“To tell you the truth, you pock marked swindler of sweets, I have little, if any interest at all in your chocolates, cherry filled or otherwise,” said twelve-year-old Vladimir Karlov to a black girl dressed in uniform.   White shirt, blue cardigan and kaki pleated skirt.

“But it’s for a good cause.   My school is trying to raise money for new books,” the high school girl pleaded, cardigan spreading just above the buttons.

“Why bother?   For your new books will do nothing more than teach you a life of yearly chocolate sales and proper condom application.   No thank you young miss, for I don’t prescribe to such fascism.”

Vladimir had meant to move along, his point, he believed, well made, and his careless degree of interest just right, but the high school girl’s cardigan had opened a bit more and the white shirt covering her dark flesh below began to reshape his perspective.   He turned back to the busty high school queen and stood with one leg forward, his chest puffed out as if just having bested a foe, their body lying helpless at his feet.   “May I taste your chocolates before purchasing?”

“I promise you they’re good,” her breasts breathed in reply.

“And I believe you my African princess, but for me to purchase I must be guaranteed that both the flavor and texture are to my liking so that I’m not up late in bed wishing I had purchased another piece of chocolate more suitable with my predilection.   You see, I’m a man of sophisticated taste; quick satisfaction and fleeting expectations mean nothing to me.   I desire long term arousal, something that I can taste again and again.”

“These chocolates have cherries and almonds and dates.”

“And when I eat them will they fulfill?”

“They’ll fulfill you ‘til you’re full.”

“But I know I’ll never be full.”

“Then you’ll have to buy again.”

“From you?”

“From me.”

And Vladimir pulled out his wallet, while her breasts beat effortlessly.   “I’ll buy two boxes and your number so that I may call and assess your guarantee.”

As Vladimir stepped closer, he took out a pen and a small pad of paper from inside his sports jacket, looking seductively at the salesgirl and running his hand through his dark hair, which was still parted perfectly to the right just as he had fashioned it hours earlier in front of his Louis XIV mirror.

“I cannot give you my number, you’re a stranger from the street.”

“A stranger I am not, for I am Vladimir Karlov, triumph of the Caspian Sea.   All women know my name, though few have been so lucky to know my body.   However, seeing as you’ve enticed me long enough for me to stop here at this corner, breaking me from my busy schedule, I feel you deserve the right to witness such a marvel.”

The girl turned to look away just as Vladimir had unbuttoned his shirt.

“Do not turn your back on Vladimir Karlov you chocolate dealing harlot,” his shirt and coat blowing open, revealing a pale chest.   “For I have no time for such teases that muse over the likelihood of a late night rendezvous but sell short the bait, which she has hooked for I am no fish of easy persuasion, I am no child of campfire pursuits.   I am Vladimir Karlov and your breasts, yes conniving streetwalker, your breasts, are all that I am after.”

Vladimir spits in her direction and flees the scene with fists clenched, the blood below his belt rising and the wind carrying the tails of his sports jacket like dust.

That night, while sitting in his father’s revolving lazy-boy and enjoying a nightcap of his best-aged scotch in the family room, a figure wet from the rain entered the darkness of the foyer holding roses and a box of chocolates.   The figure slowly closed the door behind him and set a soaked umbrella on the marble floor.   Vladimir could tell by the man’s scent, still like that of the old country, that it was his father.

“And what preposterous happenings am I to witness tonight, Father?”

Vladimir’s father stopped in his tiptoe tracks as if caught.   “Why, Vlad, what are you still doing up?   I presumed you to be in bed for some time now.”

“What you know of my personal dealings is of no consequence, Father.   Now please answer my question.   What of the flowers and chocolates?   What of the low voice and locks?”   Vladimir sits up surveying his father who stands across the room, half hidden by the darkness of the foyer.

“It’s for St. Valentine’s Day, Vlad and these treats of sugar and blossoms are for your mother.”

“Step into the light, Father for I must see your face while you spill these lies.”

