Tampa (16 page)

He gave a long sigh and tried to stare out beyond the walls of the classroom. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll make it until tomorrow.”

“That’s good,” I declared, standing to place a hand on his back and usher him toward the door. For a moment I worried the ball of tissue had dislodged when I stood and was about to roll down my pant leg and drop onto the floor like a magic egg that Janet and Trevor and I would all look at in disbelief. “Be kind to yourself,” I whispered to him. “Go home and jerk off to porn on the Internet. Have a look at other fish in the sea. Especially the surgically
enhanced
ones.” He gave me a confused grin and blew his nose.

“Thanks, Mrs. Price.” I nodded and shut the door. When I turned I found Janet leaning over my desk, bracing her weight with her elbows; her head now occupied the exact spot where Jack’s
erection
had penetrated my rectum.

“I wanted to tell you,” she said victoriously. “AP Rosen’s shoe has officially been removed from my butt.” For a second I worried her comment held a sort of telepathy, but I knew it was just
coincidence
.

“Oh good.” I smiled. “I bet you’re more comfortable now.”

“He said your reports showed I was making … let me
remember
exactly how he phrased this. Oh yeah, ‘demonstrable
improvement
.’” She pointed a finger at me and began to wag it. “Before you stepped in he was throwing around write-ups and termination guidelines, all kinds of bullshit.” Her right hand balled into a doughy fist and pounded the desk. “Damn it,” she said, nearly
tearing
up, “you’re the only decent person who works here.”

Before I was able to run or dodge her, she’d lunged toward me in a rare display of speed, drawing me close into a pillowy, slightly sour embrace.

“Well you’re certainly welcome, Janet.”

As she released me she gave me a firm slap on the arm. “I have to admit, I thought there was something off about you when you first came here. You didn’t seem like the bleeding-heart liberal type who’s out to save the world. And you sure didn’t look like you needed the money. I didn’t get why someone like you would want to piss away their youth and beauty in this torture chamber.” I smiled nervously and let her hand meet my face in a grandmotherly pat. “But you’re just a good person. Rare. The world is going to shit and flies real fast.”

She moved toward the door, then stopped to wave a
disapproving
hand in front of her nose. “Speaking of which,” she called out, “I can’t stand the stench of these kids. Make our classes smell like a locker room.”

I opened the door for her and held it as I gave my brightest smile. “It is a little ripe in here by the end of the day,” I conceded.

Though we’d escaped any legal consequences from Buck’s
interruption, the sex with Jack had definitely suffered. Puerile
buoyancy
no longer poured from him like an energy source. This had been one of my favorite things about our sessions together; I was determined to get it back. Prior to the incident, if a camera had been trained on Jack’s face during intercourse, the viewer might’ve guessed he was jumping on a trampoline: the underwater sway of his hair combined with the wordless marvel in his bouncing face made him look nearly airborne when he was on top of me. Now there was a sullen determination to the way he went about the task. When he inserted himself, he did so with a concentrated silence, watching as though our two parts could never fit together
without
his direct oversight. His eyes, squinting with focus, made him seem like a burdened metalworker performing an arduous task on a lathe. “Don’t scowl,” I had to remind him all the time now. “It causes wrinkles.”

I thought the introduction of props and toys might add some much-needed levity, but this was tricky: my own arousal was based on the juxtaposition of Jack’s long-standing innocence and budding carnality—vibrating cock rings and French ticklers might pique his interest, but they would do so at the expense of my own. If Jack’s requests began to grow more adult and lurid, the effect would be just as offensive to me as his body maturing.

My creative suggestions, therefore, had to be homespun deeds of inverted kink that came from the corruption of something
wholesome
. I tried having him wear his old Halloween costumes and sports equipment while I pleasured him—a favorite of mine was the now-too-small cup that had been part of his junior soccer
uniform
. It barely held him; his genitals spilled out from its edges, like a snake-in-the-can practical joke that had been halfheartedly pushed back inside after popping open.

But nothing seemed to nudge Jack back into the mode of
abandon
I was searching for. The problem, I soon realized, wasn’t
simply
between us. The way Jack would flinch at the slightest noise when we were alone, the moments during sex when I’d open my eyes to find that Jack’s gaze wasn’t trained on me at all but on his closed bedroom door, made it clear he couldn’t let the catastrophe of Buck finding us together go: it had left Jack with a post-traumatic stress disorder that was heartily interfering with my getting off. It felt like Jack and I were never alone. At every moment, Buck’s leering, potbellied ghost was pressing in upon us at the periphery, threatening to suffocate the best aspects of my relationship with Jack for good.

