Don’t need to think

Image credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Dying_gaul.jpg/800px-Dying_gaul.jpg

Romance Story Challenge from DC Creative Writing Read and Critique, Prompts:

Also posted in the DC Creative Writing Read and Critque’s Wattpad anthology; find it and others here.

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?” I startle out of my reverie of studying the perfect folds of marble fabric around an angelic face. I spin, looking for the source of the voice. A soft giggle disappears around behind the statue and I lean to follow it only for the voice to come from the other side.

“I can almost always tell the folks who aren’t from around here from those who are, but you just give me all kinds of mixed signals.” Her smile spreads, open and inviting, gleeful with childlike sincerity. A cascade of big, chocolatey curls explode around her shoulders, barely held behind her head with a straining ribbon.

Damn, she’s cute! And she looks to be making the first move.

I chuckle, brushing away the residual awkward feeling left in the wake of her initial comment and disappearance. Lifting back up to my full height before the marble sculpture, I hook my thumbs in my jeans.

Nonchalant. Yea, I can do nonchalant. Women like that, right?

“Well, your radar’s pretty damn good. I am from here. Just moved back after school and a couple of shit jobs.”

“Oh, of course! Did ya’ study art in school?” She raises a hand to indicate the sculpture. I lift my eyes to the perfect white marble surrounded by open space in a circle I could have opened my wingspan in and not touched the people admiring the other statues and paintings in the room. A fool would know the museum was deeply proud of this sweet little girl. The idea of comparing my art to that makes me lose some of the luster of confidence I had painted on.

“I did a little. Most art study I’ve done has been on my own, though. I didn’t want to study my love in school. I was afraid makin’ a job of it would steal the pleasure.” I give her a wry know-what-I-mean half shrug. Play it cool. She still seems interested enough. I coach myself even as my palms slide on my jeans they’re so sweaty.

Damn it, how is such a cute girl talking to me?

“Oh!” Her voice flings into the far reaches of the high ceiling, flitting between the hard, shiny surfaces in the room. The much louder echo clams her up a moment, but even that’s cute! She tightens her mouth into a tiny bud, her eyes giant – the oh-no face of a little kid caught grabbing a fresh cookie on the drying rack. “You do an art?!” She has successfully reined the brightness and I’m sad to see it diminished. Can I ask her to step outside so I can hear that fluting, sweet voice fly free and loud? I suddenly want to hear her laugh among the trees more than anything.

“Well yea-” I start, but her excitement gets the better of her.

“Do ya’ sculpt?!” She lifts and shakes her hands together, just a hair-off of jazz hands.

I try to lock down the delighted grin that grabs my lips. Don’t want her to think I’m laughing at her! “Ah no,” I wrap a hand around the back of my neck anxiously, “I’m pretty terrible with anything 3D. But give me a paintbrush and I’m at least a little better.” I watch her shoulders and eyes for any evidence that her interest has died at my ‘no,’ but she’s just nodding along, so I reciprocate. “What about you, do you do any art?” I use her odd phrasing and she lights up.

“I do sculpt. Here! Like this!” She grabs my hand and I float through the museum on cloud nine for the next two hours as she shows me the marble and bronze statues she’s trying to emulate. I show her the painting styles I’ve studied and try to describe my work. I’ve never been real good at taking pictures of my stuff, so I don’t have anything but crap on my phone.

We’ve made it to the little cafe and I’m screwing up the courage to ask her to dinner when she bolts up in her chair, rigid, her eyes wide and staring at the big clock.

“Oh! I ‘ave to go.” Before the words have fully fallen from her lovely lips she’s standing.

I open my mouth, grasping desperately for a way to make a harder connection.

She beats me to it.

“Can I see ya, again? Here?”

It takes me multiple attempts to get the words out past the exhilaration. “Tell me when.”

~      ~     ~

“I just can’a keep the damn things workin’. You put it in my hands, it’ll die.” She waves her hand dismissively at where my phone floats, rejected and forlorn in my hand.

She doesn’t… have a smartphone? I’m left blinking, mute.

“But, I do have a telephone! Tell me your number, and I can call you.” She sounds like this is a novel idea that just occurred to her.

Am I trying to date an eighty year old? I struggle to gather myself, slipping my phone back into my pocket. How long since I did that? Maybe I should try and enjoy cutting the cable a little. I give her my number, start to reach for my phone again to enter hers when she giggles.

