After a few days of this, we just skipped the school part altogether and went straight to her apartment. It was easier to do the tests there, she said. Quieter. No distractions. I filled out surveys, answered interview questions, told her about how I learned to read, about my school experiences. She carefully noted everything I did, took notes, filed everything.
I have to admit that I had some more wet dreams and it got pretty embarrassing. I'm pretty sure Mom had to realize, since I was putting my pajamas in the laundry a lot more often than usual. But she didn't say anything, so I didn't say anything.
I got to see more of the apartment—after all, my bladder couldn't hold out forever. I went down the hallway to the bathroom and resisted plundering the medicine cabinet. But I did get a quick peek at the bedroom on my way back—nothing to write home about. Just a bed, some furniture, and some more of that cool artwork on the walls. I liked the artwork and I told her so.
"Really?" She seemed surprised. She was in the kitchen, pouring the last of a bottle of wine into her glass. I grabbed a Coke from the fridge. By now I was pretty comfortable here. On a couple of nights when my mom and dad had to work really late, I even ate dinner with Mrs. Sherman and George. (He wouldn't let me call him "Mr. Sherman." "I'm not your teacher, Josh. And besides, you can kick my ass on half these games. I should be calling you Mr. Mendel.")
"Yeah. It's cool. I've never seen anything like it before." As if I had extensive art experience! But I was feeling quite grown up. Mrs. Sherman treated me like an adult, not like a kid, and it was just the two of us hanging out in her apartment, like friends. George wouldn't be home for a while yet.
"That's because it's original," she said. "A friend of mine from college paints them."
"Really?" I wandered into the living room and stood before one of the bigger paintings. I had never seen real art before, art that someone actually painted. Except for a field trip to the museum, but that didn't count.
"Yes." I almost spilled my Coke—Mrs. Sherman had come up right behind me, her bare feet silent on the carpet. "She's really talented. We roomed together junior year and stayed in touch."
And then...
I don't know why.
She put an arm around my shoulders. "What do you like about the art?" She sipped at her wine.
But...
Her boob ...
Her breast...
Was just resting against my shoulder!
I could feel it, the side of it! Her breast lay there, heavy against me, yielding just slightly. My vision swam—the riot of color before me didn't help. My lungs, suddenly tight, had trouble getting air. And when I did breathe in, I smelled...
Strawberry.
And wine.
"It's chaotic," I said in a whisper, because a whisper was all I could manage. Her breast.
"Wow," she said, and pulled me tight against her for a brief, glorious moment. Her breast just smashed against me for that instant and my throat tightened and I was rock hard in no time flat, near to hyperventilating, and then she pulled away. "That's a really, really amazing viewpoint from someone your age, Josh. I mean ... That's exactly the point of this series: chaos." She looked over at me shook her head. "You know, I have to keep reminding myself that you're only twelve. You look and act much older."
Right now, I was just acting like I had to turn away from her; if she looked down, she would see ... everything.
I held my Coke can strategically to block her view and started to head back to the Xbox. "Thanks." It seemed inadequate, though. She was telling me I was a grownup. Or close. That I wasn't like the other kids in school. I knew that already, of course. My grades. Teacher comments over the years. Even my focus in baseball, which coaches had always called "beyond advanced." Mom and Dad used to worry that I wasn't having enough fun, until I convinced them that working hard in school, on the diamond, was fun for me.
Just wait until you get to high school—the girls are going to love you.
You're very mature.
You're a good-looking kid.
I sat in front of the TV and prayed that she wouldn't sit where she could see my lap, but she did. I held the Xbox controller there and unpaused the game just as a dinosaur came on screen and made the controller vibrate with the shaking of its footsteps.
"Does that vibrate?" she asked, as if discovering this for the first time. How could George play all these games and she still have no idea about it at all?
"Um, yeah." And, in fact, it was vibrating against me right now, and I wanted very much for it to stop.
"Let me see."
I handed over the controller, leaning in such a way as to conceal (I hoped) my lap. She took the controller and jumped a little at its vibration, then laughed and said, "No wonder George likes this one," before handing it back immediately.
I sat there with the controller and an erection and my eyes locked on her left foot and its pink toenails. "You can..." God, my mouth was dry even though I'd just drunk a Coke. "You can play if you want."
She laughed again. "God, no. That's OK, but it's sweet of you to offer." She got up (quick flash of thigh again) and ruffled my hair on her way back to the kitchen.
On the screen, my character was eaten by a dinosaur, with much gnashing of teeth and squirts of blood and dino spittle.
I reloaded the game and played until it was time to go home. That night, I lay in bed and replayed the breast, the pull closer, the toenails, the hair-ruffling over and over in my mind. To my shame, I had to change my pajamas before I even fell asleep.
At lunch and during recess, I'd let Zik in on selected details. There were some things I just couldn't tell him, even though he was my best friend. I told him I got to play M-rated video games, that I'd seen the bedroom and bathroom in the apartment, and that Mrs. Sherman thought I was very grown up and mature for my age. (This last sent him into a paroxysm of air-smooching and self-hugging, accompanied by "Oh, Josh! Oh, Josh!" until I beaned him with a dodgeball.)
