breaking every single one of Parteek’s rules. Her
hair glows like a cloud in the light coming out the door. Her face
is even more beautiful with the streetlight shadows shading it. She
eats and I tell her Mini Mart horror stories. About half are made
up, a handful I heard from the guy who trained me, and the rest are
true. I don’t think she believes a single one.

She has this soft “mmhmm” sound she uses to
say “keep going” or “I’m listening” without tipping her hand,
showing me if she thinks I’m any good or worth her time.

She laughs when I tell her about the woman
who paid for a dozen eggs with pennies—that’s a true one—and my
body tips toward her. I want to be closer but I don’t know how. It
feels like she just lets me see a sliver of herself at a time.

I’m halfway through a story about a fortune
teller who wanted to pay for her Snickers by reading my future—that
one’s made up, I just wanted an excuse to touch her palm—when the
old butch walks up. I stand up the second I see her, but she waves
me down.

“Stay there baby,” she says as she lurches up
onto the curb, one hand on her knee for leverage, “I’ll leave your
money on the counter.”

I thank her and sit down again. I hold out my
hand to finish the fortune teller story and the beautiful girl puts
her hand in mine.

“Hey,” I say, “What’s your name?”

“Maria.”

I point to my name tag, “I’m Jean. But my
friends call me Naej.”

The old butch comes out with her coffee. She
waves and I wave back.

I say, “It’s like Jean, but backwards.”

Maria says, “Mmhmm.”

I shake my head, my face still serious, “I’m
just kidding. My friends call me G.”

“I can’t tell when you’re serious.”

“Same to you. Are you coming back
tomorrow?”

She nods. I kiss her.

No slow lean in, no feeling her out. No
breathing close with our noses touching. I just tilt my head and
swoop in. I catch her lips and press them full and flush with my
own.

So tough when I’m staring at a distance, so
soft up close. It feels like I’m sharing my secret with a stranger.
I’m soft inside, just like you, and I want sex. I don’t know why. I
want to fuck you. Gently, like I know you inside and out and have
nothing to prove. I want to fuck with you. Not, I want to fuck you
up, or mess with your trust, I want both of us to fuck. I don’t
want to do it to you; I want to do it with you. Slip from the
sidewalk curb to unbelievable pleasure together. I whimper,
vulnerable against Maria’s lips.

Then I kiss her properly, but in reverse.
First, I kiss her. Then, I pull back just far enough for our lips
to brush. I touch her nose with mine and breathe in. I lean back to
see her lips, then look up into her eyes.

I mumble, light-headed with a thick tongue,
“If you don’t want to do that, we don’t have to. We can just have
midnight lunch and hang.”

Maria looks down at my mouth and says,
“Tomorrow. 2 am. Make me something special.”

I nod and she leaves. I throw away our
wrappers. No one drank the can of Orange Crush so I put it back in
the fridge. I ring up our food in the register, take $11.24 out of
my wallet, and put it in the till.

—————

Maria comes through the doors at 2 am sharp.
She has on the same skirt she was wearing the first time I saw her,
a green t-shirt, and no bra. The points of her nipples pull it into
a loose tent. The sides bulge when she walks and her breasts sway
into the fabric.

I say, “I have something special for
you.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“A fresh omelet!” I wave my hands
dramatically.

“Wow,” she nods, “Okay. I’m ready to be
impressed.”

I lead her over to the microwave by the soda
fountain, where I have my ingredients prepared. I crack three fresh
eggs into a soda cup, chop up the basil, mozzarella, and tomatoes I
got from a packaged Caprese salad in the fridge, and pour it all
into a shallow, plastic lid I swiped from a microwavable pasta
dinner.

I put the lid in the microwave and set it to
30 seconds. The bread from the sandwich isn’t too soggy, so I set
it cut-side down on top of the heat lamp that warms the hot dogs.
Maria watches me flip the omelet with the help of a paper plate and
microwave it for another 30 seconds. I flip it and microwave it
twice more, to be sure it’s cooked through.

Then I pull the bread off the lamp with a
napkin. I swipe a Hershey’s bar from the candy shelf, peel back the
wrapper, and run a plastic knife along the thin edge to make
chocolate shavings. Maria ‘ooh’s as they land on the hot bread and
melt. I laugh, nervous and bashful, my feelings on display.

