The Ditto List (19 page)

In spite or because of all that, most of the time D.T. thought he was in love with Barbara. She was not at all his type, but that was exactly her charm: she was like no woman he had ever known. Perhaps it was admiration more than love, because what he thought of mostly when he thought of Barbara was the way she wrestled life, fought it tooth-and-nail, demanded that it yield to her every whim. If he was continually amazed at what she asked of her life, he was even more amazed at what it often conferred on her. Barbara demanded friends and got them, demanded independence and got it, demanded pleasure and got that, too. She demanded wisdom and knowledge, respect and equality, and by God she got all that as well. Barbara's wars were fought for others, not herself.

As a by-product of all this, D.T. yielded to most of her demands by rote—he discussed abstractions that he hadn't considered for years, traveled to socially significant places he would never have thought to visit by himself, read obscure little tracts on frightening little subjects that held no interest at all until he involuntarily managed to learn something specific about them. As Barbara bettered her own life she bettered his as well.

But still. She was so strong, so sure of herself, so ceaselessly demanding, and so, in some respects, wrong. Their fights on the occasions he refused to submit in theory or in practice were ferocious, made all the more so by her lack of self-deprecating humor and by her uncritical acceptance of the modern mumbo-jumbo that offered the simplest of answers to the most complex of problems, usually at the expense of the male component of the dynamic. One of their fights would one day consume their relationship, D.T. was certain of it. What he was not sure of was whether or not he cared. He could still remember the night Barbara, her warrior credo diluted by two joints of potent pot, had tried in tears to tell him how it felt to be a woman in a world that was ordered and administered by men who not only wanted from her only what was debasing, but who could also beat her to a pulp at any time they chose. By the end of her soliloquy her tears were matched by his.

Barbara hitched up her satin running shorts and tugged down her cotton shirt and walked out the door, calves knotting, butt bobbing, her body as eager as a colt's. Running made Barbara both fit and horny. It made D.T. asthmatic. Unfortunately, Barbara had not yet quit trying to make him a partner in things more strenuous than sex.

D.T. went back to the kitchen and opened a can of Campbell's and, eventually, boiled it. While it simmered to tranquility he ate three Ritz crackers and a soft banana that had been subliminally suggested to him, perhaps, by Lucinda's description of her nose. He wondered how she was faring out there in Reedville. He wondered what she would have done if he had joined her naked on the deck beneath her blanket and the stars, whether she would have laughed or cried or opened her arms and fucked him. He had never screwed a client, not while she was a client, at least, and in this he differed from almost all his colleagues. Perhaps it was time he joined them. Perhaps his life was now too grave for ethics.

By the time the soup was cool enough to sip, Barbara was back, letting herself in with the key he'd given her the night they had first made love, which was the night they had first met socially, at a fern bar across the street from the courthouse where, Barbara had later confessed, she had lain in wait for him with mischief on her mind and lied outrageously about her car's malfunction and her fear of entering her apartment unescorted. Both that night and since, she got exactly what she wanted.

She stood behind him and watched him ease the soup into his mouth. Barbara was as steamy as the Campbell's, as odorous as an onion. Heat rose off her like a medicinal vapor. She waited patiently till he finished. “I need a shower,” she said as he slurped the final slurp. “Come with me.”

He shook his head. “I'm still hungry.”

“Come on, D.T. We haven't showered together for months.”

“Not tonight, Barbara. Please?”

“Come on. You don't have to do a thing. I'll do both of us. I'll use that glycerin soap I gave you. Come on.”

She tugged him out of his chair. He banged his shin on the table leg. On the way down the hall she tugged roughly at his belt. By the time they reached the bathroom he was stumbling over the trousers that had fallen to his calves and were serving as a hobble. Coins spilled from his pockets and chimed like the bells of Krishnas as they skittered across the floor.

As he hopped on the cold tile, Barbara peeled off her soaking shorts and shirt and, wearing only panties darkened by sweat in back and by the equilateral shadow of her pubis in front, turned on the shower and adjusted the temperature to suit her, which was within a degree of scalding.