In early December, we got hit with more snow. Nothing like the near-blizzard that shut schools down a few weeks earlier, but just enough to make it a pain in the ass to drive and walk. When we got to Mrs. Sherman's apartment, the sidewalk was covered. She made us hold each other for support, sliding an arm around my waist, and I decided that needing to lean on someone wasn't such a bad thing. I put my arm around her waist in turn, aware of how close to her breast and hip my hand was, midpoint between two things I wanted to touch very badly. On the other side, her breast and hip pressed against me, making me dizzy, the very opposite of what hanging on to each other was supposed to accomplish. I was glad for the long winter coat that hid my hard-on, and the slippery stairs that made it OK for me to walk a little funny.
At the stairs, I started counting, my usual routine, ticking off the first six steps in my mind, then a half-turn on the landing, then one (seven) two (eight) three (nine) four (ten) five (eleven) six (twelve)...
"Don't go so fast," Mrs. Sherman said, laughing. "I'm an old lady."
"You're not old, Mrs. Sherman."
"That's sweet of you, Joshua." For some reason, hearing her use my full name made me feel ... adult.
I don't know why. When my mom used it, I was usually in trouble.
But Mrs. Sherman didn't come down hard on the word, didn't draw out the end of it. She said it...
I don't know. She said it like she said "George."
Once inside the apartment, we enacted our latest ritual: I would go to the kitchen and pour her a glass of wine and get a Coke for myself. She would disappear into the bedroom while I was doing this and reappear shoeless, usually with a button or two unbuttoned on her blouse.
We sat in the living room and she quizzed me on some general knowledge-type questions: current events, terrorism, things like that. Then I was free to play Xbox. I was doing much better in the game than George was, but then again, I had more time to play it. He had to test a bunch of games at work; I could focus on this one.
Mrs. Sherman sat ne
arby in the living room, grading her papers or reading a book while I played. She never asked me to turn the volume down.
After one particularly loud dino-roar and explosion, I looked over at her to see if I was bothering her. What I saw made me dizzy and rock hard all over again. Mrs. Sherman was sitting on the sofa, leaning back and reading a test paper. It wasn't just that by leaning back her breasts pushed up and strained against the material of her blouse. No. It's that her legs were slightly apart, and thanks to the reflection in the glass-topped coffee table, I could see...
I could see.
Right up her skirt.
Right up to her panties.
At least, I think they were panties. There was almost nothing there, just a strip of shiny black material. I thought I would explode. I was like an animal trying to cross the highway, caught halfway, terrified by the loud sounds and zooming metal things but unable to move for all that fear. I couldn't make myself look away, but at the same time I knew I had to look away, that at any moment she could look down or look over at me and see me doing this, doing this horrible, horrible thing.
My mouth went dry and I licked my lips. I was losing my mind.
A scream from the Xbox brought me back to reality. I hadn't paused the game and my character was dead. I jerked around to the TV so fast that I thought my head would just keep spinning from sheer inertia and snap right off. It didn't.
I restarted the level, my breath coming fast now, my heart pounding. I couldn't even see the screen. All I could see was that reflection in my mind's eye, the smooth skin of her thighs, the darkening under the skirt, leading to that shiny patch of black material. God! I knew I would never be soft again.
"Josh?" she said suddenly, and my heart skipped not one, but two or maybe even three beats.
I ignored her, pretending to be engrossed in the game. So engrossed that I couldn't possibly have just been looking up her skirt five seconds ago.
"Josh!"
"Hmm? What?" I asked innocently, clicking away on the controller.
"Would you mind getting me another glass of wine?"
I paused the game and looked over my shoulder. She was sitting up, holding the glass out to me. Her breasts had returned to their normal positions and her legs were primly set together.
"Sure, Mrs. Sherman."
I unfolded myself from the floor and, miracle of all miracles, my erection had subsided. I took the wineglass.
"You know, Josh, when it's just the two of us and we're here, you don't have to call me Mrs. Sherman."
I had heard George call her "Evelyn" and "Evvy" in the past. I didn't think my parents would like me calling a teacher by her first name, but what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.
"Are you sure?" I took the wineglass.
"Yes. It's just silly. You're helping me with my project. You're not just a student; you're like my research partner." She favored me with a brilliant full-wattage smile and that left dimple.
"OK ... Evelyn." It felt weird coming out of my mouth.
She frowned, her face scrunching up like she'd bitten into something sour and bitter at the same time. "God, no. Not that. I hate my name. 'Evelyn.' Yuck." She made a gagging sound and I couldn't help laughing. "Sounds like some old lady from a million years ago."
"OK. Evvy?"
"No. No, that's no good either. How about..." She thought for just a second. "How about Eve?"
"Eve."
She smiled when I said it, her entire face coming more alive. "Yes! Perfect! I always wanted people to call me that."
"OK." I said it again. "Eve."
She clapped her hands like I'd just given her a present. Maybe I had. I don't know.
I filled her wineglass and brought it back to her. She sipped and sighed in contentment.
"What's it taste like?" I asked her.
"Do you want to try some?" She held it out to me.
"Are you serious?"