His father steps into the large family room adjacent to the foyer.   “I do not lie, Vlad, it’s St. Valentine’s Day tomorrow.”

“Oh Father, please don’t tell me you have been duped yet again by these trolls of industry, these goblins of merchandising, by cards made for teenagers and toys made for infants!”

“Lower your voice Vlad, your mother is asleep and I dare not wake her at such an hour.”

Disgusted, Vladimir raises his voice a bit louder.   “Please do not display such fleeting masculinity in my presence for I dare not think of the ill effect all this prancing about will do to me in the long run.   Karlov’s are men of conviction, Father.   Where would we be now if the great Karlov’s of the past were to act in such a way during a peasant uprising or outbreak of the plague?”

“I told you Vlad, your grandfather was—”

“Speak no more, I’ll not let your nimbleness destroy our legacy.   Go now, frolic and sneak all you want, but please do so discreetly so that I may feign ignorance of this whole sordid affair of flowers and chocolates and bears.”   Vladimir turns his back on his father who stands with flowers and chocolates at his side.

“Vlad is that my Glenlivet you’re drinking?”

“Go back into the darkness, Old Man, I’ve had my fill of fairy tales and cream puff romances for one night.”   His father steps further into the room, setting both the chocolates and flowers on the black grand piano that sits just past the entrance.

“Don’t be so down Vlad, you’ll get your Valentine soon enough, in fact you might just meet her tomorrow.”

Vladimir spins the chair back around to face his father and, as if surprised to see how close he now is, stands to bolster his stature.   “I will find no such thing, for I want no such thing.   I shall find a woman as I always do, Father, but she will not be fooled and twisted like the rest of this Anglo-Saxon nation and their Anglo-Saxon holidays of Shakespearian love.   No Father, my deity is not Cupid with his marble buttocks and plastic arrows, mine is Zeus of beard and brawn, with ferocity in his brow and might in his bolt.   My woman is Aphrodite and Demeter, Hera and Athena too, and I’ll lie with them all, Father, not a chocolate in sight, not a flower in bloom, you shall see, they shall swoon.”   Vladimir drinks down the last of the scotch and raises his hand with the now empty glass to the air in revolt.

“Swoon they will, Vlad.   Swoon they will,” his father says smiling, then picks the chocolates and flowers back up, and turns to leave the room.

“Father, wait.”

“Yes, Vlad?”

“Where did you buy those chocolates?   It wasn’t from the dark girl around the corner was it, with those black eyes as piercing as her breasts, smelling of jungle romps and desert oils?”

“In fact it was, Vlad, for books and uniforms and trips.”

“Damn that scarlet hussy.   Selling to any and all she sees.”

“She was quite friendly, Vlad.   A line had been formed before her.”

“A line?   For her!   Preposterous.   I’ve seen better below tables at bars.   It’s this red holiday air, the blood of a saint has heated the loins of millions and even the least fair are enjoying the bulging air.”

Vladimir’s father disregards his son’s comments and tiptoes back into the darkness from where he came.   “Don’t stay up too late, Vlad.”

Vladimir sinks back into the couch with bookshelves blurring, “I won’t father,” and passes out with an empty glass on his belly and the dark girl’s chest heaving in his head.

She stood at the corner as if it were the day before.   The same pompous air about her yet pitiful enough to evoke the care of a woman passerby.   She had already captured the men, but pity was not their lure, for the men cared little about her school’s dire need for finances.   The men stood in line during lunch breaks and smoke breaks, from cabs and trains, from office building and restaurant, from east and west and north and south, all for a glimpse of those rounding hips and stretching cardigan.   To take it all in so that when they got to their Valentine’s bed they’d have something new, something fresh to think about.   And as they stood they stared, reassuring one another, “Chocolates are the perfect gift for my girl.”

Vladimir watched from across the street, disgusted by the men in their warehouse suits and retail loafers, gawking and talking and walking in place.   Their briefcases pressed against their belts to hide their guilt from the public.   But Vladimir was not one for such shame.   Vladimir was never one for such shame.

