Olive Bread Afternoon

By the time we finish the apple pie on our little table outside the cafe, I have given the newspaper to you and picked up my book. But my mind isn't on the book, it is on you. The sun is now high enough to be clear of the buildings across the canal. It is one of those lazy bright weekend mornings when sunlight suffuses everything with a brilliance without being blinding.

I study you as you read the newspaper. Your bright eyes, the unruly wisps of hair on your forehead, the curve of your mouth opening in time for the coffee cup you raise to your lips every now and then, the pale skin of your neck and throat moving as you swallow the coffee, the visible collarbone at the base of your neck and the beginning of your shoulder that I have kissed a thousand times, the unbuttoned top half of your soft white silk shirt moving with your body as you lean forward for the coffee revealing the curve of your right breast, your left elbow resting on the table, your hands holding the newspaper aloft at reading distance. All so familiar and yet it stirs an inevitable desire in me that I fight to subdue.

When the sun is at its peak in the sky and we are tired of reading, we head back to the airbnb stopping first to buy provisions for lunch at a bakery near the cafe.

As you put down the bag with the olive bread, the fresh wine-red grapes, and the triangle of brie cheese on the kitchen table, I envelop you in my arms from behind you, kissing the back of your neck, my hands reaching under your shirt for your breasts. You squeal in surprise and then in pleasure as I cup and squeeze your breasts and pull gently on your nipples. I burrow my face against the side of your neck, kissing urgently, biting downwards towards your shoulders. 

Voice hoarse with desire, I whisper "I want you. I have always wanted you". 

You reach back with your hands and pull up your skirt. "I know, baby. I could feel your eyes on me".

Lust took its course as I tear into you with my need, pinning you down onto the kitchen table, in time savagely emptying into you from behind. 

The urgency now tempered, I pick you up in my arms and take you to the couch to take care of your needs more slowly and gently in the striated light of the afternoon sun coming in through the window blinds.

Afterwards, as you rest I go back to the kitchen table to pull the olive bread apart into chunks and grind some fresh black pepper and sea salt onto extravirgin olive oil in a shallow dish. I think about the grapes but instead pour two glasses of the unfinished Malbec from last night. Pulling up a chair to sit next to you, I feed you lunch as you lie propped up on the couch cushions.

The farmer's daughter

In this strange world where we want to be misled and we want to misunderstand, I tell you a story.

I take your hands in mine and raising them to my lips, kiss them softly. As the music plays, its Latin rhythm coaxing us into dancing, I pull you towards me. Your black dress twirls as you give in to my gentle touches directing your body with the music. 

We dance in the courtyard of an ornate high-ceilinged marble building with multiple tall arched windowed doors on all sides. The sun is low on the horizon and its rays light up the clumps of tall grasses that grow in the marsh surrounding the building. In the easterly warm wind, a sprinkling of brightly coloured flowers wave on stems tall enough to peek above the grasses. At one end of the courtyard are the now rusted metal statues of a man and woman frozen in a dance, her body arched backwards as his body leans onto hers to kiss her neck, their arms enveloping each other.

"Did I tell you?" I ask, as I pull you into an embrace within the dance.

"Tell me what?" you respond, looking up at me, the warmth of the dying sun reflecting in your eyes.

I lead you in and out of my embrace as we dance in the bright white light spilling out of the building onto the brick courtyard.

"That we are in the middle of nowhere, Argentina. That on a moonless rainy night long long ago on the road that runs parallel to the overhead electric transmission lines in the distance, the road that you can barely see from here, a general's car broke down. He walked towards the only light he could see and when he knocked on the ramshackle house, the farmer's daughter opened the door. It was love at first sight. The general married her and took her away to the city. But in time he had this beautiful building built for them to dance in when they came back here."

"Is this true or are you just making it up?" you ask, smiling as we grind gently against each other in the recurring transient moments of closeness within the dance.

I smile back at you, hands reaching to caress your lips ever so briefly just as you twirl out of my reach in the dance. 

"Their children put in the statues here as a memorial to them when they died. Rumour has it that when the sun is low on the horizon and the easterly winds are just right, the statues come alive and you can see them dancing here in the courtyard in the light that spills out of the windowed doors. She wears a black dress and anyone who has ever seen them says she looks lovely in his arms."

You rest your face against mine as we sway together. 

"That on dark and rainy nights you can see the farmer's daughter using the telescope on the upper floor balcony to look for the headlights of the general's car."

"How beautiful and sad" you say. 

In the light of the low sun, I lean into you arching your body backwards to kiss your neck, our arms enveloping one another.