Between Lovers (3 page)

She pulls me up, kisses me over and over. “Let me please you, sweetie.”

Her mouth warms me in places that years ago was illegal, might still be forbidden in some backward towns that have refused to change, does things that should get her sentenced to a lifetime with me. The look in her eyes saying that my pleasure is her pleasure, that my wicked sounds and reaction excites her beyond reason.

“Lay back, sweetie. Relax.”

On top of me, she's big in voice, small in frame, soft where a woman should be soft, but still so toned and strong. She giggles, puts her fingers in my mouth, watches me savor them, pulls them in and out, switches fingers, does that again and again. She giggles her way into a decent laugh.

I grin. “What's funny?”

“I'm sorry. I have no idea why, but that serious look on your face made me think about the first time we made love—
oooo
,
that feels good, just like that
—the night you seduced me inside your Jeep.”

“Seduced? You're tripping. You wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

“Slow, slow, yeah, slow. Don't go Mt. St. Helen's too quick.”

“Okay.”

“God, you have me so spoiled.” She moves with me, glows, hums out “Talk to me.”

“Thinking about the Jeep. That was a great night.”

“Get real. Any time a man scores it's a great night.”

“True.”

“No one had ever sucked my toes before. No one had ever gone down on me before.”

“Nobody?”

“Shit, not like that. Greedy bastard. Thought you had found some collard greens, black-eyed peas, and corn bread down there or something.”

We laugh.

“Anybody else acted like they were afraid Bermuda might bite.” She moans over and over, each time her vagina muscles tighten around me. I'm moaning just as much, just as loud.

Nicole groans: “We're so symmetrical it's frightening. Can't control myself, want to make love to you every second I see you.”

“That's dangerous.”

“You've turned me into a nymph.”

“I'm your nymph too, baby.”

“Yeah, in your Jeep we did it hard.” She chuckles and that makes her muscles squeeze me, an oyster clamped around a pearl. She says it feels so damn good, then with the sweetest, softest voice, she goes back to her story. “We did it ... from the front seat ... to the back seat ... then you had me on the hood ... heat felt so good ... under my ass ... hold my ass ... hold my ass.”

With each word, the talk excites her. Makes me harder than times in ‘29. It's as if we're reliving then and loving now, all at the same time. I look up at her boldness and admit that she's changed so much. That perm is long gone, the dirty brown hair has been dyed too many colors to remember, braces have corrected her teeth, silver fillings replaced with white so you can't see any defects when she throws her head back and laughs out loud. The knee-length skirts have vanished, the five-and-dime underwear with the days of the week embroidered into the white cotton has been traded in for colorful and lacy Cosabella. All of that gone, as if they never existed, gone, vanished, just like her inhibitions.

Moving with ease, her stomach rolls down into the starving motion of her hips, her arms keep her hovering over me, moving up then down then up then down, gets to feeling good and that makes us both so aggressive, taking just enough of me to make me go insane, nerves exploding in waves, so many pornographic noises escape her mouth, blending with the sounds that hum in my throat.

“Fuck me baby fuck me damn you're fucking me.”

I want to know where she met her friend, what words were shared, how the fuck she ended up liking somebody else besides me, where did that magic come from, what laughs were served back and forth, how they ended up fucking the first time, if something was done that I wasn't doing, or can't do, or won't do, what obscene sounds Nicole makes, if she makes the ugly face and trembles like she does when she's with me, what she feels when she's fucking the other. If she thinks about me.

Over and over I slap her backside, some slaps in love, some in frustration, all making her sting. Envy becomes the match that falls on my liquid lust.

I pull Nicole's face to mine, when I turn her over—

“Damn, you're rough this morning. Damn, I like that.”

—and get on top over her damp body, and wonder whose leftover flavor I'm kissing.

If my love were water, it would fill this room and drown both of us.

My frustration would do the same, but not as fast as my jealousy.

