Message-ID: <13273eli$9807221216@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: "Jane Urquhart" Subject: JANEY'S JUNE (FM cons) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: <19980722023940.15368.qmail@hotmail.com> WARNING: This story contains explicit sexual matter. If you are under 18, or live in a jurisdiction in which such matter is illegal, please stop reading now. This story may be archived on free web sites but is not to be distributed without the name of the author, changed in any way, or sold. Please do not re-post without consulting the author. Copyright 1998 by Jane Urquhart. NOTE: This story is one of several in a series, starting with "Janey's January." Each story is meant, however, to stand alone. All my stories are available at http://www.extra.newsguy.com/files/Authors/BitBard/www/janey, thanks to my friend Bitbard. JANEY'S JUNE (FM cons) By Janey I own a mostly antiquarian bookstore in a Boston suburb. Just off the main drag in this commuter town. Most of my business is mail-order, of course, and in the past year or so I've been on Bibliofind, a Web Site, and business is good. Not that I'm getting rich; nobody gets rich in the retail book business. The front of the store looks pretty nice, because I want it to. It could look terrible and it probably wouldn't make any difference to the business. But I like it when the locals wander in, and I know a good many of them. As you move toward the back things get a little sloppy. I think books generate their own dust. Anyhow, this morning around nine-thirty this woman comes in. Not another soul in the store. I only opened up because I was bored. Mostly I open at about eleven-thirty, so I can catch a few customers on their lunch hours. All the new best sellers--mostly lousy in my opinion--are on racks near the door, discounted heavily, of course, and I keep a good stock of trade books and high-class paperbacks up front where they can catch the browsers. This woman, though, I know her. She's going to head for the mystery shelf, or maybe the contemporary fiction. Fairly lightweight stuff. At least she's got good taste in the genres she likes. I know for a fact that she's got the complete works of Margery Allingham in hardback. I sold them to her; not first editions, not a set--she just likes big solid books, I guess. And she reads romances by people like Joanna Trollope and Mary Wesley and Katie Fforde, not that Harlequin crap. She also likes medieval French poetry. She even taught me to like it. Me! Reading poems in French that I can barely understand. What happened was, she smiled at me one day when she bought this old beat-up book she found in the foreign language section. I asked her if she could read it--dumb question, but something made me want her to stay a minute. She told me, sure, she could, and asked if I could. Cheeky broad. I told her I could read modern French, so she gave me a lecture on the "fabliaux," said they were funny and sexy and just wonderful, they weren't too hard to read, and damn if I didn't get another copy and go at it. I'd probably have read the book if it were the Marquis de Sade, if she told me to. The funny thing was, I kind of liked it. And the next few times she dropped in she was willing to explain the phrases I couldn't understand. I think she got a kick out of translating the sexy parts. OK, I know I shouldn't be talking about what she reads. For all I know Ken Starr could be in here demanding to go through my sales slips. But I don't think so. Ms. Urquhart is no bimbo. She almost never comes in except in the summer. She works someplace in Boston most of the year. I see her going by early in the morning headed for the train station. She always gives me that great big knockout smile when she sees me. And she talks to me. I like her a lot. Nice lady. Just a little smile today, though. "Hi, Abe," she says. "How's it going?" "Fine, Ms. Urquhart." I smile back. She's past the mysteries and headed for the little room off to the right where I keep the poetry. Knows what she wants, I guess. All right, I stare at her when she's not looking. Can't help it. She's not a doll, you know. Big. I mean tall, solid looking. Roman nose that catches your eye. Curly hair. Not a sitcom type. But I look at her. Something there. The tan. She gets outside, somewhere. Beautiful skin. Not as dark as last summer, though, probably because it's been raining so long we're going to need an ark. Wearing a sweatshirt and jeans under her raincoat. She's been in the little room for ten or fifteen minutes when she pokes her head around the corner and says, "Hey, Abe, can I dump my raincoat somewhere?" Coat in one hand, a small book in the other. I recognize the book--people take it off the shelf all the time, read a few minutes, put it back. Sylvia Plath. "The Bell Jar." "Sure, Ms. Urquhart," I say. "I'll take it and hang it back here." I walk over and take the coat from her. Another little smile. "Thanks," she says. "You want a chair?" I say, standing there holding her coat. What the hell, she can stay as long as she wants, read all the books. But I'd rather see her read Dick Francis than Sylvia Plath. Even Judith Krantz. I stick my neck out a mile. "You OK, Ms. Urquhart?" I ask. I don't call my customers by their first names, and I don't ask my customers things like that. Maybe the old ladies, but not big, handsome shiksas like this