The Leather Taste

My name is Pablo. I'm thirty-seven, I wire houses and strip malls for a living, and until last Tuesday I had never done anything interesting in the back of my own van.

That changed because of a parking spot.

I do a lot of contract work for offices downtown, and one of them is a law firm on Central Avenue. Big glass building. Fifth floor of the parking garage is reserved, and spot 5C belongs to some attorney I'd never met. The sign says so in letters small enough to ignore. I ignored them. I had two hundred feet of conduit to run and the freight elevator was closer from that side.

I was pulling my tool bag out of the passenger seat when somebody's heel came clicking across the concrete like a drumroll.

"Excuse me. Are you lost?"

I turned around. She was maybe thirty-eight, dark hair pinned up, gray suit, carrying a laptop bag like it had insulted her family. She looked at my van, then at my face, then back at the van.

"Spot 5C is reserved," she said. "That's mine. The sign isn't decorative."

"Didn't see it," I said. "I'll be an hour, tops."

"An hour? No. Move it!"

"I'm working here. It's a garage, lady, not your living room."

"It's Janis, actually. And it's a lease I pay for, which makes it my living room in a way you can't afford."

Nice lady.

I told her I'd move it when I was done, and she told me she'd have a boot on my van in twenty minutes, and I told her good luck getting a boot company to come out for one van on a Tuesday. That's when she noticed the belt.

"What is that smell?" she asked. She wrinkled her nose, but she stepped closer instead of back.

"Leather. Tool belt."

"That thing is ancient."

"Six years old. Still holds my screwdrivers better than your argument holds up in court."

She looked at it. She actually looked at it, the worn brown leather, the sweat stains, the punch holes stretched out. Then she got this look I didn't understand yet.

"Real leather?" she asked.

"Of course real. What do you think, I wear plastic?"

"Most men wear plastic and call it leather. They don't know the difference."

"I know the difference. I'd guess you don't."

She crossed her arms. "Careful."

"You probably own some synthetic thing with a logo on it. Pleather. Vinyl. One of those."

The clicking heels came two steps toward me. "I dare you to prove that."

"How would I prove it?"

"By showing you what I have on under this suit, and eating your words when you're wrong."

Now, I want to be straight with you. I'm not a smooth guy. I'd had exactly one one-night stand in my life, a paralegal about ten years ago, and I'd been single so long my couch had a permanent shape of me in it. But I know when a door opens.

"There's a bench seat in the van," I said. "Air conditioning works."

"Show me."

The back of a work van has a particular quality. It smells like solder flux and drywall dust and, that day, six years of leather from a belt that had been sitting on the seat. She climbed in after me and sat down with her knees together, which looked ridiculous with how mad she still was.

"Show me, then," I said.

She started unbuttoning her blouse. Not fast. One button at a time, watching my face the whole way down, like she was cross-examining me. Underneath, she was wearing a corset. Black leather. Real leather, boned, laced up the front, and it fit her like it had been made on her body.

"Well?" she said.

I had to clear my throat. "Okay. I lose."

"You lose."

"That's real. That's real leather."

"Twelve hundred dollars of real leather," she said. "Made in a shop in Tempe. I go pick it out myself. I know the smell before it comes out of the box."

"You wear that under your suit? To work?"

"I wear it under my suit every day. It's my armor. Nobody in that courtroom knows, and it makes me feel like I'm winning before I open my mouth."

I nodded. Then I said, honest, because I didn't have a better plan, "Can I touch it?"

That surprised her. I could tell. She'd been ready for me to grab, I think. Instead she sat there for a second and looked at my hand.

"You're asking," she said.

"I'm asking."

"Yes. You can touch it."

I put my hand flat on the front panel of the corset, over her stomach. My hand was shaking. I'm not going to lie about that, it was shaking, and the leather was smooth and warm already from her body, and it made a small creak under my palm that went straight through me.

"You've wanted this," she said. Not a question.

"I've had a thing about leather since I was thirty-one. Never done anything about it. Just, you know. Thoughts."

