The Gemstone Girls

There was even a funny moment, when I asked Sapphire if she had a nickname of some sort, since Sapphire must have been a handful when she was a child. She explained that the name Sapphire did not lend itself well to nicknames. Her childhood friends had tried 'Sapphy,' or course, but it sounded too much like 'Sappy,' and she did not like it.

"At adolescence," Saphhire elaborated, "Some clever guy, Mark, tried to tease me by calling me 'Sappho.' I googled the name, and realized he was being cruel. I cried to my mother. Why couldn't she have named me Amber or something?"

"How did you stop it?" I asked.

"I got the boy Mark alone, behind the band building, and I totally surprised him by giving him his first kiss. It was also my first kiss. He was shocked to put it mildly, and he developed a crush on me. I had to keep kissing him from time to time, but we were only adolescents and that's as far as it went. He never called me Sappho again, and if anyone else tried, he lowered his wrath on them. It worked out perfectly for me."

"Did Mark kiss well?" Adele asked.

Sapphire laughed. "I can get you his number if you're interested. I'd check with Bill first, though," she replied. "He matured into a handsome man."

When it came time to leave, I did not want the evening to end, but Sapphire was leaving so I felt I should join her. I offered her a ride home, and she seemed surprised. After all, we were in Manhattan, and nobody drives a car in Manhattan. "You have a car?" she asked.

"No, of course not," I said, "I have a phone and an App." Sapphire giggled. She actually giggled! I could not remember the last time a woman had giggled for me. Boy, it was nice!

"I'd love a ride home, if it's with you," Sapphire said.

I ordered a car. You have to enter the destination. "Where do you live?"

"352 East 63rd, at First Avenue," Sapphire said.

"That's only three blocks away!" I said.

"Yes, since I live there, I am well aware of where it is. Does that mean you don't want to give me a ride home? Where do you live, farther away?" Sapphire said, with a tease to her voice.

"I live on East 9th Street, near Second Avenue," I said. "In the East Village."

"Well, that's far enough to justify a car, don't you think? Take me to your place, then," Sapphire said, and she winked at me.

I was dumbfounded, and Sapphire giggled at my astonishment. The car arrived, and Sapphire pulled me out of Stefan and Adele's as I hurriedly said my farewells, while Adele had a smile borrowed from the Cheshire Cat, happy her match making seemed to be working.

At my apartment, I asked Sapphire if she had a few hours, in which case I could give her a tour. She laughed, and I showed her my modest one-bedroom apartment, complete with my view of our neighbor's brick wall. "I can also see into your neighbor's bedroom," Sapphire said. "Does he not use curtains?"

"She," I said.

"Oh, my. Is she pretty?"

I nodded. "Very," I replied.

Sapphire continued, "Does she undress in the window?"

"How do you know that? Sometimes, yes. I think she is a bit lonely, or perhaps a tease," I said. How did Sapphire know that she undressed in the window? It's not exactly common to have such a neighbor.

"New York has so many people, and yet most of them are lonely," Sapphire said. "Are you lonely, my dear Peter?"

"Yes. Or at least I was, until I met you tonight," I said.

"Adele thinks a lot of you. She's a good judge of people. She's not wild about your ex-wife, though," Sapphire said.

"I know. My ex and I were not a good match. She's a nice person, but she's not right for me, and I am very wrong for her. It happens," I said. I quickly added, "Excuse my manners! Would you join me please with a drink? I have a reasonably complete bar, and a recipe book for most cocktails."

"Ooh, I just love cocktails! Did you like the wine at Stefan and Adele's? I thought it was a little too sweet," Sapphire said. "It's okay for cocktails to be sweet, but it's not okay for wine, at least for my taste."

I made her what she claimed to be her favorite cocktail. It was a classic cocktail, a Brandy Alexander. Sapphire raved about it, and she ended up having three of them. I wondered where all this was going, and after her third Brandy Alexander, I decided it was time to live on the edge, to take a risk. I asked her to stand, and she did, confusion on her face. I took that face kissed by angels, held it in my hands, and I gently kissed her lips, even if I am quite far from being an angel.

"Oh Peter!" she said when the kiss ended prematurely. "You blindsided me with your kiss. Let's try again!" and Sapphire leaned towards me and kissed me sending waves of passion rippling through my body. The waves went everywhere, but seemed to end up focusing between my legs, where my member began to grow enthusiastically. Sapphire's kisses were magical. No woman had ever kissed me like that.