one. "I'll take the chair, Abe, thanks." I hang up the coat and haul over one of those brown metal folding things. Best I have. She shakes it out and sits down. She looks up at me, the book in her lap, marking her place with her finger. Fucking poison, that book, I don't know why anybody reads it. I read it two years ago, right after I got divorced. Maybe people read it when they feel miserable already and want to feel worse. "As a matter of fact, Abe, I'm not, really," she says. No smile. "How'd you know?" "You always smile a lot," I say, "but not today." "Well, I thank you for asking." She opens the book where her finger was and starts to read. I figure that means, "Go away." But I don't. I just dive in. I've got no sense at all. "What's the matter?" I say. "It can't be that bad." She looks up, but she keeps her finger in the book. "You really want to know?" "Yeah, I do," I say. I mean it. It's a tragedy when a woman like her looks like this. "Lots of things, I guess," she says. "Some of them are stupid--really stupid--and I won't tell you about them. But I'll tell you a few. The bastards are after me again to give my son Ritalin, and I get so sick of fighting. I always win, but why can't they just let the poor kid alone? There's nothing wrong with him, he gets good grades in things he likes, he doesn't break things, he doesn't hurt people. He just doesn't like to sit still for hours. So that gets me down, sometimes. Also, I guess I'll just throw in that I'm thinking of getting a divorce, and that makes me sad. And I don't seem to be able to write any more. And the other things I won't mention." Well, I asked for it, didn't I? Got both barrels. You tell me: what do I say to that? I'm not what you'd call a sensitive New-Age guy. I pick up on the one that seems least dangerous. "I didn't know you were a writer." All of a sudden she smiles, big, like I love to see, and then she laughs like hell. "Well," she says, finally, "I probably shouldn't have mentioned that. None of my books here." She laughs again. "I write stories and publish them on the Internet. And I never, ever, tell anybody I do it." "Why not?" I say. "Nothing wrong with that." She puts on a big act of looking both ways to see that we're alone--we are, I mean, nobody else has come in, the place is a morgue--but she goes all conspiratorial and whispers, "I write sex stories." "You mean romances, maybe?" "No, I think I want to write those, too, but so far it's only sex stories. Erotica. Porn." I don't think at all. I'm shocked out of my shoes. "No shit?" I say. "You?" I must have some kind of funny look on my face, because she goes into gales of laughter, I mean gales, just like they say in those nineteen-thirties English novels. Then she's still laughing and big tears are coming out of her eyes and rolling down her face and she puts the book on the floor and starts fishing in her pocket, for a handkerchief, I guess, and shakes her head. "I'm sorry, Abe, I'm a mess." I stand there like a dolt for a minute, then I rush over to my desk and bring her my box of Kleenex. She grabs a handful of them and starts wiping down her face. I'm in agony. You know. Woman crying. I don't know about other men, but it always makes me feel like an asshole, even when I didn't do anything at all to cause it. You can't just slap a patch on it, like a leaky pipe. "Hey, sweetie," I say, "no way you're EVER going to be a mess." She looks up, moves the hand with the Kleenexes in it off to one side a little, and grins. I ask you. She laughs. She cries like a sprinkler system. She grins. Makes mercurial mean something like molasses. I don't know what to do. I smile; why not see if I can catch that grin and paste it on so it stays? "If you're going to call me sweetie," she says, "you probably ought to call me Janey instead of Ms. Urquhart." She grins again. "Little Janey, that's me." Then she starts sobbing. Oh, hell! I ought to call 911. I squat down alongside the chair and put my arm around her instead. Well, it feels good to me, maybe she'll like it. "Hey, hey," I say. "It'll get better." Her head snaps up and she snarls, "Like hell it will, you asshole! It'll get worse." Listen, when a babe the size of this one snarls, you start thinking Mannlicher shotguns. Francis MacComber. Lorena Bobbitt. I pat her gently, like you would a tiger you inadvertently got your arm around. Nice kitty. Then she puts the Kleenex back in her face and blows her nose like a foghorn. Forgive me; it's funny. This woman is putting me through more emotions in ten minutes than I normally manage in a year. And I hardly know her. "I'm sorry, Abe," she says. "Sometimes I get mean." "That 's OK, Janey, forget it," I say. "I never know the right thing to say." "Well, I guess you know now that you don't say it'll be better." "Yeah, I know that now." "Anyhow, it will get better, won't it?" She looks at me like I own the patent on "better." Oh, hell. What can I do but agree? If I ever get to understand women I'll be glad to tell you people all about it. I mean it. That would be valuable information. "Sure, Janey," I say, "it'll get better." "You think so?" "Yeah, I do," I say. Now we're getting back onto solid ground. As long as you're not dead, there's a chance things'll get better, right? "But what if I can't write anymore?" she says. "It's the only thing I do that's fun, now." "You'll write," I say. Now