Malkie is a gay New York lawyer who has a passing encounter with Romanian university student Sofia, who is spending the summer working as a waitress in a high-end western Massachusetts town. It’s where Malkie and her family spend weekends and holidays, as do many other New Yorkers. When they meet, Sofia whispers, “If you are interested, and I think you are, you can contact me here.” Malkie ignores the overture and the little slip of paper placed in her hand.
When she returns a month later, though, Malkie decides to find out what Sofia has in mind. She believes it when Sophia says she is attracted to the lawyer, and not just as a hook-up. Can Sophia make Malkie understand she’s worthy of another woman’s love?
Sofia was sitting in a chair on the porch when I arrived at about 2:10. Fall had begun to set in, and she wore a light blue sweater over her white blouse and black work-pants. I wore a pair of jeans with a blue blazer over a rose t-shirt. Before I sat, she said, “Let us walk.”
“I do not know your name.”
“Malkie,” I told her.
“It is a nice name.”
“Thank you. What’s your name and where are you from?”
“I am Sofia. I go to school in Bucharest. Romania.”
“So you are Romanian?”
She told me she was and that she was soon to enter the final year of her university. She was studying electrical engineering.
“The world always needs more electrical-engineers. I can work anywhere in Europe. We all learn English. It makes life easier when we get a degree.”
I told her that I was a lawyer in New York City. “Just starting out. I graduated law school two years ago.”
“That makes you how old?”
“I’m twenty-seven.”
I explained that I was unmarried and lived with my parents on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She said she had heard of it, from movies and TV shows. I explained that, no, we did not have a huge apartment like she sees in the movies.
Suddenly as we walked through a green, she stopped.
“You do not want an electrical engineer. What do you want?”
I did not know and I told her.
“I think you do” -- again -- and she bent down and kissed my lips and quickly pulled back. “Am I right?”
“I don’t even know you.”
“And you do not sleep with women on the first date? You think that I screw everyone I can, especially here in America when I will be leaving and never have to see them again? You do, do you not?”
She was rather forward, and I hesitated. “Isn’t that why you gave me your info?”
“I give you my information because I thought you were interested in me. Of course, I am interested in you. You cannot blame me.”
A note on this. There is no way this was not seduction talk. I am average height and a little heavy with nice boobs. My face is round and framed in dark hair. My nose is not small. I have never managed to have a steady girlfriend and rarely have gotten a second look from someone, male or female. Of course, working long hours and living with my parents do not help my prospects. But I am not blind and know that few would consider me a catch.
And Sofia? She was a catch. Things were slow and fall was setting in and her departure was impending. She wanted to get laid.
“You do not believe me. You think I am trying to talk you into my bed. I would love to have you there. But it is a small room in a small house in a poor neighborhood of Pittsfield” -- the once-but-no-longer thriving city just north of Lenox -- “so I am embarrassed about taking you there. I promise you I have been a good girl in America. I am not a saint. I have slept with three or four women since I arrive. I will sleep with you. But only if you tell me you want to sleep with me.”
I need to circle back on this. I must mention that while I am not a virgin (at least as far as women are concerned), I can count the number of my sexual partners on the fingers of one hand. And the number of times I have had sex with another person on the fingers of two hands and the toes on one foot.
I didn’t know how to reply to this offer, and we resumed walking.
“I said that wrong. I want to sleep with you. Very much. But I will only do so if you tell me that it is what you want to do.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you want to sleep with me?”
Again, we stopped, and her arms went around my waist. She leaned in again, and her lips touched mine but this time her tongue entered my mouth and I’m afraid to admit that I moaned when it hit my own tongue.
“Now you understand?”
