Expectations

Expectations

I'd learned to expect nothing. I knew my limitations, my essential insignificance. I'd never dared to dream she was attainable. But sometimes the body will dare more than the head. And fortune favors him who dares.

Carmen was the Holy Grail to the company's young men. Her beauty was petitely, classically Japanese: her skin smooth and golden, her shoulder-length black hair gently waved but otherwise unstyled, her figure delicately feminine. Her dress was simple and modest: a silk blouse, a knee-length wool or linen skirt, and black leather pumps Monday through Thursday; a sweater, jeans, and sneakers on Casual Friday. Her only ornament was a small gold crucifix pendant, worn just below her throat. Her grooming was inconspicuous but flawless. She usually wore a light perfume, but no makeup that I could see.

She was alluring in that indefinable way that defies reduction to its parts. You didn't look at her and see her bosom, or her legs, or her pert little tush, or even her Oriental Madonna's face. You saw Carmen, whole and perfect. And if you were male and young, or even male and not so young, you immediately wanted to take her in your arms. In an engineering firm that employed nearly six hundred men, the majority of them under thirty and single, and barely two hundred women, nearly all of them over forty and married, she exerted an appeal that could have torn the building from its foundations.

But she didn't seem to notice. At least, if she did, she declined to exploit it or play to it. She was courteous toward everyone, men and women, single and married. She didn't flirt. She carried herself with a natural grace and self-assurance that would have done credit to a reigning queen. She wasn't overtly glamorous or sexy; she was merely as close to an angel as human flesh can get.

She didn't encourage any of the innumerable young men who sought to elicit her interest, Indeed, over three years working alongside her, I'd never heard her utter a word that wasn't utterly professional. That didn't stop them from coming at her in waves... and being turned aside, one after the next.

At thirty-seven years of age, a homely, balding also-ran like me had no business even fantasizing about beautiful, poised, talented, going-places twenty-six-year-old Carmen Yoshibi. But that didn't keep my heart from speeding up whenever she passed my cubicle, or my mouth from going dry whenever she looked my way.

I have no illusions about myself. I'm a decent design engineer, but no candidate for greatness. I've run small projects by myself, but I haven't got the temperament for managing large ones. I'm not suited for customer liaison. I'm the sort a company sticks in the corner, feeds a stream of routine tasks, and generally ignores except for an annual performance review and a modest merit raise.

I have pride, but I know my limitations. It's important to know your limitations; the knowledge keeps you from overreaching. If you have no chance of making a big breakthrough or designing a killer product, neither are you in much danger of doing something ridiculous that would embarrass the company or cost it money.

To me, that's responsibility. Realism. Stick to what you know. Don't promise unless you're sure you can deliver. Admit it when you don't know or need help. Advise and help when you can. It teaches your coworkers to trust your abilities, and your management to trust your words. The world might not beat a path to your door, but you can go home at the end of the day knowing that you earned your pay.

How many men can justly expect more than that from life? I didn't. Which is why, when God smiled upon me and deposited the keys to heaven in my hands, I almost dropped them out of sheer disbelief.

I was surprised, and more than a little unsettled, to be offered the lead architect position on the EL-17. I'd never done anything that large or complex before. Despite my years in aerostructures, I had a lot to learn before I could even outline the problem. Harry Toussaint, my manager, promised me a first-class supporting cast, engineers whose several expertises would complement mine. He was so obviously anxious for me to accept the responsibility that I couldn't say no to him.

I hadn't guessed that the first subordinate assigned to me would be Carmen.

Harry asked us to put together a general operating concept for presentation to the customer, told us we'd be alone for a while before the other engineers became available, and assured us we'd have all the support he could provide. Carmen took it with more aplomb than I did. I sat there with my jaw sagging as she drew him out on just how long "a while" might be, and what sort of support, in terms of computers, software, and instruction, he could winkle out of the project budget. When we left his office, I felt as if I'd just survived a nasty traffic accident. Carmen's gentle smile never flickered.

As his door closed behind us, she took me by the arm, pulled me into a small conference room, and breathed a mock-dramatic sigh of relief.

"I thought that would go on forever," she murmured as she seated herself. "Are you as scared as I am?"

I dropped into a chair facing her and nodded, still grappling with the gravity of the assignment.

"Harry's going to expect the document within the month," she said. "I hope your social schedule can stand a little compression."

"I, uh, think I can make room. How and when do we start?"

