Girl Fever (6 page)

We will remember. Always.

 

 

 

 

 

I
haven't been scared of ghost trains since I was ten years old, but this one looks different in the fading sun. Even the
Día de los Muertos
–themed illustrations, highlighted with green neon paint, look creepy when the wind is tugging at my hair and the ground is pebbled with candy floss. The odd tape-recorded cackle or groan of machinery still echoes from behind the doors. But my heart is thumping in my throat, and the heat between my legs shows no sign of fading.

Like most stupid decisions, my choice to dawdle past closing time at the carnival is because of a girl. I've been thinking about her ever since I first saw her, the sun warming my shoulders and my mouth full of candied peanuts. Her skin was powdered bone-white, roses nestled in the curls of her hair, and the parts of her body
that weren't covered by her ruffled red dress were painted with intricate spirals and swirls. According to the lurid illustrations of her face on the ghost train's walls, her name is Encarnación. I wouldn't have stopped, but she ran over and presented me with one of the flowers from her hair; even under the paint, I could see the gorgeous dimples on each cheek when she smiled.

I live close by, so I told my friends I'd walk home by myself—but really, I'm just here to get Encarnación's number. Now that the sun has faded it's too cold for my strapless summer dress, and I move in closer to the ghost train to get out of the breeze. My nipples feel hard as thumbtacks—though I couldn't say whether that's from the chill or the thought of how Encarnación could warm me up.

This is ridiculous. The girl is long gone and I am making a fool of myself. I turn to leave.

Boo
, grunts the devil in my ear as he wraps his arms around me. All my muscles stiffen and my throat closes around my scream. But already the devil is laughing, releasing me from his grip. It's Encarnación in her ruffled dress, her face wiped free of makeup. Her skin is the color of acorns and she smells of sugar and sunlight.

“We're closed,
señorita.
Perhaps tomorrow?” Her accent is heavy on her tongue; already she has turned toward the ghost train doors. “Unless”
—
she turns back to me—“you'd like
una aventura?”
She holds out her hand to me, grinning wide, and I try very hard not to stare at the way her cleavage peeps over the top of her
low-cut dress. “I think you'll enjoy,” she says.

I grab her hand, plant a kiss on her palm and let her lead me through the door.

The ghost train car is just wide enough for two and Encarnación's thigh is pressed against mine. In front of us a ragged black curtain ripples in the breeze, blocking my view ahead. The air smells musty, like clothes in vintage shops. Encarnación pulls down the barrier over our knees, then twists to check something in the back of the car; her breasts press against my arm and it's everything I can do not to dip my head and kiss them.

“It's Encarnación, right?” I say, just to say something.

She twists back round and leans in close to me. “Emma, actually,” she whispers. “I don't even speak Spanish; I'm from Laaahn-daaahn.” Her accent has gone; she sounds just like me.

“I'm from London too,” I say. “Camden. Whereabouts are…”

The car shudders forward, cutting off the rest of my small talk. It shakes and burrs along the track, juddering the bones of my hips and thighs, making my teeth chatter.

The ragged curtain wipes over our faces and we're through to the other side. Chipped neon skeletons jerk from every joint, their Ping-Pong ball eyes rolling in their sockets. Beautiful girls with painted faces smolder from the walls. A trio of bone-men strum guitars, candy-colored skulls flash in strobes, yellow petals scatter to the floor, cobwebs brush against my hair. Under the soundtrack of ghostly shrieks and cracks of thunder I
hear the judder of machinery as we turn a corner. Emma is expecting the hairpin bend, but I'm not; I fall into her lap, my face practically down her dress.

“Fuck!” I say, righting myself. “Sorry, the car…”

Emma's laughing, her face close enough that I could press my tongue into her dimples. Lit by the strobe, each movement a photograph, she tugs down the hem of her dress so that her breasts press out at me. “Better?” she asks. It is better, obviously, because there's nothing I want to do more than pull off her dress and drop to my knees between her legs. But I can't say that.

“Um…” I say. I'm sure the quivering of the car is making my voice come out funny. Emma doesn't seem to be listening; she's wiggling on the narrow seat, lifting a hip and putting one foot up on the cutout side of the car. Then her head tips back and her eyes roll shut, a smile slipping across her face.

“Move two inches to your right,” she says, nudging my leg. “Riiiight…there.”

And I understand. Oh fuck, do I understand. The thick vibrations of the car are perfectly centered on my clit, making my heart beat in double time. A groan slips out of my mouth and I shift in my seat so the angle is just right. Emma's murmuring deep in her throat, her hand sliding up my thigh and then slowly, teasingly, her fingertips nudge at the two layers of thin cotton over my clit.

I shift closer to her so that my leg drapes over hers, sharing vibrations. Emma's breathing hard, her breasts
straining at her dress, her thighs tensing with each throb from the car. I feel a pulse in my neck and lights are flashing in my eyes and my hand is guiding Emma's farther down, pressing her fingers against me, and oh god, oh god…

The car emerges from the ride, just as we shout out our orgasms to the scratchy soundtrack of tape-recorded ghouls.

 

We're outside in the dark and Emma's busy flipping off switches. I stand on the litter-strewn ground, unsure. What's the polite thing to do after you've just reached simultaneous orgasm on a fairground ride with a hot-as-fuck stranger? I turn to leave, then stop. Usually I'd be running scared, but it's like I left all my fear back in the ghost train.

“Do you want to come round?” I call over. “I could cook…”

Emma tucks the keys into the pocket of her dress, swaying over to me. Without thinking, I press a kiss to the dimple on her cheek.

“I'm hungry,” she says, with a laugh.

I blow a kiss to Encarnación on the side of the ghost train, then take hold of Emma's hand and lead her back to my place.

