Dinner Guests

Rita punched out of her job at the department store promptly at 4 p.m. She had worked at the cosmetics counter since the day after her high school graduation the previous year. She had developed a small following based on her attractiveness, congeniality, product knowledge and unabashed flattery. Every woman she assisted was beautiful. All she needed was this shade of lipstick, that eye shadow, this lotion to make that innate beauty pop and sizzle. Women learned her work schedule, asked for her specifically, waited patiently while she served other customers even if other clerks were available to assist them.

Her coworkers could have been jealous, resentful of her popularity. But she was disarmingly friendly, genuinely interested in their lives, their families, especially their children. She loved children. Hoped to someday have her own, if she ever could find a reliable man. The other women in her department took to calling her “our Rita,” like aunts or kindly neighbors would do.

She enjoyed the work, her coworkers and customers. But the job didn’t pay well and she still lived in a cramped, one-bedroom flat with the aunt who had raised her, Gertrude. It hadn’t always been that way. Before her uncle, Henry, died in a car accident, they had a three-bedroom bungalow with a small yard, a flower garden and a public park just down the street.

Since then, though, they had fallen on hard times. Gertrude had never worked outside the home. The only thing she was qualified to do was keep house, so she had to get by with cleaning other people’s homes three days and week and cooking dinner for single men five nights per week.

If Rita caught the 4:17 bus at the stop on the corner near the employee entrance, she could take the 30-minute ride home and be there in time to help Gertie prepare dinner for the six or seven men who lived in their building or nearby and worked at the mills that polluted the air and water in her neighborhood.

Rita climbed aboard the bus, dropped a token in the box and flirted briefly with the regular driver, Clarence. She had once accepted a date with Clarence, who was so socially awkward that her charitable nature led her to give him a blowjob just for trying.

Rita was not a beauty, but she did catch your eye. Especially if you liked the girl-next-door, neighborhood tomboy look. She had a face that Gertrude described as pleasant. She was lanky. Curvaceous was a foreign word. When Rita complained that she hadn’t developed larger breasts and rounder hips, her aunt advised her to be thankful that she wouldn’t have tits hanging to her waist and hips that shook like St. Nick’s belly of jelly when she walked.

She did like her legs, though. So, she favored short skirts — minis when she went out on a weekend — to show them off.

Rita slid into an empty seat on the left side of the bus near the rear exit door and settled next to the window. As Clarence steered the bus away from the curb, a man wearing an overcoat over a business suit and carrying an umbrella settled down next to her. The day was warm and the forecast did not call for rain, but Rita was used to all types and took no undue note of her new seatmate.

Until, that is, he opened his coat and she saw his hard cock sticking out of his fly. He quickly spread out a newspaper and held it above his lap, but that did not shield his member from Rita’s view. She gazed out the window to try to make him believe she had not seen his dick. But he grasped her right hand and pulled it to his crotch. She instinctively wrapped her fingers around his prick, since that’s what she’d done countless times while parking with high school boys who demanded similar attention.

Rita continued to stare out the window. She could rip her hand away. She could scream, have Clarence stop the bus and call the cops. She could politely tell the gentleman that she had no interest in giving him a handjob and ask that he change seats.

What she did was slowly stroke the stranger’s cock. He didn’t move or make a sound but kept his left hand lightly atop her right wrist. He didn’t restrain or guide her. He just enjoyed the movement of her hand. And she admitted to herself that his shaft was longer and thicker than many she’d felt before and was kind of a pleasure to have in her palm.

What the hell, she thought. Jerking off a stranger on a public bus might be just the change she needed from gazing mindlessly out the window and seeing the same damn buildings, shops, people, traffic, dogs, cats, pigeons that she saw every damn day on the ride home. She didn’t want monotony to become a part of her life. Adventures were too few and far between to pass up, even one that was so criminal in nature.

Plus, jerking the jerk off also would give her a good story to tell the other girls at work the next day. She increased the pace of her stroking and turned to watch her ministrations.

The bus made several stops with the usual comings and goings of passengers. No one gave any sign of being aware of the handjob in progress, but many city residents also were inured to strange behavior in public places. Also, there was a likelihood that some people enjoyed watching what she was doing.

