53 Letters For My Lover (18 page)

“Breaking me in? What am I? A horse?”

“Uh-huh. My prized filly. Let me get my crop so we can go a-ridin’.”

“A crop, huh?” I grab my discarded stocking and whip him with it. “How do you like it now?”

“That’s it, baby. Let your inner freak out.”

We start laughing. Then his voice drops.

“Come here, you.” He pulls me down for a long, searing kiss.

It’s not funny anymore. It’s hot and urgent and throbbing.

My lips explore the planes of his neck, the smooth, broad expanse of male chest, his tight, flat abs, down, down, down. I hear his sharp intake as my breath warms the part of him that’s twitching with need.

“Payback time.” I smile, dodging the area altogether.

His thighs clench as I reach for my black stocking and wrap it around the base of his shaft. I pull one end at a time, letting the soft, wispy fabric run first to the left, and then the right, caressing his flesh in a silken loop. He groans as I move the stocking up and down the length of him, tugging on him, pulling, teasing.

“Yessss.” His head sinks back into the pillow.

Watching him with his eyes closed, head tilted back and that look of utter rapture, I feel the heady thrill a woman feels, when a man who is always in control is about to lose it. Just for her.

The moment I wrap my lips around him, he lets his breath out in a long, slow hiss. My hands stroke him as my tongue slides up and down, focusing on the points he showed me, until he cries out.

When he’s spent, he flings one arm possessively across me. I nudge his leg over my belly, until I’m completely anchored by his weight.

“Really?” he asks, eyes closed, a small smile playing on his lips. “You’re not going to freak?”

“Really.”

February 3rd, 1996

“Syntribation.”

“What’s that?” I open the pizza box and let the aroma invade Troy’s office.

“Syntribation,” he repeats. “The technical term for the way you masturbate.”

“What?” I almost drop the lid.

“Masturbate.” He grabs a slice and bites into it. “Does that word make you uncomfortable, Shayda? Because everybody does it. You do it, I do it, the whole world does it.”

“I...um...” I peer intently into the pie-chart of colorful slices.

He pushes the curtain of hair from my face and laughs. “I wondered how long it would take today, Beetroot. I think we broke a record.”

I pick a slice and put it on the napkin.

“Here. Let me show you something,” he says.

I look around while he logs into his computer. Most of the work in his new office is finished. There are some odds and ends, but I only notice because there’s no one around, none of the crazy hustle and bustle I hear when we’re on the phone. It’s a huge space, rows of cubicles, meeting rooms, and the white checkerboard of a commercial ceiling.

“Here we are.” He turns the screen towards me.

“What’s this?”

“This, my dear, is the future. The internet. You type in a search and the results come up, almost instantaneously.” He pulls me into his lap. “See? Syntribate. When a woman masturbates by crossing her legs and rubbing her thighs together.”

Somehow it doesn’t feel so weird anymore—that word—as I sit in a lush leather chair, with his arms around me.

“So this internet...it’s like a dictionary? A library of sorts?”

“It’s much more than that.” He lights up like he’s been watching a fantastic game and people are finally joining in and catching up. “You’ll be able to put your real estate listings on here, post photos, describe properties, reach out to a whole audience of people that you wouldn’t otherwise interact with. On the personal front, you can stay in touch with anyone in the world, without stamps or long distance phone bills or telegrams.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, it’s something called email. In fact, let’s set you up with an account right now.”

“An account? I don’t think I’m ever going to use it.”

“Maybe not right away, but now is the best time because you can get whatever name you want. This stuff is in its beta stages. You can be the first Shayda on Hotmail.”

“On what? I don’t want my name out there.”

“It won’t be out anywhere.” He laughs. “You just give it to people you want to stay in touch with. It’s like your phone number on the internet. You use it send and receive messages.”

“I don’t know about this.”

“We don’t have to go with your real name. Pick an alias.”

“Like what?”

“Like hotmamma or browniebaker or hey, how about syntribater?”

I roll my eyes.

“Okay. We’ll go with
the
syntribater. It sounds more bad ass, like ‘The Terminator’, except in the bedroom.”

“We’ll do no such thing,” I reply, but he’s already typing.

“Username: beetrootbutterfly.” He pauses. “No. Something sexier.” “Beetbutt...yes, that’s it. Password...hmmmm ...hereweare. Let’s add some numbers...hereweare1996. You think you’ll remember that? Aaaaand...voila! Shayda Hijazi, you are now officially [email protected].”

“Thanks. I can’t wait to give that out to everyone.”

“Yeah, you should add it to your business card. Hey, maybe we should register beetbutt.com before anyone...uh...grabs it.”

I slap his hand away from my tush. I haven’t giggled in years. “And what am I supposed to do with it now?”

“Check it for dirty emails from me.”

“You’re mad.” I shake my head. “And I have forty-five minutes before I pick up the kids.”

“Right.” He looks at his watch. “Which means you have five minutes to finish your pizza and I have forty minutes to thoroughly, completely, utterly ravish you.”

We reclaim our lunch, now cold and soggy, but it still tastes divine. Maybe it’s because we’re sitting on the floor, Troy leaning against the desk, me leaning against him, our feet stretched out in a double V before us.

We watch dust motes in the sun, streaming through the windows before us. The city bustles beneath, soundless behind the glass, little cars zipping in and out of concrete blocks of lego land.

