Bliss (8 page)

"God!"

She sagged into the sheets, shuddering still, and barely
moved when Regina moved up her body to lavish wet, openmouthed kisses on her face. Her damp thighs fell in a sprawl
across the bed. Regina clambered on top of her and straddled one thigh. Watching Sinclair's face, she worked her clit
against the lean flesh until her body stiffened then trembled
extravagantly. She sighed, chuckling.

"Even when you don't do anything you're a great fuck."
She sighed again and snuggled up to Sinclair's slick, petaldotted skin. "Am I forgiven?"

Sinclair stretched around the invasion of Regina's body
into her personal space, before relaxing against her pillows.
"We'll see."

Dawn found them asleep. Regina curled like an inverted
question mark perpendicular to Sinclair, her cheek resting in
the curve of her lover's lower back, a hand spread possessively over the full curve of Sinclair's ass. As the light penetrated deeper into the room, turning it a uniform shade of
gray, Sinclair blinked and turned her head to face it. She'd
only slept for two hours.

Two mornings later, Sinclair woke up to a message from
Regina to call her at an unfamiliar number. She stumbled to
the kitchen, belting her bathrobe and dialing the phone at the
same time.

"Hey," she said when she heard Regina's voice.

"'Morning, sexy." Regina chuckled at Sinclair's sleeproughened voice.

"Very funny. Where are you anyway?"

"I'm up in the country for the weekend. Why don't you
come up?"

Sinclair opened the cupboard and peered in. "I don't have
a way to get up there."

"My car's at Volk. Just drive it up here and we'll ride back
together."

"I don't drive." With the phone propped between her
cheek and shoulder, Sinclair took out a container of loose tea
leaves and a bottle of honey before taking them to the stove.

"It's OK out there. Traffic won't be that bad this-"

"I can't drive." She put water in the kettle and put it to
boil.

"Oh, sweetie," an edge crept into Regina's voice. "Get a
car with a driver, for heaven's sake. What do you do with
your money if you don't use it?"

Sinclair looked at the phone in her hands as if it'd grown a
coat of slime. "Why don't I just see you when you get back
into town, Regina?" Her voice was hard, final.

"Oh. OK." The other woman prattled on about something else for a few more minutes before Sinclair stopped
their conversation on the pretense of having to eat breakfast.

"Have fun," she said, then broke their connection. Pushy
broad.

inclair knew that she was walking around like a clown
with her face always cracked in a brighter than bright
smile, but she didn't care. Despite the minor disagreements
and power struggles that she'd had with Regina, this was the
first time she'd ever felt totally free with someone that she
was seeing. Even in college, the period when she should have
been experimenting, she'd kept to boys, suffering through
one disappointing encounter after another and trying to convince herself that it was the newness of the activity that made
it so disappointing. Now she knew better. Sinclair occasionally thought of the other person who Regina was seeing, but
she figured that as long as they didn't mind sharing, neither
did she.

Her smile surfaced again as she looked away from her
computer screen when Shelly buzzed to let her know that
Regina was outside her office waiting to see her.

"Hey, baby." As Regina walked into the office Sinclair was
instantly suffused by memories of last night, her writhing on
the hardwood floor of her apartment in a sea of her own
juices, begging Regina to fuck her harder.

"Hey." Sinclair stood up to claim her hug. "This is a nice
surprise."

Regina was wearing her Bohemian drag, faded jeans that
hugged her hips low and showed off her amazing ass, and a tie-dyed tank top with a picture of Jimi Hendrix on the front.
Sinclair knew that if she slid her hands under Jimi's Afro she
would find Regina's breasts bare, nipples hard from the arctic
air-conditioning.

"Maybe not so nice. I actually came by with a bit of bad
news. "

"What's wrong? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." Regina paused. "We can't see each other anymore."

"Excuse me?" Sinclair's hands dropped away from the
other woman's waist.

"Yeah. This has been great and everything, but ... you
know. It's time for me to move on."

"Are you joking? Things are still great. What about last
night?"

"Yeah." Her mouth curved in the familiar smile. Then she
looked away. "Remember, I told you that I was seeing somebody. Well, it's more than that. So I can't get too attached or
stay with the same person for long. That's the deal. One
month." She shrugged. "Sorry."

Sinclair didn't try to stop her when she turned to leave.
The door clicked softly behind Regina as Sinclair sank into
her chair. Tears burned behind her eyes, but she refused to let
them fall. There was still work to do. Shaking her head
quickly, Sinclair turned back to her computer and brought
the month's-end reports back up on the screen.

Twelve hours later, she felt betrayed. Regina had rubbed
her hard edges soft, alchemized her from steel to warm toffee
in those thirty-one days. And now Sinclair was softened,
melted, and alone. She glared at her computer screen, trying
to work past the pain. By noon she had succeeded and
pushed Regina from her mind to slog through the reports
and financial statements that had been piling up on her desk
all week. Hours later, she barely looked up when Shelly
knocked on her door to wish her a good night.

Sinclair's office darkened when the sun fled the sky, but she
turned the lights on, tilted the chair to make herself more
comfortable in front of the computer monitor, and continued
to work. Only when Sinclair heard the vacuum cleaner just
outside her door did she realize what time it was. Even then
she wasn't anxious to go home. Nothing waited for her there
except more solitude, more time to think about Regina. But,
reluctantly, she shut her office down for the night, turning off
the computer and pulling the office shades closed.

Sinclair was tired, arms heavy with the weight of sadness,
face tight and pinched from thinking about Regina, then not
thinking about Regina. Her stomach chewed on itself to
make up for its lack of breakfast or lunch. At this rate, dinner
looked like it was going to be a miss, too. She took one last
look around the office before walking into the hallway. The
door whispered shut behind her.

