The View-Master Wager

The storm had been going since midnight, and by seven Carol Mendez was soaked just walking the last block. She was fifty-four, a mail clerk at the Kruger central library, and she had never once been glad to arrive at work early. Until she saw the rope.

The rare books room was roped off. Yellow tape too. A tarp hung over the far corner of the ceiling, sagging with water, and a slow drip was landing two feet from the case that held the incunabula.

"Oh, lovely," she said to nobody.

There was a man already in the room. On the ladder, actually. Navy coveralls, tool belt, the works. He glanced down at her.

"You're not supposed to be in here, love. Roped off."

"I work here. Carol. Mail clerk." She held up her lanyard like a badge at a checkpoint.

He came down the ladder. Big hands, gray at the temples, maybe forty-two. He wiped his palm on his thigh before offering it, which she appreciated. His coveralls said COLT WHITMORE, ELECTRICAL, stitched over the chest.

"Colt. They sent me last night when the leak started. Roof gave up over this corner."

"Roof's been threatening that for years. It finally found the one room with books worth more than my house."

"That's what the guy with the clipboard told me. Hence the tarp."

The tarp dripped again. Carol moved the drip tray an inch left. Some habits.

Colt went back up the ladder and started pulling wire through a conduit above the drop ceiling. Carol set down her bag and did her rounds. Clock in, check the mail trolley, check the cases. All locked. All dry except for one corner of floor.

She made coffee in the staff alcove and brought him a cup without being asked. He took it with his left hand, still working.

"Cheers."

"You're gonna be up there all day?"

"Probably. Whole circuit's wet. Gotta test everything before I can even think about restoring power to the room. Otherwise I'm just patching a live wire into a swimming pool."

Carol leaned against the oak table and looked at him. She'd always looked at men in uniform. Firemen, postmen, that one RAF pilot who came in for the archives in ninety-eight. She'd never told anyone about it. It seemed like a small, silly thing to have carried around for thirty years.

"You're staring," Colt said, not unkindly.

"Occupational habit. I like a uniform."

"Is that right."

"It is. Always have. Never done anything about it, mind. Just liked looking."

He wired something and the tarp drip counted a slow three. He looked down at her. She was fifty-four, and she knew exactly what her face did when she decided something. It did it now.

"Here's a thought," she said. "Purely a thought."

"Those are usually the dangerous ones."

"I'd like to try something, if you're willing. I do a bit of exploring, through the coveralls. Nothing daft. Fabric only. You stay zipped and belted and we see how long you last. And it's separate from the library and your contract and my job, so say no and I'll fetch you another coffee and we'll never mention it."

The ladder creaked. Colt looked at her for a moment, then laughed, short and low.

"You're serious."

"Completely. We're stuck in here till that circuit dries out or the storm quits. Whichever's last. I've got a trolley of mail nobody's gonna collect and you've got four hours of testing ahead of you. Might as well be interesting."

"And the game is I keep it zipped."

"Fully zipped. Belt on. Nothing riding on it, mind. No prizes, no forfeits. It's a game, and either of us can end it with one word."

"Through the fabric," he repeated, like he was checking the math.

"Through the fabric. I'm fifty-four, I've been single since before you had gray hair, and I've been curious about this since I was twenty-five. You're here. The room's closed. Nobody's coming."

He came down the ladder, which she took as a good sign. He drank half the coffee in one go.

"Do I get a say?" he asked. "Because I'll be honest, it sounds like I sit here like a saint while a pretty woman has her way with my coveralls and I get nothing."

Carol snorted. "Pretty. At my age."

"You'd be surprised what I think at your age."

"Charming. All right. You get a say. Anything you'd like to try, you ask, I answer, and either of us can say no. Fair?"

He thought about it. She watched him think. He was better at it than most men she'd worked around, which was saying something, and that saying something was not flattering.

"You've got that View-Master," he said. "The red one. I saw it on your desk last month when I changed the sockets in the mail room."

Carol blinked. "You remember that?"

"It's not every day you see a View-Master on a government desk. My mum had one. Red bakelite, three reels of the Lake District. You've got one."

"I've got eleven reels. Been mine since I was a kid. My dad bought them off a jumble table. What about it?"

"Later, if you're willing, you put the viewer to your eyes and look at whatever slides I pick while I carry on working. Belt on, zipped up. You look and you tell me what you see. Take it off any time you like."

Carol raised an eyebrow. "That's your big ask. Slides."

"Slides," he agreed. "That's the twist. It's a test of your composure, not mine."

"My composure."