D.T. dallied, struggling out of his pants, trying to tug his trousers over his shoes, finally starting from floor level and working up, beginning with the brogans. He was still in his underwear when Barbara turned away from the hissing shower and peeled away her panties. Then she stretched his shorts beyond his cock and pushed them to his ankles, and raised his T-shirt off his head.

He was always leery when she stripped him. He was not of notable endowment, and Barbara who weighed and measured everything else about him, from his taste in music to the objects of his charitable bounty, must have weighed and measured his cock as well. And doubtless found it wanting. Thankfully, she had never mentioned it. Blessedly, he lived in a culture that decreed that women display their breasts and men secrete their cocks, at least in circumstances short of the carnal or the uronic.

The shower curtain slid smoothly over its rod, releasing sodden smoke that was the stuff of deviltry and witchcraft. Briefly, he thought of cannibals. “Come on,” Barbara said, and stepped into the tub and disappeared in the cloud of steam. “D.T.,” she warned from within when he failed to follow.

Cupping his genitals to keep them from becoming cooked, D.T. clambered in to join her. Gritting his teeth against the solid swords of water, pulling the curtain shut behind him, darkening the shower into a London fog, he waited for instructions.

“Turn around.”

He did and felt her hands slip easily over his back, their kneading surges oiled by a scented soap Barbara had ordered from a catalogue of imported erotica. Within a minute he was drugged by her firm ministrations of his torso, by the assault of the shower, by her delicate probing of his soapy ass. He felt like home-baked bread, hoped that Barbara would soon eat him.

“Now the front.”

He turned again and watched the sudsy water find its way around the bulges of her body and drip like albino urine from her pubic brush. As he gazed on her, she soaped him thoroughly, beginning at his chin and neck. When she reached his waist she sank to her knees onto the flowery non-skid appliqués on the floor of the tub. She lingered on his genitals, her work efficient not seductive, causing D.T. to wonder not for the first time if she found them foul.

“D.T.?” Barbara's voice slipped through the cheering shower like a whispered secret.

“Hmm?”

“What's a scrotum?”

“What?”

“What's a scrotum? Bernie said something about his scrotum today and I wasn't sure what he was talking about. I was going to look it up, but since you're here …”

D.T. reached for her hand and guided it. “This.”

“The balls?”

“No. The sack.”

“Oh.”

“What brought up the fascinating subject of Bernie's scrotum?”

“He got hot sand all over it.”

“Dangerous, those nude beaches. Warning: May be hazardous to your scrotum.”

He looked down into Barbara's smile. “See my sunburn?” she said, and raised a breast. Below the deep brown of her normal tan, the pink white circle around her aureole peered at him like a bloodshot eye. He winked back. They played with each other longer.

“Does this hurt?” Barbara asked, squeezing.

“No.”

“This?”

“Yes. God.” He curled.

“Is that what happens when you get hit in the balls?”

“That. Worse.”

“Why does it hurt so bad?”

“Who knows? As an aid to propagation of the species, probably. A function formerly held in high regard.”

“Is this where sperm comes from?”

“I think so.”

“Don't you know?”

“I think I do.”

“Why are there two?”

“Fail-safe, maybe. Or maybe one for boy babies and one for girl babies.”

She pinched something near his knee. “Why does one hang lower than the other?”

“Jesus, Barbara.”

“Don't you know?”

“No.”

“You don't know nearly enough about your body, D.T.”

“I'll get to my body as soon as I'm through with my mind.”

Barbara washed his ankles and between his toes and then stood up and trailed her fingers through his frothy and newly labelled scrotum. “Do you still masturbate?” Her face was an inch from his.

“Still?”

“Well, all men masturbate, don't they? I read they did.”

“Not all. Most, probably. When they get the time.”

“You mean you never have?”

“I didn't say that.”

“When's the last time?”

“Last night. And then again this morning.”

“You.” She poked him, and turned her back. “Do me,” she said.