We stood there kissing for maybe a quarter of an hour or more. I think I could have kissed that angel forever. Maybe she learned a lot when kissing her adolescent boyfriend Mark? Finally, Sapphire broke the kiss. "Oh, my! Look at the time! I really must go now. Peter, thank you for the lovely evening. You have a nice apartment. I love the East Village. Let me order a car," she said, bringing out her cell phone.

Sapphire was being sweet. I had a modest one-bedroom apartment and a man of my means typically lives in a more upscale neighborhood in a fancy building with hot and cold running doormen and either park or river views. I like where I live, however, and how I live. In some ways, I am a simple man, a quality not fully appreciated by my gold digging ex.

"You can just flag a taxi. There are plenty down here. I'll help you," I said.

"You are such a gentleman! Find me a taxi and then give me another of your wonderful kisses to remember you by!" Sapphire gushed.

To remember me by? What did she mean? "Sapphire, can I see you again?"

"Oh no, Peter, I don't think that would be a good idea. I could fall for you much too easily, you really are my kind of man, and you even kiss well. However, first you need to recover from your divorce. I will not be a rebound girl; I refuse. Call me when you have laid a few other women, and if you still want to, we can date properly, okay? Maybe you want to take the little exhibitionist next door out for a spin? I'll bet she spins nicely."

I felt like crying, but I saw Sapphire's logic. She was much too special a woman to subject to an immediate post-divorce affair. I got her a taxi, and she gave me a kiss that made me instantly hard. Jesus, it was wonderful.

"Don't forget me, Peter. I think I might be falling for you," Sapphire said, as her taxi sped uptown, taking her out of my life. I stood in the street, staring at the tail lights of the taxi as it sped uptown, the woman of my dreams within it.

Had she really just suggested I try to seduce the sexpot next door as some kind of pre-condition to us dating? What kind of woman suggests such a thing?

I went back to my apartment, and it still had Sapphire's scent in it. It smelled wonderful. I picked up a glass of good Scotch whiskey I had not yet finished, and I looked out my bedroom window. There was my neighbor, naked and luscious, looking at me and giving me her seductively beautiful smile. I indicated she should wait a minute, and I returned with a note writ large on a sheet of paper. It said, "Meet me at Starbucks on the corner in 10 minutes?"

My naked neighbor smiled, and she nodded. She held up ten and then five fingers, indicating she wanted 15 minutes, and I nodded. She was young, maybe 20, and just as pretty when dressed as she was naked. Her name was Emmy, and she asked about my wife, because she had not seen her in a while. I told her the brief outlines of my sob story.

"Who then was that siren you had in your apartment earlier?" Emmy asked. "That's Sapphire. She's destined to be my true love, but she says I need a rebound affair before we can see each other. I guess she's right, too. It's a bad idea to fall in love right after a divorce. Such relationships often are doomed," I said. "Is that TMI?"

"It sounds like you need a time-limited, meaningless affair with a girl who will give you great sex, no strings attached," Emmy observed. I noticed that Emmy bore a striking resemblance to Sapphire, and for that matter to Crystal and Ruby, too. I felt as if I were losing my mind.

"Yeah," I said. "Good luck finding that, right?"

"Well, Peter, as it happens, time-limited meaningless sex without strings is my specialty. How about it? Your place or mine?"

"You mean, now? Tonight?" I asked.

"No time like the present!" Emmy said, smiling broadly, and hooking her bare foot around my calf. She must have slipped off her heels. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, mister, and this here rosebud wants your hot body. You can choose: Your place, or mine?"

"Mine. I need a drink," I said.

"It appears you make a mean Brandy Alexander. I can't get one here at Starbucks. Sapphire sure seemed to like them. I thought she was going to take you to bed. Nice of her to leave you for me to enjoy. Shall we go?" Emmy said, rising from her chair, and slipping her tiny feet into her heels.

How did she know I made Sapphire a Brandy Alexander? She could not possibly have known that just from looking into my bedroom. I gave Sapphire her drink in the type of cocktail glass one is supposed to use for it, but such glasses are used for many similar drinks. Was it just an amazingly lucky guess? Yet Emmy had seemed so certain! What the bleep was going on?

