Mary Grace was tired of this shit.  As Gwen Stefani would say, it was bananas.  With her platinum blonde Jean Harlow pin curl ‘do and alabaster skin that rarely saw the sun unless covered with sunscreen fifty, Mary Grace was often told how much she resembled the pop singer.  She heightened the comparisons by getting regular teeth whitening treatments and never leaving the house without what she considered her trademarked red-stained lips; today’s shade was Red Hot, courtesy of Colorevolution.  Of course Mary Grace considered her appearance far superior to that of Ms. Stefani, and at thirty-seven had quite a few more years of beauty ahead of her.  She didn’t even envy her marriage to hottie Gavin Rossdale.  Mary Grace had invested in that ball and chain thing to reap less than lucrative results.  The most valuable things she got from the deal were a Hilton Head townhouse, her cherished cardinal red metallic Mercedes-Benz CLS550, five hundred grand in cash and the irrefutable knowledge that gorgeous philandering husbands came a dollar a gross.  Two years later and she had managed to retain only fifty percent of those assets.  Yet here she was again, rolling the dice, pulling the handle, spinning the wheel, wearing a hypocritical white dress with Brennan Hammond’s arm linked through hers as they promenaded down a rose petal strewn path cutting through the center of ten rows of folding chairs containing some two hundred guests.  And at the end of it was Carlson, turning away from her and striding across the grass.
.        She felt her future father-in-law’s arm tighten, but she remained undaunted, holding her smile as she made her way towards the minister, the ten bridesmaids and groomsmen who were now all looking back at her with poorly concealed panicked expressions.  Her eyes locked with best man Tyler’s and she tried to read in them any evidence that he had prior knowledge of what appeared to be the groom’s cold feet.  She was somewhat relieved to discover he looked just as surprised as she felt.  She even detected a slight shrug, a tilt of the head.
.        This shit is bananas.
.        Brennan deposited her safely before the minister, between Tyler and maid of honor Beatrice, her older sister, who leaned in and whispered, “What’s going on?”
.        Without cracking her smile and barely moving her lips, Mary Grace–Maggy to her sister’s Trixie–answered, “Not sure,” although she had more than a mere inkling of what may be afoot.
.        “Excuse me for a moment,” she said to Father O’Neil.  He nodded back at her, his lip turned down in the beginnings of a pout.
.        She hurried across the lawn after her fiance, chased by the not-so-murmuring murmurs of her guests, their tongues already clucking out the tunes of “poor girl” and “such a shame.”
.        She found him by the small lake that bordered the rear of his family’s estate, looking out over it as if he imagined there an ocean, a country on the other side of it to which he could escape rather than the backyard of the neighboring manor.  He heard her approach and turned his head slightly to speak over his shoulder.
.        “I’m so sorry.”
.        She said nothing, her heart hammering, waiting for him to continue.  She’d always known this was a possibility.  Honestly, an outcome more realistic than the ceremony and the actual marriage to follow, ’til death did they part.
.        Finally, he spoke the words that turned the release valve on the building pressure in her chest.
.        “There will be a wedding today.”
.        Again he paused, and for a moment she held her breath, expecting to hear, just not yours and mine.
.        “And I anticipate it will be everything we expect from it.  I suppose I just needed a moment to . . .”
.        “Reflect?”
.        He turned to her and smiled.  Oh, what a crushing smile he had.  Under different circumstances it would be the kind to uplift and fill with hope and the warmth of knowing that when directed at her no harm would come to her, no sadness could break her soul.  But things being as they were, tears sprang to her eyes, the kind that if she didn’t catch them now, they would threaten to pour to overflowing, drowning the very life she was joining with him to cultivate.
.        He reached out to her.  “Reflect with me,” he invited, and she accepted, placing her small hand in his large one, feeling it wrap around hers with comforting security.  She stood beside him, lightly resting her head against his broad shoulder, barely touching so as not to ruin the hairdo that had taken two women and three hours to perfect.
.        “What are we looking at?” she asked softly.