"What kind of thoughts?"

"Smell. Feel. The sound it makes." I swallowed. "Taste. Honestly, the taste."

She raised one eyebrow. "Taste."

"It's stupid."

"It's not stupid." She took my hand off her stomach, held it a beat, then put it back, higher, over the lacing. "The smell is the whole point. The taste is where it gets serious. I broke up with a man three years ago who thought leather was a phase. It's not a phase."

"Can I smell it? Up close?"

"Pablo." She'd learned my name at some point, I never told her. "Stop asking me one thing at a time like you're pulling a permit. Tell me what you want. All of it."

So I told her. I wanted to put my face against that corset and breathe it in. I wanted to unbuckle my tool belt and lay it across her lap, because in six years of fantasy that was the picture, my belt on a woman. I wanted to know what the tongue of the corset lacing tasted like. And I wanted to do all of it slow, because I'd waited six years and one Tuesday and I wasn't going to rush it now.

She listened with her arms crossed again, over the corset, which I have to say was an incredible look.

"That's a strange list," she said. "I like strange lists. Yes to all of it. But one rule."

"Name it."

"You argue with me the whole time. If you get polite and agreeable, I'm out of here. I picked a fight with you for a reason. And this is separate from the parking spot and from whoever signs your invoices. Nobody owes anybody anything, the boot is off the table either way, and if either of us says stop, we stop."

"That won't be a problem."

"Good." She leaned back against the panel wall of the van. "Start with the smell."

I leaned in and pressed my face just under her ribs, against the black leather, and breathed. It smelled like her heat under it, and the leather itself, that rich animal smell that never quite leaves a good hide. My belt smells like that after a hot day. Hers smelled like money and Tempe and three years of grudges.

"Say something," she said.

"It's better than mine."

"It should be. Mine didn't spend six years in a van."

"It spent six years winning court cases."

"Every one of them."

I ran my thumb along a lace. The leather gave a soft squeak and she shifted her hips. Her hand came down and covered mine, not to stop me, just to press it flatter.

"You're still shaking," she said.

"Six years, Janis."

"I know. I can feel it." She looked down at me. My face was about four inches from her corset. "You said taste. Do it, then. The lacing. Right here at the knot."

I didn't need to be told twice.

I got my mouth on the lace where it crossed at the bottom of the boning, right at the edge of the panel, and I licked it. Leather and salt. It was warm and it creaked against my lips and I heard her breath go out slow through her nose.

"Well?" she asked.

"Better than I thought."

"You have no idea yet!" She reached up and started pulling the knot of the lacing loose, one pull, two. "Question. How far do you want to take this today? Because I have a deposition at four."

"Depositions run long," I said.

"Not if I win fast."

She pulled the lace another inch and the corset loosened around her ribs with a sound I felt in my teeth.

"Before anything goes further," she said, matter of fact, like she was dictating a motion, "testing and history. Mine's clean, I get checked twice a year. And whatever we do today, anything past mouths gets a condom. Agreed?"

"Agreed. I got tested in the spring and it's been a long dry stretch since. And a condom, absolutely."

"That's fair."

"And Pablo?"

"Yeah?"

"When we get there, you're still going to argue with me. You're going to be very disagreeable."

I grinned against the leather. "Lady, it's my best skill."

* * *

The knot came loose all the way. She shrugged the loosened corset open just enough to breathe, and the two front panels fell apart a half inch, and I got my first look at skin under all that black.

"Down, cowboy," she said. "Hands first."

Fine by me. I had six years of hands.

But then my phone went off in my pocket, loud, the job-site ringtone, and she said, "You had better not answer that."

I didn't. Some things come before work.

The phone shut itself up. She arched an eyebrow at it, then at me.

"Good man. Now. The belt. You said you wanted it on my lap."

I unbuckled it slow. Six years of habit, every buckle knows my hands, and it came off like taking off a jacket. I laid it across her thighs, all that leather going soft and heavy