by Layla Briar
(02/20/08)

The plumber calls, "Ma'am?" and I come around the corner. He has a fistful of what looks, at first, like wet straw. On closer examination I see that it's a tangle of condoms. I blush; then frown. This will never do. He's so beautiful, with his compact muscles and fresh haircut, but there's no way I can seduce a man who handles other people's waste with bare hands. It demonstrates a cavalier attitude toward hygiene. I sigh: another one down. I explain the condoms by telling him that my nephew was here dog-sitting, in February, while I went on a cruise. This is perfectly true. I have used condoms, myself, the last few times I've had sex, but I know enough not to flush them. And it's been a while. Since October, and Carlisle.

The plumber jokes with me pleasantly; he asks if maybe my dog-sitting nephew could give him some pointers, maybe teach him some fresh pick-up lines. "There must've been a dozen rubbers down there."

"Well, Ryan's a hottie."

"Zat so?"

He washes his hands, and I make a mental note of everything he touches -- faucet, soap pump, towel -- so I'll know what to disinfect later. It's such a shame. He has lovely hands, with straight fingers and smooth, square-trimmed nails.

"Boys or girls?" He pushes a button on his remote control, and the plumbing snake retreats backward down my hallway, leaving a glistening trail.

"What?"

We back up together toward the kitchen, him wiping the floorboards as he goes. "Your nephew. Does he like boys or girls?"

"Are you gay?"

He straightens, nodding.

I snort with laughter, and keep on laughing. The plumber smiles, confused. I love this guy. He's warm -- the opposite of Carlisle. When I finally regain my composure, I offer him coffee, and he accepts.

"Ryan is straight." I offer the plumber the sugar bowl, noting where he touches it. "I'm sorry for laughing at you. It's a long story." He leans against my sink to indicate he's got plenty of time. He's wearing gay-guy clothes, I realize now. A T-shirt with a supple drape, Italian jeans. As gay as you can get away with in rural Ontario. Boy, am I ever thick.

"It would offend you," I tell him.

"Naw."

I know it won't, anyway. I tell him I belong to a book club, all women, all around my age. "I'm fifty-two," I add. He nods. "Well, we generally read literary fiction, you know, serious stuff by serious authors. But for a change, a few months ago, we read this trashy chick-lit thing, they're always about slutty junior editors, or PR reps -- anyway, it was so clichéd that the protagonist actually seduced the pool-cleaning boy in one scene."

"As if a slutty junior editor could afford a pool."

I smile. I love him. "Well, exactly. And then we women got to talking amongst ourselves, and the big debate was, how possible is that, really? To seduce a tradesperson who comes to your house?" I'm half-hoping he'll answer my rhetorical question; I wouldn't mind his perspective. But he stays silent, keeps smiling, so I go on. "About half the women said, piece of cake. Any woman can seduce any man, anytime. The other half said, no way, José."

"And you said?"

"I said I wish I'd taken the trouble to find out, back when I was young and sexy."

He laughs. "You're still sexy, hon."

I smile at him, gratefully. "Well, I hope so...because they dared me to, and I accepted."

"You bet them you could seduce a repairman."

I nod. "They gave me a year to make good on the bet. This is an old farm. Things are always breaking down. And there's no husband to fix them." I raise my eyebrows provocatively.

"And I was a prospect until I told you I'm gay?"

I shake my head. "Until I saw you with that handful of used condoms. Eww."

He frowns in mock offense, and I press an extra twenty into his hands with the credit card slip. On his way out, he spots Ryan's graduation photo on top of my piano, and taps it with a finger. "What a shame. Bet I could convert him."

"Out!" I shoo him playfully through the door, and watch him pick his way gingerly down the frozen walk.

Before the gorgeous gay plumber there was the furnace guy, a middle-aged fellow named Rocco who showed me pictures of his five children, four girls and a boy. Way too married. Then two months later, the furnace conked out again and they sent someone else, an earnest man with an accent, balding but young, maybe in his late twenties. I flirted my heart out with THAT guy. He answered mostly in monosyllables until he got on a rant about the son he'd fathered back home in Albania when he was eighteen. The mother was a monster, an evil jezebel bent on denying the boy a life of comfort here, in Lambton County. I told him I felt his pain. I told him everybody needs a little comfort in this life. I told him we deny ourselves the company of others, and for what? I sucked lasciviously on a candy cane. I considered putting vodka in his tea. But it was no use. Miz Boland this and Miz Boland that, through two days of clunking around in my freezing cellar. When he passed me in the doorway, he'd suck his stomach in and flatten himself against the jamb lest any part of his body touch any part of mine. It was useless.

