Tats (27 page)

She tastes like sweet and sour together. She tastes like old-fashioned maple syrup and wild honey with just a dash of bitterness all at the same time. I feel like no matter how deep I am inside her, it’s not enough. I want all of me inside her; I want all of her in my mouth; I want her to come all over me—my face, my hands, my entire body.

I look up the length of her body and watch her gorgeous face as she begins to climax. Her pink nipples are hard, she moves her hips in little circles and clutches the sheets in her fists.

She tightens, arches her back and moves back away from me a little. But I don’t let up, I press into her; I move faster and harder and that’s when she comes. She whispers hoarsely while her body spasms, “Oh God, Lee...Oh God...”

I keep my fingers deep inside her, feeling her muscles clench and unclench. I lie prone on top of her body and ride the waves of her orgasm. For a long time after she shudders, tiny aftershocks rock both her and me. When her body is peaceful again and her breathing evens out, only then do I pull my hand away.

“My God,” she breathes into my neck, “I haven’t come that hard since...ever.”

I kiss away the wet tears at the corners of her eyes. I kiss and bite her breasts, sucking on her nipples. I can’t seem to stop making love to her.

Vivian surprises me by raking her fingernails down my back, across my butt and then sliding her hand between my legs. She licks my ear and sucks my earlobe into her mouth. In a throaty voice, she asks, “Does that feel good?”

I don’t even have time to say anything before her fingers expertly take me to the edge...but just before I fall off...

She stops.

“Don’t do that,” I plead. “Don’t stop.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says, slapping my ass.

For chrissakes. I give up. I roll over and bury my face in the pillow. She’s not like any woman I’ve ever met and I don’t know how I feel about that.

The next thing I feel is her body pressed against my back and her tits and hair caressing me all the way from my neck to the soles of my feet. I feel like I’m floating. I feel like parts of my body don’t exist until her breasts touch them, then they light up on fire.

She pushes my legs apart with her knee and rubs her tits down my ass and between my legs. She lifts my hips off the mattress with both hands. Then her right hand eases around my hip and under me and down and her fingers find the exact right spot. Her hips press into my ass and I can feel her tits on my back and...my God, I’m going to...

She stops.

“Vivian, dammit. Don’t tease me.”

“Beg,” she orders.

She leans down and bites me kind of hard on my back and before I decide whether I like it or not, she uses her left hand to thrust her fingers deep inside me from behind and all I can do is gasp out loud and grab the headboard for support. Her right hand goes back to where it was and I’m filled with a need, a hunger, that there are no words for, and all I can do is hold onto the headboard.

And I beg. God help me, I beg just like she wants me to. “Fuck me. Please, God, Vivian...fuck me.”

She doesn’t stop this time. She takes me all the way and further. I explode from the inside out; it’s like a flower blooms in the pit of my belly and opens wide and then completely devours me. I’m like Silly Putty or maybe Jello when I collapse back onto the bed.

I’ve just caught my breath when she spoons me from behind and playfully pinches one of my nipples, sending me into spasms all over again.

Oh, my God, this woman is most certainly going to kill me.

And I mean that in a good way.

I sleep a thousand sleeps in the next couple of hours. Intertwined in Vivian’s warm skin, my hand cupping her breast, I am oblivious to anything but my own contentment. I’m in a haze when I wake up. It’s dusk and I can hear the sounds of a highway close by. I reach out for Vivian, but she’s not there. I sit up and throw my legs over the side of the bed.

“Viv?”

She doesn’t answer.

I walk to the bathroom and push open the door. I turn on the light. Nothing. I trip back into the bedroom and turn on those lights too. Nothing.

She’s gone. Maybe, just maybe, she went out to get us something to eat. Or maybe to get a pack of cigarettes. I sit at the foot of the bed...and that’s when I see it. A large heart is drawn in Viv’s red lipstick on the mirror. I look around. That’s all she’s left behind—a large, lipstick-smeared heart.

She fucked me and left me and took the money with her.

I am numb from the top of my head to the tips of my toes for I have no idea how long. This curious little thought niggles at the edge of my brain. “I fucked a cheerleader,” I say out loud. I start to laugh. The laughter rolls out of me in giant topsy-turvy waves. I slip off the bed and hit the floor, doubled over, holding my belly and flood the empty room with my laughter.

