The Gallery Gift

I still don't know why I said yes to meeting at her gallery instead of a restaurant as anyone else would. Nerves, maybe. Curiosity, definitely.

My name's Judy, I'm fifty-two years old, and I've been a police officer for twenty-six years. I met Frankie online six weeks ago, on one of those sites for women who like women. We messaged almost every night. Long messages. Careful ones. Neither of us rushed anything. By week four I knew her middle name, her coffee order, and the fact that she hadn't dated anyone in over a year. By week five she knew I was scared to death of meeting in person and doing it badly.

So I said yes anyway.

My shift ended at seven that Friday. I didn't even go home first. I just drove across town in my personal car, changed nothing, and figured she could take me as I was. Uniform and all. Squared away, boots polished, smelling faintly of the station house coffee. Romantic, right. But it felt honest, and honest felt safer than trying to look like somebody I wasn't.

Phlox Gallery sat in the arts district, in one of those old warehouses with the big windows and the freight door. The sign was small. The door was heavy. I pushed it open and there she was.

Frankie stood at a workbench near the back, wiping her hands on a rag. She was forty-eight, shorter than me, gray coming in at her temples, wearing a work apron spotted with dried slip. She looked up and smiled, and I swear my knees did something unprofessional.

"You came straight from work," she said, setting the rag down. "God, look at you. I almost didn't recognize you in uniform."

"I didn't want to be late," I told her. Which was true, though also I hadn't wanted to sit in my apartment changing clothes three times and talking myself out of the whole thing. I admitted that part later, on the couch. She laughed and said she'd have done the same.

She wiped down her forearms and came over, and we did the awkward thing where two people who've only ever typed at each other don't know whether to hug or shake hands. We ended up doing both, badly, and laughing about it. Her hands were still cool and a little damp. I didn't mind.

The gallery itself was one long room, white walls, track lighting, maybe fifteen pieces. Sculpture, all of it. Bronze and stone and these strange glazed ceramic forms that looked like they'd been grown instead of made. She walked me through it slowly, hands in her apron pockets, telling me which pieces had fought her and which had come easy. I liked that. She talked about her work the way I talk about police work, half pride and half complaint.

"This one's my favorite," she said, stopping in front of a piece near the far wall. It was a torso, abstract, about four feet tall, carved from some pale stone with a curve to it like a hip or a wave. "Marble from a quarry upstate. Took me eleven months. I nearly gave up on it twice."

I stood there looking at it. There was nothing literal about it, no face, no arms, but it felt like a body anyway. Warm somehow, even in a cold room. I told her that and she got quiet for a second, the way people do when you say the true thing back to them.

"That's exactly it," she said. "It's about a body without being one. I'm glad you saw it."

We ended up on a couch in the back corner. It was old and covered in a dust sheet she hadn't bothered to remove, and it smelled faintly of clay and coffee grounds. I only noticed that once, the clay smell. She pulled a thermos out from under the workbench, poured tea into a cup and handed it to me like it was a ceremony. Chamomile, she said. She'd remembered I don't do coffee after four.

And that's when I got honest with her, sitting there in my uniform with my boots up on a crate of packing material.

"I'm nervous," I told her. "I've been nervous for six weeks. This is the first time I've done anything like this since my divorce, and that was a long time ago, and I kept thinking I'd walk in here and we'd have nothing to say."

Frankie took the cup back from me, set it down, and turned so she was facing me square.

"We have plenty to say," she said. "You've been talking to me every night for six weeks. You're just talking out loud now."

Fair point. I relaxed a little after that.

Then she got quiet in a different way. The serious way. She wiped her palms on her apron, which I recognized as her version of my fidgeting with my belt.

"Okay," she said. "There's something I want to ask you, and I want you to know up front that no is a complete answer. You can say no and we drink tea and look at art and that's the whole evening, and I'd be fine with that."

I nodded. I remember my heart picking up, but not in a bad way. More like a call coming over the radio. Attention, something's happening.

She explained it slowly, and I'll try to do it justice here. She'd been working on a life-sized figure in the back room, a sculptural study about trust, and thinking a lot about sensation and stillness and what it means to let somebody move slowly with you. Out of all that thinking had come an idea she wanted to try with me, if I wanted it.

One session. Nothing rushed. She had a smooth glass toy, curved, no sharp edges, and she wanted to use it externally only. No penetration at all. Just the weight of it and the vibration of it, pressed against me through my clothes. Slow pressure, slow movement, her hands steady on the outside. That was the idea. She said it twice so I'd be sure I heard it right, and then she said the important part.

"You keep your uniform on the entire time if you want.