On the underground platform, the stink of trapped air and
the olfactory memory of a thousand sweating bodies pushed
itself into Sinclair's nose. People stared listlessly up and down
the empty train tracks, waiting for that bright white light in
the tunnel to tell their feet to move. Eventually, the train
came in a rush of sound and wind to dump off its load of
passengers and pick up some more. Sinclair sat far away
from the small crowd on the train, tucking herself in a seat
under the railroad map and an ad for pheromone-laced perfume.

She didn't notice the man until the train jerked to an
abrupt stop, forcing her to grab the beam in front of her and
look up. He was dirty and bearded and had a red bandanna
tied around his neck. His eyes were fastened on her. Sinclair
looked away, but not before noticing his gaping fly and the
hand he had shoved into the hole, massaging himself as he
stared. She glanced quickly around the train. Heads bobbed
over open newspapers and paperback novels, all intentionally angled away from her and her new admirer.

Sinclair looked away, but just below the steady rhythm of the train, she could hear the slap of the closed fist against
flesh. Her face burned. She turned away, trying to tune in to
the conversations of other passengers, to her pain, anything.
When that didn't work, she took out her book and tried to
read. The words lay flat on the page, making little sense to
her twitching eyes. She still heard him. A smell rose from
him, like rotten oranges and bay rum. Vomit darted up in her
throat and she gagged. As the train lurched to its next stop
she rushed through the doors, pushing past the crowd on the
platform and up the stairs. Sinclair barely made it to the
warm air and warmer-still piss smell of the surface street before she vomited into the gutter in a bitter, pale arc. People
backed away from her, careful not to come too close as her
stomach heaved until there was nothing left. When she could
finally take a breath without gagging, Sinclair stumbled to
the corner to hail a taxi for home.

At home she didn't know what to do with herself. She tried
to make something to eat, but by the time the microwave
beeped to get her attention, Sinclair's interest in the bowl of
nuked ravioli had already cooled. The processed tomato
paste with its thin layer of grease made the meal a chore even
her iron stomach couldn't complete. Losing Regina had locked
up her throat, allowing in only the barest amount of oxygen.
Her dinner ended up in the trash.

Sinclair stood staring in the garbage then choked on the
lone sob that rose up in her throat. She shouldn't be taking it
this hard. After all, she was used to people leaving her to wallow in the pain of their absence. Sinclair closed the garbage
can and went to pick a new book from the shelf.

A taxi picked Sinclair up from her apartment at seven
o'clock the next morning. By eight, she was in her office
working on spreadsheets that weren't due for another three
months. Shelly buzzed her at ten minutes to nine to let her
know that she was in.

"'Morning, boss lady."

"Good morning, Shelly." Her voice sounded tired, even to
her own ears.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Just didn't get enough sleep last night."

"OK." Sinclair heard the shuffling of papers. "You have a
meeting at nine thirty. The reports you need for that are at
the top of your in-box in the green folder."

"Thanks. Just give me a ten-minute warning for that,
please."

"Sure thing."

Sinclair scratched and clawed her way through the rest of
the day, trying to make it all the way to five o'clock without
walking out. At five on the nose, Shelly walked into her office.

"You look like shit," her secretary said. She sat on the
edge of Sinclair's desk and dropped a bottle of scotch in her
boss's direct line of sight. Glenfiddich. The deep green bottle
was only three-quarters full.

"What's going on with you?" Shelly asked.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing." Sinclair turned to her secretary, annoyed. "Aren't you still on the clock?"

"Nope. My slave duties for Volk ended"-she glanced
down at her neon pink watch-"two minutes ago."

Sinclair blew out a harsh breath and gave in. "I have
glasses and ice over there." She waved to her mini fridge.

"I know. I was just waiting for you to offer." Shelly retrieved the glasses and poured her scotch neat, but dropped
three ice cubes in Sinclair's glass before filling it nearly to the
brim. "Here you go."

Sinclair drank it in two quick gulps. Ice tinkled against the
crystal as she put the tumbler back on the desk. "Don't you
have a boyfriend or something to go home to?" Shelly
seemed like the kind of girl to do the domesticity thing.

"If you don't want me here, all you have to do is say so
and I'm gone." Shelly refilled Sinclair's glass.

Sinclair lingered over the comment, watching Shelly through
the sweating tumbler. Finally she sighed again. "Women are
really fucked up, Shelly."

"Especially the one who just screwed you over?"

"Are you talking about that Velasquez woman?"

"Yeah, that one."

Sinclair didn't bother pretending surprise. Regina had visited her often in the past month, leaving too many smiles on
her face for her to be "just a friend."

"The screwing wasn't a problem. Apparently that was all
she wanted me for."

"You're that good?"

"If I had been any good then maybe she would have
stayed. But she got all the material she could use already."
She finished off her scotch. "On to the next gullible bitch."

"I heard through the grapevine that she was a good lay. Is
that true?"

"I thought you were trying to make me feel better?"

"Yeah, but I might as well get some juicy info, too."

Sinclair laughed bitterly and held out her glass for more.
"If you're in the market for a month of the best sex you've
ever had, then give her a call. But don't expect to get any
more than that. She's got a misses or mister at home."

"A girl could get off a lot in thirty days." Shelly looked
like she was thinking about it.

Sinclair leaned back in her chair, already taking on the lazy
slouch of the pleasantly inebriated. "She was amazing. She
made me feel like I had a golden pussy and she couldn't get
enough. This is going to be hard as hell to get through."