It was bright, the sun was still casting silver shadows and the lunch crowd was in full swing.   But it would slow soon enough and the stockbrokers and their wire-framed accountants would have to disappear once again, leaving Vladimir to the white teethed woman with her red lips and nails, her diamond studs dancing between long braids.   “Soon enough, soon enough,” he repeated.

“Soon enough and what?” The voice was coming from a street vendor selling individual plastic roses.   His hat is white and tall and his gloved hands hold the bushels of plastic valentines with a salesman’s flare, spinning and waving in the traffic breeze, passing them before stranger’s paths as if the fragrance of the silk petals would entice.

“Soon enough, vendor of carnival bloom, and I’ll wake up between those volcanoes of pouring flesh, pulling her out of those stockings of navy mesh.”

“But she’ll crush you Vlad, you’ll drowned in her moving earth.”

“How dare you speak to me in such—”

“For I know you like you know you.”

“Speak like that again and it will be you whom I crush.”

Vladimir’s attention finally turns from across the street to the plastic roses that had been drifting in and out of his view.

“Why, Henry!”

“Why, Vlad!”

“If I had known it was you, I’d have not spoken so.”

“If you had known it was me, I would have never spoken so low.”

Vladimir forgets the girl for a moment and the two friends share in a handshake.

“Good to see you old friend, and what of this silk selling farce?”

“Tis’ the day for lovers’, Vlad.”

“Tis’ the day for stooges,” Vladimir says with a dictator’s conviction.   “Such is a holiday for fairgoers and bake sale organizers with their homemade baskets and candy apple teeth.   Selling sweets to disguise the rotten fruit below just as those men use long coats to disguise their crooked erections.”

“But Vlad, do you not seek a Valentine?”

“I seek a Valentine no more than a lion seeks a mate, for I am the alpha male amongst these glass-spined hyenas and soon the black lioness will breathe me in.”

“But even lions must fight to lead the pack.”

“And fight I will, Henry, but wait in line I will not.”

Vladimir and Henry stood side-by-side, Henry’s roses between them; silently studying the line of men as it slowly dissipates before them.

“Perhaps some flowers then, to help her pick up your scent,” Henry offered.

“No roses or flowers at all, for the scent of Vladimir Karlov is like that of a nation of heroes, like that of a nation of men, like that of a nation of roamers, never hiding their lust with leather as if it were a sin.”

“Then perhaps some chocolates will do, some much more exciting than that which she is selling.”

“Forgive me Henry, but I don’t believe anything you have to give could compete with the selections she offers.”

Henry reveals a box in the shape of a heart from under his coat.   “Try one and you shall see, try three and a lion you’ll be.”

Vladimir turns from the line and its leader to look at the chocolates in Henry’s hand, then to Henry’s convincing brow.

“A lion I will be?”

“A lion you will be.” Vladimir reaches in the heart shaped box and grabs a chocolate of the same shape.

After eating one of the chocolates Vladimir looks to Henry.   “These taste as if from glass, aged and bitter yet sweet.”

“Then try another, Vlad, try another and another, ‘til the bitter is gone and the sweet is all that remains.”

“Henry ol’ boy, I enjoy the bitter, but I shall have another and another as you suggest.”   And Vladimir did just that, so that after just a few minutes the chocolates tasted like chocolate and the bitter was all but a past.

Soon Vladimir’s face is covered in the European chocolate as dark as the skin of his prey.   He looks to his hands, now sticky with blurring satisfaction and his stomach growls as he reaches for another.

“Why Vladimir, I think you’ve had enough,” Henry says causing Vladimir to look past the sticky sweetness and see his protruding belly below.

Despondent, Vladimir looks to Henry with guilt.   “Oh, Henry, I feel nothing like a lion.   I feel only fat and weak and lame.”

“Fear not Vlad for it’s dark chocolate, so you’ll not get fat at all.”

“But I already am Henry.   I’m squat and round as a ball.”