 

 

 

 

 

T
he first thing Gail did was show me the crotch seam of the peach shorts she wore under her employee apron—making me juice my panties right there in aisle 14B.

It wasn't intentional, though I later learned it's the kind of thing Gail
would
do intentionally. It was simply that she was squatting down and bending forward to crack open a case of soup when I came up behind her.

Soup happened to be the next item on my shopping list, so hovering in her vicinity to await access—to the soup, I mean—was perfectly legit.

As she resurfaced and stepped aside, she smiled invitingly, and her eyes flickered a barrage of messages:
Oops, I didn't realize you were waiting for me to get out of the way… You were checking out my ass, weren't
you? But don't apologize, honey—I like girls too, and you can check me out any time you want… You
do
like girls, don't you?

I'm pretty good at processing unspoken conversation, but it was all I could do to keep up. Finally, she brought her voice into the mix—while still keeping those sassy eyes flickering—by honoring our interaction with a brief, cheerful giggle while I logged her name tag info.

Then she rounded the corner into another aisle, while I just stood there with my clit twitching in my shorts.

If I'd been at home in this condition, I would have had my pants down and my fingers up my slit in five seconds flat; but this was errands-and-client-meeting day, and jilling in a public restroom wasn't really my style. So I embraced the alternative, namely, squirming my way through the afternoon until I could be back home—which, for a woman who could always get down with the lazy, viscous tension of anticipation, was an erotic pleasure in its own right. In my opinion, nothing brightened a weekday like the ever-present thought that there was a big, fat masturbatory orgasm in my future.
Just you wait
, I promised myself seductively.

When I returned to the supermarket two hours later, still riding the simmering libido that I'd been husbanding—if you'll pardon the expression—between my legs since my previous visit, I encountered Gail again. Amazingly, though her naughty eyes and her creamy peach butt had been with me all day in spirit, it hadn't occurred to me that I might actually see her when
I returned for my cold foods.

Her face lit up when she caught sight of me: I read approval, mischief, flirtation, employee courtesy…and a smidgen of surprise. Though my primal instinct was to drop my shopping basket and paw hungrily at the T-shirted breasts that bubbled under her apron, my social instinct was to account for my repeat engagement.

“You must think I'm the slowest shopper in the world,” I said with a self-deprecating laugh. “But, honestly, I haven't been wandering the store this entire time. This is a separate trip.”

“Yeah, I was wondering,” said Gail with a teasing grin.

“You see,” I explained, “I have a system.”

Her eyebrows went up inquiringly.

“I only come into town once a week, for errands and a regular meeting. And whenever I'm running early, I get as much grocery shopping out of the way as I can before seeing my client.”

“You run
early?
” Gail seemed genuinely impressed.

I shrugged modestly before continuing. “But then when I do the pre-meeting grocery run, I have to come back afterward. The proactive shopping trip is great for nonperishables, but there's no way it would work with frozen food and the like. So I stop by after the meeting to snag those items, before I rush home to my cold-air appliances. It does mean two visits, but the net result is I get home a lot sooner than if I left all the food shopping for last.”

“Very clever.”

“Thank you.”

I could feel my upper thighs perspiring with erogenous alertness, like a quart of orange juice sweating en route to the fridge. And my nipples were stiffening like they were already there.

Gail was looking me up and down. “If there's one thing I admire, it's a woman with a system.”

Oh, fuck. Was she blatantly coming on to me?

“And, yes, I'm coming on to you.”

That did seem to settle it, I noted, as my knees began trembling and my bottom cheeks started tingling.

“May I suggest you hold off a little longer on the frozen food? I have a feeling you're going to be delayed for a few minutes.”

“Nnnn.” I was nodding frantically and nibbling the tip of my own finger like I always did when I was very nervous or very aroused—or, as in this instance, both.

“You can say that again,” quipped Gail. She looked at her watch. “Would you like to join me in the customer service office? This is a dead shift—people will cover the counter if anyone needs customer service, but the office will be empty.”

I swallowed, still nodding, before finding my voice. “
I
need customer service, Gail.”

“And I will cover
that
personally.”

I felt a small, surreptitious slap on my derriere as she followed me into the office, pulling the door tightly shut behind her.

I turned to face her.

“A woman who runs early, huh?” She grinned. “Well, then, let's see how early you can be for the dinner party in my pussy.”

She licked her lips. Then she went all elbow-awkward as she tried to untie her apron at the back.

After hours of low-idle fantasizing, I was now aflame with the thought of getting my tongue all over the meal nestled in that peach crotch seam. “Here,” I said breathlessly, reaching around to take hold of the straps. “Let me do that.”

“Of course,” Gail acceded.

She abandoned the apron to me and mirrored my embrace.

“After all,” she murmured in my ear—squeezing my ass so hard now that I squeaked with desperate excitement—“you probably have a system, don't you?”

 

 

 

 

 

I
t's you, babe! It's you!” Marla turns from the mirror where she's buttoning her pressed, white shirt.

Modeling the new red dress and spiked heels I bought for her fortieth birthday party, I execute a careful twirl. The short rayon skirt billows up around my thighs. Marla catches me at twirl's end, sliding her hand up to squeeze my ass.

“I guess you like it, then?” I bite her earlobe, tonguing the silver stud. She's got on her dress shirt, black slacks. A silk tie with delicate pink petals lies on the hamper, waiting.

“I'd like this”—she slaps my ass—“in anything—in a trash bag.”

“Like on ‘Project Runway'?”

“Exactly like that.”

“Well, then, I guess there's no need for finery.” I make to slip away, but she pulls me in tight.

“Finery is good, too.” She kisses down my neck to the
V
of the dress, her hand sliding under the fabric, gliding to my breast.