Penthouse (16 page)

I stick my tongue deep into Martha’s hole. She releases a breathy “Aaah.” I pull it out, then push it in again, pressing especially
hard against the top of the opening, which always gets her squirming. She assures me she has a G spot, and that that’s where
it is, though I haven’t found a parallel place on my own body. I take her word for it. I lick her awhile there, with considerable
force, glancing occasionally at Jack across the way. He’s milking himself a bit faster now. His face holds the faintest suggestion
of a grimace, as if he were trying to take a troublesome crap.

I decide time is running out, and I want him to see Martha come before he climaxes. So I move up to her clit, gently tonguing
it before clamping down with my lips to spread her inner labia apart. She groans louder now. I place some fingers inside her,
just to keep her warm and filled, then set to work licking her clit as rhythmically as I can. I manage to stretch the hood
of her clitoris wide with my own mouth, so that my tongue’s path rubs against the buried center there, where she is most sensitive.

Her genitals have swollen huge, her bulbous clit fluttering each time my tongue brushes against it. She is moaning loud enough
that Jack must be able to hear her. I peek his way and see that he’s pumping his dick furiously, biting his lower lip, watching
us—almost glaring at us.

Martha’s voice begins to crack, like a grinding machine. She is getting close. Still licking hard, I look up her
trembling torso to her face, which is twisted with the pain of yearning, not too different from Jack’s. I get wet for her
in a hot gush, and find myself tunneling my fingers in and out of her pussy so that my roughest skin works against that G
spot. She calls out, with a hoarse sort of howl, and her vagina squeezes against my fingers like a clenching fist. I lick
her with all the strength that my tiring jaw has held in reserve, flicking the tip of my tongue over that pulled-taut clitoris
in sharp, vibrating strokes. She howls again. I purse my lips and suck her clit now as hard as I can, pulling the small length
of it all the way into my mouth over and over. Her cunt contracts faster, until it’s a steady, pulsing shudder.

“Fuck me now, just fuck me,” she whispers hoarsely, pushing my face away. I sit back a bit and shove my fingers in and out
of her slippery opening. She’s gone, breathing hard, eyes closed, letting out loose short breaths like a woman giving birth.

Now I look at Jack. This time, I stare directly at him. And I smile a wide smile. He is on the verge. When our gazes meet,
his eyes bulge, horrified. He scowls and shakes his head as if to urge me to look away. But I’ve caught him too close to coming
for him to stop now. His cock is slick with precome and he keeps working it with a blurred hand. He has his other forearm
twisted under a buttock. He must be screwing himself in the ass with a finger—or maybe, I speculate, a secret dildo.

His face twists like a rag, then collapses with a silent roar as he shoots against the windowpane. His head snaps back, he
shoots again, then falls out of view onto the bed. I look down at Martha, who’s drifted into semiconsciousness, with me slowly
fucking her to sleep. Jet lag, I guess. I look back to my neighbor. Jack has disappeared.
My God
,
I think,
did I embarrass him? I mean, did I truly mortify him, this nice college boy? I bet he’s in the john throwing up because some
dyke saw him come.

He doesn’t return to his bedroom tonight, from what I can see. I turn off my light before undressing, then nudge Martha over
and climb in beside her. As I drift into the vague state between day and dream, I picture Jack in some future circle jerk
with a group of buddies, watching naked women on TV. Jack gets up wordlessly to change the channel, because he is plagued
by an irrational fear that the women on the screen might actually be watching back.

BY
T
SAURAH
L
ITZKY

D
id you ever do it before, Owen?” I asked him as I climbed on top.

“Oh, yeah, many times,” he said, but I did not believe him; the down on his face was as soft as a flower and his body hair
was so spare, just a feathery plume or two on his chest and no genital hair at all. But his rosy mouth excited me, and his
limp pink cock was thick, longer than my hand, and promised much pleasure if only I could get it to stand to attention. He
shimmied beneath me like a nervous fish as I stroked his cock up and down with my wet slit. Last night he told me I had lovely
eyes, but he pronounced it “luuve-lee,” having just come up from Louisiana to work in his brother’s Cajun seafood restaurant;
and lovely in my panties was what I thought he would be, but now in my bed he was hesitant, tremulous, scared, a young cock
who didn’t know what to do with me. I should have known better, but how I love my foolish pleasure.

