Biochemistry

"We're out of Taq polymerase."

"No, we're not," I said. I'd been late getting to work this morning, the car was showing signs of breaking down (not that I would know what's wrong with it—and I hate mechanical issues), and my plates were showing no sign of growth—the agar as smooth as a baby's bottom. The last thing I wanted to see was Vasili Kurakov and his "I own the lab" attitude.

"Check the freezer yourself." He might as well have had his arms folded, with those royal airs.

"Vasili, what do you expect ME to do about it?"

"Aren't you the person who made the last batch?"

"No, that was Anna. And so what if it was me? I get blamed if it runs out too soon?"

"Well yeah, it would mean that you made too little."

"This might be funny on another occasion but not today." I was staring at the tauntingly blank plates. He was at my shoulder, invading my personal space, and I knew he knew that something had failed to grow, because of the telltale toothpick streaks across the agar.

"You tried to culture the wrong strain, didn't you?"

"What makes you say that?"

He pointed to where I'd labeled the plate with a Sharpie. "670. You were looking for 670."

I glared at him questioningly.

"You probably took the vial labeled 610. I was having an issue with Jordan about this—he was saying that my 1's look like 7's because I write them European-style."

"Oh my god, and they were out of order so I didn't have the advantage of consecutive numbers to check."

"Yeah, someone dropped the box a couple of days ago and the vials went flying all over the place. Just stuffed them right back in the box. Haven't had time to fix it yet."

"Gee, well, thanks a lot," I exclaimed. Vasili plucked the squandered plates from my hands and dropped them into the garbage. He started to walk away but I stepped in front of him. "That's it for today, huh?"

"Unless you want to make me some Taq polymerase."

"You know what? You KNEW your handwriting was ambiguous. You should've written the genotype of the strain on the vial, and not just the strain number."

"Details, details." He stepped glidingly aside and passed on out of the room, but not before my palm strike had made contact with his shoulder.

*********

Eleven a.m. Only one more hour until lunch. I could go to lunch any time I wanted, of course, but I stuck to the noon hour as though it were prescription.

My cork bulletin board was littered with neon-colored Post-Its, a few of which trailed down the side of my computer monitor. "Payroll 5-0330," read one. "Pick up milk," read another. A third sported a delicious combination of consonants: "'Phthisic': afflicted by a progressively wasting or consumptive condition, esp. pulmonary tuberculosis." Heh, I never noticed they all began with P. I relegated stray sheets of scratch paper to the two unwieldy piles of papers on my desk and laid out tomorrow's Journal Club article.

Then I heard a snatch of conversation behind me: "I've only heard of lesbian couples using those."

"Oh no, get with the times! You can satisfy a woman with both ends, or the man can take it up his ass...."

It was enough to make me look up from "ATP-bound conformation of topoisomerase IV: a possible target for quinolones in Streptococcus pneumoniae." Really I should already be sick of hearing about Anna's randy exploits, which I'd often hear her telling to the lab tech Susan, like she was doing now. But even though her lifestyle was too wild for my taste, my own was far too tame. It made sense, I told myself—I was relatively new to the city, had just been a postdoc here for four months. I didn't have dozens of classmates I saw daily, like Anna (who was in graduate school) did; nor did I have conventional good looks, the way that Susan did, for instance.

"Amy, you're giving Journal Club tomorrow?" It was Jordan, another postdoc, in the hallway.

"Yup, topoisomerase."

"Awesome. I'm going to lunch now but I'll check it out after lunch."

I waved and went back to the J-Bact paper, finding consolation in ATP binding sites and antibiotic resistance.

*********

Vasili Kurakov reappeared at my lab bench in the late afternoon. "Have you run out of another enzyme?" I asked coolly, looking up from the cloning maps I was assembling on my computer.

"No, I decided those are problems I need to bring to my undergraduate from now on, and not to you."

"You've made a wise decision."

"In figuring that he will be competent enough to make a judicious amount? I think so."

I exhaled loudly in indignation. He flashed an evil sort of grin. I was about to ask him what he wanted, when he started looking over the gel photos taped above my bench.

"How do you get handwriting this neat? Do you have a robot label everything for you?"

"I can't even tell whether that's a compliment or an insult."

"Heh—'compliment'!" he said in disdain. As I glared, he picked up a pipetman and started pumping it vigorously, while obliquely raising an eyebrow at me.

"Vasili, this question is long overdue. What the hell are you doing?"

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No. I mean—I mean, don't you have work to do? I was kinda in the middle of—"

"Come to think of it I DO have something to finish up, and I understand completely." He waltzed out.

I turned back to my cloning maps for a few minutes, and then decided I had had enough of the day. I had better get back to the car fast enough so that I'd have time to do something about it before dinner. Usually I worked on into the evening, but Wednesday night was a night set aside for not working, just arbitrarily decided upon like the noon lunchtime. Convenient, maybe, that the car had chosen a Wednesday to start jerking and spurting.

As it turned out, once I got out into the parking lot, the car wouldn't fucking even start.

"Agh!" I growled, running my hands up the sides of my face. What to do? I found myself walking back upstairs into the lab.