“Fucking me, baby. Damn you're f-f-fucking me.” Her mutterings are vulnerable, sometimes incoherent, sometimes the sweet rambles of a naughty child. She holds the sheets with one hand, wiggles in pleasure, her hips moving her love up toward my body. I pull her legs up, rest her ankles on my shoulders, all she can do is grab the sheets and enjoy. That's how I make her my prisoner.

“Tell me you love me.”

“Damn, you're fucking me. That's it, that's it, f-f-fuck me like you think I should be fucked.”

Her crude words attempt to disconnect the emotion, but they can't dilute how I feel.

With my thrusts I say, “Tell. Me. You. Love. Me.”

“I love you, I 1-1-love you, and you know, oh God—”

“Whose pussy is it?”

“Yours. It's. Yours. It's. All. Yours. I. Love. You. This. Pussy. It's. Yours.”

“Say my name. I want to make sure you're here with me.”

I refuse to be reduced to my lowest common denominator, refuse to be seen as a single body part, refuse to become just a dick putting out the fire in her hole.

Nicole says, “I still want you to meet her.”

I don't respond to that.

I lay there in the bed with my eyes closed. Nicole is on top of me, her hands tracing over my body, wide awake like she's been IV‘ed to a double latte mocha cappuccino espresso.

Another commuter train rumbles by out on Embarcadero.

She kisses my lips before she heads for the bathroom. Nicole walks in a way that lets you know she used to do ballet many moons ago, as a child, that she does yoga as an adult, using the core of her body to move herself, her abs and inner thighs tight from doing most of the work.

Nicole leaves the bathroom door wide open. She sings a Pru song, the one about the candles. She sings that all the time. Her singing is terrible, but it has raw passion. The toilet flushes.

The sandman sprinkles sleep dust all over me. Try to shake it off. Body heavy.

Water runs in the sink. She's washing up. Her bracelets jingle with her scrubbing.

I feel warm. At peace. Then I'm gone to dreamland.

Just that quick I'm in Paris. At a strip club. A slim European woman with freckles coming toward me and Nicole. The woman is naked in high heels. The dancer performs, sings, her voice so clear. She sounds as smooth and hypnotic as that wonderful vocalist Ondine Darcyl, croons “Black Orpheus” in perfect French, moves her body with a Brazilian feel.

Sudden heat on my groin frightens me, makes me yell back to consciousness.

Nicole laughs. “You jumped up like Al Green getting splattered with hot grits.”

“Scared the shit out of me.”

Nicole whispers, “Relax.”

She has two towels, one hot, wet, and soapy, the other just hot and wet. She wipes me down, removes all the leftover love with the soapy towel, then wipes away the soap with the other. She does that with a smile. So nurturing and compassionate. When she's done, she kisses the tip of my penis.

She asks, “Did you hear me when I said that I want you two to meet?”

I sit up. We stare. I tell her, “I'm not deaf.”

“Last month, when I asked, you said that you'd think about it.”

“Help me out here. Why would you want us to meet?”

“Then I won't feel guilty. Like I'm cheating.”

“Are you?”

She pauses. “Then you won't act like she doesn't exist. I love you. I love her.”

“You don't love her.”

“How do you know?”

I say, “Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve.”

We stare at each other, restless, indeterminate gazes that reach deep.

She says, “I'm a divided soul, sweetie. And I can't go on like this. Not much longer.”

“Then choose.”

This is a discussion we've had countless times since the wedding. Each time it becomes harder.

She tells me, “I have a solution. If you're still open to new things, it can work.”

She wants me to ask, but I don't.

With a wounded smile, she hand-combs her locks, untangles that hairstyle that started off as a sign of resistance, and still is, and she takes my running shoes from the closet, tosses them at my feet.

She gently says, “Get dressed.”

 

Fog walks the streets. Dark skies give Oaktown that Seattle appeal.

I have on black running tights, white T-shirt, gray St. Patrick's Day 10K sweatshirt. She wears blue tights and a black hooded sweat top, a red scarf over her golden hair.