All the time he had sat at the bar and sipped his Guinness his eyes had played with my big, D-cup tits, but now
with them hanging just above him he was too shy to touch them. I put my hands beneath their heaviness, hefted them, made them
shake and dance a jig. I lowered a big, brown nipple to his face and brushed it back and forth across his rosebud lips as
I kept slowly stroking his cock up and down with my wet slit. He started to thrash and moan. “Oh, mother,” he said, ”oh, mother,”
which was not what I wanted to hear, but I was so hungry for it I would have fucked him if he called me Michael or Gregory.
I lowered my head, covered my teeth with my lips so as not to bite, and sucked him hard. He smelled like talcum and bread,
and the more I sucked, the more the juices simmered between my legs. After a while the sap rose in him, his prick began to
quiver and twist. I took a condom from the box beside the bed and peeled it out, but when I turned to sheathe him, hop astride,
and ride to paradise, I saw his mouth was slack, his eyes were shut, his head lolled back— he was asleep.

No fool like an old fool, I thought, as I climbed off, went to the refrigerator, and selected a fat carrot from the stock
I always keep there. I washed it and cased it in the Ramses X-tra sensitive, X-tra thin I had opened for Owen, put a generous
dollop of K-Y on the tip, went into the toilet, and, seated on the throne, made myself come three times and then one more
time as a prayer for a better-luck next fuck. When I got into bed, I poked Owen several times in a nasty fashion, but he did
not move, his snoring echoing through the room. I lay down beside him and tried to remember the names of all the lovers I
had taken that I had picked up in bars. I remembered thirteen and then drifted off to sleep.

I was awakened by a flurry of soft kisses around my neck and on my shoulders. It was still dark outside. I
turned to Owen, returned his kisses, and we cuddled together wrapped in the lap of night. Reaching down, I found him hard.
I got another Ramses from the box, slid it on, kissed the latexed tip, rubbing it between my lips but not taking it farther
into my mouth. I teased him with my tongue until he cried out, “Oh, oh, oh,” and this time he did not call me mother. I turned
over on my back and, seizing hold of him, pulled him on top of me, parting my legs to let him slide in. On the first attempt
he got my peehole and I had to take him in hand to lead him home; he thrust wildly three or four times and then came as fast
as an exploding rocket, leaving me forlorn on the launching pad. Whatever virtue there might be in initiating a young, inexperienced
man, it seemed that virtue would have to be its own reward, for I certainly was not getting any other satisfaction from young
Owen.

In the morning I made coffee. I set a steaming cup before him as he sat at my kitchen table. “I was your first, wasn’t I?”
I asked. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down naked across from him, spreading my legs so he could get a good look
at my thick bush and the pert, pink lips within. He blushed, averted his eyes, and denied that he had been cherry. “Owen,”
I said, “you are not being truthful, and I know you’ll always remember me in a special way.” He did not comment on that, just
started talking about his brother James’s restaurant. I couldn’t wait for him to finish his coffee and leave, which he did
sooner than I expected because on the second sip he found a cockroach floating in it belly up and I didn’t offer to pour him
another cup. As soon as he was out the door, I turned the shower on. I wanted to scour his ineffectual little chicken kisses
off my skin, and in the shower I started to
write a song about a cock as hard as a rock that would fuck me through millennia.

Then I drank three cups of Café Bustelo, black with four sugars, and got to work on my novel about a poet who works as a barmaid
in a bar where they sell guns and cocaine, which they do not sell at Monty’s, where I work (although Monty can get you a diamond
or a VCR, and if you are short on money he’ll lend you some at 15 percent a week). Monty has four daughters, and told me if
a guy gets too fresh to always let him know. He calls me Bazooka Tits, and I don’t mind—he watches over me, pays me on time.
He tells the customers, “Bazooka’s a writer, and one of these days she’s gonna leave us when she wins the Nobel Prize.”

When I go to work that night, Carlos, the bouncer, gives me what on his face passes for a grin, which means he opens his mouth
and salivates. He says, “Well, how was he?” I lie and say great, then go into the bathroom and change into my work costume
of black jeans, black leotard, and the padded push-up bra that makes my big tits look like watermelons. I rub some peach body
oil into my cleavage and, checking myself in the mirror, think Camille Paglia is right—if you’ve got it, use it.