He fished the soap off the floor of the tub and did her, back first, lingering at her favorite places and at his own as well. By the time he was finished they both breathed deeply, through parted dripping lips. “Do you want to do it here?” she asked.

“No.”

“On the bathroom floor?”

“The bed.”

“Okay, but next time in the tub.”

“Sure.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He took her hand and helped her from the tub. Then Barbara assumed the lead, firmed her grip on his hand, and started toward the bedroom. “Do you want a towel?” D.T. asked her glistening back. She shook her head and increased her speed, her footprints on the carpet like the tracks of Crusoe's Friday.

Still pulling him like a Flexible Flyer, she belly-flopped onto his unmade bed, then turned onto her back and tugged him down on top of her. Once fused, their wet bodies bucked and smacked like printing presses, as though each cell was frantic for a mate. D.T. kissed her, tasted the tang of salt and the fatty paste of soap. His thick tongue slipped between her lips and she closed her teeth until he squirmed, then sucked his tongue until he could taste its root. He backed away and took a breath.

Slithering beneath him, Barbara arranged their bodies so that his prick pressed squarely on the bristly carpet that hid and warmed her sex. He gnawed her neck and ground his pelvis onto her, then ground again, alert to what she wanted, then alert to something else. The sensation was different from the usual slab of fur, a gritty scrape along the shaft of his prick. Sand. From the nude beach. Perhaps the grains that had singed poor Bernie's scrotum. The thought of Barbara and Bernie naked lit him.

He rolled to his side and slid down her body until his tongue could lap her fresh-baked breast. He nibbled lightly at the nipple, playfully, then more roughly, then drew as much of the firm sack into his mouth as it would hold. He made more noises, released it, watched it tremble. As he flicked his tongue at the nipple once again, Barbara's moan erupted over him like a tribal command. He slipped his hand between her legs and separated the pucker of her flesh and buried one finger, and then another, leery for a moment that Barbara would make him stop and trim his nails, as she had the first time he had probed her similarly.

Her sticky inner glue threatened not to let him leave. He nipped at her breasts, one and then the other, while propelling his coated fingers so far into her she hollowed out and gobbled him. As she raised her hips to meet his fistic thrusts, the telephone rang. He disbelieved it until it rang again.

“No,” Barbara said.

“I have to.”

“No.” She clamped her legs around his wrist, double-locking him inside her.

“We've been through all that, Barbara. Something might have happened.”

“What's going to happen? You know it's always nothing but neuroses.”

Barbara's abandonment of this inconvenient segment of the sisterhood amused him briefly. “That's not the point. I just can't not know.”

“Please? Just this once?”

He rolled to his back and cast his free hand in the direction of the intruding instrument. After one misfire he grasped it. “Hello.” The word was a demand, not an invitation. Barbara rolled and wrenched his wrist.

“Jones?”

“That's me.”

“Jones, the divorce lawyer?”

“Hello, Del.”

Barbara swore softly and released him. He rolled to his side, away from her and toward the telephone. Behind him, he felt her leave the bed.

“How'd you know who it was?”

“I've been expecting your call, Delbert. I've dealt with guys like you before.”

He wondered where Barbara had gone, if she was leaving the apartment, if he should go after her. But more than that he wondered what Delbert Finders was up to, how much he was prepared to risk to get D.T. to abandon his young wife to the hazard of her marriage.

“I know she spent the night at your place, Jones. I followed you from the hospital.”

“You must be good at it; I tried to check.”

“I'm good at lots of things, pal. You get in her pants? Huh? You roll around on that big belly and suck on them big floppy tits? Huh, Jones? Big Lawyer-Man. She show you how good I taught her to fuck?”

Behind him, Barbara slipped back onto the bed and crawled toward him over wadded covers. His body bounced. A hand gripped his hip and rolled him to his back.

Humming a toneless tune, Barbara straddled him, crouched, balanced on one hand and two knees. Her other hand grasped something round, a jar, a can, something. And she clenched another object, pirate-like, between her teeth. It looked very much like a knife.