She dimpled. "How? With pencils, pads, and coffee. When? Now sounds about right."

"This late on a Friday?"

She glanced at her watch and nodded. "It's only four." She cocked an eyebrow. "Do you have a date or something?"

"Uh, no."

"We can get a lot done in an hour or two." She rose and headed for the corridor. "I'll be back in a jiffy."

Five minutes later Carmen was back with a pair of graph-paper pads and two Styrofoam cups of what our cafeteria passes off as coffee. She set it all down on the table, swung the conference room door closed, resumed her seat, and slid her chair toward mine until they were touching. I fancied I could feel her body heat through the layers of clothing between us. Her perfume, which I'd learned to ignore at ordinary conversational distance, swirled through my head, arrowed to the center of my brain and pitched camp there.

My body stiffened involuntarily. She noticed at once.

"Something wrong?" She looked honestly concerned.

"Uh, no, just a... a back spasm." I did my best to smile, hoping it wouldn't look forced. "You seem to have an approach in mind already. Could you outline it for me?"

She held my eyes a moment longer, nodded, and started to sketch on the pad before her, narrating her concept as she went. I fixed my gaze on the pad, struggled to ignore that maddening scent, and started an internal litany: We're just working together. Nothing more. It's just work, it's just work, it's just work...

But the mind's control over the body is incomplete. At least, it's that way for me. What we were there to do was insignificant next to the fact of Carmen beside me. The incompatibilities of our ages, our positions, and our prospects in the company had faded into invisibility. She was too beautiful, too vital, and too graceful for me to think of her as just a colleague.

I developed an erection. No, that's not quite right. It didn't "develop;" it sprang from my groin like a guided missile, tenting my trousers as it strained for liftoff. I hunched forward a little further, hoping to conceal it beneath the shadow of my upper body. Hoping further that it would subside after I'd had a few minutes to accustom myself to the temptation beside me.

No such luck. It only seemed to get larger and harder. Worse, the friction against my clothing soon elicited a slow leak of seminal fluid. My body was unimpressed with my attempt to treat Carmen with impersonal collegiality.

I started to fidget, shifting from side to side as subtly as I could in an attempt to relieve the pressure. If anything, it had the opposite effect. The drip got worse.

And Carmen noticed.

"Is something the matter?" she asked.

I forced a grin. "No, I just... I'll be right back." I pushed my chair back and started to rise, intending to head for the men's room and have a stern chat with my rebellious organ. Carmen laid a hand on my arm, and I froze.

She was staring directly at the crotch of my trousers. There was a wet spot there, easily visible against the taut beige fabric.

About two hundred years later, she looked directly into my eyes and asked, "Is that for me?"

I couldn't speak. I could barely draw a breath.

She rose, took me by the arms, and urged me to rise as well. Before I realized what was happening, she'd unbuckled my belt, unbuttoned and unzipped me, and lowered my trousers and briefs to expose my betrayer, steel-hard and still leaking.

I don't have words for the state of stunned incredulity I occupied at that moment. It could hardly get deeper... until Carmen put one warm hand to the underside of my penis and slid it down to cup my scrotum. She caressed it gently.

Caressed "it?" She was caressing me. That hunk of willfully rampant flesh was my genital organ. I couldn't disown it, any more than I could ignore it. Carmen was fondling my most intimate parts with the delicacy of a lover. A practiced lover, completely at ease with her beloved's body and determined to bring him to the pinnacle of pleasure.

"Carmen..." I gasped. What little restraint I possessed was near to failing. "I can't... I mean, you mustn't --"

"Shhh. Why not?" she murmured. She ran a fingertip along the root of my scrotum, and I gasped again. More fluid flowed forth, wetting her arm. "You can't imagine how wonderful this is... how flattered I am."

"What? Are you saying --"

Midnight-black eyes riveted my own. "Yes. Exactly." She stroked my penis with an exquisite underhand motion, fingers moving cylindrically around the rigid shaft. I moaned in sweet agony. "Should I continue with this, or would you rather we went back to work?"

I nodded mutely.

"You never made a move or gave me a sign," she murmured, still stroking me gently. More fluid pulsed out of me, dampening her arm all the way to the elbow. "Always the consummate professional, polite, reserved, almost completely impersonal. While all those boys swarmed around me, pestering me until I could hardly think. Why, Paul? Why not even a hint?"

