F DOT LEONORA

Eliza was on her stomach on Oscar’s bed. She could smell him on the sheets, in the room.
That he was there, that he had been in the hotel room. Mindlessly she kissed the mattress, ran her fingers over the sheet like it was the path of Oscar’s chest hair. Balling the sheet in her first, she remembered herself.
It was wrong for her to be upset that he was with someone else, that she expected Shanghai to be their place because it had been so magical for them when they were there before. Even with Fiona in the middle of her crisis…
Fiona had not been surprised that she was going to Shanghai, nor was Rafe. Oscar was the reason that she had agreed to open their relationship in the first place, because she could not put away what she felt for him. Other things had happened since then. Marcus…she was not sure about that, but it was something she was not thinking about when she opened her relationship up. She was thinking about Oscar, why she had come to Shanghai now.
It had never occurred to her that Oscar would be with someone else. He was with someone else and she was lying on his bed in his hotel room alone, waiting for him.
On her back, her fingers ran absently over her own chest. Her fingers caressing her breasts, their softness soothing to her while she waited.
There was nothing else she could do.
The beep of him coming into the room, made her slip her hand out of her blouse where she had been fully caressing her own breast imagining it was Oscar doing it.
He stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at her.
“I feel awkward, like I should say sorry. But there is nothing for me to be sorry about,” he sais
Eliza let her feet touch the ground.
“I am sorry, I can leave Oscar–”
Oscar put his hands on her shoulders when she stood up in front of him.
“Don’t guilt trip me Eliza.”
Eliza wanted to glare at him with hatred, but being close to him…it was all she had been fueled with coming to Shanghai. Why the long flight was manageable. Thinking about him looking at her, touching her.
She stared at him.
“I missed you.”
He pushed a strand of hair out of her face.
“You did not tell me you were coming.”
“If I had, would it have made a difference? Would I have found you alone?”
“Are you alone in New York? Were you ever alone any of the time that we were together? I have to be celibate while you are open?”
Eliza picked up her purse, and buttoned her blouse. She knew he was right, but she did want him to only be with her. It was awful, but that was what she wanted. Not another woman making Shanghai not their place anymore.
“I said I can go,” she snapped.
Oscar smirked.
“Go.”
Eliza walked past him, saw that she had misbuttoned her blouse and stopped to fix it.
“You’re going to let me go?”
“You said you wanted to go twice. You came here Eliza, you know your own agenda.”
“I do.”
She walked to the door, before her hand was on the knob, she turned to him.
“I know I am wrong, but it is how I feel. Can you imagine how I feel?”
She stared at him.
“And what about me? I was with someone new and you came to Shanghai. Our place. How do you think I feel?
“Look, here is my card. Call me. I know now is not the time, but I am here. I am here…”
Eliza stared at the Shanghai skyline, that was almost as familiar to her as the New York one. Familiar skylines and unfamiliar emotional territory.

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shanghai via fortykay.com

Oscar liked Polly asleep in his arms. She was soft and smelled sweet of perfume: the one she wore and her natural scent. Her soft snoring let him know she was tired, so he lie there staring at her. Sometimes he almost dozed with the sweetness of her, her scent and her breath on his face and arms.
And then he would wake up. This time, his own drool like hers had been on him when she fell asleep that first time in the car, on the mattress.
And then he woke up, as if from a nightmare.
He got out of the bed softly so he did not wake up Polly. He reached for his jacket, and fished for his phone which was turned off.
On, it alerted him to a text from Eliza.

Where are you? I am in Shanghai…

Oscar felt heart palpitations. He had not even put on his shoes, as he walked into the hallway. He did not want to make the call in the room with Polly. He could still feel her breath on him.
Was it his guardian angel that got him out of the bed, and into the hallway where he saw Eliza?
“Eliza…”
She wrapped her arms about him quickly. He stared at her half from disbelief, half from the bit of happiness that would always be there when he saw her.
“Oscar,” she squeezed him again. “I wanted to surprise you, and I told them I was your wife and left a hefty tip…I was in the room. But you were not there…”
He looked in her eyes, and he knew that she knew even without saying anything. That she knew that there was something that she knew, that she did not want to know.
“I was out with a colleague.”
“A woman.”
Eliza answered her own question and looked at him.
He nodded.
“You were with this woman…”
Oscar nodded. He felt guilty at first, but then he realized that her was no need. He was not married or engaged to her. She was engaged to someone, before he ever fell in love with her.
The entire time he was with Polly this time in Shanghai, he realized that was what he was infatuated with as much as Polly. That there was nothing that he had to think about besides her. He liked that.
There were no dead skeletons that he had to think about, that he knew about at least.
“Eliza, I love you, but I walked out of the room and she was sleeping and I want to be there when she wakes up. This is the key to my room, the extra. Wait there.”
Eliza took the key and nodded. He was not sure if she was dazed by the shock, or if she was okay but she walked to his room which was further down the hall.
He looked after her, and went back into Polly’s room, got in the bed and lie there again.
Polly still slept and he stared at her now with less joy, and a bit more fear.
He wanted her, he wanted her so much. Her breath warm on his, her eyes when she woke up focused on him. Lulled by her softness, he fell asleep.
In his dreams, Eliza chased him.