"You've got that dry look like nothing gets to you. I want to see if it holds while you're describing a picture of Blackpool Tower with my hand still on my belt."

She laughed. It came out of her before she could file it. "You're cheekier than you look."

"I look fairly cheeky."

"That's true. All right, Whitmore. Terms. You stay zipped and belted, I do the touching, you keep working like I'm not there. Afterwards, if we're both still willing, I put on the View-Master and narrate your picks like a woman at the cinema. And I get a story for my sister I will never actually tell her."

"And we shake on it."

They shook. His hand was warm and rough and he held it one beat longer than a handshake strictly needed, then let go and stepped back.

"Ground rules," he said. "Anything either of us says stop, we stop. Whole thing's off, no hard feelings, nothing owed."

"Agreed. Anything you don't want touched, say so now."

"Keep it to the front and the belt. Not fussed on the back of the neck, personal thing."

"Noted. Mine's simple. Nothing under the fabric unless we've both said so out loud."

"Fair." He climbed back up the ladder. "Rain's easing anyway. Might be done by noon."

"Then I'd best not waste the morning."

She finished her coffee. She washed the cup, dried it, put it back. Bought herself a minute of being a normal woman in a normal room. Then she pulled her chair around to the foot of the ladder and sat down in it like it was a front-row seat.

"You're actually doing it," Colt said, wire strippers in his teeth.

"Course I am. It was my idea."

"Thought you'd chicken out and make the tea instead."

"I've been chickening out of this sort of thing for thirty years. Not today."

He went back to the conduit. The rain kept up against the tall windows. Somewhere above them a pipe ticked. The tarp dripped its patient three-count into the tray.

Carol watched his hands first. That was the honest place to start. Big knuckles, careful with the strippers, sleeves rolled to the elbow where the coveralls were still zipped to the collar. The tool belt sat heavy on his hips. Screwdriver, tester, a roll of tape. The navy fabric pulled across his back every time he reached.

"Colt."

"Mm."

"Turn round a second. Facing out."

He did, staying on the ladder. Now she had the whole front of him. Chest zip, belt, thigh pockets, the works.

"Right," she said, and stood up. "May I put a hand on your chest?"

"Yes."

She put one hand flat on his chest, over the zip pull, and felt him breathe in.

"Comfortable?" she asked.

"Comfortable enough," he said. "Ask me again in ten minutes."

Ten minutes later he was still zipped. He was also, she noticed, working one-handed more than strictly necessary.

She went on to the shoulders. Flat of her hand, slow, over the thick cotton. The coveralls were stiff and warm from him. She could feel the heat of his skin through the weave, but faintly, like a rumor.

"That do anything for you?" he asked. He fed wire into the conduit with his left hand.

"It does something for me. Jury's out on you."

"Ask me again in a minute."

She smoothed the fabric down across his chest. The zip pull sat right under her thumb. She left it alone. That was the game, and she'd made the rules, so she was going to follow her own rules even if it killed her.

His name was stitched over the pocket. COLT WHITMORE, ELECTRICAL. She ran her finger across the letters.

"That's not touching the man, that's touching the advertising," he said.

"I'll decide what counts."

She traced the shoulder seam. Then the collar, where the fabric met his throat. He swallowed. She felt it under her palm and something in her stomach jumped, thirty years of wanting a uniform and here was the actual article, zipped to the chin, breathing under her hand.

"Still comfortable?" she asked.

"Still comfortable."

"Liar."

She laughed and dropped her hand to his belt.

The belt was leather, scuffed, heavy with tools. She walked her fingers along it, screwdriver to tester to tape. Underneath it his hips shifted a fraction. Not away. Toward, if anything.

"You're leaning into me, Whitmore."

"I'm leaning into the ladder."

"You're leaning into my hand."

He didn't answer that. He pulled the tester off his belt, checked something in the box, clipped it back on. All one-handed. All while she pressed her palm flat against his stomach, over the cotton, and felt the hard line of the belt buckle underneath.

"The thing about coveralls," she said, "is there's nowhere to hide."

"There's plenty to hide behind."

"Not from me."

She slid her hand down the zip line. Slow. Not touching the pull, just the seam beside it, fingertip riding the stitching. The cotton thinned over his stomach. She could feel the shape of him under there, the slope of it, the warmth gathering.

His breathing changed. Not much. Enough.

"There you are," she said.

"There I am."

"Still working?"

He was. He got the junction box cover loose and set it on the ladder shelf. Wires inside, colors all bundled. He sorted them one at a time with his left hand, and his right hand hung at his side, open, doing nothing, which she took as a kind of discipline.

"Lower now," she said. "Is that a yes?"