My Friends the Allens -- Coffee?
by Mark Aster

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Note: Adult themes.  Parental discretion advised.
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"You have to kick it just SO!"  She kicked the side of the
washer with the side of her foot, and the jammed quarters
suddenly and noisily rattled into the coin-box, and the loud
hissing water began to spray onto my clothes.

"Thanks," I said, "I was just about to try that."

I grinned, and she grinned, and she brushed a lock of
mouse-brown hair out of her face and sat down on the bench.
Her feet were in thin grey cloth shoes, slippers really, with
suede soles.  Tight cotton leggings covered her legs and
her bottom, and she had a loose Dodgers sweatshirt on top.
Her eyes were large and brown and amused.

My usual laundromat was closed for renovation, and I had
wandered to this one, laundry-bag over my back like a lost
summer Santa.

"Those yours?" I asked casually, nodding at the washer next
to mine, which was chugging away at someone's shirts, socks,
underwear.

"No, mine are in that dryer."  Just as she said it, the dryer
stopped, shorts and bras and panties spinning and tumbling one
last time over each other.  She scooped them out into a small
hamper, and turned to go.  She looked over her shoulder at me
on the way out.

"Bye!"  She said.

"Bye!"

A few mornings later, outside my apartment building, I saw her
again, leaning against a window ledge, in tight jogging shorts
and a t-shirt.  There were damp circles under her arms.

"Kick any washers lately?" she asked.

"I've been practicing."  I bashed my foot into the wall, a bit
too hard, to illustrate.  She winced sympathetically.  "I was
just going in for coffee," I said, nodding at the Coffee Nook
across the street, "can I treat you?"

She took her coffee with cream and sugar.  She sat easily in
the chair, her legs stretched out in front of her, hair matted
with sweat.  Her hand held the mug firmly by the base, ignoring
the handle.  Her fingers were long and slender, fingernails
blunt and unpainted.  There was a gold band on the ring finger
of her left hand.  We didn't talk much.

"Summer's getting hot."

"Again.  Never too hot for coffee, though."  She drank slowly,
sipping the coffee between her lips.  People came and went.

"I should be going," I said.

She swallowed the last mouthful of brown from her mug.  "I come
by here jogging lots of mornings."

"I come here for coffee pretty often."

She stood up.  "That's nice," she said, "Bye!"

"Bye!"  I watched her walk out to the street and into the stream
of pedestrians.  The tight shorts emphasized the flow of her
muscles.

We would sit by the window and drink our coffee.  We never
talked much.  When I passed her the cream, sometimes she would
close her fingers around mine, and we would touch just for that
second.  She sat and let me look at her, her hair and her face,
her feet, ankles showing above her sneakers, her bare legs.
No one else looked at her; the two of us sat at our table,
two people sitting together, and no one thought anything of
it.  Sometimes I would get there first, and when she came and
sat by me, fresh from her run, her breasts would still be rising
and falling quickly under her t-shirt and sports bra.

One morning it was especially hot, muggy, the air thick and hard
to breathe.  She came late, and talked less than usual.

"God, it's miserable."

"No day for running."

"I'd hate to miss my run.  It's the long pull home to the shower
that I'm dreading."

"You could use mine."

"Your shower?"

"I live right over there."

"I could use your shower?"

"Sure."

Going up the stairs ahead of me, her body moved efficiently,
catlike, the muscles of her thighs and rear bunching and
relaxing in rhythm.  She smiled and disappeared into the
bathroom, and the shower ran, not for long.

"Don't worry about the water bill!"

"Oh, I never take long showers.  Could I borrow a robe?"
I handed her mine through the crack of the door.

She sat sideways at one end of the couch, her legs up.
I sat next to her feet.  We talked about the weather.  I
took her toes between my fingers, gently massaged them,
rubbed the muscles of her soles.

"That's nice," she said.  She smelled of my soap.  Her feet
were cool and small in my hands.

"Ah, God, look at the time," she said, "I have to go.  Thanks
for the shower!"  She went into the bathroom, changed back
into her sweaty clothes, and went out.

"Bye!"

That night, I took a long shower, and I slept in my bathrobe.
I could still smell the soap.

The next morning was hotter still.  She came into the Nook
before I'd ordered my coffee, breathing hard, bending her legs
to ward off cramps, cooling down and panting in the humid air.
Her shorts and t-shirt were soaked.

"If you want to use my shower again, we could skip the coffee."

"Sacrilege!"

"You'd have more time to shower."

"Hm, OK."

She went up the stairs ahead of me again, and I handed her my
robe.  The shower ran again, maybe a minute longer than before.
I stood by the bathroom door, imagining the sweat washing off
of her, down the drain, the water running through her hair,
down her neck, dripping from her elbows and her nipples.  The
water stopped, and I went and sat on the couch.

She hummed to herself as I massaged her toes and her feet.  My
robe was much too large for her, and it covered her loosely.
I ran my fingers over the long thin bones of her ankles, and
she looked at me.  Her lips parted, and I thought she was
about to say something, but she stopped and looked out the
window.  I gently stroked her shin, and kneaded the slim
firm muscle.  She closed her eyes.

One hand still on her leg, I reached up and touched the tie
of her robe, my robe, with the other hand.  A drop of water
from her hair sat poised on the ledge of her collarbone.  The
tie came open slowly, quietly.  Her skin was warm and tan
under the robe.  I could see her stomach, the inner slopes
of her small breasts, a few strands of dark pubic hair
showing around the terrycloth.  I took my hand from the
tie and touched the bare skin of her stomach.  Her chest
rose and fell.

My hand on her leg moved up, squeezed just above her knee.  I
thought of her running, her legs taking her weight in turns,
thighs passing each other, muscles taut.  Under her robe, her
skin was firm and relaxed; my fingers slowly climbed the lower
slope of her breast.  With the fingers of her left hand, the
hand she drinks her coffee with, she touched the collar of
the robe; perhaps she tugged it a little to the side, and
another inch of her shoulder was bare.  I heard, felt, a
low pulsating rush in my ears.  I squeezed her breast gently,
and she drew in her breath.

"I think I ought to go."  She said it softly, with a rising
intonation, like she'd just had bad news in the mail.  Her
lips were thin and pink and dry.

"Yeah," I said, my fingers nearly to her nipple.

I looked away as she stood quickly and went into the bathroom
to change.  She stopped at the door.

"Bye!"

In the bathroom, I picked up her robe.  I held it to my face
for a long time.


My Friends the Allens -- Coffee?
by Mark Aster
The End