*********

"You're sure this isn't too much out of your way?" I said nervously.

"Not at all. I know these streets like I know the genetic code." Vasili drove intently, both hands on the wheel.

"Well thanks again for this."

"What are your plans for the night?"

"Oh, curl up, read, nothing too special. I'm reading some stuff by Eugene O'Neill."

"I remember Long Day's Journey Into Night was really good."

"It is."

"So, uh," he said, "you don't have a significant other?"

"Nope, just Eugene tonight."

He was caught off-guard by the phrasing but then understood. "I always figured you didn't, but you know, you can never be sure."

"Right. Uh—you're single too, right?"

"Free as a bird."

"I also always figured."

"Amy, you know why I know these streets so well?"

"Huh?" Something was amiss. What was that grocery store?

"I'm not driving to your place. I'm driving to mine. I knew it was a big risk but I hoped you would notice really early on and point it out, and if you didn't like it I would have driven you right where you wanted to go. But you didn't notice. You weren't even looking out the window."

"Christ, Vasili—"

"I'd kiss you but I don't want to get into a traffic accident. We'll be there in five more minutes."

*********

As soon as he'd parked his car and shoved the key in his pocket, he grabbed my shoulders. We kissed hotly, excitedly, with almost a sigh of "At last" but also the tingling promise of what was about to transpire. Without breaking breath contact he struggled on his knees across the transmission and awkwardly onto my lap, crouching in the space in front of me, jammed in the small space allowed by the car, and I kissed and kissed him. Finally he squirmed back across the driver's seat, got out of the car, ran around and opened up the passenger's side, and we embraced languorously standing against the car roof. I couldn't get him close enough in my arms.

"Let's go inside," I whispered.

On his couch he fell astride my body full-length, almost knocking out my breath with the ecstasy of the feeling. Kissing, I rolled us over onto his back and started dizzily undressing him, lapping hungrily at the new territories uncovered by my hands. His erection, seen through his pants, made something tremble inside me. I peeled it free and, as he lay there momentarily helpless—partly because he was emotionally moved to see the reciprocation of his desire—I bent on my knees and started sucking his cock. I pumped his shaft in my hand as I tenderly lavished my tongue in his straggly undergrowth, then wet the circumference of his rod in long licks before I once again took it as fondly as an infant with a pacifier. As I looked up to see his reaction, my mouth repeatedly pampered the part of his body I had come to treasure in the shortest time.

"Amy," he whispered hoarsely, in disbelief even as pleasure coursed through him. "Amy." And then, "don't let me come just yet."

His harsh breathing fused again into my lips as he held me full-length along his body, his hands warm and sure as they divested me of my own clothes. I was wild with anticipation; there was such heat in the air. Still lying under me, he hoisted me cephalad until my bare breasts fell against the slopes of his cheeks, and then turned his head to pleasure each nipple; I moaned his name, over and over. He kept it up patiently with his tongue, but even as I gloried in it, I was near tears with impatience.

Then he took on the Vasili Kurakov air impossible not to recognize from the lab. His face so hard with passion it was like a mask, he laid me aside, stood up, removed my pants as confidently as if he were unsandwiching a Western blot, and said low, "Lie back." A wave of gratitude made me gasp when his tongue found my target, licking precisely bulls-eye. His hands cupped my bare ass and for some reason I felt an especially human connection from having warm hands hold me there. I was sprawled moaning on the sofa while he knelt on the floor. He licked me into abandon, into new states of seeing. All along this man....

"Vasili, Vasili, I'm getting close." He murmured stifled encouragement against my pussy. "O Vasili, Vasili, Vasili...." I had to give him his name, so to speak, and his name was perfect for rolling myself over the edge, propelled relentlessly into a mad blank world, screaming.

Having subsided, I scrambled toward him: "Stand back, let me get you hard again—" and I knelt on the floor as he stood up, and as I cherished his cock in my mouth I felt I could capture that pose indefinitely. How I loved serving him at the same time I was possessing him vulnerable....

"Amy, Amy, are you ready."

"O Vasili." I stood up to meet his embrace. I was beginning to tremble. We kissed with the feeling we had first recognized out there in the car, but at a more intimate leisure, with more confident emphasis. He held me tightly with one arm while he filled the other hand with one side of my ass, massaging it up and down. His cock poked at my pubic hair. We couldn't stop kissing.

"Vasili," I whispered finally, "come into me." And I lay down on the couch, face up, spreading my legs as Vasili knelt down between them, and I helped guide his cock until I felt it entering the right place, and then I lay back and watched his face over mine as he started to fuck me.

The sensation was a blissful pleasure like no other. I moaned low, long, and loud, uncontrollably, as he hit my G-spot over and over. He filled me so full. I could feel, too, that the bucketfuls I had released were doing their job as lubrication. He was making the occasionally involuntary sound, too, and it escaped as outward through a veil under which he was fully engaged, his heart and being submersed. It was inexpressible joy fucking Vasili. An inexpressible joy.

My moans grew louder and fused into contiguous utterance; my limbs had lost circulation; I felt entirely in a supraphysical state. I thought I could feel his wet warm cum, as I convulsed and nearly shot out of consciousness.