“That’s me.” He points to the west, a distant spot near the lake. “Behind the tall building with the white roof.”

I think of us in his loft, that sultry afternoon last summer; those five words he spoke.

I’m dying to kiss you.

We never meet there.

“A neutral spot. Not mine, not yours. A space between,” he said.

And so we meet in a hotel room, a luxurious suite with thick drapes and a soft carpet and a padded headboard, that muffle voices and footsteps and reality.

“And that’s you.” His finger moves across the window, to the other end of town.

“You can’t possibly make my place out.”

“No.” He wipes his hands and hugs me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder. “But I like to imagine you out there, one of the lights in the night.”

I think of him, standing by the blue of his roof top pool, looking across the lake, to a suburban house with a red door and a swing set in the back. I know what it’s like to wonder because I do it all the time. Mundane things like the color of his bed sheets. When does he go for his run? What radio station does he tune in to? Is he in the car, listening to it, while he heads out to dinner with a date? Does he take her to his loft after wards? Does she hop in the shower with him in the morning? Does she dry herself on his towel?

The papers have stopped reporting on him. A few interviews here and there, but nothing on his social life. I wonder if he made a few discreet calls after I barged in here about that photo. I don’t know which is better. Knowing or not knowing.

“Troy?”

“What?” He twirls a strand of my hair around his finger.

“Promise me you’ll tell me if things start to get serious with someone.”

“Why?” he asks. “Will you leave?”

I don’t answer.

He doesn’t promise.

It’s not perfect, this thing between us, like trying to bring the two circles of our lives together, and living in the small, tight space where they intersect, everything else pushed to the circumference, until we step back inside our very different, very separate orbs.

I look at the time. Five more minutes.

I want this simple afternoon of cold pizza and dancing dust motes to stretch out forever.

February 25th, 1996

“Why don’t you come
and stay with us for a few days?” I ask.

“No.” Maamaan dabs her eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

Always proud, stoic, removed. She leaves me feeling lacking and inadequate.

“I’ll miss her.” She sits down. Pouffff. Like a rapidly deflating soufflé, tired of holding her form. “She would have been happy. So many people.”

“
Khaleh
Zarrin was a sweet lady. Her life touched a lot of people.”

“And me?” asks Maamaan. “Who will come to my funeral?”

How different can two sisters be?
Khaleh
Zarrin—quick to laugh and eat and dance. Quick to forgive. And Maamaan —locking everything up in a tight closet, tucking the key in her bra, along with a stiff, white handkerchief and a $20 bill.

“I certainly don’t want
him
there,” she says.

“Baba came to pay his respects today. We can’t begrudge him that,” I reply, although it had come as a shock, seeing him after all this time. Didn’t he know we needed notice? To shine and polish our armor; to take up our positions.

“Hossein should have been there. Why didn’t he come? Is he too busy to attend his aunt’s funeral?”

“It’s a long drive from Montreal.” I make excuses, not because I’m trying to protect Hossein, but because I can’t stand the fits that Maamaan has, when that closet bursts open and I’m the only one standing in its path.

When I was small, I read a story about a Dutch boy who saved his country by putting his fingers in a leaking dam. He stayed there all night, in the cold, until help arrived. And so I tend to the cracks and the holes and the rips, even though I know that Hossein will never return.

“Here.” I pour her some tea, in one of the dainty, gold-rimmed cup-saucer sets she insisted on bringing along from Iran.

“Ah.” The first hint of a smile all day.

I know she is thinking of sun drenched parlors, and friends gathered in pink velvet arm chairs with high backs.

Everyone adored Mona Kazemi.
The women wanted to be on her list, invited to the lavish affairs she hosted. The men wanted her—her Sophia Loren body, a glance, a smile, a scrap of anything she threw at them.

But she remained faithful, even though it was common knowledge that Ali Kazemi went from one mistress to another. Then came the revolution. Baba lost his businesses, his estates, the posh cars, his investments. We moved to a squalid apartment on the other side of the city. Maamaan grew resentful. She had put up with the cheating, but a change in her lifestyle was not acceptable. It was Baba’s job to provide for her and he was failing. The lower Baba fell, the more they fought. She slammed the door. He went out and got drunk. She broke the china. He had another affair.

When Baba and
Amu
Reza pooled resources for a new business venture, Hossein and I thought things would get better, and for a while, they did. Hossein escaped Maamaan’s cloying grasp and I came of age. Of marriageable age.

“She’s beautiful,” said
Khaleh
Zarrin. She looked so modern in her white capris and bright coral lipstick. “Send her to me. Toronto has so many good Persian families. I’ll fix her up like this.” She snapped her fingers at ‘this’.

Maamaan’s eyes darted to Baba.

“I don’t want to get married,” I said to
Khaleh
Zarrin. “I’m studying to be a writer.”

“Shayda, we’ve never interfered with your education. You’ve had the best schools and the best teachers. But writing is such a fickle career.” Baba waved his hand dismissively. “And with all the censorship here, what’s the point?”

“I don’t want to go to Toronto.”

“Not even for a holiday?” asked Maamaan.

We both knew it wouldn’t be just for a casual visit. We couldn’t afford that.

“Shayda, you have an opportunity. For a better life. And who knows? With one of you there, the rest of the family stands a better chance of getting out,” said
Khaleh
Zarrin.