“You’re tall and strong, now fit to take in her all.”

Vladimir looks over his body in doubt.   He flexes his arms and puffs out his chest, trying to suck in his protruding belly.   “I’m fat Henry, I’m fat, and the lioness will never fall for me.”

“It’s dark chocolate, Vlad, you can eat all you want and still be the lion you’re meant to be.   So flex and stretch and wipe your face, for I caught a glimpse of her brassier and Vladimir my boy, it’s lace.”

Vladimir’s eyes go wide and dark, focusing on the girl across the street again, her shoes tied tight and socks pulled high so that the flesh from her calves reaches over the lip of the fabric.   He continues to stare as he begins to rub his hand over his aching member.   Her knees and an inch of thigh is all he can see of her legs, but as Vladimir knows all to well, one can tell a lot about a woman by just seeing those knees.

When Vladimir was six he attended a speech given by the president of the “Marxism for Millionaires Society.”   She was a tall woman who looked to be in her late thirties.   Her hair was dark and falling and her eyelashes reached to the ceiling.   Her lips were still pouty, but perked up on all the right words.   They were covered in just the right amount of red lipstick so that when she drank from her highball she left a cloudy outline, but never any color.   Seeing the outline from his table, Vladimir couldn’t help but commit to an ongoing adjustment of his erection below his breathable cotton/spandex combo slacks.   The stretch, he thought aloud, “Makes this a whole lot easier,” drawing looks from others at the table.   “Why this feature had not been mentioned in advertisements if not at least by the salesman is beyond me,” he continued aloud, causing the elderly man with a shiny silver monocle to address him.

“What feature do you mean, Vlad?”

“Oh nothing, Walter, just my wandering mind again, an idea for better estate tax evasion as it were.”

“Ahh yes, Vlad, the most lucrative evasion of all.”

“If not for the IRS we’d be without a game.”

“If not for the IRS we’d be without a name.”

“Hear hear, Walter.”   And the two gentlemen drank from their stiff martinis and Walter gave Vladimir a respecting wink behind his millionaire monocle.   Vladimir then turned his attention back to aggressively removing the clouded lipstick outline from the president’s highball.

While Vladimir worked to fulfill, the president finished her speech and the crowd applauded and cheered.   She raised her hands above her head and waved in gratitude, causing her breasts to pinch higher and closer, pushing through her skin colored blouse.   With this, the crowd applauded louder and Vladimir worked harder, sweat beading at his temples, hand hitting the table and rattling spoons against saucers.   It was louder and louder around him so he banged and banged ‘til the spoons fell from their saucers and couldn’t make a sound.

The beads on his temples began to move as the ejaculate from within did the same, and the crowd couldn’t be calmed.   She waved and waved, waved those breasts all around.   She waved and waved ‘til the saucers were falling to the ground.   And just as those beads were about to fall, just as they were about to burst, she moved from the podium and revealed her falling weak knees.   The room went silent and the clouded lipstick disappeared, which Vladimir could do nothing to recall.   His hands went weak and the oatmeal scent of his desire never burst forth onto the oriental floor.

Walter and the rest of the room took their seats, exhausted from approval, as Vladimir sat weary and distant.   His hand was still holding his bloodless let down, the image of her aged and drooping knee caps with those weak thighs that weighed them down stuck in his head.   He nodded to the others, as they looked him over, sweat sticking to his brow, motionless and cold.   Vladimir nodded again and again, acknowledging the truth behind the lift in breast and bob in hair, the truth behind it all.   She was beyond sex.   She was beyond age.

However, the dark lioness’ knees could still wrap thighs and calves around waists and necks, and squeeze him inside her just as he had imagined all the previous day’s night and as he imagined and sought after now.   The blood that had disappeared with his remembering of the president raced back and his hand went back to work, slowly going over the outline, slowly going over expectation. “I shall let her press me in her, Henry, I shall let her press tonight.”

“And you will press until you’ve conquered Vlad.”

“Until tomorrow’s light.”

