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“I knew it!” She didn’t seem to mind that I’d lied to her before.
Marcy owned more brushes than Picasso, all shapes and sizes and kept in a rolled-up leather case. She whipped out one now and used it to dab at the lipstick. I watched, fascinated as she drew in her lips like a paint-by-numbers picture.
“So he’s got a good job. Big deal. Has he got a big dick?”
I coughed and blushed. I don’t know why. I’ve heard worse. Said worse.
“It’s adequate,” I said.
“Oh,” she said sympathetically, blotting her lips on a square of tissue. “Small?”
“No! Marcy, good Lord!”
“Adequate? C’mon, Elle.” She turned to face me. “Cut? Uncut? Long? Short? Thick? Thin? What?”
“Jesus, Marcy. Who looks that closely?” I bent to scrub my hands.
“Who doesn’t?” She began packing away her box of paints and powders.
“He has a very nice penis,” I told her. “Aesthetically pleasing and fully functional.”
She rolled her eyes. “Spare me, would you? You’re acting like this is no big deal.”
I pushed open the door to the bathroom and started for my office. She followed. She didn’t stop at my doorway, either, but came right in and made herself at home.
“Have a seat,” I offered wryly. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Give me one of your diet sodas,” she said. “I know you hide ’em in that minifridge.”
I handed her a can and settled behind my desk. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“Yes.” She cracked the top open and drank, not seeming to care she was ruining the lips she’d just worked so hard to paint.
“Shouldn’t you go do it, then? Instead of interrogating me about my sex life?”
“Who’s interrogating?” She cried. “I’m just asking.”
I had to laugh at her. “Marcy, we had sex. It’s no big deal.”
She frowned. “Sugar, that’s just sad. It should be a big deal, otherwise why bother?”
She had a point, one I’d made for myself when I’d sworn off the act altogether. “It was worth the bother, all right?”
“So he was good.”
“He was good, Marcy!” I shook a pen at her. “You nosy bitch!”
She put a hand over her heart and looked wounded. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I sighed, resigned. “He took me to the movies, and we went to his place, after.”
I didn’t mention the dance club or the bathroom at La Belle Fleur. Marcy oohed, anyway. She leaned forward on her seat.
“Did he put the moves on you right away, or did he pretend he wanted to show you his soda can collection?”
“I think we both knew why I was going back there. And he doesn’t collect cans, at least that I can tell.”
“Phew,” she said. “Because that’s total turn-off.”
I laughed again and shook my head. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Marcy drank some soda, then set the can on the edge of my desk. “Elle, if you don’t mind my saying so—”
“Would you stop if I did?”
“Hell, no.”
I waved my hand. “Then by all means, carry on.”
“I think it’s good you got out.”
Her words touched me, and I smiled. “Thank you, Marcy.”
She nodded, then winked. “So you’ll be seeing him again.”
My smile dimmed a bit before I answered. “Yes.”
“Geez. You sound thrilled. What’s the matter, he chews with his mouth open? What?”
I shrugged, studying the folders of work piled high on my desk. “No. He has very pleasant manners.”
“Uh-oh,” she said. “Very pleasant manners. An aesthetically pleasing penis. You’re regressing, girl, let me hear you say he’s a great fuck and fun to be with.”
There would be no resisting her. I knew that by now. Yet I gave in to Marcy not because she could be an insistent, nosy bitch, but because I’d never have admitted my thoughts out loud had she not pushed.
“I like him.”
“So what’s the problem?” She looked concerned. “That’s a good thing.”
I shrugged again. I had my reasons for not wanting to like him. For avoiding relationships. They were shitty and pathetic reasons, but I had them.
“You don’t have to marry him.”
“Heaven forbid,” I said, startled at the thought. “Good God, no.”
She held up her hands. “Just saying. What’s wrong with going out, having a good time, getting laid?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it. I just…” I shrugged. “It’s not really my thing.”
“Maybe you should rethink what your ‘thing’ is,” she advised, getting up. “’Cuz to be honest, honey, I don’t think it works so good for you.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I replied.
“Sarcasm,” Marcy said loftily, “is the defense of the guilty!”
With that, she swept from my office in a cloud of Obsession and left a sweating soda can to stain my desktop.
I had the bus ride home to think about what she’d said and what Dan had promised. No attachments. The idea was appealing, though ridiculous. People can’t just fuck. They can’t. One or the other gets caught up in emotion, someone gets hurt. We’re not meant to separate sex from love; there’s a reason why euphoria occurs in both situations. Sex and love nourish each other. You can argue it’s humanity’s way of establishing family groups and guaranteeing creation of the next generation, but the simple fact remains: the more often two people engage in sex, the more likely it is that one of them will fall in love.
How many times would it take, I wondered. I stared out my window at the streetlamps, counting them as I always did. The number never changed. I defined my life by numbers. What number of times would I take Dan inside my body before one of us felt that first pang of emotion?
And would I be able to stop if it were me?
It wasn’t that I’d never had a boyfriend or never been in love. I had been, once. A long time ago. Head over heels, madly, passionately, devastatingly in love with the boy I thought might be my knight in shining armor. Funny thing about that shining armor, by the way. It tarnishes pretty fast.
By the time I got home, I had determined I was not going to see him again. There could be no point in it. It was useless, a satisfaction of the body that could lead to nothing but dissatisfaction of the mind. I knew it without a doubt. I wouldn’t call him, I wouldn’t see him, I wouldn’t… wouldn’t…would not.
