Nora helps Margot out (Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1)

At the bottom of the stone steps leading to the neighbor’s door, Margot & Nora held the small wooden dresser as Margot knocked with her knee. “Oh Asami, we have something for you!”

A woman came to the door wearing only a pair of cuffed canvas pants and a chambray apron tied at the waist and streaked with gouache. The cloth didn’t manage to cover her small, widely-spaced breasts, which danced either side as she hopped over a pair of hiking boots on the mat. “Margot dear! You caught me painting. Please, come in!”

You have got to be kidding me, Nora thought as she helped Margot wrestle the dresser through the narrow entryway hung with coats and hats. This feels like the opening scene of a porno. After Margot’s unintentional peep show upstairs, their conversation about nude photography over a two-page spread of a woman masturbating in the bath, and the stairway descent of the barefoot and braless furniture-movers, Nora didn’t think the evening had any more surprises in store. But now this, a perky topless painter who Nora recognized as Em & Janie’s pottery teacher at the college inviting them into her apartment. I swear, if this ends with me naked…

Asami led the two women with their cargo through the kitchen into a combined living room and bedroom. The large bed, to Nora’s surprise, sat at the very center of the room looking not unlike a stage. Asami’s apartment was light-filled and open like Margot’s, but looked out over the private tiered garden and trees of the hillside rather than the city. Her palette and easel stood in a sunlit corner.

“Just set that there next to the closet. I’m going to wash up.” Asami disappeared into the bathroom while the women lowered the dresser gently into place. Nora glanced over at the vanity and did a double take at what appeared to be a ceramic dildo, gently curved and glazed in rich purple and rose swirls. My goodness these middle-aged ladies.

“Isn’t that just lovely? She makes them over in her pottery studio,” Margot said with a smile, noticing Nora’s glance. “I have one somewhere. Best when you warm it up a bit first.”

Asami came out of the bathroom and hung her apron on a corner of the easel. She crossed to the closet, topless and barefoot, and retrieved a white linen shirt which she slipped over her head. Nora admired the woman’s ease and obvious groundedness in her body, finding the contrast between the fluid movements of her limbs and the firm jiggle of her breasts to be oddly satisfying, as if carefully choreographed for an audience. It reminded her of aspirations in her own dance practice — everyday movements rendered beautifully and subtly. She thought back to the dildo on the vanity.

“Asami, this is Nora. Nora, Asami,” Margot said, motioning to each of them in turn.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nora. Care to stay for a cup of tea?”

“I’d love that.”

“I’m going to leave you ladies to it,” Margot said, leaning in to give Asami a hug first, and then Nora. “Thanks for your help, honey.” Nora tried to ignore that she could feel Margot’s large breasts practically engulf her own.

Asami set a kettle to boil and cleared a space for the two of them at a small round table. When the water was ready she carried in a handmade teapot and two tiny cups.

“Margot said you make, um, pottery?” Nora involuntarily looked toward the vanity.

“I make all kinds of things out of clay. Have you seen my wands?”

Nora giggled. “Oh my gosh, I was talking about the teapot… but yeah, I noticed the one by your bed. Margot told me she has one too.”

Asami stood and retrieved a banker’s box from a shelf in the hall, which she set on the floor between them. “I make them in all shapes and sizes.” Inside was a tidy stack of ceramic wands tied up in cotton sleeves. She placed three on the table and poured two cups of tea. The smell of jasmine rose in the still room.

Nora picked up the first, which was significantly heavier than she expected, and slid it out of its sleeve. It was a good 20 centimeters long and glazed in an earthy pink. The thickness filled her hand. The second was shorter and slimmer, tapering to a rounded point and glazed the color of honey. The third was midway between the two in size and gently curved. When she lifted it with her fingertips at the base, the other end reached the inside of her wrist. Its surface was cool and glassy, glazed in lavender flecked with gold. “This one is lovely,” she said, turning it in her palm.

“I want you to take it home with you. A gift of thanks for all your work this evening,” Asami said, taking a sip of tea. “Funny you chose that one, mine is the same model. It’s a fun shape.”

“Thank you, Asami, that’s so kind. It’s beautiful work.”

“They’re modeled from actual people, you know.”

Nora’s eyes went wide. She looked afresh at the object in her hands.

“It’s true! I don’t keep track of who, of course, but each one starts from a reference made out of plaster. Friends and colleagues, a few graduated students. The process of making the reference is actually quite playful, and the models seem to enjoy it.”

“You just, like, casually make a casting of their hardon?”

“Yep.”

“And they know it’s going to become a… wand?”

“Sure do!”

“That’s wild.” Nora drank the rest of her tea. The sun was setting behind the magnolias outside the window. “Thank you, Asami.”

“Let me know how you like it.”

Nora walked down the stone steps through the flowering trees as a flock of parrots rounded Citron Hill. The sky was streaked with lavender clouds over a band of gold at the horizon. She felt the length of the smooth ceramic wand in her back pocket press gently but suggestively against her bottom. What an evening.