The Think System

Marion was, above all else, a smart girl. A reasoning kind of a girl. She was most comfortable when dealing with abstractions, concepts, systems.

Harold Hill might not have had much time for thinking about abstractions, but his finely honed instincts about people told him that while the way to Marion’s heart might have been through her family, the way to light her on fire a bit south of that organ was through getting her to think about it.

Thoughts and words, words and thoughts… and a library full of books to draw on. Once he’d made it clear he was staying on in River City – and times being what they were, a proposal to the town’s librarian was a foregone conclusion – he’d begun making a study of the inventory of that library not only for the books it had, but those it didn’t have. Periodicals like “The Yellow Book,” for instance. A copy of Fanny Hill… although he thought that might be a set of lessons for after the wedding, rather than before. No need to frighten the girl.

He started with the works she already knew, making his own intense study of what was best and finest and then offering it back to her, preferably whispered into her delicate shell of an ear as the warm summer nights darkened and shadows deepened over the porch swing. Mrs. Paroo left them alone, she had long since made up her mind and what’s more she approved wholeheartedly of the way Marion spent increasing blocks of time staring into space, startling and blushing when she was jolted out of such a reverie. The blushing… a few careful applications of John Donne had resulted in a delicious day of pink cheeks around the library, countless stolen glances and a breathless stolen kiss between the stacks when the building was nearly empty because all the children were back in school. And then Harold had gone back to the little storefront he’d opened the week before, and resumed his place behind the counter to spend the rest of the day selling very little sheet music, and only a few clarinet reeds and one set of banjo strings. He had, however, taken orders for two new Victrolas and several phonograph records… it still astonished him that people were spending the sums they were for these things with so little work on his own part, that they came to him.

The wedding was set but months away, at Christmas: six months of learning one another, of anticipation… of thinking. In September, during an unexpectedly warm weekend, Harold and Marion had taken advantage of being the oldest courting couple in town and arrived at the footbridge after all the young folks’ curfews were past. He was pleased to see the puzzled frown on her usually smooth brow when they pulled apart after a particularly long kiss, the little sigh of frustration that slipped out. Marion wanted more, but she had so little idea what it was she wanted. How easy it would have been to take advantage; how ironic that she was the one woman of whom he would never even consider taking such advantage. But he relished her frustration, which had only grown more keen after he began lingering longer after each kiss, nibbling at her lips until they parted and then gently teaching her by example how to tease and play with her tongue.

That night at the bridge, he had licked at her luscious mouth until she kissed him back just as urgently, her breathing growing rough; when he pulled her closer, the length of her body against his, she melted into him with no hesitation, and he almost regretted it for the self-control it demanded to keep his hands at her waist instead of letting them slide lower. Higher, perhaps, would be safer… he drew them up along her corseted sides until his thumbs were just under her arms, just a hair’s breadth away from where the delectable swelling began. Stroking there, he willed her to think about him moving his hands, about the time when he could move them to where he wanted them.

In October it was chilly in the evenings, and on the last night they braved the weather to pause at the bridge he murmured some selected lines of Robert Herrick a bit too close to her ear, and then made love to that same ear and her neck with his lips and tongue. He meant to make her fall, to swoon, but ended up losing himself in the scent of her hair and her skin, the velvety smoothness under his mouth, the taste of her… making him long to taste the rest of her, making the two months ahead seem like several eternities. When she grabbed his hair rather rudely and dragged his mouth up to hers, he forgot for a few mad moments the strictures about where his hands should not stray… and he was not punished but rewarded, by the amazing sensation of Marion groaning into his mouth and straining closer still. The pressure of her hips, the way the curve of her hips fit perfectly into his hands even through the heavy velvet of her skirt and the rustling petticoat beneath… he knew he should hold her away from his erection, that a gentleman wouldn’t do what he did and hold her there, but for that brief time they were both overwhelmed. They pushed apart eventually, sheepishly, and Harold clutched her slim hands in his and kissed her fingers and professed his love much less eloquently than the poets would have done, and she couldn’t get enough. But from that time forth, all he needed to do was to stare at her neck – which was so often revealed temptingly by the upsweep of her honey-gold hair – and ask her if he could reserve the collected works of the Cavalier Poets again, and she would respond with a little giggling gasp as if anyone hearing must certainly know what he really meant.

He liked to come to the library in the early evenings in November, leaving his store in the care of Tommy Djilas who was shaping up to be a fine salesman with a good ear for the type of music people enjoyed and were likely to buy. Harold would help Marion shelve the last of the books, help her record the last entries of the day in the ledger where she recorded the comings and goings of each volumes, shoo out the last few patrons, and make sure the windows and doors were all secured and the lights out. And then there were those few final unchaperoned minutes of time they thought they could get away with and still emerge respectably together for the walk home… one of the fondest memories Harold would ever have was the expression of anxiety fading to wonder and then sheer desire on his Marion’s face the first time he was bold enough to do more with that time than just steal more kisses, to pull her away from the windows between the shelves and trace the outline of her breasts so carefully with his fingertips that he might have drawn that shape from memory afterward. He wanted, almost too much to bear, to lower his mouth to the peak that he felt forming beneath his thumb, to suckle at the shape through the cloth of her crisp, white blouse until she cried out with pleasure. He didn’t need to; she cried out at the slip of his thumb across the eager little bundle of cotton-covered flesh, and her voice was darker than he expected, frustrated again, husky and glorious… the sound went straight to the firmness in his trousers, and now he didn’t hesitate to tug her closer although he knew he would ultimately find no satisfaction this way.