And so, when I'm fed up with whatever it is that's shredding the insulation in the eaves of my garage and call the ratcatcher, it barely registers that the man they send is unpromising -- a stern farmer-type, perhaps seventy years old. I lead him to where I keep the ladder, and I go in to make coffee.

Five minutes later, there's a howl -- then a thud -- in my sideyard; and the unmistakable odour of skunk percolates through the cracks in the siding. I hurry to the window and the ratcatcher is on his knees, digging blindly through his bag. He pulls out a white plastic bottle, wrenches off the cap, and splashes the contents into his face with both hands. I hold my breath and struggle with the old window, stiff even in this dry cold; it's been shut since fall. There's a blast of cold air and then the skunk tang hits, making my eyes water even at this distance.

Before I have a chance to ask what I can do for him, the ratcatcher is barking orders. "Hose! Towel! An old one!" He's facing me but he can't see; his eyes are scrunched tight against the assault. His white hair stands on end all around his face, giving him the look of a mad professor. "Is your outside water on?"

I run to the shut-off to check, then to the shed for the hose. When I get back, he's wearing only a pair of graying, stretched-out briefs. I hesitate. "You know, you could come inside and shower. It can't be more than six or seven degrees --"

He grabs the hose from my hands. "You don't want me inside, ma'am. House'll stink for months."

I believe it. Just being near him, I know that the smell has permeated me, too -- my hair, my pores. I back away.

"Did you not expect to be sprayed?"

He snorts. "Didn't expect a skunk. Not in the rafters. Skunks don't climb."

"Oh no?"

"Towel," he growls, turning the water on.

The ratcatcher turns, dripping, at the sound of my next approach, and I can see that his stomach is preposterously flat, his midsection almost concave above the abdominal muscles. But the skin on those abs is old-man skin -- thin, and losing its grip on the structures beneath. I find myself staring; I don't hand him the towel immediately, even though his shriveled nipples are blue with cold. Instead, and without ceremony, I reach out and place my free hand on that flat belly. We look down together and watch with detached interest as the slight bulge in his sodden briefs lengthens, then rises, straining against the wet cotton.

When the ratcatcher meets my gaze, he doesn't smile; instead he frowns and appraises, gauging my intent. This strikes me as funny and I want to ask him, sarcastically, if this is a common occurrence, for strange women to test his virility. But I can't even open my mouth. He is dour and frowning and I am frozen to the spot. He is also spectacularly hard for an old buzzard -- well, how would I know, not having fucked anyone his age -- but the head of his cock has actually fought its way out of a leghole and is inches from my elbow.

I look in his eyes for permission to touch it; I feel suddenly much more like a naughty child than a seductress. But his expression doesn't soften. He takes the towel from me and steps backward for room to dry off. With his long fingers, he rakes the elastic of his briefs down over his hipbones, and lets them drop to the ground. He stands front-on to me, cock at full salute as he dries his hair, and there's an unmistakable threat in this. His leanness makes him nakeder than naked. He's grandpa-old and teenage-hard and he's smack in the middle of my sideyard in March. The bare branches of my mock-orange bush rattle icily against the drainpipe and if anyone drove by right now, they'd surely crash into my mailbox at the sight of him. I look down at his bony white feet on the frozen grass and the lewdness of just that little detail makes my breathing shallow.

He walks toward me and hangs the towel over the railing. The skunk smell is so strong that I teeter when he leans closer, the wind behind him now. He kisses me roughly, his gums bony under his thin lips, hard teeth just below the surface. He scoops up handfuls of my long skirt in each fist -- trying to get at me right there next to the tap -- and I have to squeak "indoors," as if he didn't know any better, like an animal not quite tame.

Even then, I lead him only as far as the antique church pew in my entrance before he sits, stubbornly, and yanks me toward him. When I stoop to pull my panties off, my face comes within inches of his cock but I'm thinking instead of the hose, in summertime, and being a child in need of a drink. I imagine the mineral-and-rubber-tinged reward, excess water dribbling on my shoes, the rest icy at the back of my throat. And so I open my mouth, but he won't allow that; he impales me on him instead, and I fumble for a handhold and find none. I'm forced to flatten my palms against the wall for traction.

His thighs are hard and shockingly cold. His cock is cold. I have never felt such a thing before. My face is so close to the wall that I have to turn my head sideways and my cheekbone bumps hard against the paint, twice, three times, and he's done. It's only then, too late, that I even begin to feel aroused myself, or, at least, become aware of it. I linger in his lap until his eyes open, and he eases himself free of me with a shudder.

The ratcatcher offers no apology for the brevity of his performance. We're both farming people; I guess he assumes I'm familiar with the concept of 'buyer beware.' Buy a truckload of someone else's compost, and you've accepted the risk of crabgrass; seduce an old bachelor who hasn't done it in this decade and bear the risk of premature ejaculation.