.        “The future.  I had to see it before I could do it.”
.        “And did you?  See it?”
.        “I did.”
.        “And can you?  Do it?”
.        He turned and looked down at her, and she closed her eyes, unable to read in his the unbearable truth.  Either way, she thought, I am not going to win.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Nicklas Tarminsson had always tried to instill in his girls a certain work ethic, a sense of understanding that the amount received worked in tandem with the effort invested.  Of his three daughters, none of them applied this concept to their lives with more dedication and tenacity than Mary Grace.  As early as five she figured out that merely asking for a cookie may get her one or two; crawling into daddy’s lap and batting her eyelashes and pouting her rosebud lips granted her access to the cookie jar as well as a chilled glass of milk.  Such shenanigans were deemed inappropriate once a girl reached a certain age, however, and at nine years old the reward system that was in place for older sister Trixie was implemented for both Mary Grace and her identical twin, Madeleine.
.        “Identical” was the technical term and while strangers may have a hard time telling the sisters apart, Mary Grace’s face was more heart-shaped, Maddy’s oval.  And where Madeleine was more reserved and bookish, a quiet loner who could more times than not be found playing hymns on the piano, it was Mary Grace who convinced her to learn some show tunes, which she would sing along to her sister’s playing with unrestrained glee.  It didn’t matter that she couldn’t stay, or even get, on tune.  What she lacked in skill she more than made up for in volume and execution.  She knew every word, danced with flair, and even her reserved twin came alive when playing piano for Mary Grace.  For that was how Mary Grace saw it: she was the star, her sister an employee to do her bidding.
.        This training would come in handy later, when she needed to convince a boss how happy she was at her job, how brilliantly he maintained his employees.  Or when she was called upon to entertain clients, or garner the most tips from delivering plates of food along with cheeky smiles and snappy one-liners to drunken club-goers during the late night shift at Denny’s during her college years.  But at nine she and her sisters were designated certain household chores.  The list was written on a dry erase board secured to the back of the door of the dry goods closet in the kitchen.  Beside each task was a designated dollar amount and two blank lines, provided for the doer of the chore to fill in her name and date upon completion.  There were fifteen tasks; on a lazy week of Mary Grace’s her name would appear a mere eleven times.  The girls were also rewarded monetarily for school performance and for her entire academic career Mary Grace was in the top five percentile of her class.
.        Upon entering her teens Mary Grace began to see a problem with her father’s reward system as it pertained to men as opposed to women.  She was a fast learner who soon discovered her male co-workers were rewarded with raises and preferential scheduling for even temperance and diligence while the girls with the most lipstick and tightest clothing were awarded the same.  The awakening came during her year-long stint as a fast food worker, her first paying job outside the home.  There was a definite pecking order, with fat, pimply, unattractive girls in charge of such unsavory jobs as cleaning up the dining area, scrubbing the bathrooms, re-stocking straws and cups and condiment packets.  The okay-looking girls and lazy boys were next, working the drive thru and the counter.  Hard-working boys came next in the hierarchy, getting to work the back line, frying up the burgers and preparing the food, joking with each other and never having to put up with some customer’s attitude.  And the sexy girls had it best of all, getting paid to sit in the back room with the boss while he did paperwork or hanging outside the back door, smoking cigarettes and gossiping.  She made an occasional appearance on the floor, to eat a French fry or assist at any station of her choice during peak times.
.        Figuring this out gave her a definite leg up on women still armed with the false sense that intelligence and hard work would earn them a higher paycheck or status.  There was intelligence, and then there was smarts.  Mary Grace was equipped with both, and in the workplace she annihilated any woman who was misfortunate enough to have only one.  What smart women knew was that salaries were not only reflected in a bi-weekly check.  They were in quarterly and Christmas bonuses.  They were in jewelry boxes and company cars.  They were in expense reports and vacation time.  They were evident in the seminars held in Jamaica, Miami and Hawaii instead of those that took place in Des Moines, Little Rock and Toledo.  What intelligent women knew was that you didn’t have to screw a succession of bosses to gain entrance through the back door of the boys’ club.   You simply had to become the mistress of the most powerful one.
.        Then, at twenty-six, Mary Grace met Wyatt Proust.  Tall and chiseled with dirty blonde hair and a smile to match, Wyatt was the newest hot-shot lawyer to join the firm where she was employed as personal assistant to one of the partners, Kyle Sloane.  Sloane had even hired him, grooming him to become his protégée and eventual replacement come retirement.  Unfortunately for Kyle, within six months Wyatt Proust had replaced him in Mary Grace Tarminsson’s bed.
.        Mary Grace had never seen herself as the marrying type, or even the kind of woman who built up her man to the detriment of her own aspirations.  But soon her aspirations became being a wife to Wyatt, and seeing to it that he was the kind of husband who could furnish her with the type of lifestyle she was accustomed to having without him.  And within five years, she achieved just that.
.        At thirty-two, Mary Grace was living her ultimate life.  She was rich, beautiful, and in love.  Her husband had opened his own firm with a fellow ship-jumper from Sloane, Harris and Schvitza, Bernard Krantz.  There was a million-dollar home in Essex Fells, four cars, a condo at MGM Signature in Las Vegas, a townhouse in an exclusive Hilton Head community, annual vacations to exotic locales as well as weeks spent abroad.  Mary Grace’s daily activities consisted of planning and attending social events, booking hotels and travel, going to the gym, Pilates and yoga classes.  She got involved with the community, volunteering at women’s shelters and donating time and money to local elementary schools, providing books and computers to students, organizing and overseeing activities on school-sponsored career days.  She even attended church at her sister Madeleine’s parish once a month, loaning her voice to her twin’s piano playing as they lead the congregation in that service’s selection of hymns.  Yes, Mary Grace’s life was as perfect a life as one got in this world.  But Mary Grace hadn’t just gotten it; she’d earned it.  And that made it all the more valuable.  She assumed Wyatt was just as happy.  Until the day he came home from work and told her the one thing that was missing.  Children.
.        The subject of children had come up before they were married and Mary Grace had floated along since that conversation  under the impression that they were on the same page, one in a story that didn’t include children.  Bearing a child would mean surrendering her body for nine months and her life for the rest of it.  That was something Mary Grace was not willing to do.  Surrogates, Wyatt suggested.  Adoption.  Mary Grace refused all of it.  Children would mean division.  Division of time, money, energy.  Children would mean staying home to shape them into responsible, productive people while the ghost of her strolled a Fijian beach, mourning a long-dead life.  No.  Absolutely not.  No children.
.        Two years later Wyatt came home from the office and told her his personal assistant was carrying his baby and he was leaving Mary Grace to be with her.

While the woman with the oversized Prada bag inspected the pre-made sandwich selections, Mercy took a moment to pop another Altoid.  The penis was long gone, but all she kept thinking was dick breath.
.        “How fresh are these?” the woman asked.
.        Mercy cleared her throat.  She hadn’t swallowed, but still it felt slick with cock snot.
.        “They’re delivered daily,” she answered.  She swiped invisible man- dribble from the corner of her mouth.  She’d never done anything like that before.  She was sure now that she had, everybody could tell.  Like coming in from the rain.  Even the best of umbrellas couldn’t keep all the drops off you.
.        “How about these?”  A manicured to a Witchiepoo point red acrylic nail poked the refrigerated case right in front of the cheesecake slices.
.        “Same,” Mercy said.  The Altoid–her fifth since returning from the ladies’ room–was strong, but she still tasted him.  In reality there had been barely any taste at all, a little salty, the smell of soap and  freshly laundered underwear overriding any sense of taste.  But to her he tasted of dark roast coffee, licorice biscotti, the thumb that used to soothe her as a baby.
.        “What do you do with them if you don’t sell them all?”
.        “We throw them out.”
.        The woman tsked, shaking her head.  “Such waste when people are starving in the world.”
.        Mercy stared pointedly at the Prada bag, big enough to fit the ten remaining sandwiches and the starving people who would never get to eat them.
.        “Would you like to have one?” Mercy asked pleasantly.  “One less sandwich in the trash can.  Your good deed for the day, and all you’ll have to do is eat lunch.”
.        Her sarcasm was lost on the woman.  “It’s well past lunch, and I can’t afford the calories.  I’ll have a skinny latte with caramel drizzle, no whipped cream.”
.        Mercy went about making the latte, and the five other orders that followed, finally receiving help from Pete on the last one.
.        “What can I do?” he asked, coming behind the counter, still tying his apron.
.        “I need a harvest pretzel in the oven,” she answered, making change for the last customer in line, smiling and wishing him a nice day.  Was it really four o’clock already?
.        “Do you mind staying back here for a while?  The tea and cookie display is a mess.”
.        Pete smiled.  He knew how neurotic she was about the displays, always filling them up, alphabetizing, making sure no berry blends were mixed in with English breakfast.  What he didn’t know–unless he could see or smell it on her–was her anxiety concerning what had happened little over half an hour ago in the handicapped ladies’ bathroom stall.  That was what she needed to get organized, settled in her head.  She’d be of little use to him or anyone else at The Novel Cafe until that occurrence was fully processed.
.        “Go ahead,” he said, aware that this time of day saw a decline in business until about seven.  “Otherwise we’ll both be back here, wiping off the counters and equipment.”
.        She would have asked him if he minded covering for a break, but she’d already taken it at three when Vivvi watched the cafe while she gave head to Keene.  She shivered thinking about it now, kneeling in front of him, bringing down his zipper, eager to finally get her hands, and her mouth, on him.  She’d swallowed him the minute she saw skin, tilting her head and opening up her throat to take him all in.  She kept going until she felt his torso on her lips; he groaned and she gagged, embarrassed at her freshman over-enthusiasm.
.        “Just go slow,” he whispered, stroking her hair.  “It’s not going anywhere.”
.        She never got him very deep again, but he didn’t seem to mind.  He held her head, moving it gently, guiding her back and forth, up and down, telling her what he liked, how to use her hands and her tongue.  At a certain point he eased her away, turning toward the toilet and manipulating himself.  She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, her hands reaching for his penis.
.        “Let me help,” she cooed, and he put his hands over hers and together they pumped fast and hard until he reached full release.   He leaned back against her and she rested her head on his right shoulder-blade, her hands still enveloping him as he wilted, loving the feeling of him in her palms, his juices on her fingers.  She felt a pulsing between her legs, the area hot and vacuous, weeping to be gored.  She felt it now, while she moved the packages of shortbread biscuits into the slot next to the boxes of vanilla tea bags, and she mashed her thighs together, willing her tingling clitoris to behave.
.        After her shift she sat silently in her car, the windows rolled down, thinking of Keene and his penis.  It was funny how the mind did that.  First there was just Keene, the frequent customer with the brown curly hair and adorable smile, and now there was Keene and his penis.  They were separate to her, just as they separated her into two parts:  the woman who was obsessed with Keene, and the woman who was obsessed with Keene’s penis.
.        She supposed she could consider herself a woman now, even though she was technically still a virgin.  At nineteen, she was  considered by most to be a girl:  specifically her work supervisors, college professors, and anyone else in the g-pop over forty; and especially her mom and dad.  Christ, if either one in that latter group could have seen her at three-fifteen today.  She smiled, and not just from the hypothetical looks on their faces.  She smiled now, as she always did whenever her thoughts traveled anywhere in the vicinity of Keene Forbes.
.        Often after her shift she would come out to her car and sit there for a good half hour, thinking about her most recent interaction with him, mentally reliving some of her other favorite moments if there was nothing new to dream about.  She fantasized about what their life could be like together, the kind of house they would live in, the children they would have, the colleagues they would entertain, the friends they would travel with.  She imagined lounging on the deck of a yacht on some exotic, turquoise waters.   Almost always she drifted back to the day she’d first seen him eight months ago, when she’d been sitting in the cafe, filling out her job application.
.        Located in a shopping plaza less than a mile from where she was enrolled in classes at the community college, The Novel Cafe seemed a perfect place to work for a girl who spent more time in Starbucks and Barnes and Noble than a classroom.  One of a small but growing chain of bookstores in central and western Pennsylvania, this particular location was the most recent to open its doors.  Considering she patronized them on a virtual daily basis, securing a job there was more than just logical; for Mercy it was a no-brainer.
.        She’d been occupying a table by the window, sipping an iced mango tea limeade and transferring onto the application the names and numbers of personal references from her iPhone address book when a man approached, excusing himself for interrupting and asking if he could use the plug behind her chair.  She placed him in his late twenties, with chestnut curly hair and brown eyes.  The smooth directness with which he spoke, the way he enunciated his words, was executed with such subtle confidence she instantly pegged him for some kind of English teacher.  Later she would discover she wasn’t far off the mark; Keene was actually a writer, and had been published in several literary journals as well as a number of Internet magazines.  After a month of interacting with him, and garnering his full name from his credit card, she looked him up and ordered several back issues of the magazines that contained his work.  From his articles and stories she would cobble together the man for whom she would develop and all-consuming love.
Her first day of work had her on the floor, re-stocking books and becoming acclimated with the many categories of literature.  She ran into Keene in the teen section, his arms full of vampire sagas.
.        “Don’t judge,” he said with an embarrassed smile.  “It’s research for my work.”
.        Between then and now, not an entry in her journal went by without her recording a snappy comeback she could have made.  What she came up with that day was by far the most forgettable.
.        “Campaigning to become president of the Ian Somerhalder fan club?”
.       Lame as it was, it earned her a smile and a chuckle.  She was still appreciating the magic of both when he left the aisle.  Before he did, however, he said to her, “Congratulations on getting the job.”
.        The rest of her shift was spent with the goofiest of smiles on her face, she was so tickled with the idea that he remembered her from two weeks ago, from the smallest of encounters.  It was true she remembered him, but only because she had been instantly attracted.  Obviously he was too, and that fact caused her to not only grin like a simpleton, but bust into a giggle here and there throughout the night, causing one of her grumpier co-workers–an overweight thirty-year-old woman named Sheree with Chucky doll hair and a nose ring that made her resemble Elsie the Borden cow–to mumble miserably, “Weird-o.”
.        But why wouldn’t he find her memorable?  She was young and bubbly, blonde and wholesome, resembling Cheryl Ladd the first time she’d bounced onto the screen as Charlie’s newest angel.  Mercy had her banging body, too, with plump perky breasts, flat stomach and lady shaver advertisement-perfect legs.  Legs she wanted to fling over his shoulders, thighs she wanted to squeeze and lock around his neck, drawing his face into her wetness.
.        She’d never had these kinds of dirty thoughts before.  Keene awakened them in her, and once they’d been animated, there was no silencing them.
.        He came to the counter the first day she’d worked the cafe.  She was learning the register and he spoke to her in his silky voice.
.        “Hello, Mercy.  How’s the job going?”
.         Her heart leapt that he had addressed her by name; then she realized she was wearing a name tag.  Still, it felt great to watch his mouth form her name, to hear it roll off his tongue.  She tingled in her private place.
.        “I love it,” she said with an enthusiastic smile.  “It’s a great place to work.  And seeing people like you make it better.”
.        He’d blushed slightly.  “Thank you.  You’re a day-brightener yourself.”
.        “Thank you,” she responded.  “What can I get for you today?”
.        He got a large coffee and peach danish, and she asked how his research was going.
.        “On to the next project,” he answered.  “Thanks for asking.”
.        Oh, hadn’t they been so polite back then.  Who could have seen that many months down the line they’d be in the rest room, his dick in her mouth?
.        Mercy.  That’s who.