Without warning, my laughter abruptly turns to tears and I sob into my knees. I clutch desperately at the bedclothes and yank them off the bed and down on top of me. I bury myself in our smell and I cry.

Chapter Fourteen

Knock, knock.

I bound out of bed with my heart in my throat and throw open the door. I’m about to say “Vivian! I’m so glad you came back!” but my heart thuds back to my belly when I see it’s just the maid. Her eyes glance up and down, and only then do I realize I’m standing in the doorway stark naked.

“Housecleaning,” she mouths.

I shut and lock the door and roll back into bed.

Thirty minutes or so later there’s another knock at the door. This time I open it with a sheet wrapped around me and much lower expectations.

It’s the manager. He’s balding and somewhere in his late fifties with pants pulled up way too high. Probably because he’s wearing both a belt and suspenders. He has a little chili or something like it globbed on his tie. The glob totally missed the napkin he has tucked into his collar. He, too, looks me up and down and seems disappointed that I’m covered up.

“Checkout was an hour ago,” he says, licking sauce off his mustache.

For one serious second I actually entertain the idea of pulling him inside and paying for the room the old-fashioned way before I realize I’d rather be homeless.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” I say, shutting and locking the door firmly between us.

I get into a steaming hot shower and scrub scrub scrub everything about Vivian off my skin. I don’t want to smell her, think about her, talk about her, or any fuckin’ thing about her ever again. It takes me until the water runs cold, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t exist to me anymore.

I put my dirty old clothes back on and feel a sizeable lump. There’s a roll of bills in my right front pocket. I quickly count the money and realize I’m holding twenty grand in my hand. Thanks, Vivian, I’ve never been paid for sex before, but thanks for making me sink to new depths.

I’m planning on just walking out the door, but I don’t make it that far. I catch sight of the lipstick heart drawn on the mirror and wild fury coats my brain and acid roils in my stomach. I ball up my fist and pound the mirror. I pound it over and over and over again, screaming, “I hate you! I hate you! Why the fuck did you leave me?”

Exhausted, I sink to my knees and cradle my cut, bleeding hand. I crawl to the bathroom and yank the roll of toilet paper from its holder. Panting like some damned dog, I wrap the toilet paper around and around my hand to stanch the bleeding.

“Bitch,” I whisper through gritted teeth. “Look what you did to me.”

I use the bathroom sink to pull myself to my feet. I crunch through the broken glass, open the door and step out into the bright sunshine.

The cab drops me off at WalMart and I am so fuckin’ glad to see that my Harley is sitting right where I left it.

I zip up my jacket, put on my sunglasses, open the fuel cock, stick in the key and fire her right up.

This is why I love motorcycles more than people. They do exactly what you tell them to do.

The bike’s loud pipes drown out any thoughts of my own, which is a nice break. I have no idea where I’m going. All I know is I’m going there at eighty miles an hour and I’m going feet first. It must’ve been instinct because when I roll to a stop, I’m parked in Ginger’s driveway. Just here to pick up some of my shit, I tell myself. Just get my shit and leave.

I pick the house key out of the dead potted plant by the door and let myself inside. It smells stuffy and smoky and like stale alcohol. I flip on the kitchen lights to discover where the smells are coming from. The place is a mess. Dishes are piled shoulder high in the sink and ashtrays are overflowing everywhere. Instead of emptying the ashtrays somebody’s just been stomping out the butts on the floor. Empty Wild Turkey bottles and beer cans and Margarita Mixer cartons are scattered around on every visible surface. Good. Maybe when she has to clean up by herself, she’ll realize I was good for something.

I walk down the hallway to my room only to find the door open. Clothes are thrown about. The closet doors are open, the chest of drawers is tipped over, the bed sheets are off the bed and balled up in a corner. Looks like Ginger went on a little rampage. I don’t really give a shit. I find three T-shirts and a couple pair of jeans that look less dirty than the rest and roll them into a ball. I get my stack of journals out of the ceiling panel where I hid them. I shrug at everything else. I guess that’s all I really need.