By the time I got home, my mother had called three times and left messages so long they’d filled up the tape on my machine. And I, unable to hate her, found myself even unable to ignore her. I listened to her tirade, and then I picked up the phone.
“Who’s this?” She sounded querulous. Old. I had to remind myself she was only in her early sixties and far from an invalid. “Ella?”
“It’s Elle, Mother. Please.”
“We’ve always called you Ella.”
Then she was off on her rant, and I didn’t bother correcting her again.
“Are you listening to me?”
As if I had a choice. “Yes, Mother.”
She gave a low snort into the phone. “When are you coming home for a visit?”
“I’m very busy at work. You know that. I told you.”
I listened with half an ear while I drew water into the teakettle and took out a microwave meal from the freezer. I grabbed one plate. One glass. One fork. Set one place at my table, which was big enough to seat four but never had. I didn’t have dinner parties.
“I want you to take me to the cemetery, Ella. Daddy can’t do it, he’s not able to make the drive.”
The fork clattered against the plate. “Mother, I told you before. No.”
There was, incredibly, a long silence in which I heard nothing but the sound of her breathing. “Elspeth Kavanagh,” she said at last. “The least you can do is put a rose on his grave once in a while. He was your brother. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Ella? He was your brother, and he loved you.”
The kettle screamed, saving me from the effort. With shaking hands I turned off the gas and poured the water into my mug. It slopped, stinging my hands. I hissed in pain.
“What’s wrong?”
“I burned myself on some hot water.”
And she was off again, with the best way to treat burns, and how I should have someone there to make sure I did it right, and someone there to take care of me. Because so obviously I couldn’t care for myself. I ended the call as fast as I could. I looked at the tea, the food, the single plate.
“I know who he was,” I said aloud to the empty room.
Dan answered the door with tousled hair and sleep in his eyes, which widened at the sight of me. It was the black vinyl raincoat and the stiletto shoes. The red lipstick and black eyeliner. I knew what I looked like. A parody of a teenage boy’s wank fantasies.
I closed the door behind me. “Hi.”
Dan smiled. “This is a surprise.”
It is immensely satisfying to watch a man get hard at the sight of you. He wore flannel sleep pants, slung low on his hips. They tented admirably when I slid open the coat to reveal the little I wore beneath.
“How about this?”
He blinked, his gaze taking me in, toes to thighs to hips to breasts to throat to mouth and at last, to my eyes. He stared at me. My breath caught, my bold act more act than bold. For an instant I thought he’d fail me. That he’d ask me to sit down, offer me a drink. But only for a moment, because he gave me exactly what I wanted with his next words.
“Take it off.”
I dropped the coat to the floor. I wore black thigh-high stockings and matching black lace bra and panties. Clothes from the back of my drawer I hadn’t worn in ages. Power clothes, to make me feel sexy. They worked. Watching him watch me tightened my nipples.
“Get on your knees.”
I did. He put a hand on my head, his fingers gentle and tangling in my hair. He nudged his hips forward, pushing flannel-covered cock toward me, and I reached for him. I touched him through the soft fabric, stroking, and his instant sigh of pleasure shot desire straight between my legs.
“Put me in your mouth.”
He made it so easy for me to do what he wanted. I wanted that. I craved it. Having it made easy for me to not have to decide. I rewarded him with my acquiescence. He took away the responsibility, and I shivered with delicious, illicit joy. There is so much freedom in not having to choose.
I slid my fingers into the waistband of his pajama bottoms and slid them over his hips, then his thighs. Slowly, slowly I drew them down to his ankles. I let my fingers caress the sensitive backs of his knees. I studied his skin, the pattern of hair, darker than that on his head, the lovely thickness of his penis, standing at attention for me.
There are women who think getting on their knees for a man is demeaning. That putting a penis in their mouths is dirty, disgusting, a chore, a bother, something to suffer through, tolerate, an act to be borne instead of relished. In some cases I understand why they might find that to be true, but I pity them, nevertheless. They don’t understand how much power they can wield from their place at his feet. How much they can gain by giving him pleasure. I looked up, meaning to speak, and the look on his face stopped me.
He put a hand on my hair. “You are so beautiful. Do you know that?”
I don’t like the word beautiful. It’s used for vases, horses, houses and flowers as much as it is for humans. Beautiful is a flattering lie.
I shook my head a little. “Shhh.”
His fingers smoothed along the top of my head, then down my cheek. “You want me to say something different?”
“I want,” I said, and pressed my cheek to his thigh, “you to tell me to suck your cock.”
His hand twitched on my head, and he groaned a little at my words. “Elle…”
I smiled. I kissed his thigh, nuzzling the hair, softer on the inside and higher up. I brushed the soft weight of his testicles with my lips, earning another soft gasp from him. “Say it.”
“I want you to suck my cock.”
I took him in my mouth, an inch at a time, steadying myself by holding on to his thighs. His grunt was reward. The way he pushed forward into my waiting heat another. The way he whispered my name as he stroked my hair yet a third. I took him all the way in until my lips brushed his belly and then drew out again, pausing at the head of his penis to offer a bit more suction. Then down again, slowly, breathing through my nose and concentrating on discovering every ridge and line along his length.
