Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. Quickie - Lyra's Near-Death Experience - by Redbud (Redbud has been reading some stories by Remittance_Girl. Her stories are at <http://www.remittancegirl.com/stories/stories.htm>. She's one of the best erotic writers Redbud has read. This story is inspired by her & for her. As always, I might return to make changes and hopefully improve.) His hands were beautiful. She watched them. She watched through the dusty window of the gas station as he stepped out of the car. He was bald. He wasn't fit. But his hands - his hands were beautiful. She was drawn to them. She stepped out of the office with its old Coke machine filled with bottles and its rows of dusty 10-40 and 10-30 SAE. A curl of red dust licked the truck's tires, her legs and the shoes of the bald man. She crossed the hot asphalt as he reached for one of the nozzles. "You can't do that," she lied. She had to see his hands. She stepped onto the curb between the pumps. He stopped. "Oh..." he was nervous. He pushed up his glasses - thick black-plastic frames. He was wearing bowling shoes, or were they golf shoes? - a black suit and thin tie. But his fingers were beautiful. She wanted him to push his glasses again. "This is a long way from nowhere," he said, smiling nervously. A shot of heat lifted the dust again and shook the desert broom growing close to the cracked white asphalt. "What kind?" she asked. "What?" "What kind of gasoline?" she asked. He was trying not to look at her breasts and hips. She never knew which was worse - the guys who looked at her as if they owned her or the nervous ones that wanted to. "Supreme," he answered. She turned. Let him look. Let him get it out of his system. She wasn't wearing much today. She Was nineteen, slender, tanned and taut. She was probably the most girl he had seen in a long time - just a tank top that barely covered her belly button and ripped jean shorts. She turned again. "You need to pop the lid." "The lid?" he asked, staring at her breasts. "Oh! The lid!" He turned, reached to the bottom of the truck seat and popped the lid. And then she wanted to cut loose. Fuck it. What am I doing here? Why am I still in this dump? Why the fuck was she living in a trailer behind a gas station in the middle of a desert - where every Dad wanted to fuck a piece of trailer trash. Just a quick doggy, she could see it in their eyes. Fuck them! "Your hands!" she blurted instead. "Excuse me?" he pushed up his glasses. "Do you," she couldn't help herself. "Your hands... do you do commercials?" "No." The bald man flashed another nervous smile. "I'm a Prestidigitator. I don't advertize." "A what?" "A Presti-digi-tator," he said again. "Here... wait..." He dug for the wallet in a back pocket. "Here..." He handed her a card. "What... like a pianist?" An unimpressive card. "Oh no...no!" He laughed a squeaky little laugh. "But I `am' a professional." "Like a concert pianist?" she asked sarcastically. "Well... sort of..." "Well..." She was getting impatient, re-imagining her tirade: deserts, dumps, dead ends. "Well... Sort of... What?" "I'm good with my fingers..." Glasses up again. God, those hands! - those fingers! "I help people... women... and sometimes men. I mean, I help men help women..." "...to what?" she asked. "Marital problems," he answered. "Sex," he whispered, nodding. "Those kinds of problems." Those fingers... Jesus. They were beautiful. She tried not to look. What was wrong with her? Was this a fetish? "Well, I don't even have a boyfriend, so no use to me...." She lifted the pump handle. The old machine ground to zeros. "Know why? They all dumped me..." "Why?" the man asked. "May I ask?" She suddenly wanted the conversation to end. "They couldn't make me cum, OK?" "I could help you with that." "Like `hell' you could..." "I mean," he quickly added, "professionally." "Do you mind getting out of the way?" "Out of the...Oh!" The little man broke into another sheepish smile and quickly moved out of the way. "I have recommendations..." "You have..." She tried not to laugh, snorted instead. But what the fuck, why not? Maybe she was a little horny. How long had it been? "Ok... as soon as I'm..." Jesus! She gasped. Interrupted. Jesus Christ! How did he? His fingers! So quick! Just some tears in her jeans but somehow... he found it - the one - the tear right at her crotch. She had clamped down on the nozzle. Oh! The pump began to grind out the gallons. Oh God! His fingers! Butterflies! Hummingbirds! He was... They were... How was it possible? They were so smooth! So deft! So light! So quick. One gallon. She felt warm, hot, wet... soaked. "Uh!" Fuck! She wasn't watching the pump. No, not at all, she was staring out beyond the truck, across the road, across the Saw-Toothed Ditaxis , the Creosote Bush, Fishhook Cacti, and Bufflegrass, out at the distant mountains. Her feet moved apart, her back arched, opening her sex - her opening - to the squat bald man behind her - the squat bald man with the beautiful fingers. Oh, God! Her eyelids drooped, her mouth fell open, and the pump clicked past three gallons. How was he doing it? How did he find room? His fingers were opening the petals between her thighs like the bee at the flower's throat. Oh! She never felt so open! Her own sex was going to open, open and swallow her! Why didn't he fill it. Jesus! - she felt empty. She... She was looking down at herself! She was above her body! She was out of her body! She could see everything! She could see the sunburn reddening the top of the squat man's head. She could see herself, back arched, ass up, and the man's beautiful, lovely fingers between her thighs. She could see herself looking blankly across the road. She had dandruff. Fucking worthless shampoo. But she could see everything! Matter. Time. Atoms and four gallons clicked by and then she... She was looking down at the earth! So small! So perfect! And in such a deep and lonely darkness. But she knew where she was. Yes, she know exactly where she was standing on the little, blue and white ball hanging in the stars. And she could see the billionth spark of life that moved across its surface, in pain, in happiness, sorrow, ecstasy, emptiness and completion. She felt a tremendous tenderness for it all, and love. It all made sense. And she could still hear the grinding click of the pump. 5 gallons. And then there was light! Not just light, but a mandala - ecstatic, unimaginable, perfectly forgiving and perfect love. If she could have wept, she would have. If she could have stayed there in the perfect, beautiful, loving light, she would have. But somewhere, on a tiny mote, a speck, an atom in the unimaginably deep ocean of the cosmos, an old gas pump ground through 6 gallons, 7, 8, and finally, at 21 gallons, the nozzle abruptly released. She convulsed, in her body, there, back in the desert, with sharp, quick pulses of ecstacy that made her cry out and arch again and again. She was dribbling down her narrow thighs. Her nipples ached and chaffed against her tank top. She wanted to shed it all. She wanted to fly. She was in orgasm. She was trying to breath. Each pulse gripped her taut belly, breasts and hips. She couldn't breath. And then it was over. There were flowers blooming - Scarlet Spiderlings. She had never noticed them before. Just on the other side of the road. Yes, they were beautiful. Everything was brighter, colors more colorful, the sky bluer, the air sweeter. "Miss?" Why should she turn? The world was beautiful. "Miss?" Was he pushing up his glasses? "There are more things," she said in her raspy 19 year old voice, "in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." "Shakespeare?" "No," she said. "Just a hunch." Clarity. Oh yes, she had clarity. It all made sense. She knew what she needed to do. First, she would quit smoking. Then she would sell the trailer. And who was this little bald man? "Do you take credit?" he asked. "No," she answered, still gazing at the beautiful desert. "It's on me." The squat man awkwardly sidled next to her, glanced at her, smiled sheepishly as he took her hand, the hand holding the nozzle, and removed it from the truck. She heard the cap close. She heard the truck-door close, she heard the motor start. He pulled away. She looked at the card again. Prestidigitator. A drawing: two hands, open, like the wings of an angel.