House of Holes (26 page)

Kathy showed her that two fingers gently squeezing his arm muscle meant “good.”

The room was large and sparely furnished. Kathy explained that furniture had to be kept to a minimum because Nedbody was blind, of course. Then she left.

There were some grapes in the corner, and Reese looked at them wistfully, thinking that she could eat them but Nedbody couldn’t. She ate a grape, and then, feeling a little shy, sat down next to him on a couch and put her head on his shoulder. She inspected the low mound of his neck. It was surprisingly easy to get used to his headlessness. If you hadn’t known what human beings looked like you would simply assume that this was the way they were.

She tweaked his nipple, as Kathy had done, and his hand brushed her away. That was good—it was a sign of his having preferences. She wanted to know what Nedbody wanted and what he didn’t want. “I think I want you to have no clothes on,” she said to him. She pulled, and he got up, and she slipped the robe off and slipped his underpants off, and he almost lost his balance getting out of them, but she held his arm to steady him. Then she walked him over to the bed and stood behind him. His butt was his best feature, it was quite amazing—two strong bouncy male musclecakes covered in a furze of hair. She helped him bend forward, and, showing him how to place his hands, she urged him to lie on his stomach on the bed. He did so, his legs hanging out over the floor. She wanted to look at everything about him. She punched lightly at his ass cheeks, and then she looked at the back part of his balls for a while. Then she lifted the phone. Kathy answered. “Kathy,” she said, “I don’t think I can do this. I really need him to have a head.”

Kathy came back in. “I’m so sorry, Reese, his head is unavailable.” She said. “You have to make do. But have a look at this body.” She pointed to him facedown on the bed. He was sleeping. He seemed to drop off easily. A slight sound of breathing escaped from his neckhole.

“Can you at least give me some pointers?”

“Sure,” Kathy said. “He likes to be massaged. The seat of his intelligence is his lower back, so I massage there first to get his attention. It’s like getting eye contact.” She parted his legs and stood between them, squeezing her thumbs into his back. He stirred slightly in his sleep.

“Another thing is he likes you to tickle just behind his knees. Watch.” She tickled, and Nedbody’s legs jumped. She tickled again.

Reese noticed that now Nedbody’s hips were grinding into the bed. She turned to Kathy. “He seems to be getting into the bed action there.”

“That’s what he does, poor guy,” said Kathy. “Anytime you put any pressure on his genitals, he dry humps you.”

“Oh,” said Reese. “Well, I can live with that.”

“I’m going to leave you now,” said Kathy. “It’s a little traumatic for me because I take care of him. I can’t help it. Sometimes I feel jealousy. But I want him to have as good a time as he can have, and I have to do an oil change on three of the other guys.”

“What’s an oil change?”

“All the bodily necessities—we have to flush them out every other day to keep them healthy.”

“This is pretty impressive but pretty nutty,” Reese said.

“I can get used to anything,” said Kathy. “They’re nice men.” She paused just before she closed the door. “I can tell from the way he’s humping the bed that he’s got a big hard-on,” she said. “Turn him on his side, and you’ll have a nice present.”

She closed the door.

Reese sat next to Nedbody for a moment, looking at the smooth muscular expanse of his back. His arms were flung wide. She smelled his underarms, which though Kathy had washed him had a whiff of man scent. She pulled on the hair, and he shrugged. Then she couldn’t stand it—she had to bring out one of her trusty erotic romances. It was
Tastefully Done,
one from the Untamed Wanderer series. She read Nedbody a passage as he slept, gently caressing his perfect bottom as she did and feeling his muscles involuntarily tighten as he dry humped the bed. “Shadow’s thighs registered the heat of his haughty stare,” she read. “He seized her roughly and lifted the burning torch of her sex to his mouth. ‘Shadow, I have craved your salt taste for three long years,’ he said, his lips red as embers in the deepening dusk.”

“Whoo!” she said. “That’s the stuff! Nedbody, baby, do you mind if I kind of help you turn over?” He didn’t seem to mind, and she eased her fingers under one of the thick muscles of his upper thigh and pulled gently, feeling like a camel driver. He drew his arms in and turned, and she had her first glance at his cock, which lay like a railroad tie hanging out from his body. It moved with his heartbeat. She watched it for a moment, wondering at its independent spirit.

“It looks like you have something major going on there, Nedbody,” she said. She found that she couldn’t help herself, and she curled her fingers around the fullness of what remained of his intelligence. “Think with your dick,” she whispered, moving her mouth closer. She pulled one knee up and pushed the other away, and he lay sprawled, jutting upward like some travesty of a Michelangelo sculpture, and from him came the dusty, meaty scent of his balls, which she breathed in for a long time and allowed to swirl around in her brain. For she did have a brain as he, poor Nedbody, did not. “You poor brainless man,” she said. “I’m going to suck your dick, and you won’t even know it. Mmmmmmm.”

She encircled the base of his cock and brought it up so that it grazed her lips, and she found that when she did his hips made a little judder, a kind of minithrust, which was precious to her because it was a bit of communication. “That’s it,” she said, “use those hips, baby.” Then she closed her fist on his cock and slid her hand all the way down again until the skin pulled tight on the pistil head of his manjig.