I am now ready for work, and soon I am dancing up and down behind the bar, pouring Absolut straight up and J. W. Black to
secretaries with Joan Collins hairdos, red-tape brokers, water-cooler jokers, and femme fatales who work for the phone company.
Monty believes in pouring with the glad hand, business is good, and soon they are lined up three deep and Monty has to step
behind the bar to help me.

I am happy to be going home alone this night. I shower, dry myself with my favorite pink towel, then
spread the towel on the bed, lie down on it, and coat myself all over with cocoa butter. I love to oil my breasts until my
nipples thicken and grow hard; then I get out my hash pipe, fill it, light it, and a few puffs later I want to go to Africa,
I want to ride a camel across the desert, I want to be penetrated by a Berber chieftain with my back pressed into the hot
sand.…I go to the refrigerator and get another carrot. It does not disappoint me.

I have the next three days off, and work on my book without making much headway; mostly I fart around and ask myself why I
am in this world. When I go back to work, Carlos tells me someone has been looking for me. Who, I want to know. Carlos says,
“I never saw him before.” What does he look like? I ask. “Looks like a model in a magazine,” says Carlos. This doesn’t sound
like anyone I know. I change in the john, and then Monty cashes me in.

“You look good, Bazooka,” he says, “rested.” Cocoa butter and carrots, I think, and say thank you.

My first customers are two Bass ales in flannel shirts, and then a couple comes in. I turn to go to the cash register and
notice I am being watched by a man at the end of the bar. I wash a few glasses and observe the fine bones of his face, the
broad shoulders beneath an expensive-looking leather jacket. The big hands he has placed on the bar are manicured, well kept,
no wedding ring, but then the ring could be in his pocket. His blue eyes sparkle, and he is smiling right at me; there’s something
familiar about him, yet I can’t place him. I remember what Carlos said about the guy who looks like a model, and I think this
must be the one. As I walk down the bar toward him, his eyes are on my cleavage, and I lean forward to give him a better view.
He orders a Guinness, and as I draw it from the tap I do this little trick of moving the glass under the spigot to
form a shamrock on the foam. When I set the glass in front of him, he says, “You’ve put a shamrock on my Guinness.”

“Maybe this is your lucky day,” I say.

“Maybe,” he says and smiles wider. He reaches inside his jacket and extracts a wallet made out of some strange leather I’ve
never seen before. “What kind of leather is that?” I say.

“Stingray,” he says. I think of it as some kind of exotic shark, and sleek and sure of himself as a shark is what he is as
he pulls out a twenty and pushes it across the bar.

“Keep the change, girl,” he says. I tell him I haven’t earned such a generous tip, and that I don’t want what I don’t earn.

“Owen said you were a smart one,” he says, and then I know why he looks familiar to me: He’s Owen ten years older and ten
times as tough, Owen’s big brother James, come to check me out.

I give him half a smile and then take the bill. While I’m ringing it into the register, I suck in my belly and open my mouth
to make hollows under my cheeks like Katharine Hepburn. Then I bring him back his change and turn without looking at him as
I move down the bar, serving drinks, joking with customers, emptying ashtrays that are already empty. Maybe he fancies himself
a shark and wants to chew me up, and I just might let him.

As I set down his fourth Guinness, he says, “I want to thank you properly for what you did for my little brother.”

“No thanks necessary,” I reply. I wonder what Owen has told him, that he fucked me five times, that he had me down on all
fours begging like a dog?

Then the big brother says, “Well, then, I’d like to thank you for being so beautiful,” which is when I ask him what he has
in mind.

“Come back to my place after your shift and I’ll cook for you.”

“Will you put Guinness in the sauce?” I ask him.

“I put Guinness in all my sauces,” he answers.

Later, in the taxi, he was saucy all right—he put his tongue into my mouth when he kissed me, and taking my hand, he placed
it below his belt. The swelling was as thick as a Campbell’s soup can and I hoped it wasn’t a trick, like some sort of inflatable
prosthesis. He put his hand inside the waistband of my leggings and reached south until his fingers found my other mouth and
fed me some sugar. The cabby was driving with one hand and the other was playing in his lap as he watched us through the rearview
mirror.