Part of fucking a girl right is being willing
to work in front of her. You have to be willing to really do
something, to really concentrate and care that it comes out right.
You have to do it right in front of her and show her you’re not
afraid. You have to show her you can pay attention to the details.
You have to show her you will make her the best microwave omelet in
the world, with the most delicious chocolate toast. You will make
something from nothing and with those same thin hands and ready
mouth, you will lift her up and lay her out. You will listen. You
will be patient. You will surprise her. You will make her come.

I set her up on the sidewalk with a plastic
knife and fork, a shitload of napkins, a handful of single-serve
packets of salt and pepper from the food court, and a carton of
milk. She eats her breakfast. I watch her with my head in my
hand.

She tells me she’s never had an omelet this
good and I swat my hand like she’s flattering me. But I believe
her. No one makes omelets as good as mine, not even on a stove. She
finishes eating and needles me about when and where I’m going to
culinary school. I make it through ten minutes of flirtatious small
talk before I kiss her again.

To call it a kiss is to place the emphasis
too strongly on one star in a constellation. It’s incredible on its
own, sure, but the amazement comes from seeing every spark of light
all at once, as a whole. Her mouth is wonderful, but it’s the
closeness that’s so erotic. I lean into her, so my leg is pressed
to hers, her breast is against my chest. I nuzzle into her neck,
press my face to her hair. I lose myself in sensation, no longer a
person, just a bale of oversensitive nerves. I kiss her for my own
pleasure and feel her sigh. She leaves her lips resting slightly
apart when I pull away, like an invitation to come back.

The sidewalk felt dangerous when we were just
sitting on it. Now we’re making out in public, in the middle of the
city, well after midnight. The danger swells in my chest; there are
bigger things to worry about than the store getting robbed when I’m
not looking. I pull Maria up and she follows me back into the store
without a word. I lead her to the backroom and leave the door
ajar.

It’s a narrow, rectangular space, with a
waist-height counter along one short edge, boxes along both of the
long walls, and a cluster of overloaded coat hooks on the other
short wall.

She’s watching me with dark eyes, looking
sleepier now than I’ve ever seen her. I kiss her softly and she
curls her shoulders toward me. She puts one of my hands on her
breast and I moan into her mouth. I’m half-listening for the bell
on the front door and half-ready to fuck the night shift and take
her home.

Just three weeks into this job and I’m going
to lose it.

Maria puts her hand flat on my chest and I
pull back. She looks at my face, up at my hair, down at my lips,
then at her own hand on my shirt. She doesn’t say anything. I’m
looking at her, stricken by how lovely she is, but cautious. I’m
not sure what’s going on, if she wants to stop or if she just wants
to look at me.

It feels strange for us both to be standing.
I want her to rest, to relax, to feel like she has time and space,
to know we’re in no rush, but i don’t know how to say that, or
suggest that we move. So I just pick her up, as quickly and
non-sexually as I can, and set her on the counter, next to the
phone and the radio. I smooth her skirt down and stand in the V of
her legs, looking up at her.

Maria smiles and takes my head in both of her
hands. She asks, “Do you bring a lot of girls back here?”

I shake my head, “Just you. But I mean,” I
exaggerate a shrug, “I did just start working here. There’s still
time.”

She snorts. She strokes her fingers through
my hair; I close my eyes. It feels incredible, like I have never
been touched like this before. I don’t feel her moving closer so I
startle when she kisses me. My heart is still nervous and tight in
my chest. I feel like I’m always on the verge of losing her when I
look away, afraid object permanence doesn’t apply to lovely
white-haired ghosts. She keeps her hands behind my head and kisses
me. She opens my lips with her own and touches our tongues
together. No suggestive twist or reach. She just touches the inside
of me with the inside of her, pulls back, and does it again. I put
my hands on her ass and pull her forward on the counter. She wraps
her legs around my hips and pulls me closer still.

It’s an embrace with no momentum. I hold her
and that’s it. We kiss in slow motion. I’m not taking her clothes
off. I’m careful not to push up her skirt. I just snuggle into her
and kiss her neck, kiss her chin. Her hair feels as soft as it
looks. I hold her and it feels like it matters. Like I’m holding
her on the edge of a long drop, or holding her heat in when it’s
too cold outside, holding her coat on when the wind’s trying to
take it off.

I let her kiss me harder than I kiss her
back. The longer we touch, the more I feel her tender spots, rising
to the surface, making themselves known. Like everyone who lies
playfully, she has a lot to lose. I can see it in her eyes. She’s
breakable. She knows it, and now I know it too. She lets me grab
her hips, but she shivers when I touch her ears. Those quiet eyes
aren’t apathetic, just careful what they let you see.