we're talking stuff I really know about. "Writers write. Accountants don't stop counting, no matter what. Painters paint. You'll write again." This is, of course, bullshit of the first water. But it sounds good. I think sounding good is very important at certain junctures. "I could write about this female oaf coming in and crying all over an innocent bookseller." She gets a sort of absorbed look. "You could." Sure she could. Hell, you can write about paint drying. "But there's no sex," she says. "Gotta be sex in my line of business." She grins at me. "Wanna fuck?" Now, gentlemen, I'd really like your opinions on this. I don't want them a week from Sunday. I want them NOW, this very second. Because I have to say something to this demented broad that I think is a wonderful woman. Preferably something that won't make her (a) cry, or (b) bite my head off. "Sure, Janey, whatever you say," I answer weakly. But I gotta tell you people: my dick has totally disappeared. This kind of scene is about as sexy as standing around in the cancer ward. "I've always wanted to say that," she says. She grins. "Never had the proper moment before. I like things to be proper." "Sure, Janey," I say. How about that? Nice kitty. Will she please turn off the waterworks for good? "Wanna fuck" my ass. This nice woman is nuts. However. Nuts or not, she feels good. My arm is still around her, and it likes that. It's telling me, don't let go. My arms is nuts, too. On the other hand, my back is killing me from squatting like this. "No, really, there was this story, everywhere I went to school, that there was a guy around who walked up to girls and said, 'Wanna fuck?' and very rarely, but sometimes, they said yes. He figured it was worth the laughs and the slaps. You ever hear that story?" "I heard it at U.Mass. maybe ten years ago. I never heard it at the Wharton School of Finance, because nobody had time to even think of fucking, much less jokes about it." "You went to Wharton? In Philly?" "Yeah, that very one," I say, "and stop looking like that. I worked for Price, Waterhouse for three years and then told them to stick it. I run this store on the latest financial principles. Of course, they won't let me come to the alumni functions at Wharton." "But you never told me! I thought we knew each other!" "It didn't seem relevant to thirteenth century poetry. And you never told me anything about you, either." "But you really quit a big-time career-track get-rich job?" "I really did," I say. "I didn't realize at the time that I was also quitting a very expensive wife, but that seems to have been the case." "I guess you guys can't win," she says. "My husband is getting to be a big deal and I see less and less of him, so I'm going bye-bye, I think. I want a husband, not a big deal. I don't know what he wants." Her eyes begin to moisten again and I brace myself for another shower of tears. Then she visibly pulls herself together. I mean it. You could see the shoulders come down, the muscles relax. I breathe a sigh of relief. I think maybe she'll go home and leave me to get a shot of Scotch, maybe my monthly cigarette, and calm down. This woman has done a number on me, without even trying. She stands up and reaches a hand down to me. "Come on up," she says. "You must be having muscle spasms by now." So I start to get up and she pulls and I wind up falling into her and here I am with my arms around her, just trying to stay vertical while my back stops killing me. And guess what! Oh, man, does she feel good. There ought to be a law. When all you want in the world is a shot and a cigarette, maybe, and a chance to watch CNBC for a few minutes to see what's going on in the Japanese stock market, women should not be allowed to feel so good. It fucks up all your planning. "Uh, excuse me," I say. She gives me an evil grin, puts her arms around me and squashes me up against her. At 9:54 a.m. she does this. I am a night person. "I'm feeling better already," she says, smiling beatifically just even with my eyebrows. "I'm feeling like you'd better go away," I say. "This situation may be getting out of hand." "What?" she says. "Are you a cad? Would you take advantage of a poor woman who is desperately unhappy? Just because she's kind of liked you for a long time?" She is grinning like a maniac. I'm rapidly finding that dicks recover in seconds if properly motivated. I think I'm becoming a cad, and I didn't even know I was qualified for the job. "I would never take advantage of a desperately unhappy woman unless she came upstairs to my bedroom," I say, telling the awful truth. "You live upstairs?" she says. "How convenient for seducing desperately unhappy female customers." She looks all solemn. But she doesn't let go of me. "Why don't you let go of me?" I say. "I think I can stay up by myself now." This is a last ditch effort. I am not really a cad. I do not want to take advantage of this desperately unhappy woman. My dick does. My dick hasn't had anything to do with a woman in more than, what? A year? It wants what it wants, and it doesn't give a damn what I want. She lets go of me. I sway, but I don't actually fall. My back is better. My dick is worse. Becoming a cad, I reach out and take her in my arms. I bend her head down to mine and I kiss her. She kisses back. My tongue goes into her mouth, checks around, decides it's found a home. Her tongue investigates, signals