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skeleton with a rose photo by f dot leonora

Polly swore she saw light when she looked at Oscar in the alley that they stumbled into after karaoke. His light lit the way to their driver, and her head secure on his shoulder as they drove back to their hotel.
It was late and dark, they went to her hotel room and she spun around the room in her qipao as if she had on a flared skirt. Oscar put his hand on her hip, and they danced around the room. When she looked at the moon, she thought to herself what if he wanted to? She had not been expecting anything to happen between them, so she did not have protection. She knew that there was something between them, but now what? Nothing has been said, and she honestly was old-fashioned. But what would he expect? She bought him to her room so late.
He paused to stare at the moon beside her.
Sex was never something she rushed into. Her mother named her after her friend, a flower child who she had pictures of with huge flowers and butterflies painted all over her.
Polly never could imagine that her mother had been friends with that Polly. That her mother had been so free. Because when she was growing up, AIDS new and fresh. People feared getting it, by looking at someone. She remembered sex ed classes, where they said you could not tell if someone had it by looking at them. No matter how healthy they looked.
Oscar looked beautiful to her now. More so than he ever had in the entire time that she knew him. He raised her face to his, the light of the moon eclipsed by his.
“Tell me,”
She blinked repeatedly from the moonlight and the intensity of his gaze.
“Oscar,” she started, and then she was quiet.
“What?” his voice was soft as he caressed her cheek.
“I just don’t want to move so fast? I asked you up here, and I just don’t want to…rush anything…”
Oscar looked at her. She tried not to cry because she was not sure what he was going to say, as he turned to face the moon.
“I did not come up here with expectations. We were both drinking, and I just wanted to make sure you got back here safe…” He caressed her chin and looked at her, his face close enough to kiss. “And for this.”
He kissed her, and the light that she saw when she closed her eyes was a combination of him and the moon.
She wrapped her arms about him and he pulled her closer, ran his fingers along her neck and further down like she was the treasured instrument of a musician. She wondered if he had ever played anything…
He stopped kissing her, and then he laughed.
“What?” she said looking and him and laughing a little, even though she did not know why.
He leaned on the window sill.
“Because I remember not even being able to be in the same room with you.”
“”Oscar–”
“No,” He said putting his finger on her mouth. “I just feel good that we got past all the barriers, because you are so beautiful inside and out.”
He kissed her again, and Polly felt like she had been painted with flowers and butterflies…

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veruschka with butterfly via listal.com

Severine had travelled so many parts of the world, places that many people might never see in their lifetime. But as a flight attendant they were places that she would not just see once, but maybe even revisit many times over. Though at the end of the day, her world was Paris and New York. New York not so much because she had lived there, but the fact that Rafe was there.
Every time she was in New York she saw Rafe.
But it was Paris where she lived and where she was now, that she wished was not just hers but theirs.
The first thing that she loved about Paris over New York was that even when she was in a crowded part of the city, there was an isolated corner that you could end up on and have piece of mind…if that was what you wanted. While Rafe was not in Paris with her, he followed her down every street that she walked.
“Tell me what you see,” he questioned her now on the phone.
Rafe had been in Paris with her before, so when she told him stories about it she knew he could kind of imagine what she was telling him.
“Where are you Severine?”
Severine looked around sobered by Rafe’s voice. First she was just texting him, and now she was was talking to him on the phone. Recently he had been more accessible to her than ever, but at the same time he felt further away because she would always need more of him than he would or could give her. In ways she understood that, but it other ways she wanted more. Like for him to come to Paris for example. Ever since she was last in New York, she dreamt about him with Calaveras makeup because it was damn sexy to her to have been making love to him while he was so scary.
Maybe he was that scary to her even when he was not in makeup, and maybe that was what she liked about him.
But she could not over think it when she was with him, even if with him was only an international
phone call on a dark street.
“I am just outside of my apartment, it is a quiet, dark street.”
“What are you wearing?”
Severine smiled.
“Do you want me to be naked? Leaning from a balcony? I could tell you an erotic story if you want me too…”
“Don’t patronize me Severine, I want to know what you are wearing because I am going to tell you what to do.”
“A house dress, a simple one. Probably vintage. And perfume, the one that you told me that you like so much. I put a lot on even before I knew I was going to be talking to you. I put it behind my ears, around all of my curves.”
“Did you perfume every crevice of you?”
“Every secret crevice, so that only someone like you would be able to come close and catch all of my scent.”
Severine remembered earlier today, walking into the tiniest bookstore with wall to floor books. She could not see anything but piles of books, and then she saw the man who owned the store. She thought to herself it would be so easy to have Rafe slip into that store, and make love in erotica section.
“Is there anybody with you?” he asked her.
“Just you.”
She heard his soft laughter evaporate almost as soon as she heard it.
“Then I want you to act as you would if it was just me with you. What you do if it was just us?”
Severine took a deep breath.
“Where are your hands Sev?”
“On the phone obviously,” she said continuing her flirtation.
She wanted to make him say exactly what she wanted him to say, she wanted him to say exactly what he wanted her to do and she wanted him to use the filthiest language he could to instruct her.
“I told you not to play me, pull up your house dress and touch yourself with your other hand like I would touch you if I was there.”
“It is drizzling here.”
“Haven’t we fucked in the rain?”
“No,” Severine said clutching her crotch through her dress like she was a young boy wearing his jeans low over his his hips.
There was a pause and she was not sure if he was embarrassed that they had never fucked in the rain and he was confusing her with someone else, or if he was thinking that they should have because they had been in the rain together?
Then his words came as slowly, but pointedly as it they were drizzling about her.
“Then we will sext in the rain. Now pull up your dress and use your phone and video it for me.”
Severine looked around, the dampness around her was like a mist with the sound of Rafe’s voice was steadier. Her house dress moved up almost of its own volition, as she turned her phone on herself. On that dark Parisian street, she was on display like bread in a Parisian boulangerie. Her bright smile was shadowed in the dark, as she gave Rafe the show he asked her to produce.

