My NRFU Diary - Day 5

My favorite part of my second day in The Field as an official, badged Census Worker was meeting and “interviewing” Ms. Valeree P—, [number withheld] [street withheld], over in [town withheld]. Hers was the only door I knocked on yesterday opened by an apparently Filipino houseboy who introduced himself as Ferdinand. When I told him what I wanted and showed him my badge, I detected the beginning of a sneer on his little brown face, but then I heard a throaty female voice call, “I’ll attend to this myself, boy,” in an accent that I couldn’t quite place, but had no trouble at all finding bewitching.

She didn’t walk toward the door, but glided, as though on a dolly. My nostrils filled with the smell of her perfume. There are those who believe that our olfactory memories are keener than all others; I was transported instantaneously to an elegant department store in Paris in 1987, where I was transfixed by the spectacle of an inconceivably gorgeous young woman offering to spray the wrists of jewel-strewn matrons as they headed from one designeer collection to another. I stood watching her, probably open-mouthed, until she noticed me and made the face of someone who’s just tasted something acrid.

“My name,” Alfred’s mistress purred, “is Valeree, with three e’s, as mentioned earlier in your reminiscence, and I recognize it as my duty to cooperate fully with the Census Bureau, however inappropriate or…intrusive their demands may be.” She switched her rhinestone-bedecked cigarette holder to her left hand and extended her right. I have always had a…thing for women who wear black satin opera gloves to lounge around in their own homes on a Sunday afternoon, and for those able to pack so much innuendo into three syllables, as she had into intrusive.

She pouted at me cinematically and flared her nostrils in the manner of Chrissie Amphlett as she let me slide her negligee down her gorgeous narrow shoulders. It fell like petals around her feet. Noting with delight that she was wearing stay-up black stockings, I kissed her neck. She shuddered. I unhooked her black lace brassiere. I poked her in the tummy, but not with my hands. She moaned as my lips found their way to her left breast. She grasped me; oh, did she! Her tongue flicked at my own. Our hands explored each other.

She asked if I had protection. I admitted I did not, having anticipated nothing like what was going on between us. She let go of me and whispered, “Then I shall send Ferd to the convenience store to get some, though he’s been beaten comatose by local roughnecks each of the past four times I’ve sent him there.”

I told her it was more than I could bear to have on my conscience. She asked how much the Census Bureau paid. When I told her, she guffawed, but then immediately put her fingertips to her mouth and said she was sorry. She said she would pay me twice as much per hour to be her love slave, and that I wouldn’t have to worry about strangers’ dogs, as her poodles weren’t biters. I heard Ferdinand clearing his throat pointedly, and wondered if she were painting a realistic picture. I told her I was deeply flattered, but that I’d sworn an oath to the Bureau, and was a man of my word.

Her expression turned to one of tart petulance. She cared no longer if the smoke of her cigarette got in my eyes and nostrils. I sighed and asked if someone usually lived in the apartment, or if it was a vacation or seasonal home. I could see in her remarkable teal eyes that I’d hurt her terribly. Another one lost, and this so soon after the worst one.

The sacrifices we make so that no state sends to Congress either more or fewer representative than its population warrants, there to be given money and oral sex by corporate lobbyists, the scourge of our democracy!