She had been jerking the man off for about 10 minutes when he suddenly broke the silence between them with a few quick gasps. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to her. She placed it over the tip of his cock and it caught the cum he spurted into it moments later.

Some of the sticky jism eluded the hanky and lodged on Rita’s hand. She looked around for something to clean it up with, saw nothing and wiped it off on his pants leg.

“Hey, dolly,” the man hissed, greatly offended by her effrontery. “These trousers have to be dry cleaned. That’s gonna cost me money.”

“Think of it as a service charge,” she said. “Ain’t nothing in this world that’s free, darling.”

He huffed, tucked his dick back into his pants, zipped up, closed his overcoat, folded his newspaper, picked up his umbrella and got off the bus at the next stop. Rita just shook her head. It takes all kinds.

Their rundown apartment building was a five-minute walk from her stop, if she didn’t dally. She scurried along the sidewalk, dodging slower-moving pedestrians, offering a smile to all and a kind word to the many she knew by name.

Rita was popular in the neighborhood. Attractive, but not too attractive. Smart, but not too smart. Fun-loving without a doubt. One of the first to show up and be counted in a neighbor’s time of need.

She pushed open the outside door to the foyer and saw the building superintendent pretending to repair a light fixture that hadn’t worked properly since her sophomore year.

“Hello, Mr. Conroy,” she called gaily, hoping to fly past him and up the stairs without delay.

“Ah, Miss Rita, how fortunate that I happen to be here when you arrive home. This is the third, you know, and I have not yet received the rent from you and your aunt that is due on the first.”

“I know, Mr. Conroy, and Aunt Gertie and I are very sorry. I get paid on Friday and my aunt should have the gentlemen’s dinner money for last month by then, too, so we can get the rent to you when I come home from work Friday.”

“Well, if this was the first time you missed, I might be able to let it slide,” Mr. Conroy said. “But it’s the third time in the last year. The rent is due on the first. I must give the money to the owners on the second. If I don’t have it all then, I must make up the difference from my own pocket. I am not a rich man, Miss Rita, and my kindness to you and your aunt won’t pay any of my bills, either.”

“I understand, Mr. Conroy, I really do. And so does Gertrude. We just have these ups and downs, ebbs and flows in our meager finances,” Rita said. “I’m sure you can understand that.”

“Understanding isn’t accepting, Miss Rita. I’ve covered for you again this month, but I can’t let this go on any longer. You must pay your rent by the first from now on or, I’m afraid, find another place.”

“Oh, Mr. Conroy, we can barely afford this apartment. Anywhere else we look will probably be much more expensive. Housing in this town just costs too damn much. Pardon my language.”

“Not my problem, Miss,” he said. “I have financial issues of my own, you know. A family to support and whatnot.”

“Well,” Rita said, “approaching him. Perhaps there’s a way to soften the blow.”

She grabbed his hand and led him back into the hallway and under the stairs. She felt his cock through his pants and smiled wickedly when it started to grow. She unzipped his pants, burrowed around in his boxers and pulled his dick out. She crouched down, ran her tongue around the tip of his cock and then wrapped her lips around it.

She had learned in her young life that sucking a cock usually was at least a temporary solution to most any problem involving men. She had never tried it on Mr. Conroy before, but, hey, he was just a man and it had worked on a chemistry teacher, the owner of a bodega where Gertrude had run up a large tab, a policeman who thought that jaywalking across a quiet street while a girl out at night on her own was a major crime and, most recently, the head of her department when she legitimately could not explain why her cash drawer was short at the end of her shift.

Rita took the long view. Indeed, she had been a long-distance runner in high school, a reliable member, not the star, of her cross country and track teams. She still ran several miles each morning on her days off, had completed two half-marathons and had a dream of someday going the distance in Boston or New York.

Giving the super a blow job when money was tight was a mere investment in the future.

Mr. Conroy rested his hands lightly on the sides of her head as she blew him. The touch, she noted with irony, was similar to that of the stranger on the bus. And Mr. Conroy’s prick was a good fit in her mouth, as bus passenger’s cock had been in her hand.

The super breathed heavily and moaned softly, “Oh, my, oh, my. That does feel good, Miss Rita.”