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paris at night by f dot leonora

Severine felt happy as soon as she was in Paris. She actually loved that people did not think Montparnasse was hip anymore. All the tourist guides that she ended up inevitably reading, said Montparnasse was dead and that it only had a hideous tower.
Montparnasse was her home, she loved it. She walked with her carry-on down the slick streets, basking in the happiness of being home. She turned back toward Port Royal station.
Looking back, she should have known that there was something with Rafe. R, as she called him affectionately with a lovely and very French roll of her ‘r’.’ Eleanora wanted to know his actual name, but what woman did not love having their very own Mr. Big?
Rafe was big from the time she met him. And everything that happened ever since was even bigger. When he called her the last time from New York, and said that he loved her, she felt finally. Because if he did not love her, then what exactly had she been doing all this time with him?
He said he wanted to see her soon, and she was flying into New York for the Day of the Dead. So she joined him for a Day of the Dead party. When he saw her, her face was in complete Calaveras makeup, with extra black shadow to make her look thin as the bones painted on her. He touched her waist, pulled her close to him. They canoodled, and she filled with warmth.
He buried his face in her hair, and whispered.
“You’re so beautiful, so very beautiful.”
She looked up at him.
“Even with a death mask?”
He grinned, looking down at her looking the Grim Reaper himself, and wolfish. Rafe meant wolf after all, and he was her wolf. She had read a novel once translated into French called Le Loup et la Colombe by a popular American romance author. It was a very passionate and sexual romance…she wanted Rafe to be her loup, and to be his colombe forever.
They circled each other the entire night, she never said a word to him about him saying that he loved her. She knew he would not, but after she went on and on about his declaration with Eleanora, she wanted the romantic element to be romantic, to be drummed up.
And it was, even at a party that celebrated death. Because after all human beings created death. If they created life, they also created death inadvertently.
They ended up later, much later making love in the house where the party was being held, where there were ofrendas all over the house and things inviting dead in such a loving matter, making love. Making love in a room where in the mirror, she could see Rafe taking her in his arms. Kissing her and entering her in Calaveras makeup, so it looked like death was taking her like on the cover of an old pulp fiction novel.
She had a flight the next day, and she was happy to have some time to look at Rafe without a mask of death in the morning. Even though their rendezvous was dying slowly.
Asleep, and still, he was more than beautiful. His breath was even, as he slept untroubled sleep. She cherished this because it was rare that she spent time alone with him, his scent warm. When he woke up, his wolfish grin threatened to eat her alive and she wanted to be devoured.
It was not perfect, it was never going to be perfect between them, she thought hours later when he was kissing her like the way that soldier kissed that nurse in iconic style in Times Square after the war. That was the thing. She was inaccessible to him, in a different way than he was inaccessible to her. But there was something there and looking back on it, she would rather have a part of him than nothing at all.
And with that thought, she sat down at her favorite cafe, with her carry-on and her favorite waiter bought her a grande cafe because he knew that was what she wanted. She smiled at him, and he pushed a chocolate into her hand like he always did. He was so kind to her after her long journeys, and she appreciated that as she sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette.
Paris was the most beautiful place to reflect and dream.

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parisian cafe by f dot leonora