Emboldened by her response, intoxicated by not just the need for her but by her, Harold had taken a simpler approach that day and just told her what to think about. And more, of course. “I know I’ll be thinking of this later, Marion… will you be thinking of it? Of my hand, fitting so perfectly there… If I could, I’d kiss you there. I will when I finally can. Think about that, too… about what that will feel like, my mouth against your skin instead of my fingers over your clothes…”

“Yes,” she’d whispered, a sobbing little whisper, and Harold thought he could live for a hundred years on the look she gave him before her eyes closed. He teased at her nipple more firmly, cupping her other breast tenderly, bringing forth a series of moans from his beautiful, willing victim.

It had been too brief, but any longer would have been a danger in too many ways and so they emerged into the cool of the night, Harold welcoming the effect of the chill and Marion tugging her coat a little closer around her waist with a blush – not against the cold, but because she felt her body’s response to Harold’s touch must still be as visible as a marquis to any who passed by.

It was a small town, and a town full of gossips, but since they had collectively decided to welcome Harold Hill and repaint their previous image of the librarian from slatternly to virtuous, prying eyes looked elsewhere. In the early weeks of December Mrs. Paroo looked elsewhere, too, and if Marion and her beau remained together in the parlor long after the rest of the household was asleep, well… the wedding was almost upon them, and her late bloomer of a daughter surely had ground to regain in this area. She knew, of course, that Marion had been doing a lot of thinking lately; but she also knew that the thinking was unlikely to lead to cold feet, in this particular case. She only hoped, in her practical way, that it did not lead to any children born embarrassingly hard on the heels of the wedding; but it was already December now and the wedding was just weeks away, so the danger was most likely past in any case and it was clear Harold was not planning to do a last-minute scarper. The music store was doing well, beyond all their expectations, and Harold was gaining a respectability in town that seemed to surprise him most of all. Mrs. Paroo liked the idea of grandchildren.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Marion would whisper as his fingers first toyed with her blouse buttons, then slowly unfastened them one by one, revealing creamy skin that he thought he could never spend enough time touching. Or kissing… although the skin whose taste he liked best so far wasn’t creamy, it was a dusky pink and grew darker as it grew firmer under his suckling lips. A flick of his tongue across the dimpled roughness would make Marion shiver and gasp, and he wondered if he might bring her to a crisis that way, and he wondered if she had ever had a climax. He knew some said women didn’t have them, but he was experienced enough to know full well that women in fact did, and that some women had them quite easily… Marion was pliable and warm in his arms on the night he first dared venture beneath her clothes, a week before their wedding, her fingers laced into his hair as he savored her breasts and the silky skin between them, and the hand that wasn’t supporting her seemed to slip into her lap of its own accord. Nestled there, just at the top of her thigh, and he pulled back with an apology on his lips when he felt her freeze; the apology never made it out of his mouth, because she kissed him fiercely and gripped his hand too firmly for him to remove it.

“Harold, I’ve been thinking about that, too,” she moaned softly when next their mouths were free, and then she stroked the back of his hand to make sure he would be in not doubt as to what she meant.

He recovered with laudable speed considering how the blood rushed away from his brain, and decided the advantage was being given to him to push. “Have you, now? You naughty little thing, Miss Marion. In the middle of the library, in broad daylight, you’re thinking about this?” He trailed his fingers into the crook of her lap, curling the back of his hand into the dip of her broadcloth skirt and pressing down gently. Caught in his gaze, she blushed brilliantly but then smiled that electric smile and shook her head, causing a loose curl to bob charmingly around her shoulder.

“Not in the library, at night in bed,” she murmured, and then lifted her hands to her lips in horror at what she’d said.

Harold caught her fingers, pulling them away and shaking his head gently in amusement. “And what, my sweet, are you doing while you’re having all these thoughts, lying in your little bed at night?” He knew what the subtle shift and press of his fingers was doing to her, and found it irresistible.

“I… I can’t…” She shook her head again, and Harold frowned at her and stilled his hand.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” she admitted instantly, and then looked away, ashamed. Caught. “I should…”

He captured her lips again, kissing until she kissed him back properly, feeling a thrill at the knowledge that he’d been the one to teach her how to do that. It was nothing compared to the knowledge of what he had yet to teach her. Perhaps because he had been made to wait for so long, perhaps because he truly seemed to love this often infuriating but undeniably lovely woman, Harold found himself driven nearly mad by thinking about what they would do not only on the wedding night but afterwards, years of possibilities, and the true test of his salesmanship would be in convincing her that each new delight was not only right and good but something she desired as much as he did.

For the moment, the idea seemed to be selling itself. Marion was leaning into his kiss, even letting the shift of her weight on the couch part her legs the slightest bit… and then she was gone, with a furious blush and a gasp, clutching the placket of her unbuttoned blouse together in one hand and holding her skirt in the other to make her flight up the stairs possible. He knew she heard his stage-whispered “I love you,” because she looked back at that moment with a panicked smile, just before dashing up the stairs and out of his sight. “And I’ll see myself out,” he finished when she was gone, and he did so, grinning from ear to ear all the way back to the little house he had purchased a few blocks away, the house where they would live together once they were married. It was cold, and the fire took too long to warm the room where he slept, but he added an extra blanket and went to sleep still smiling in anticipation.