Stu

Ana walked by George’s office early the following morning, before the bank opened. She was wearing a black sweater, snug black-denim pants, and her 5-inch black stiletto pumps, which clicked quite loudly in the corridor. She stopped and stood in the entrance to George’s office and said cheerfully, “Good morning, George. How was your conference? We missed you here!” She looked at George, and could tell he was a little surprised by her unusually friendly manner. George managed to stammer out that the conference was fine, and Ana said she would see him later and walked away. It was important not to start off too strong.

The day proceeded normally until Ana’s mid-afternoon break. She walked back to George’s office, the clicking of her heels announcing her presence well before she actually arrived. “Hi, George!” she said. “Can I come in?”

“Why sure, Ana. Make yourself at home,” George replied, gesturing for her to sit down in the chair in front of his desk. “What’s up?”

Ana sat down in the chair, positioning it so that it was at a slight angle relative to George’s desk. This would allow a better view of her shapely profile. She crossed her legs, so that the heel on her right foot was dangling in the air, where George could readily see it.

“George,” she said. “I have a big favor to ask of you.” She explained that Joe, one of the assistant managers at the bank, was having a birthday next week. Ana had volunteered to go buy a birthday card for him for all the bank staff to sign. “I need a man’s advice to ensure I get the right card for Joe. I was hoping you could come with me to the store, maybe tomorrow during lunch, to help me buy a card.” She talked for a minute or two about Joe’s sense of humor and how she, as a woman, might not be able to pick the right card that would really appeal to him. As she talked, she let her shoe hang from her toes, which she wiggled slowly to make the shoe rock back and forth slightly.

“Why sure, Ana, that sounds fine. Let me know when you have lunch break tomorrow, and we can go,” George said calmly, but Ana could see that his eyes darted nervously a couple of times to her foot before returning to her eyes. Men are so helpless, she thought.

“OK. Let’s be ready to go at 12:30 tomorrow. Thank you so much, George. You are a real sweetie.” Ana got up, turned around, and exited George’s office with her standard wiggle. She turned in the doorway, looked back at him, and said, “See you then.”

Ana met George at their designated time the following afternoon for the five-block walk to the greeting-card store. Ana was wearing a navy-blue top, skintight blue corduroy pants, and matching 5-inch blue stiletto sandals. They talked about the bank as they walked over to the card store. Many men might have asked Ana whether she was comfortable making the walk in such high heels, but George was too shy to bring up the subject. They arrived at the store and began looking at cards. “You look here, and I’ll look over here,” Ana said, moving about six feet away from George.

She looked through the cards, realizing that George had an excellent view of her high heel-enhanced profile. As she looked at the cards, she kept an eye on George through her peripheral vision. George was turned towards her, so that he could see her through his peripheral vision while he looked at the cards. Ana smiled to herself.

“Oh, look, George. Here’s one. Let me read it to you.” Ana said. She then employed a flirting technique she had learned as a teenager in Costa Rica. She turned so that she was facing George at a slight angle. She positioned her right foot a little ahead of her left foot. This particularly sexy angle gave George an excellent view of her feet, legs, posterior and her figure as a whole, and she could still look him straight in the eye while appearing completely natural. Costa Rican women flirted this way all the time, but Ana had almost never seen it done in the United States.

Ana read the card, giggled, and asked George what he thought. George liked the card and said it definitely was a candidate, but suggested they keep looking. Ana had used her peripheral vision to observe George as she read the card, and was certain he had given her a split-second elevator-eyes look. How can you not love men, she thought.

They spent a good 30 minutes looking at cards. During the last 15 minutes, Ana changed her strategy entirely, choosing to stand right next to George as they looked at cards together. She was wearing one of her favorite perfumes, expecting it would make a favorable impression on George. They made a lot of eye contact as they read and reread the cards that they felt were the best candidates. They finally picked one, paid for it, and left the store.

“I am not sure I have ever spent 30 minutes looking for a card, not even for my wife,” George said as they walked back. “That was a very pleasant lunch break, and I am sure ‘ol Joe will like the card. Thanks for asking me to come along, Ana.” It was one of the few times Ana had ever seen him smile.

“George, you were very helpful. I could not have done this alone.” Ana added, “Would you mind if we slowed down a bit? I would be more comfortable walking in these high heels if we went a little slower.”

“Of course,” George responded. “No need to get back to the bank so quickly any way.” He added, “I suppose you must look forward to weekends, when you wear shoes that are a little lower.”

As far as Ana was concerned, she had hit the bulls-eye. She did not think she would be able to get George to say anything about her heels, even though she had set him up for just such a comment. The man must really be enjoying himself.

“Actually,” Ana said, touching him on the arm, “on most weekends, I wear shoes that are even higher. I know all of you at the bank think I am crazy, but we Costa Rican women live in our high heels.”

“And I am sure your husband appreciates that,” George said. Another bulls-eye!

Ana turned to George and said playfully, “As a matter of fact, he does!”