Except food. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything and my belly is letting me know about it. I go back to the kitchen and open the fridge. Good God. Condiments. Beer. And a leftover half-eaten Subway sandwich. I take out the sandwich and a beer. I open a cabinet door looking for a clean plate. The cabinet is bare. I open the dishwasher kind of hoping that maybe Ginger has actually washed some dishes. It’s empty too. Except for...I pull open the top rack. Wow. It’s a big neon blue dildo. Nine to ten inches long at least. I wonder if they ran it through a cycle already or if it’s still dirty and just sitting in the dishwasher. I don’t touch it just in case. I guess Ginger hasn’t missed me too much.

I grab a chair and tip it over so all the shit that’s on it dumps to the floor. I sit down heavily, pop open the beer and drain it all. Then I start in on the sandwich.

I’m only into it a couple of bites when the door opens and Ginger appears in the doorway. She’s wearing some kind of spangly miniskirt. And, if I know Ginger, and I do, nothing underneath. She has on knee-high red boots and a black pleather bra. She takes one look at me, crosses her arms and leans against the doorjamb.

“Well, look what the cat drug in,” she says. “What happened, Lee? You nail the little straight girl a couple of times and then she leave you?”

“Nope,” I respond around mouthfuls of teriyaki chicken. “I just nailed her once.”

Ginger smiles at me and I get a little queasy in my throat. Ginger smiling is not necessarily a good thing.

She swings right into my space bubble and looks down at me. “You miss me?”

“Nope.” I take another bite.

“Not even a little bit?” she pouts.

“Nope.” I swallow.

“I bet I know something you did miss.” She reaches behind her back and pops open her bra, throws it across the room and straddles my lap. This position effectively traps me in the chair, puts her huge tits right in my face and now I can’t finish my sandwich.

“I’m trying to eat here,” I say.

Ginger squirms a little in my lap and pushes Bert and Ernie even further into my face, and if there’s one thing Ginger knows, it’s me.

“C’mon, baby,” she coos. Her squirming becomes more insistent. “I need to relax. Why don’t you relax me, hmmm?”

She sucks on my earlobe. That’s not fair. That’s not playing fair at all. She darts her tongue in and out of my ear and I drop the sandwich. Goddammit. When it rains, it fuckin’ pours.

I relax Ginger in the chair. I bend her over the kitchen table and relax her again. Then I relax her once more on the floor.

I pull my pants back up, grab my cleanish clothes and journals and head for the door.

“Where you going, baby?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I’ll know when I get there,” I say, slamming the door behind me.

Like a dog chasing its own tail, I ride in circles. And just like a loyal dog, I go back home to the same master that kicked it.

The blinking neon lights and smell of desperation hit me as soon as I pull into the parking lot of The Glitter Box. I got nowhere else to be, so I might as well be here. At least there’s some girls to look at and nobody ever bothers me at the bar.

It hasn’t changed from the last time I was in here with Vivian. Loud music, mostly naked girls swinging their tits, and Dixie’s still slinging the drinks.

I nurse a beer for the next hour and think about how all tits start to look the same when you see so many of them. I pass the time by giving them all names: Fred & Ginger, Starsky & Hutch, Tom & Jerry, Sanford & Son, Adam & Eve... Even the dancer’s names seem interchangeable: Tawny, Ebony, Brandi, Candi, Buffy and Kitty. And those are just the girls working tonight. I wonder if they became strippers and changed their names, or if they were born with those names and were destined to become strippers. I watch all the lonely men stuff their paychecks in the girls’ G-strings and wonder how many of them are going home to their wives and how many of them are going home to jerk off in the shower. Or both.

Ginger comes out on the stage after awhile and I watch her work over a drunk redneck with a pocket of ones. She keeps glancing my way and I know she’s dancing more for me than him. Or maybe that’s just my ego thinking. After a couple of songs she leads him to the private room. She looks back over her shoulder and throws me a kiss. I feel absolutely nothing.

A woman sits down next to me even though there’s at least three empty barstools to either side. She orders a crantini. I study her in the mirror behind the bottles. She’s probably closing in on fifty. She just looks real good for her age. She’s got it going on strong. She’s stacked pretty good and dresses to show off her Pamela Anderson’s. (With tits that big you only need one name.) She glitters from head to toe in diamonds. She has expensive clothes, expensive hair, expensive jewelry and cheap taste in women if she sits down next to me.