One other thing; Emmy resembled, in appearance, all of the three stripper-named girls, as I thought of them: Crystal, Ruby, and Sapphire. She could have been Sapphire's younger sister, just looking at her face. She had the beauty of Sapphire in her face, and the same twinkle in her eyes. A better proxy for Sapphire I could never have found. I decided I was not hallucinating; it really was just a striking coincidence. A flashback from my LSD period might also have explained it, if I had experienced an LSD period, that is.

The main difference was that Emmy was petite. She was short, but perfectly proportioned for her short body. Sapphire, and also Ruby and Crystal, were tall, and a bit statuesque. Emmy was a little minx of a woman, and she was exactly what I needed right then. Her bubbly personality was like a curative tonic for my sad soul.

I began to wonder about my sanity. Every available woman I was meeting looked the same to me! This was probably something doctors might have called 'Divorce Syndrome,' or some such name. Symptoms become easier to handle when a name is attached to them, even if no treatment is known. Having your insanity recognized as perhaps not too infrequent makes it seem no longer to be insanity, even if it nevertheless is.

Actually, on second thought, it was probably named after the doctor who first wrote a medical journal article about it. Maybe Oliver Sacks had noticed it. I could call it "Sacks Syndrome," in his honor. Is that too banal? How about "Oliver Obsession?" The article describing it could be titled, 'The man who mistook his date for another,' or some such thing. All available women look as if they're all sisters to each other.

True to her word, Emmy was dynamite in the sack. She had the energy and enthusiasm of youth, and an eagerness to please I had never before experienced. When she blew me, I knew in advance that she would swallow, she was that kind of girl. When we fucked she wanted to be on top, and her adorable little breasts swung gently around as she bounced around on my cock. When I ate her out, she responded with the enthusiasm of the possessed. I had never known, nor certainly ever been with, a woman such as she.

Emmy's pussy seemed always to be wet and ready for me. She would gasp each and every time I would enter her at the beginning of a nice fuck. She would groan and moan loudly as I pumped inside her. She often wanted to be on top, and I had absolutely no problem with that. She leaned over me, her nipples grazing my chest, and she kissed me lovingly while she fucked her heart out. Sometimes she would kiss me lovingly, and then rear up to a sitting position and do me cowgirl style. I loved watching her boobs bounce around while we fucked in that position. Her kisses reminded me of Sapphire's, and I'll be damned if they were not almost as magical as Sapphire's own!

That first time, Emmy stayed the night, and the next morning I fucked her ass, at her insistence (!). We showered together, and we ended up fucking again in the shower. I realized that to live, if one is to live at all, is to take a shower with a 20-year-old sex obsessed vixen. Wow.

She let me take pictures of her, still dripping wet from the shower, and she even used my phone to take a selfie of us fucking. Her dazzling smile lit up the room as she clicked the phone camera. She texted herself a copy of the picture of the two of us locked together, me being deep inside her at the time.

Emmy was not the kind of girl to limit herself to the bedroom. We did the deed in the kitchen, and in the living room. She liked to wake me in the morning so we could do it while watching 'Morning Joe.' I never did understand that particular fetish.

I began to understand her desire or even perhaps her need to be watched. I decided to try a few things. Sometimes when we would walk hand in hand, I would put my arm around her ass, even though we were in public. When I did that, she would lean into me and purr.

Next, just before we left the apartment one time to go out to dinner, I playfully unbuttoned her blouse a bit. She looked at me with lust in her eyes, so I undid a couple more. Now I could see her bra if she leaned forward even a little. She instantly knew what I was doing, of course, so she bent down to adjust the buckle on her shoe, even if it was a fake buckle, and I got a great view down her blouse.

Emmy said, "Let me use the bathroom a sec, and I'll be ready to go." When she emerged from the bathroom, she was clearly braless. I cupped her boob in the elevator as we left the building, and I tweaked her nipple. She squealed happily in response. "Shall I flash you here in the elevator?" she asked me.

"There are cameras in the elevator. The doorman might see you on the CCTV," I said.

"Okay, you've convinced me," Emmy said, and she lifted her blouse up to her chin, smiling beguilingly. At the dinner, she continually found reasons to lean forward, and once or twice to bend over to adjust her shoes. I enjoyed it almost as much as she did.

Emmy upped the ante by wearing short skater skirts, with lace panties underneath. She would find reasons to flash strangers on the street, and when taking long, steep elevators in the subway (the 59th Street Exit from the 4 and 5 trains were her favorites), she would stand with her legs apart and then bend over to adjust her shoes, thereby giving the men behind her a wonderful view up her skirt.

