Best Black Women's Erotica (21 page)

Reid gave her a joint to help her put everything in perspective, and even though Martine hadn't smoked in years because dope made her lethargic for days afterward, she sat in his library and smoked the entire joint like a cigarette, skimming through Wole Soyinka's
Death and the King's Horseman
and thinking she understood it all at last. Sometimes the king has to commit suicide because ritual demands it, she thought, just like in the play. A king's gotta do what a king's gotta do. She felt like she'd gained enough perspective to last a year.

And when Reid came behind her, kneading her shoulders and asking if she'd care to join him and Maya in the pool, she couldn't think of one reason why not.

The sky had gone dark while she wasn't paying attention, and it was cooler outside than it had been the night before. Not New York by a long shot, but there was definitely a bite in the air. Bright lights illuminated the pool from under the water, and the rest of the patio was black. Martine tipped across the smooth, glistening pebbles of Reid's patio tiles, enjoying the prickly sensation against her bare soles. When she noticed that Reid and Maya were naked, floating serenely with their arms resting against the pool's edge, she climbed unselfconsciously out of her one-piece suit and tested the water. Yep, the heat was on. A heated pool in Miami had seemed almost beyond extravagance to her when Reid first had it built, but she was grateful now.

This is going to be a good night, she decided.

With a light streaming right beside Maya's body, Martine could see that the areolas centered on her tiny breasts were a dark brown, nearly as dark as her own. She could also see a dime-sized birthmark near her navel.

“Where are you from?” Martine asked her.

“Half of me's from Brazil, half from Lebanon. But I've lived between Georgia, Michigan, and California my whole
life. Take your pick,” she said. She paused, as if to say
You through with your questions now?
Then, she went on blandly, as if continuing an earlier conversation: “I think most movies are just dumb. The people are so fake.”

Despite her mellow mood, her body melting in the warm pool, Martine didn't feel inclined to try to explain to a serial killer how script deadlines and sophomoric formulas had made characters virtually inconsequential in Hollywood. Let Reid defend his own, she thought.

“Martine would agree with you on that,” Reid said.

“Like cute, happy little dreams,” Martine said with a yawn. She enjoyed the familiarity of this debate with Reid, which reminded her of college. Even then, measuring herself against Reid had provided her a sense of conviction. “
Judas
was an important film, Reid. You proved you could do it, and then you went back to helping people sleep.”

“I never saw
Judas
. I'm not really into the Bible and all that,” Maya said. “But I know what you're saying, Martine, because I didn't like that big movie Reid put out last year at all. I just thought it was silly. Sorry.”

“See that? You may be the only two people left who don't tell me only what I want to hear,” Reid said, staring at Martine with such heavy-lidded eyes that she knew he was wishing he could broach the question of a threesome. He would never dare ask her, of course, but Martine wondered if this was the one time she might consent. They were all within a couple feet of each other, close enough to touch. The water lapping just below Martine's chin was lulling her to a place where no questions need be asked, and no answers were required.

“You must be broke as hell, huh?” Maya said to Martine.

Martine smiled ruefully, closing her eyes. “Something like that.”

“Reid is a millionaire. He doesn't even pay attention to how much money he's got, 'cuz he's got so much of it. And
people come here and kiss his ass all the time. The actors who are supposed to be so hot themselves are the worst ones. I've seen them.”

“Me, too,” Martine said. She liked Maya's candor, and she felt the sudden hope that everything Reid had told her about Maya that day was complete horseshit. “Is any of it true?

“Is what true, babe?” Reid asked, invisible behind her eyelids.

“I'm talking to Maya. Is it true what Reid said you did?”

Martine heard a playful slap and splash in the water. “How come you had to go and shoot off your mouth?”

“So is it true or isn't it?” Martine said.

Maya paused. “What did you say I did?”

“He said you killed four men.”

Maya's voice grew slightly husky, sounding almost too big for her frame. “Well, then, he's a damn liar. It was five. He knows it was five.”

Martine lay very still in the water, waiting to feel something. Instead, she wished she had her 16mm camera with her, that she was capturing the night on film. She couldn't pretend she was still an observer, though; she had become one of her subjects.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. “Why do you kill men?”

“It's just beyond my control,” Maya said, sounding bored. “There are no...what's that word, Reid? That pretty one you use all the time?”

“Epiphanies,” he said.

“Yeah, no epiphanies. I do it because I feel like I have to. I guess love has to hurt, that's all. Better them than me. But I'm going to stop, though.”

“Now who's lying?” Reid said.

This time it was Maya's turn to laugh, a very merry and girlish sound. After a short silence she said, “What are you gonna do with your money, Reid? Put me in your will.”

“You a crazy woman, girl, if you t'ink I'm going to do something fool-fool like dat.”

“Who are you giving it to, then? Martine?”

Suddenly, Martine opened her eyes. She wanted to see Reid's face when he answered. He was gazing at her, smiling. “Should I do that, Martine? Should I give you my money?”

“Keep your money,” Martine said. “You can't buy what you want from me.”

“Why you gon' buy de cow fo', you get de milk fo' free?” Reid said, and this time it was Martine who gave his shoulder a slap. Afterward, Reid's voice grew reflective. “No, my money goes to my perfect little precious boys. Life will be good to them.”

There was silence again. Whether it was because of the pot or the warm water, or both, Martine felt her spirit floating inside herself, untroubled. Reid, seeing her thoughts, reached over to stroke her chin with the ball of his thumb. His eyes sank into hers.
Those
eyes she knew like her own. They were not the eyes of a stranger.