"Sure." She shrugged. "Just take a little sip. And promise me you won't tell your parents I let you try this." She looked over at the clock. "You won't still be drunk by the time I take you home."
"Ha, ha," I said. "Very funny." But I took the glass and sniffed it carefully.
"Oh, so you're a connoisseur!"
I had seen people drink wine in movies, so I went along with the joke—swirled the wine in the glass, sniffed it pretentiously. "A passable bouquet," I said in a snooty tone, causing Mrs.—Eve to throw her head back and roar with laughter. I grinned at her and waggled my eyebrows, then took a sip.
It actually tasted pretty bad, but Eve seemed to like it, so I didn't want to say so. I don't know what I expected, but from the smell, I thought it would be more like fruit juice. Instead, it tasted like fruit juice gone bad. And it burned my throat as it went down.
"Well?" she asked.
"It's OK." Ever the diplomat.
She took the glass back. "OK, so you're not a red man. I can tell. See? You've learned something. Next time you're on a hot date, don't order the red wine."
"Got it."
She looked serious all of a sudden. "But really, Josh—you can't tell your parents I let you do this, OK? I could get in a lot of trouble."
Over a little sip of wine? Puh-lease. But whatever—I wasn't going to tell my parents anyway. "Don't worry about it."
That night at dinner, my mother asked me why I had a grin plastered on my face. I didn't realize I did. "No reason," I told her.
But the truth is this: Until I ate my second helping of mashed potatoes, I could still catch a lingering taste of the wine on my lips when I licked them. And for some reason, it tasted better now.
That night, I did my best not to think of Eve as I lay in bed. It was pure torture; she had become a part of my nightly ritual, to the point that I didn't put on my pajamas until I'd already added another wad of tissues to the trash can.
I was getting home later and later each day; Mom was working late to show her professor (that's what she called him, "my professor," not "my boss") that he had made a good choice when he'd hired her. George had loads of deadlines, multiple games coming out at once ("going to golden master," they called it), so I stayed at Eve's for hours after school each day, playing Xbox, stealing looks whenever, wherever, and however I could. Dad started coming home late, too, since there was no one home anyway.
You'd think that we'd be sullen and sort of miserable, what with all of us seeing each other just for an hour or so at night before I went off to blast through my homework. But the opposite was true: Mom was ecstatic because she was doing so well at her new job; Dad was happy to have some peace and quiet. And me? I was playing video games and getting the chance to memorize a beautiful body on the sly. What's there not to be happy about? I even heard Mom through the vents one night saying, "Thank God for this. It's like free babysitting."
School was, for a little while, difficult. I had to remind myself to call her "Mrs. Sherman," for one thing. For another, it was tough to be just another student to her, to not be able to joke with her or be silly like we were in her apartment. She made it more difficult—every now and then, with no warning, she would toss me a big, secret smile, her left cheek dimpled, her eyes shining.
Zik smuggled one of his brother's Playboys into school one day and we sneaked off during recess to page through it, saving the centerfold for last. As we unfolded it, our eyes drinking in the seemingly impossibly smooth skin and endless acres of bared flesh, Zik whistled low and quiet. "Why isn't there a girl like that around here?" he begged. "Why?"
We checked the Playmate biography to see if, by chance, this girl was around here, but she was from Canada.
"What do these numbers mean?" I asked. "Thirty-four C—"
As usual, Zik had the scoop—his dad and brother were a font of this sort of information. "Those are measurements. Here, here, and here," he said, cupping imaginary breasts, then hands to his waist, then his hips.
"I don't get it. What do the numbers mean?"
"Thirty-four C is, li
ke, her bra size, J. Thirty-four C is good."
We caressed the centerfold with our eyes again. "Well, obviously. But what does it mean?"
"I don't know! What is it with you? Can't you just stare at the tits?"
There were other numbers on the bio sheet. I did some quick mental math. "She's twenty."
"OK. Twenty is good. That's not too old."
"Mrs. Sherman is twenty-four," I said, and maybe I shouldn't have, but Zik knew I was going there almost every day after school.
"Huh." He thought about that. "Twenty-four. That's pretty old."
"No, it isn't." A thrill of unexplainable anger riffled through me. "And anyway, just because someone is old doesn't mean they aren't hot."
"Like your mother."
"Shut up about my mother!" I punched him in the shoulder, but it was just kidding. I knew what my mom looked like, and Zik never meant anything mean by it.
That afternoon at Eve's, she retreated to the bedroom as usual while I switched on the Xbox and then went to pour her a glass of wine and get my Coke. But this time, there was a new wrinkle.
"Something wrong?" Eve asked, poking her head into the kitchen. She had worn a rather shapeless and severe dress at school, but now was changed into a pair of sweatpants and a loose T-shirt. She'd added some more lipstick—she had told me once that it wore off during the day at school and her lips felt dry without it. Her hair was tied back—it changed the whole complexity of her face, drawing back her cheekbones, making her look like an entirely different person. Still beautiful, but in a different way.
Her feet, of course, were bare. Bright red toenail polish.
"There's two kinds of wine." I pointed. Next to Eve's red wine was another bottle of white. "Which one do you want?"