He's looking around now, realizing there are no clothes to pull on. His overalls and jacket are outside, in a heap at the top of my driveway. He clears his throat and steps around me, heading for the door.

I frown. "You're not going to put those back on? They're only good for burning. You'll never get the smell out. I'm sure I've got something that'll fit..."

And then, halfway up the stairs, I get angry. Not at this man specifically, or even at Carlisle, who's been the reliable target of my wrath for five months now. Not even at men in general, just for being nothing like the pool boy in that stupid novel. Perhaps I'm angry at myself, for being so willing to scurry in search of clothes for this ungrateful old grouch? But that's not it either.

By the time I've reached the top of the stairs, I find I've completely changed my tack. Instead of digging for a sweatsuit, I get purposefully under the covers of my bed, and I call down to him. "Are you coming?"

He's quiet, and I imagine him standing with his ear cocked, wanting me to repeat myself, but I won't. I wait. He waits. A long moment passes and I savour his confusion. I finally hear his footsteps creaking on the old stairs, and a broad smile creases my face.

The ratcatcher appears in the doorway. My bed is going to smell like skunk forever and I wish I'd thought to use the spare room instead. But what's done is done. He shifts uncertainly on the rug until I actually hold the covers up and pat the mattress for him to sit. He lowers himself onto the sheet and, as angry as I still am, I suddenly feel a strange tenderness toward his frail body: the extreme boniness of his hip, the blue rings that span his nails at the cuticle. He's going to need half an hour at least, I reckon, to get it up again; but that's fine, and it serves my purpose. I take his hand before he's even properly settled and I lay it on my hip. When he doesn't move it, I put my hand over his and move it for him, gliding his smooth, dry palm along the skin of my inner thigh.

I put him to work. I press my lips to his but wait to be kissed, keeping the pressure on until he reacts. I part my knees emphatically and hold his gaze.

And so, the ratcatcher reaches grudgingly for me. He parts the lips of my pussy and slides his fingers into the cleft. He does this dutifully, almost absently, in his farmer's way. I know his kind. The situation confuses him, but duty is familiar.

I'm surprised at my body's eager response after only a moment or two. It takes effort to hold my own hands back. The coolness of his lean body tempts me; the thinness of his skin is strangely intimate, promising access to all manner of textures beneath. Even the skunk smell doesn't repel me; there's purity in the way it overwhelms, leaving room for nothing else.

But I restrain myself and I make him work.

When I'm close to coming, I fight that too. I retreat at the last moment and kneel facing him; I stare impassively and wait for him follow me to his own knees, to cup my breasts in his hands. My skin is thinning too; my nipples droop a few inches lower than they used to, but I find I want his practical, farmer's eyes squarely on me. I want to be seen just as I am. I want to be assessed, appraised -- maybe even found wanting -- and to be pleasured anyway.

He's obeyed this far, and so I give some ground: I let my hands drift where they may. My fingers find the slight swell of his bottom, the only place on his body that's even remotely fleshy, and it's my touch, once again, that arouses him. The ratcatcher is used to work; manual labour is all he knows. He's used to handling bodies, even if they're the bodies of animals. It's gentleness, and mercy, and being touched that are exotic to him.

With my hands on his body, his mouth is instantly softer and hungrier, and I don't have to look down to know he's hard now. I reward him by pushing him onto his back, and I climb astride and ease him slowly inside me. We look down at our genitals and not each other's faces while I accomplish this; our lack of emotional connection has left us free, and we find ourselves fascinated, like children.

I ease my way into a rhythm, careful of my own comfort. I take my time. I glance down as I grind against him and it pleases me to find that the ratcatcher's eyes are closed. He is not searching for my gaze; he doesn't demand engagement; he does nothing to compete with the rhythmic grip and slide of woman on man.

There's dignity in this quiet self-possession. What made me angry earlier -- what I perceived as an inappropriate attitude of entitlement -- moves me now. I lean forward, instinctively finding the angle that will bring me off, and as I do this I put my hands in his wild hair and we come, exactly together, my fingers wrapped gently around his thin skull.

Afterward, I'm careful what I talk about. I don't want to ask him what he does for a living besides pest control, in case, say, he raises minks for fur. Or in case his politics offend me. So we stick to pleasantries. I serve him coffee. I don't offer to pay his fee, because he never did oust my vermin, and so he would feel patronized. I don't tell him he was the best lay of my life. I lend him sweatpants and an old flannel shirt.

As he drives away, I know what he's thinking, because I know his kind: that it's not true what they say. Some skunks do climb.

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