“I love it here,” Maya said, her voice sounding far away, a pattering. “This is the best home I've ever had. Have I told you that before, Reid?”

“To you, any home is the best you've ever had,” Reid said, still gazing at Martine. She saw the silent, private plea to her in his face.

“No, I mean it this time. This one is the best,” Maya went on.

“Me, too,” Martine said. Relieved, Reid swallowed her with his gentle mouth.

It took Martine some time to realize that the fingers plying her nipples beneath the water were not Reid's. Maya's fingertips squeezed harder than Reid's, to the brink of pain, but Martine discovered that she didn't mind. Somehow, that seemed just right.

Maya's tongue and fingers were the instruments of a poetess, Martine decided. Martine had never been touched by a woman
this way, had never been curious about it, but Maya's mastery made her a being beyond gender. She did not kiss Martine, offering only touch, not intimacy, which was fine. While Maya made Martine squirm and cry out from the most unexpected motions—a palm pressing against Maya's submerged belly while a wiggling finger gently penetrated her vagina, or the sensation of a tongue teasing at her clitoris beneath the warm water, making flesh and fluid nearly one and the same—Reid kissed her with his healing lips, whispering vows that were even more satisfying to Martine than the unseen hands squeezing and caressing her nakedness, washing her.

Four hands, each of them with its own mind. One voice in her ear, the voice she heard in her dreams.

“You okay in there?” Reid asked, knocking gently on her doorjamb. She hadn't seen him standing there watching her. He was shirtless, wearing nearly translucent white drawstring pants, with a small white hand towel draped across his shoulders. He was still lovely to her, but that was all. Tonight, she didn't long for Reid's presence in the bed beside her.

“Should I be?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Fine. Then I'm okay,” she said, and smiled.

Martine heard a sharp clink of metal, then Maya stuck her head in the doorway, more than a foot lower than Reid's. “Hey, there,” Maya said, grinning mischievously. “Reid's getting me a late-night cup of tea. Want anything?” Martine was not even surprised to see that Maya's tiny wrists were bound in front of her in thick iron handcuffs that shone in the light in a way that made Martine think they must be very cold.

“Do you wear those all night?” Martine asked.

“Only if I don't want to be put in my room. Reid lets me sleep in his bed with these.”

“Where'd you get those, Reid?”

“Lincoln Road Mall,” Reid said. “I'll take you sometime.”

“No thanks,” Martine said, smiling. “They don't have my size.”

Reid winked at her. “Precisely. I'm the one who's shackled where you're concerned, not vice-versa. Good night.”

“Good night, you two,” Martine said to them. “Be good.”

She watched them walk away, Maya shuffling because her ankles were bound, Reid tenderly holding her elbow, helping her keep her balance. Something about the image struck Martine as profoundly moving. She was more tired than she could remember being in a long time, but she didn't reach up to turn off her bedside lamp right away. She wanted to wait for the sound of metal dragging across the hallway tiles as Reid and Maya walked back past her room to where they would sleep. She wanted to see them together again.

Waiting, she fell asleep herself. Then, for no particular reason, she snapped to alertness with a gasp. She glanced at the clock and realized that twenty or twenty-five minutes had passed. Had Reid and Maya come back through the hall? She didn't think so. She was a light sleeper, and she would have heard them.

Somehow, she was certain that too much time had passed. She remembered she was still a little stoned, because her chest was constricting and suddenly she didn't seem to have any sensation in her fingertips or toes. It took her a long time to realize she was only afraid. Anxiety attacks were another problem she had with dope, she remembered.

Martine sat up, wrapping her kimono around her nakedness. She found her worn leather sandals and put them on; she never walked on floor tiles barefoot, a lesson from her mother. Men want dainty feet, her mother had told her. She'd heeded her mother's lessons, or most of them, and none of them had prepared her for Reid. What Reid wanted, apparently, was
much more than dainty feet. There was no way her mother could have predicted that for Martine when she was a college student on spring break, when Reid came home with her and kept her family laughing with his funny stories and sly smiles. She and her mother could see some of who he would be, but not everything. They hadn't seen Maya.

Reid's house felt much larger and more foreign at night, when most of the lights were off. He only spent a few months a year here, so he'd never put up photographs or imposed much evidence of his own tastes, not like his house in LA. The blandness of the hallway seemed to stretch forever. But there, at the end of the hall, Martine could see the fluorescent light glaring from the kitchen, no doubt bouncing off the shiny floor, the white appliances, the white countertop. The light offended her eyes.

And she heard something, too. The sound of quiet weeping.

Martine never had to actually walk inside the kitchen. She only had to walk close enough to see Maya kneeling on the floor through the entryway, her handcuffed wrists held up so she could rub her face. Martine was close enough to see a single strawberry on the floor, nestled beside Maya's bare, grimy foot. Maya walked without shoes, Martine realized.

“You said you didn't do anything to the strawberries,” Martine said. Her voice was gravel, as if she were asleep.

Startled, Maya looked up at her. Her tear-damp face was no longer brown, but bright red. She was a woman in agony, Martine realized, and in this way they were really no different.

“I didn't. Not all of them. Just...one. I couldn't...help...” She was sobbing, incomprehensible for a moment. “I thought he...threw them...out...”

“Is that what you really thought?”

Abruptly, Maya stopped sobbing. She gazed up at Martine as if she were noticing her for the first time and had somehow decided tears and explanations weren't necessary for her.
“Well, anyway,” Maya said, drawing in a long, clogged sniff to clear out her nose, “I'm going to stop. I really am. Just like I said.”