“You know, I never use it, so I’m not sure I even remember! I’ll call you tonight, though. That’ll give it to you, right?” I nod slowly.

Paul totally said you only get two out of three: hot, single, or sane. I should have known something would be off when she was single.

She leans across the little table between us, hitching her breasts up entirely too distractingly as she scoops up my hand in both of her tiny ones. “Is that so terrible?”

Oh sweet curves and shadowed recesses, how I long to see more of you…

“Wha- uh… no! No, not so bad.” I stabilize, jerking my eyes away from the scoop neck of her striped pink and orange dress. Noticing that I recognize this dress gives her the same sexy profile as the dress she wore last time.

She knows what flatters her!

She sits back in her chair, wiggling with pleasure. Her eyes venture to the people walking around us and I open my mouth before she can suggest we find the next exhibit.

“But uh, it’s a little early for it, but would you like to walk, or metro somewhere, and grab some dinner? Or, maybe a couple drinks?”

Her gaze swings back to me and for a moment it’s as if she doesn’t understand english. Her eyes carry no recognition, no understanding of what I’m talking about at all. Then she blinks and all the brightness pours back into her face.

“Oh, hm….” She checks the big clock on the wall across the small cluster of tables and chairs in which we sit. “Not today. I should be going though.”

“Ah, well, let me walk you to your car, or the metro, or-” I don’t like the desperation I hear in my voice, but neither can I call it back or ignore its insidious claws in my tongue.

“Oh, don’t worry! I’ll run to the bathroom first.”

I wait for her outside the bathroom, even though she insists I don’t. I wait for twenty minutes before I ask a woman coming out if she saw a girl in a pink and orange striped dress.

“Nah’, sorry honey. Sounds like she ghosted you.”

~     ~     ~

But she called me a few hours later, just as promised.

We meet at every art museum in the city, except the Hirshorn. She swears she won’t step foot into a Modern Art Museum.

“They’re just rubbish!”

I resolve never to show her my art projects from my first couple years in college.

I don’t remember who started calling them dates first. It seems like I was afraid to call it that one day, and the next, that’s what they’d always been. Our date to the American Art Museum was my favorite. It’s where I grew the balls to finally kiss her. I could have died of happiness at her delighted squeal. She didn’t let go of my hand the rest of the day.

Until 4:13pm. Everytime.

I save an exhibit in the Freer Asian Art gallery to show her until we only have fifteen minutes to see it if she holds to her pattern. She loves it. Her excitement and adoration of every art piece infects me to my bones. But she still doesn’t miss her time.

“Oh lovey, I’ve got to go! No, you stay here and enjoy the exhibit.” She always says this. It’s like I can’t watch her leave. I kiss her fingers half-heartedly and she doesn’t seem to notice my lack of fervor. A swift, though enthusiastic press of her full lips to my cheek, and she spins away skip-trotting toward the stairs.

I don’t go back to the exhibit. I don’t shadow back through the galleries we visited on this trip, day dreaming of each moment, savoring the sweetness of her presence. I don’t immediately start searching for the next free afternoon on my calendar.

I follow her.

The ridiculously cute but also totally sexy robin’s egg blue dress she wore today makes her easy to pick out of the crowd. Though no matter what she wears, or if she has immersed herself in a crowd, I can’t miss a single inch of her petite, five foot frame. Her aura draws my eyes to her like a moth to flames. I can no more not look at her than I can stop breathing now.

I try to stop at each corner until she turns the next but the Freer is a damn maze! The floors don’t even line up from one level to the next! She buzzes through the warren of hallways like she owns the place.

I turn the corner she took last and hit a locked door. A small panel simply reads, “Basement.”

I stare around myself a minute, look back around the corner to see if she could have taken the next turn and I just missed it. But no, there’s only another locked door down there, too.

I glower at the “basement” sign for long minutes before sighing and trudging back into the main body of the museum to find my way back to the surface. She’ll call me later to arrange our next date.

~     ~     ~

“Lovey, what would you say if I asked you to let me sculpt you?”

“Wait, what? Really…?” I’m taken completely unaware. We crouch together, leaning our shoulders into each other, our temples almost touching as we study the beautifully illuminated page of one of the Library of Congress’ thirteen original Gutenberg Bibles. “You want to… carve a sculpture of me?” I can barely wrap my head around it.