Vladimir steps into the yellow traffic, passing through the bus’ fumes as they honk their disapproval.   The noise of it all bounces off the steel walls and concrete curbs, down grates that lead to the ocean and beyond so that even fumes hundreds of feet below seem exhausted.   But none of it affects Vladimir.   None of it sways his erection, as it reaches more and more.   So much so that a child sitting in the backseat of a taxi nudges his mother with pleading curiosity.   “Why mother, are those boy’s trousers alright or are mine defect in some way?”   But his mother can’t answer for she’s transfixed on the outline herself as she rolls the window down and places a hat on her lap where her own hand begins to move.   Over and over again.

In Vladimir’s other hand he holds the half eaten box of chocolates and breathes red air past his teeth, discolored from the alcoholic sweets.   The shadows of skyscrapers sway over Vladimir as he reaches the sidewalk, looking to the lioness just a couple yards away.   She bends again, and his hand moves again, and she retrieves another box for a man.   So far over.   So far down.   So far so that an outline of her own can be seen and Vladimir can stand it no more.

“I’ve come back to tell you I’ve discovered other chocolates more sweet than you could ever produce,” and Vladimir waves the box before her and back to his side again.

“Those rattle and move, mine are firm and thick and the noises they make are moan.”

Vladimir continues with a scoff.   “You speak too much with your serpent tongue.   I could find much better ways to put that nuisance to work.”

“You could find no such way because you offer no such way, for you’re a boy not a lion, with a boner not a bulge.”

At this Vladimir’s free fist clenches and he steps in a furious sprint, stopping just a foot away.   “A boner not a bulge, a boner not a bulge!   Look again you Moroccan minx and Rastafarian reject.   This boner is more than bulge, this bulge is more than big.”

“I see an outline of kitten, of a child, of a mutt.”

“I see a weak willed harlot, a siren, a sore, a slut.”

“But not slut enough to wrap your waist, not slut enough to moan your name.”

“Yet slut enough to let them stare, slut enough to let them gaze.”

Vladimir is now close enough to the temptress so that when he leans back with slanderous words his erection grazes the front of her skirt.   When Vladimir notices this he edges even closer and begins to bend at the knees.

“Now back away with that Kay-Bee toy, with that water gun of sixth grade joy.”   But Vladimir moves closer still and bends at the knees again, lifting the skirt as

he goes up and says, “I have chocolates of my own.”

“Then leave mine alone.”

“Just taste them and lick them and hold them on your tongue.”

“Please leave her alone, my boy you’re far too young,” says a man with pharmacy glasses and a horseshoe trim, causing Vladimir to turn his attention from his makeshift squats along the girl’s thigh to the nuisance and his Macy’s day sale tie.

“Run along old man for your pills will not work.   They will not help you perform.   They will not get you past her skirt.”   The man goes red and races away, causing the girl to burst out laughing, breasts heaving for the world.

Ignoring the man with his white eyes gone red and hands too sweaty to grasp, she turns to Vladimir who places his hand on her voluptuously shelf like ass.   “My name is Veronica, and you must be Vlad, for I know of no other twelve year old that could make a grown man so sad.”

“Vladimir Karlov is known far and wide, and you are the last of the women who does not run and hide.”

“I have nothing to fear.”

“Vladimir Karlov my dear.”

And Veronica laughs again, giving a flirtatious wink, “Vlad, we shall see.”

“Yes Veronica, you will be.”

Veronica laughs again with arctic teeth against African skin, and eyes as green as Brazil.   She laughs and laughs as she packs up her things and Vladimir stands and watches.   As he watches he leaves his hands at his sides leaning his outline against her skin, allowing the skirt to dance over him like natives for rain and child.

Vladimir’s manhood reaches out and stands for him alone.   And as she bends for one more box she catches a glimpse from down below, then gives Vladimir one more wink and quickly races home.   And as Vladimir watches her off, into the bare trees of the park, he sees an outline from behind where the kaki skirt’s gone dark.