I shuddered before her ministrations. She held me just before the point of climax, prolonging my tension and letting it build to an irresistible height. As powerfully as I yearned for release, part of me never wanted it to end. I was ready to fall to my knees and worship her.

Her caressing motion slowed, stopped. Her hand left my penis and went to my hip. I caught my breath, gradually mastered myself, and studied her face. It was as tight with excitement as my own. There was no hint of cruelty in her expression, only an eager delight.

"This is too precious to waste," she murmured. She bent, pulled up my pants, and swiftly but tenderly restored me to decency. "Go get your jacket and briefcase."

Carmen's apartment was as simple, modest, and graceful as everything else about her. The furniture was Danish Modern, of classic line. A scattering of matted Impressionist prints adorned the walls. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the living-room windows, bathing the little room in serenity.

She led me to her bedroom and gestured me toward her bed as she started to disrobe. I could only sit and watch, still unable to believe it was all real. Presently she stood nude before me, glory wrapped in golden flesh, arms spread and smiling gently.

Her crucifix pendant was still around her neck.

"Do you like me?" she asked.

"You can't imagine," I breathed.

She dimpled. "Then why are you still dressed?"

I jammed my zipper twice in my rush to join her.

When I was as nude as she, she flowed up to me, let her fingers trail over my chest, and took my crucifix pendant between thumb and forefinger.

"Christian?" she asked.

"Catholic."

"So am I." She pressed me down onto my back, lay full length atop me, and we kissed for the first time. I wrapped my arms around her, she laid her face against my chest, and we stayed like that, unmoving and unspeaking, for a long moment.

"Paul," she said, "I want you to know that I take this very seriously."

"Hm?" I was still too lost in the moment to attend to anything but the wonder of it.

She pulled her head up and caught my eyes again. "I'm a virgin," she said, barely above a whisper.

"Huh? But why --"

"Because I take you seriously. You and what we're about to do. How do you feel about it?"

"Carmen," I croaked, halfway between bewilderment and insanity, "I can hardly believe it's happening at all. I've never imagined that you'd want me as more than a coworker. What are you asking me?"

She put her hands to the sides of my face and studied it.

"I want you so badly that I ache from it," she said. "I've wanted you for months, years, almost from the day we were introduced. You're so sweet and humble, and kinder and more responsible than I ever imagined a man could be. But if I take you into my body, will you be accountable for the consequences? No matter what they are?"

My chest tightened. The first hint of tension appeared in her expression.

"Are you asking me to marry you?"

"Not necessarily," she said. "But I don't use contraception. I don't believe in it. And I won't abort a child." Her intensity was unchallengeable. "If I conceive a child by you, will you do the right thing, or will you run away from him -- and me?"

I can't call what I was doing at that moment "thinking." It was too exalted, too thankful, and too wild with glee. A man who reaches my age never having married can't allow himself any grand expectations about love or progeny. But that's what Carmen was offering me. Everything I'd ever desired, without reservation, if only I could match my commitment to hers.

I let my hands slide down her back, took a firm grip on her buttocks, and pulled her over me until the head of my penis nestled between her labia. Her eyes widened, but she held her tongue.

"Carmen Yoshibi, fulfillment of all my wildest dreams, will you marry me? Join me at the altar at Our Lady of the Pines and let Father Ray join us in matrimony? Share my bed and bear my children? Care for me and be cared for by me? For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, until death do us part?"

She paled. An eon elapsed between each breath and the next.

"Paul Thomas Mattison," she murmured shakily, "deepest yearning of my heart, will you marry me? Take me for your wife and the mother of your children? For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, until death do us part?"

"I take it that means yes," I whispered.

"I knew you were sharp," she replied.

"How did you know my middle name?"

The corners of her eyes crinkled. "You'd be surprised what I know about you."

"Then you know I'm not particularly well to do, don't you? I hope you don't expect --"

"I expect nothing," she said, "but your love and fidelity."

I hugged her against me as the last of my fears dissolved. "Damn, I don't have a ring on me. Poor planning!"

She tensed her legs, jiggled briefly up and down, and I was at once fully lodged inside her.

"Under the circumstances," she gasped, "I think this will do."

She did conceive by me, perhaps that very night, for just nine months later Raphael Paul Mattison, our first child, emerged from her loins. Twenty years, three sons and two daughters from that blessed day, she and what she has given me are still the fulfillment of all my wildest dreams.

Gentlemen, don't go astray because of low expectations. Ladies, don't let them!