While it is still art, going anywhere but a museum has thus far not been a successful topic. I’ve let it go for now. Conveniently we live in a city full of free museums, so no loss yet. But this… Was this like an offer to come back to her place?!

“Yes, lovey, you! I think you would look stunning in bronze, don’t you? I bet I could make your hair like the Dying Gaul that you like so much!”

I’m putty in her hands and she knows it. I love that damn piece. She’s laughed about the hair ever since I showed her a picture of it, though.

“Well, come on then,” she squeezes my hand where her slender fingers are laced in mine.

“Now? Oh…” I stand looking around uncertainly until I catch a clock.

Of course.

It’s 4:13.

She takes my hand and skips a few steps before falling into a walk at my side. When I start toward the back door next to the gift shop to leave she tugs me gently back.

“No, no, this way.” I turn bunched brows and an open mouth to question her, but she meets my turning lips with her finger. She holds it just a moment, a shushing motion, then curls the finger in a come-hither.

Yes, ma’am!

I look around, circumspect in my observation of the Library of Congress staff. No one is looking in our direction. I pause too long, finding it hard to believe no one notices the two of us as she leads me down a hallway with a tiny “staff only” sign standing on one side. I look back to her in surprise and find her throwing swift glances back at me, her eyes round with a whole different kind of excitement than I have seen on her face up to now.

All the blood suddenly drains from my face into lower regions and I couldn’t have given a damn if any of those Library of Congress staff saw us now.

Is she gonna lead me to some dark little closet?! We’ve only shared pretty chaste kisses up til now, maybe we can explore a little more in a secluded hallway! Damn it, why didn’t I stick a condom in my wallet like Paul told me to?! Wait no, it’s not gonna go that far…

I argue with myself, back and forth on what I hope she’s doing, what I want to do, what we’ve done so far, until suddenly I can’t ignore how long we’ve been walking.

Wait, where the hell are we? We’ve taken multiple turns and the hallway is still the clean off-white tile of the LoC, but the light has changed or maybe the crown molding? When did that disappear?

“Where are we?” I ask and flinch at the strange lack of echo the big empty space emits back.

“Almost there,” she whispers and I wonder if I recede into myself, trying to hide from the sounds of my own body’s movement.

“Almost where?” I whisper, tugging on her hand lightly. I’m hoping she’ll slow down and move to my side, but she remains in the lead, bee-lining for whatever destination she has in mind.

She takes the next left and I jerk to a stop. A door with the same “basement” label as the one in the Freer. Another museum with a basement? Were they all relabeled together some handful of years ago or something? What the hell?

She opens the door with no hesitation and pulls me through.

All my excitement for a little closet shatters to sharp glass slivers at my feet in the massive, brightly lit space I find myself.

How the hell has this been hidden under the Library of Congress for hundreds of years and never gotten out?!

It’s like the inside of a cathedral! Twenty, thirty foot high, vaulted ceiling, supported by a dozen massive pear-based columns, painted with climbing vines and flowers.

Wait, are those real?!

But even those pale in comparison to the sculpture collection sprawling out across the floor. Just in the first cluster before the first column to my left circle a quintet of enthralling statues. An elderly man, the deep wrinkles in his face looking soft and touchable even in marble, his right hand massaging the thick joints of his left. Next to him a woman sprawls on a low couch, her luscious form draped only with a thin sheet, a golden burnished bronze arm thrown back and over her face as she is swooning. The sheet looks so believable, I would swear it was in danger of falling off. An angelic child stands cast in plaster next to the couch on a short base. Young enough that the little jacket and chubby hands are genderless, but that makes the sad eyes no less heartbreakingly sweet. The last in the cluster is a young, African American man. The sculptor captured his skin tone and the softness of his mouth beautifully with a ceramic glaze they let crack on his lips.

Every single piece in the collection is just stunning! And they’re all people. I’m staring around in open mouthed awe when her small voice, from too far away, snaps me back to the present.

“Over here, lovey! We must take some measurements!”

“How in the hell did you gain access to the Library of Congress’s overflow space…”

“We’re not in the Library of Congress anymore, lovey!” She laughs at me, as if that explains everything.