*** *** ***

George got very little work done that afternoon. He felt like a teenager again, with every cell of his being filled with desire. Ana completely dominated his thoughts. Every detail of her was vivid – her lovely brown-red hair, the scent of her alluring purfume, her shapely hips, world-class ass, long legs, and those killer heels. But there was something else that filled George with both excitement and dread. Ana knows, he thought. She knows I have been looking at her. But how? I have been so subtle and so careful, it seems impossible that she could have noticed. Ana has never shown the remotest interest in me, so there is no reason for her to think I had been admiring her. Perhaps I had not been as careful as I had thought. However she did it, she knows I have been looking at her. That is the only explanation for sudden interest in me, he concluded.

And anyway, he thought, look at the bright side: She knows, and she likes it, and she is being friendly with you. It could be a lot worse: She could have made efforts to avoid me, or, heaven forbid, filed a complaint against me. If she had to find out, this is the way it should turn out.

He stopped at the supermarket on the way home and bought flowers and a card for Patricia. Part guilt, perhaps, but also an affirmation for himself that no matter how much he lusted after Ana, he knew Pat was his woman. By 9 p.m. that night, he could not stand it any longer, and he practically had to beg Patricia to get into bed. He was like an uncontrolled bull, with his head full of thoughts of Ana. He tried to bring Patricia into his fantasies, but his experience with Ana was only a few hours old, and there was no way that Patricia could compete with Ana in his imagination. So he just thought of Ana, her ass, the way she stood, her near-vertical feet in her heels, the blue nail polish on her toes that matched her heels, the smell of her perfume, the way she stood so close to him that he could reach out, seal her lips with his and stick his tongue down her throat. He was moving so forcefully that Patricia had to ask him to be more gentle. They both climaxed but, an hour later, as they thought they were going to bed for real, George wanted to do it again. Patricia could not remember the last time they had made love twice in the same night.

As she lay in bed after the second lovemaking session, Patricia could only think of one thing: What had Ana done to him? She may have kept her promise of not telling George about that awful lunchtime conversation, but she was clearly acting on the information she had gained from it. Was she acting out of revenge to Patricia because of the way she had embarrassed her at lunch with her stories of George’s sexual interest in her? Or maybe she was a tease who got her kicks by whipping men into a frenzy?

To make things worse, George went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of her favorite wine. Oh, God, wine was the last thing she wanted right now! But she sipped it anyway, not wanting to hurt George’s feelings. George talked about all the romantic places they could visit once he retired, how they could do so many things that they had never had the time to enjoy over the years. Oh, Patricia thought, what he must have been thinking about Ana to feel so guilty that he has to do this!

She finished the first glass of wine and George poured her the second glass. She did not want it, but she simply could not say no. Despite her protestations, George poured her a third glass, pointing out that she was going to go to asleep anyway, so there was no problem with it.

“So how was work today?” Patricia asked as she worked on her third glass. She began asking about long-time associates of George’s at the bank that she had known for years. They talked a bit about each of them, and then Patricia asked, “And how is Ana?”

George gulped hard on his wine. “Ana?”

“Yes, Ana. One of your bank tellers. You know, while you were at your conference, I was in the neighborhood of the bank and I needed some money, so I stopped inside. Ana was the teller who assisted me. I introduced myself to her, said I was your wife. She was very friendly. A real snazzy lady.”

“I don’t really talk to her much. I don’t know her very well.”

Patricia knew she should have stopped, but her husband’s understated response annoyed her. So she kept pushing.

“She is a very nice lady. I actually had lunch with her the other day. I was interested in what she could tell me about Costa Rica, because we might want to go there someday. So I called her up and asked her to lunch.”

“You did? That’s funny. Ana never mentioned it to me,” George said. “But it is even more curious that you never mentioned it to me. You usually tell me about things like that.”

Somehow, I have done it again, Patricia thought. George is right; I would normally tell him something like that. If I could just say no to wine. “I guess I just forgot,” she said.

George put the wine glass down. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together in a way he did not like. “OK, Patricia. Tell me what is going on. Why are you interested in Ana?”

“I could ask the same of you, George,” Patricia said defensively. “I heard you say her name when we were making love that one time. You denied it, but I heard it. So I decided to find out who she was, and I went to the bank, and one thing led to another, and we had lunch. That is all. Is your story that simple?”

“There is no story,” George said. “She is a teller at the bank. Yes, she is a very attractive woman, and she dresses sharply, as you undoubtedly observed. I can’t control the fact that the bank hired an attractive woman to work as a teller. You want to know something? She asked me today if I could help her select a birthday card for Joe. That is the most I have ever talked with her.”

“And look at what it did to you. You go pick out a birthday card with this woman Ana, and you come home like Casanova possessed. How long has it been since we did it twice in one night?”

“It is odd that Ana never showed the slightest degree of interest in me until today. And now it turns out that she starts becoming real friendly and flirtatious with me right after you have lunch with her.”

George stopped. All of a sudden, the puzzle came together in his head. “Oh, my God, Patricia! You hear me mention this woman’s name once, you become curious, you have lunch with her, and suddenly she is friendly to me. What did you tell her, Patricia? Did you tell her I blurted out her name once when we were making love?”

“Oh, George, do you think I would ever tell her something like that?” She stopped, and tears began to well up in her eyes. “What I told her was something far worse. Oh, George, it was an accident. I never wanted to say or do anything that would embarrass you! Please forgive me!”

George filled his glass of wine and downed it in one gulp. “Just what did you tell her, Patricia?”

To be continued.