Gelato

Clean Sheets 2010

I was less than five feet away and looking at her through the lens of my camera and was struck by the intensity of her blue eyes. Briefly she turned my way as I snapped the first picture and then back to the task at hand; creating a work of edible art from gelato for the middle-aged man standing in front of me watching her every move. His son, about ten years old, noticed nothing but the green colored gelato he was spooning into his mouth. She filled the man's cone and then built four slanted gelato sides that stopped short of becoming a point.

She handed him the cone. He put some Euros that had been at the ready on the glass countertop. Merci, she said. He smiled at the cone. Merci, he said, and turned and licked simultaneously. He spoke to his son in French, and both of them smiled as they exited the store.

I had taken a half dozen more pictures of her making the cone, and finally I put the camera down and looked at her as she asked me something that could have been almost anything, as my attention was on her pouty bottom lip and not what was being said. She repeated herself and I finally understood -- cone or cup was being asked, and not what form of pleasure can I give you, sir.

Cone, I told her, and then looked down once again at the gelato choices under glass and pointed to the merangue. She smiled, but just slightly, and took a small tasting spoon from a dish and reached in and scrapped a mini scoop of merangue. Unexpectedly she put it into her mouth slowly and provocatively while I stood watching her trying my choice of gelato. She then reached down, tossed the spoon in the trash and picked up a cone and began to build me a merangue Eiffel Tower as she had for the customer before.

I wondered what color her hair was, since it was hidden behind a baker's "do rag," which seemed to be more of a fashion statement than a health code requirement. Her age was a mystery; she could have been twenty-two or thirty-two, or sixteen or seventeen. She was magnificent to my fifty-year-old eyes, and I felt the surge of love at first sight return to me as I pointed to the cherries and cream gelato.

The girl/woman was enchanting, but I was salivating from thoughts of the gelato playing with my taste buds. It had been years since I'd been in Florence and had great gelato. This would rival it. I could tell by looking, even before tasting it. She built my sidewalls with the cherries and cream as I snapped away picture after picture. She wore a cook's white shirt, collarless and buttoned off-center. It was spotless and white as if she'd just opened it from the cleaners. It had the dual effect of hiding her body and yet making it sexy and alluring.

I paid and said thank you, forgetting to even try one of my six French words. She rang up my money and said nothing as I licked my gelato and closed my eyes with more ecstasy than should have been allowed by law.

It's four o'clock, I must close, she said. Her French accented English sang ballads to me. She came around the counter and closed the window blinds on the shop windows and turned a sign around to read what I could only guess meant closed. I didn't move. Her cook's shirt didn't come all the way down to her knees, and her legs were as shapely as the cones she made. She closed the blinds on the door and we were alone in the small shop, now illuminated by the lights from the gelato case and several recessed lights from above.

I must refill the case, she said, without asking me to leave, and I nodded as she started to pass by me and then bent her head down and took a bite of gelato from my cone. She went around the counter and into the back room and returned carrying a plastic container mounded with chocolate gelato that she put into place, after removing an almost empty one. She made the same trip four or five times, during which I finished my gelato, cone and all, and watched.

Wiping off the glass case with a towel, she nodded approvingly at her own handiwork and took another mini spoon and reached in for a taste. It was the merangue again. She pointed at the door and I realized that she was telling me to go, so I waved and turned the doorknob.

No, she said, suddenly from behind me, and reached over and locked the door. She held out another sample spoon of gelato, and before I could get my mouth on it, she laughed and leaned her head back and swiped it on her neck. I did the only thing that came to mind; I licked it off. After a minute or so she went behind the counter and unbuttoned her tunic, shrugged out one arm, exposing her left breast, which was round and full with her pink nipple standing at attention. She filled a sample spoon with more merangue, and while holding her breast from below with her left hand, covered the nipple with the merangue held in her right hand.

While I was licking and sucking her nipple clean, my hands reached around and grabbed her ass. Her tunic slid up and there was nothing but skin to my touch. She pulled away, unbuttoned her tunic all the way, and sat on the counter. She put gelato on her right nipple and then in her navel; both of which I dispatched greedily with my lips and tongue.

She lay back on the counter after merangueing her pussy, and whispered in sing-song French all the time I was de-meranguing her. She thrust herself hard against my mouth, her legs tightening on my back, and then her body slumped like a rag doll. I began undoing my belt when there was a knock on the door. She looked at her watch and showed me a couple of minutes to five, pushed me away, rebuttoned her tunic, and led me out from behind the counter.

She opened the blinds, the door, and turned the sign around as a half dozen people crowded into her small store. Cup or cone, she said to the first customer, not looking at me or even noticing when I finally edged my way out of the store, heading back to Notre Dame to find my wife, Elaine, whom I ran into a short distance from the store.

I feel like a gelato, Mirsky, she said to me, and I told her that I tried it, and to take it from me, it's not like Florence. Not like Florence at all, I repeated. You might not enjoy it as much, I told her. How about you, she asked in a teasing tone as she reached up and wiped my chin. Me, I said. I'm another story altogether.