I mean, maybe it does? Of course we couldn’t be! But then how the hell…

She grabs my hand and jerks me toward a knee high greek plinth. “Up we go, lovey! No time to waste!”

I chuckle at her fervor, “I’m not goin’ anywhere. I’m happy to let you stare at me all you like.” I tease, leaning in to steal a kiss but she flits away, unaware.

“Oh, that’s perfect, lovey! I don’t think any of the others have said that before! I really must capture it. Oh, yes, like that!” I look up, confused at the nonsensical thread and a sharp pain stabs the back of my head. I duck back down, a hand lifting to check for blood.

“No, no! Back where you were, like you were seekin’ a kiss! I love it!” Bright lighting suddenly snaps on from every direction, blinding. I slowly ease back into the lean. I won’t be able to hold it for long.

“Where are you?” I ask, squinting.

“Right here, lovey. Give us just a minute longer, eh?”

“Of course…” I say hesitantly. This seems so off, but she is pretty unconventional…

“There we are,” I jump when her voice sounds right next to me and her hand lands on my foot where it rests on the column. She lays her hands on both my ankles and runs them up. Gooseflesh follows her touch like a wave and I breathe in, savoring the expectation of it cresting in my groin.

Even though I’m standing on a base, bent at the waist as I am, she has to fold in under my chest. Her hands flow over my hips, dangerously close to exactly where I want her hands to go. My eyes flutter in pleasure and desire. The heat of her body contained in the curve of mine, the brush of her big chocolate curls wafting a honey scent across my face, the light but sharp touch of her nails through my jeans all light up my nerves from the crown of my head in a wave down my spine. It makes my fingers and toes clench. My whole lower body tightens.

Would she be mad if I grab her right now? Scoop her in for a kiss? Lay the line of her body along the front of mine? If this is really her work space, no one will walk in on us. I open my eyes and reach.

What?

Her arms have lifted and her small hands have landed on my elbows. It feels like iron manacles have banded around my forearms, locking my arms in place.

I try to straighten up. Somehow she’s standing at my side, a hand on my lower back.

How can she reach that high? How can she put enough pressure on me to keep me from standing?!

“Keep tryin’, lovey. We’ve got to set the struts to make sure your position is just right.” Her voice whispers along my skin, lifting goosebumps of pleasure but also standing my hairs up in terror. The honey scent of her fills my nose again, but now it brings stone dust and a metallic heat of casting bronze with it.

What the hell is going on?!

I try to drop to a crouch out from under her hand.

How can she move this fast?!

I don’t actually see her move, she just appears in front of me again, her hands on my knees. The feel of iron bands wrapping around just above and below them squeezes tight then flexes to only a light pressure. I fight against the pressure and it grips me hard, a painful sharpness that forces me to flinch back.

I try to cry out. I can’t move my mouth! I can’t feel my lungs expand or my throat swallow! Only stillness.

“Yes, that’ll do nicely. My perfect gentleman, forever frozen in his sweet quest for a kiss.” Her voice has changed. It’s… bigger. All of her has… expanded. She’s not fat, she’s just… immense. She is everything. She is all around me. She surrounds me. She holds me in place with a strength and force of will that isn’t human. And yet I see her petite form standing before me, removing her small hands from my knees.

What’s happening?! I can’t move! I can’t breathe! Why can’t I move?!?

“Don’t worry, lovey. You won’t feel trapped for long. You’re my sculpture now, and statues don’t need to think.”

Don’t need to think?!

She walks an experimental circle around me, her eyes running every line of my body. Measurement, assessing her handy work. She reaches forward and touches my hip with a perfectly manicured fingernail. Pain jolts and I shift the inch I can away from her.

“Yes, good,” she croons.

Don’t need to think?

Time passes. Minutes? Hours? Days? The light never changes. She comes and goes. I watch as she tweaks some of the other statues around me. Adding wings here, removing arms there, changing a modern sweater out for a more classic toga, or stripping one statue entirely bare. None ever cry out or protest aloud, but I can feel tiny pricks of confusion or agony from them.

Don’t need to think.

She comes and admires me for a long time. Long enough that I feel a memory of the heat she once caused me. It flares when she leans up and kisses my ever ready lips.

Think?

The yawning, cathedral-like space spreads out at my feet and I offer a kiss whenever she wants it.