We had a two-month long torrid affair, but then she said she had to study for some exams, being a college student and all. More importantly, her boyfriend was returning from Thailand, where he had been serving in the Peace Corps.

It had been fun, but she felt it was time for me to return to Sapphire. We had seven or eight goodbye fucks, and then it was over, as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had begun. I had fond memories of my time with Emmy and a few pictures as souvenirs. I was grateful for the pictures, because otherwise I might have thought I had been hallucinating the entire affair. She also still undressed for me in her bedroom window, occasionally blowing me a kiss. I would smile back.

I was now alone again, and becoming a little despondent, when out of the blue Adele called me to invite me to an "end of lent" party. I wanted to ask if Sapphire would be there, but I lacked the courage. I figured there was a chance. What if she were in fact to come, but with a different man? How could I deal with that? I was a nervous wreck as I approached Stefan and Adele's apartment on the Upper East Side. I had given up Sapphire for lent, in effect, and an end of lent party sounded pretty good to me!

I thought Easter Sunday was a strange day for a party. I'm not religious, but surely other people are? Since it was a Sunday, and most people including yours truly worked on Monday, it made sense that the party was an afternoon party. Had it been in New Jersey or certain parts of Queens or even a couple of neighborhoods of Brooklyn, there might have been a barbecue, but instead we had delivered Korean barbecue, referred to at the party as 'catered.' I can't complain, actually. The liquor flowed freely, the Korean barbecue was exceptionally good, and the Japanese and Thai beers were wonderful.

Sapphire was not there, so no worries on that score either. I was thinking that now that I had had my de rigeur post-divorce affair with that cute, little and delightful collegiate sexpot Emmy, I had fulfilled the requirements set down by Sapphire, and maybe I should call her? Anyway, I was a happy and relaxed Peter at the party.

The first thing that threw me was that Crystal was at the party, complete with her hair pulled back and her iceberg persona. I tried to have a little discussion with her, since she looked so much like Sapphire I felt warm towards her. She actually looked happy to see me and broke the ice by asking me to call her Kristy. She was now much more charming. We talked for a bit, and she excused herself. I moved on.

I lost track of Crystal/Kristy, and next I ran into Ruby! What was this, a collection of all my well-meant match-ups at the same party? This was so bizarre. I made a mental note to ask Adele what the bleep was going on.

Ruby was a little nicer than Crystal/Kristy, and we had a pleasant conversation, but she still had up her invisible shield, one that I would never have been able to penetrate, even if I had wanted to do so. Those two women just seemed to have taken an instant standoff approach to me, and while time had weakened it, it had not dissolved by any means.

I was amazed about how similar Kristy was to Ruby, and how both of them reminded me of (whom I now felt was) my true love Sapphire. After I ran up against Ruby's invisible shield once again, I moved away from her, finding someone else to speak with, and I lost track of Ruby too, as she disappeared, just like Kristy had before her. The next person to show up unexpectedly was my very own little collegiate sexpot Emmy.

"Hi, Emily," I said.

"I'm not Emily," she said. "My full name is Emerald. I just shorten it to Emmy."

"Of course," I said. Yet another stripper name. Was it a conspiracy? A conspiracy by who? To what purpose? I decided to relax and to resign myself to being confused. Let the waves roll over, I told myself. Emmy had her boyfriend with her, and he was an impressive guy. He was well over six feet and bristling with muscles. His name was Rock. Of course, it was. What else could it have been?

He came up to me. "Good to meet you, Peter. Emmy tells me you kept my sexually supercharged girlfriend satisfied in my absence. I'm much obliged."

I was stunned. I did not know what to say. Did I enter into some parallel universe? I spoke the truth, by saying, "Don't mention it."

Emmy spoke next, "Have you seen Sapphire yet, Peter?"

"Is she here? Is she coming to this party?" I felt like an idiot asking Emmy, who was just a college student, such questions, but after all, I did know her very well by now, inside and out. In fact, I felt closer to her than to any of my friends, even if she did have the world's scariest boyfriend with her.

"Yes, I'm here, and if you want I can be cumming at this party, too, Peter," purred the unmistakable voice of Sapphire, from behind me. I whipped around to see the woman of my dreams, and there in front of me were Crystal/Kristy, Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, also known as Emmy.