“You don’t know this, Nedbody, but I just love sucking dick,” she said. “And you’ve got an unusually fine one, and I’m going to be very, very nice to it.” She closed her eyes again and smelled him and stroked him once. His hips moved, sending him toward her. She opened her mouth and felt him push against her tongue. She flattened her tongue out and slathered under his head, and each time she did his pelvis jerked, and that made her happy.

She tried not to look up at his head, because his head wasn’t there, and she concentrated on his true self, which was his dick. She was grinding her muffin against the muscle just above his knee, and then she stood for a second because she wanted to be naked. She wondered if he could feel her breasts, and it seemed not too difficult to find out. He was lying with his hands at his sides. She lowered one of her breasts, and when his hand felt her nipple graze the sensitive skin in the middle of his palm his hips made another small jump.

“You got me feeling pussyish, Nedbody,” she said, breathily. “Think with your asshole.” She grabbed his dick with one hand, and with her left hand she snookered a finger up his ass, and then she held her mouth still and began a slow, deliberate crescendo, jerking him off into her mouth. He raised his arms, and she saw his hands waving in the air in a little twirling dance of pelvis pleasure, and then both his fists clenched suddenly and she felt his asshole crunch. His stomach worked, and his hips rocked, and his legs flumped together, his knees knocking audibly, and she felt a hot jolt of manwater against the back of her throat. Then he trembled and subsided.

“There you are,” she said, “you nice headless man. There you go. You stay right there, and I’m going to get my moment now. Wait.” She rode his thigh, looking at his spent cock and remembering how it had felt in her mouth, and she twizzled her riddler and moved back and forth on the wet slippery spot on his thigh, and finally she whispered, “Oh, Nedbody, here I come.” She clamped her legs around his thigh and came and came and came. Then she flung herself down on the bed next to him and laughed. Nedbody was asleep already, breathing quietly.

Cardell Meets Betsy on the Beach

C
ardell knelt to study the footprint in the sand. In the air there was a deep-in-the-nose smell of ocean and seaweed and timeless things that have no name.

The footprint was light and small—the print of a woman. He pressed his own foot into it and tried to imagine her firm footbone. He started following the footsteps, walking in them as much as he could.

The beach curved back into a small bay where the House of Holes condominiums were, and as Cardell turned the corner he saw a distant figure wearing a hat. He increased his pace, still stepping in her footsteps. With each step he took, he learned more about the arch of her foot, the ball of her foot, and her small, strong toes. He was almost loping now.

Finally, he caught up to her. She was wearing a loose, faded dress and a hat, and she held her sandals hooked on her fingers. Her hat was woven of pale fine straw and made her face glow like a classy tangerine. He recognized her.

“Hi, I bought the pen,” he said.

“Oh, good,” said Betsy.

“I’ve been walking in your footsteps,” he said. “It was the most intimate experience. Did you feel my feet pressing against your feet?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Let me try walking in your footsteps, and you can see what you feel.”

“Okay.”

Cardell walked a few paces ahead and stopped.

“Don’t turn around,” she said.

He didn’t. She walked up to him.

“Did you feel the ball of my foot pressing into your footprint?” she asked.

“Some,” he said. “More I felt the arch. But yes, I feel I know you better now.”

“And I know you better. We’re old friends, in fact.”

Cardell paused, full of indecision. “But we’re very different.”

“That’s true. I collect beach glass, and you don’t.”

“You seem rich.”

“I’m not poor. My husband’s father was rich. He was sup-posedly a ruthless businessman, but he was always nice to me.” She smiled.

“I’d love to see you come,” Cardell said thickly.

She laughed. “Ah, but I’m married, as you know. I don’t cheat. Much.”

“Does your husband have a friendly sex organ that treats you well?” he asked.

“He does,” she said, in a distant voice. “It’s got a knobby end that fits me just right. But I suppose that’s private information.”

Cardell looked out at the ocean. “I wish I had a cold iced tea right now.”

Betsy’s voice was very small. “I have cold Snapple in my condo, if you want to come back.”

So they went back to her condo where there was a tall vase filled with carved canes and a Chinese ceramic pig on a side table, its head resting on a red pillow. There were also many jars of shells and beach glass. Betsy pulled the sliding door half open so that they could still hear the sound of the sea.

“My husband is at his office,” she said after a moment. “I—I can call him. Should I?”

“Absolutely, yes, give him a call.”

She flipped out her cell phone. “Honey,” she said, “I’ve met a nice-looking young man on the beach who says he wants to watch me come.” She paused. “I know. I know. Okay. I know. Okay.”

She held the phone away from her ear. Cardell raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“He’s kind of angry,” she whispered. Then she listened some more to the telephone. “He wants to talk to you.”

Cardell took the phone. “Hello, sir?”

There was a strong voice in his ear. “I don’t know who you are, but stay away from my wife. Leave the condo immediately.”

“I will leave the condo, but I would really like to see her come first, and I know that’s a problem for you, but I also know she wants to see my mandingo. I’m just going to shuck my boxers off, and my mandingo will be sticking out, and she’ll get a good look at it. She wants to, I know it. Do you say yes?”