2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

2:00 A.M

Ben places his lips against Sarina’s. She raises her chin to make it easier for him. It’s more of a press than a kiss. A place marker.

The feeling at the base of Sarina’s stomach is akin to the promise of snow. Ben releases her but does not move away. Sarina touches her bottom lip for reference.

Madeleine is singing.

Principal Randles sits in a booth by the window, her will climbing and falling against the cage of her decorum. Something about this girl and her song is so rapturous, so influential, that even the tax attorney begins to move the lower half of his body. She will not cause a scene. She will not rise up from where she sits. It will not be the Winter Assembly again. But then the girl hits one pure note that shimmers into vibrato and the principal’s dominion over her actions slips. She’s standing, but she will not leer over the table. Fine, it is permittable to leer if only his attention stays on the stage. But the tax attorney, twitching with rhythm, feels her movement behind him. How can she explain? How can she battle the urge to hold him? She will say a cheerful remark and sit back down. She cannot think of a cheerful remark. The girl alights into an array of short notes, each one hammering a rib in the principal’s rib cage. The tax attorney’s cheeks are the color of sheets she can’t afford. Three thousand thread count. She clutches at them. She will not put her tongue on him. She will not put her tongue on him again. He tries to shake her grip with a stilted laugh.

She will let him go. After this lick. After the next. But his skin tastes like olives and she loves olives. She takes unhurried, indulgent licks.

It is the Winter Assembly again, only this time instead of mauling Kevin, the unfairly muscled janitor, she mauls the tax attorney, who under “Special Interests” on his profile wrote, Your wok or mine?

Release him, she begs herself. He is openly struggling. But her ancestors were electricians and plumbers. She can devastate chestnuts in her grip. She moans into his ear. The tax attorney bats at the ground with his feet. People at other tables gape. She cannot stop, dear God let me stop, she cannot stop. She drags her tongue from the base of his chin to the corners of his petrified eyes.