We take a slow jog out of the Waterfront, by all the gift shops, head through the light fog. Rows of warehouses that are being converted into lofts line the streets. All in the name of profit and gentrification, the reversal of the White Flight is in progress. The homeless are out peddling
Street Spirit
papers for a buck a pop. Some are sleeping on the oil-stained pavement while people pass by in super-size SUVs and foreign cars that cost more than a house in the ‘burbs of Atlanta, Georgia. The dirt poor, the filthy rich, all live a paper cup away from each other in the land of perpetual oxymorons.

I say, “You want me to meet this chick—”

“Don't say
chick.
That's a misogynistic word.”

“Nicer than what I usually call her.”

“Which is disrespectful. Yeah, I think meeting will benefit us all.”

“So, this thing with her is pretty serious?”

She smiles because I've given up the silent treatment. “It's serious. There's more to it.”

Acid swirls in my belly.

Nicole goes on, “I think we can resolve this situation.”

“More like what?” I ask. “What more is there?”

“‘We ... just more.” She has a look that tells me this is deeper than it seems, but can't tell me all, not right now. She says, “Let's talk while we run.”

We take the incline up Broadway, my mind trying to react to what she just asked me about meeting her soft-legged lover, whirring and clicking and whirring as we jog by the Probation Department. We come up on a red light and stretch some more while we wait for it to change. The signal makes a
coo-coo, coo-coo, coo-coo
sound when it changes to green, that good old audio signal for the blind folks heading north and south. It chirps like a sweet bird going east and west, so we know we have the right-of-way and it's okay to get back to running north toward freedom.

Before we make a step, a Soul Train of impatient drivers almost mows us down.

We jump back. Both of us almost get hit. That lets me know that both of our minds are elsewhere.

Nicole says, “Be careful here, sweetie. This is where all the assholes rush to get on the Tube.”

Someone driving a black car with a rainbow flag in its window slows and allows us to cross.

I run behind Nicole. Check out the fluid movement of her thighs. Seven years ago they weren't so firm. Back then she had a whacked Atlantic Star hairdo that hung over one eye and she looked like Janet Jackson, not the
Velvet Rope
version, but the chubby-faced Penny on
Good Times
version. Now her belly is flat and the muscles in her calves rise and fall, lines in her hamstrings appear, her butt tightens; all of that shows how much she's been running, doing aerobics, hiking up every hill she can find.

It fucks with me. I try not to, don't want to, but it fucks with me and I can't help thinking about her being naked with another woman. Keep thinking about all the videos I've seen with women serving women satisfaction, but refuse to see Nicole in that light, in that life. I want to believe that they sit around baking cookies, knitting sweaters, and watching Lifetime Television for Women.

Those silver bracelets jingle as she gets a little ahead of me, not much. My shoes crunch potato chip bags and golden leaves. Buses spit black clouds of carbon monoxide in our faces.

The light at 13th catches Nicole. I catch up and ask, “Why does she want to meet me?”

“Because. Curious, I guess. I love you; she knows that. Sometimes she sounds intimidated.”

“Because I'm a man.”

“Maybe. After seven years, we have a solid history, don't you think?”

That makes me feel good. The simple, five-letter word
solid
makes me feel good.

The signal
coo-coos
three times. We run north.

We race the incline toward Telegraph, a liquor store-lined street that leads into good old Berkeley.

At 20th, under the shadows of a sky-high Sears and World Savings building, she turns right toward Snow Park. We avoid a million chain-smokers who are congregated out in front of Lake Merritt Plaza, the black-lunged outcasts of a politically correct world, then cross several lanes of fast-paced traffic and head toward the children's park and petting zoo called Fairy Land.

I maintain a steady pace and ask, “This hooking up, is this for her, or for you?”

“For me. Because I'm in fucking purgatory.”

“Where do you think I am? I'm standing next to you.”