OK to some headquarters somewhere, and this kiss becomes very serious indeed. I remember I always liked this woman, even when all I was doing was running her credit card through a machine. My thinking apparatus begins to weaken. I push her away just far enough to get a hand on a small but very nice breast. She pushes back and I can't move the hand. I guess I mean I don't want to move the hand. I like it there. Meanwhile, the kiss continues, getting warmer and warmer, until it feels like there's danger of something getting crushed. She pulls her head away and smiles at me. "Is that the stairway over there?" she asks, jerking her head toward the stairway. I let her go, she lets me go. I take her hand and bow. "This way, please, Madam," I say. We walk toward the stairs. We sort of run up all the way. I bull through the bedroom door, take one look at the unmade bed and cringe. She follows, looks, smiles, and starts jerking the sheets at the corners to straighten them out. She gets the pillows--one is on the floor, of course--and whacks them until they tremble in fear. She puts them neatly on the bed. Then she backs off and starts pulling the sweatshirt over her head. I set records getting out of my dress shirt (no tie, thank God) and we're both naked in seconds. She's standing maybe five feet away, on the other side of the bed. She looks at me and smiles. I jump up on the bed, bounce over and grab her. I pull her down and fall beside her. We embrace. I let go, roll over, open the drawer of the night table and pull out a package of condoms. Probably past their sell-by date. "Good," she says, taking the package out of my hand. "I'll do the honors." She does, giving old Herman a few little strokes just to make him feel good, I guess. He does. I look at her. "Last chance for me to avoid being a cad," I say. "No chance," she says. "I'm not desperately unhappy anymore. I may be unhappy again, later, but not desperately, I think. You're off the hook." I'm lying there on my back. She rolls over, not quite on top of me, but on top enough so I can feel those pert little breasts squash up against my chest. I pull her down and kiss her again. More. With feeling. I get the impression she is liking this. I gently turn her over, put myself on top. I look into her eyes, she smiles. I find that I'm smiling, too. Then I slide down a bit and kiss my way down her collar bone--very nicely delineated, I notice--onto her right breast, then to her nipple. I put my mouth on that lovely brown patch and use my tongue to caress her. She throws her head back, sighing, and gently puts her hand on my head. With my right hand I stroke the side of her chest, down to her waist, to her hip. I ease over onto my right side and with my left hand stroke the inside of her thigh. She holds me tight. Her eyes are closed now. I reach the warmth of her vagina and gently press, then ease her lips open with two fingers. I slide my fingers further and feel the slick wetness inside. She closes her thighs gently on my hand, trapping it, while I move my fingers up toward her clit. I find it, and she shivers. She presses hard against my hand. I stroke her for a long time, then I pull back my hand and roll on top of her, putting myself between her legs, supporting myself on my elbows, my pelvis against her pussy. She reaches down as I raise my body so that she can grasp my dick. She holds it and guides it into her channel. It slides home. I shiver with pleasure. I lower my upper body so that I am pressing against her breasts. She runs her hands down my back. Very slowly, I slide back and forth, until I can't hold back anymore; I pump vigorously and she meets every thrust until she suddenly stops, freezes a moment, and sighs. I move again, she meets me once more, we move in sympathy until my climax destroys my control and I fall on top of her, shot through with pleasure, feeling her chest under mine, feeling her arms crushing me to her breast. We lie that way for a few minutes, then I slowly roll off onto my back. She lets me go, signaling reluctance as she eases her grip on my body. She turns, lies on her side, looking at me. She smiles, somehow more gently than before. Her face looks relaxed. I put my hand on her side and stroke her, slowly. "Thank you for taking a chance on being a cad," she says. "Oh, no," I answer. "I thank you. But I'm still worried about you. What are you gonna do?" "I'll get by," she said. "I always have." She kisses me, just nicely, not so hot this time. We get up and dress and go back downstairs. I had forgotten to lock the door, to put up the sign that said "Closed." But nobody had come in. We're standing side by side, holding hands. Suddenly she turns, puts her hand behind my head and kisses me. "I don't think I'll buy Sylvia Plath," she says, smiling. "I've got the new Sharyn McCrumb," I say. "You want it?" Pretty stupid. I want so badly to do something, something great, to make her feel wonderful forever. I can't. I give her the book instead. She won't take it. Insists on paying. But makes damn sure she gets the discount. Maybe she's feeling a little better, I think. -------THE END------- Please write to me at Janey98@hotmail.com -- +----------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `--------------+ | | | | Archive site +----------------------+--------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | ----