I can smell the greenery and the trees ahead of us and somebody’s perfume. I’m walking around in the sunshine with my girl. This is a nice day.
We cut into the trees, and the temperature drops about ten degrees. We stop just long enough to read the rattlesnake warnings and the big NO SMOKING, FIREARMS OR OVERNIGHT CAMPING Sign.
Trish takes my hand as we walk across the bridge. She holds it for a minute, but my palms sweat a lot and pretty soon we sort of loosen our grip and let our hands ride against each other as we walk, taking advantage of being out of step to let fingers slide over palms and stroke a little on the bounce.
A pack of kids rushes by and we separate, coming back together smoothly like we were dancing. The sun shines through the trees, and I watch the way it dapples her chest and face. I hear the buh buh buh buh of an air compressor and the chug uh chug uh chug uhuhuh of a small motor and then we’re out in the sun again, and it’s like a blast furnace. She nudges me as I look out over a riot of flags, colorful stands and tents and hands me the discount coupons she picked up somewhere. The air is thick with sugar and hot dogs, and the hot smell of dry corn all overlaid by the must of dead leaves and dirt.
There’s a big pumpkin patch off to my left. They’ve cleaned the field and piled them all up in a long line around the front and one side. Their thick, grainy smell mingles with the overly rich gasoline mix of the antique corn husker that chugs away in front of the patch. The old man in the booth is patiently feeding corn into it. Cobs go in and out spray kernels into a huge bin in front of the machine.
We join the ticket line and she steps behind me and puts her arms around me. I bend my hips a little so they press back into her and she responds by gripping what she calls my “bone china hips.”
Then we’re at the window. I buy tickets from the bored girl, and we join the general flow toward the maze entrance. Kids are running in a sugar frenzy waving torches of hot-pink cotton candy and whirling thin neon-green tubes through the clots of grownups and strollers.
We move pretty quickly and I use the time to read the rules and look at the huge map of the flower bouquet-shaped maze. I wind my fingers around hers, squiggling one across her palm: Do you want to fuck me? Hers brush back, Yes, yes, please.
The whole thing is fun and really scary because I worry what happens if she gets tired of me, or I can’t keep it exciting.
We make our way through the intersection at the entrance and enter the maze. Kids are running wildly back and forth across the little cross paths, and parents are shouting for them to slow down. The trails are covered in broken corn stalks and leaves, bits of trash and tiny cobs. I look at the standing cornstalks. They’re dried-out yellow and faded green, and covered in little ears that look like animal feed.
The maze is made on a huge field of corn, drawn out by a computer and cut by a combination of tractor and hand tools. It’s now that I get the idea that gives me a shiver down my back and a crawl over my scalp. I turn it over and over, exploring it before I even start to think what it could mean, what it would tell me about where to go, what I could expect to learn from it.
I think about it all the time Trish and I are walking though the maze. We move aimlessly. I thought she would want to follow it like a labyrinth, but she is content to walk along and turn as the moment and flow dictates. This is promising and what makes up my mind.
At the next small path we cross, I nudge her so she turns. There’s little traffic here for the moment, and I pull her to me and she squeals a tiny bit as I hug her tightly and French-kiss her. I don’t like doing it. So I’m surprised when my mouth opens and I’m tonguing her.
She’s so small compared to me that my hands wrap completely around her waist. I let her pull back just a little so I can see her surprised smile and then put my hand behind her head and lean down to nuzzle her ear. I can feel her start to wriggle but I’m ready, tightening my hold so she can’t get way.
I smile as I mumble in her ear, making sure to get a lot of Zs in there for the full effect. I can feel her smile and the tightness in her body as she struggles to stay still. I don’t know why it works, but it’s like tickling her only multiplied a hundred times. It always makes her flushed and she grins to beat all.
I give her a couple of seconds to get the full effect and steel myself. Then I whisper, “Do you want to suck my cock?”
Trish wasn’t expecting that, but she doesn’t pull away in shock. I nod to myself. This was the right thing to do. No matter what happens I will know then what I have.
I let her go and she smiles up at me, blushing furiously. I take her hand and we walk the maze some more. Just as I’m thinking she won’t be able to answer, she says, “Okay.”
At first I think she is talking to herself. She does that. It’s like the question is in her head, but the answer ends up out in the world.
I look at her and she nods and I know that whichever it was, she’s committing now. I take that as a big cookie and squeeze her hand.
The walk has changed moods now. It’s no longer aimless; it’s directed, focused. We make our way up to the top of the bouquet, and I find a particularly dense patch and say, “How about here?”
She’s assessing it, and I know that even though the English teacher says, “No!” she’s committed. A couple of boys burst out of the patch in front of us and we laugh as she says, “No, not here.”
I think that I’ve pushed her pretty far just getting her to agree and am ready to let her go when she says, “We’re going about this wrong. We need a better perspective.”
She leads me to one of the two lookouts and climbs up the steep stairway first, letting me have a good look up her skirt. I hang back, happy to oblige her and then step in behind her as she stands at the rail.
The whole maze is spread out below us, and I look out to the west and see the foothills, right behind the deer fence that surrounds the maze so the wildlife can’t eat the attraction. The sun is just kissing the tops of the nearest line of hills.
I can see, when I look back, that the open end of the bouquet is the wrong choice. It’s too busy; there’re too many paths around the blossoms, which tend to congregate the people. All the ins and outs are irresistible to the kids, who use them to stage ambushes, leaping around corners whirling cornstalks like light sabers.
We turn to the other side of the lookout, and I cage her with my body against the rail. I can smell her hair, faintly flowery. I can smell her, salty sweat and a musky sex rising up out of her clothes. My heart leaps at the thought of what we intend to do. I press into her space, and she bends over the rail to accommodate me, opening herself. I breathe in deeply and feel a buzz in my chest rise up to my head.
“There,” she says. “Over in the corner,” and I know we are looking at the same place. It’s a thick spot between the stems and the little decorative swirl along the edge of the fence.
“Let’s go see.”
Trish follows me and I hear her shoes clumping along behind me. She sounds careful and I know some of that is the steep stairs, but the sound is bright, not dragging. She’s going willingly. I wrestle the smile off my face before she joins me at the bottom.
She keeps looking at my crotch as we walk and I smile. She says she never liked giving head before. You could have fooled me. The women in my life haven’t liked giving head and to find one that does it with such joy is… well, it makes a lump in my heart. Like that song, where the guy tells the woman how glad he is that she loves him, because he knows she doesn’t have to.