What was needed was a dual act of revenge upon Buck—a plan that Jack and I could execute together as a team to show him that his father didn’t hold any real power over us. What Jack no doubt really wanted—for his father to know that Jack alone sexually
fulfilled
me—obviously wasn’t possible; we couldn’t demonstrate for Buck what amazing orgasms I achieved atop his son. But I realized with heavy delight one Friday that we actually could do something a little bit close.

“Jack,” I proposed, my expression flushed and gleeful. “Let’s drug your father tonight.”

I hadn’t predicted hesitation on Jack’s behalf, but he wasn’t so sure; he asked a long series of prudent questions and didn’t agree until I’d sufficiently explained every aspect of it—“You’re sure he won’t feel sick the next day? Won’t he know something happened?” I felt as though Jack was a dubious employee at some stickler
government
agency and I was applying for a building permit but hadn’t met the zoning requirements. Every detail had to be disclosed
before
he’d sign off.

He was eventually convinced, and perhaps a small bit frightened, when I relayed how often I’d gone about the process with Ford. “At worst your dad will have a headache or sleep in late tomorrow,” I promised. “I do this to my husband all the time.”

Jack laughed with worried eyes, unsure if I’d made a joke. When he realized I hadn’t, he brought a fingernail to his teeth and chewed for a while. “You’ve never done that to me?” he hesitantly asked, thinking back on whether or not he’d ever abruptly fallen asleep in my company.

“It’s a way of getting a break from people I don’t enjoy, Jack. I’d have no reason to do it to you.” This was what I hoped the evening would convey to Jack most of all: it was us vs. them. Buck and Ford were on the other side of the equation.

That evening, we agreed I’d indulge Buck’s invitation to stay for dinner. Once we were all seated and the wine was poured, I made a request for hot sauce. “I’m feeling spicy tonight,” I said to Buck, who lit up at the connotation with palpable hope.

“Jack,” Buck ordered, chewing, “can you go grab the hot sauce?”

My stomach sank. I hadn’t planned on it being a challenge to get access to Buck’s wineglass, but he hadn’t left my side since he’d
gotten
home. When we’d sat down at the table, Buck had scooted his chair so close to mine that I could smell the vinegary mix of merlot and marinated beef on his breath.

But Jack surprised me, his voice a perfect hue of casual teenage defiance. “You go get it,” he replied, his eyes not leaving his plate. “She’s your girlfriend.”

Buck’s satisfaction on hearing this intimate term and possessive pronoun applied to me completely outweighed any sense of umbrage at Jack’s not obeying. Smiling, he rose from his chair and headed to the kitchen. This was exactly what we’d wanted to happen, though I couldn’t help feeling a small bite of irritation at how clever Jack’s response had been. It hinted toward an ability to mislead that I didn’t particularly want him to have. But the callow lack of modesty in his too-pleased smile as I whispered over to him, “Nice job,” erased my discomfort entirely: Jack was merely pleased that he’d pleased me. He’d done it for the greater good.

Taking the small envelope out of my pocket and emptying it into Buck’s wineglass, I sloshed it around a few times until the
powder
fully dissolved. The anticipation of having Jack inside me with Buck’s unconscious body there as a witness made me impatient; when Buck returned, I immediately extended my glass for a toast. “To feeling the heat,” I said. Buck’s glass clinked with my own.

“I’ll say.” He winked.

Since it was the start of the weekend, and having received
optimistic
clues from me, Buck was in party mode. He burned through the glass and poured another in a matter of minutes. It was hard for Jack and me not to laugh as Buck began to nod off, his head falling
fully supine against his sternum while the two of us pretended to continue having a normal conversation. “It’s a warm winter, even by Florida’s standards,” I remarked. “Global warming? What do you think, Jack?”

Jack giggled. “Scary stuff.” I took a swig of wine directly from the bottle and passed it to Jack, who also drank.

“Scary stuff indeed. Buck, what do you think?” We both turned to view the fallen crown of his head. “What’s that? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.”

It wasn’t long before we were giddy, partially buzzed but also delighted at Buck’s incapacitation. “Do we leave him at the table?” Jack asked.

“Let’s drag him to bed. He won’t second-guess waking up there.” Jack stood and walked over to his father, giving him a few firm testing pokes on the forehead before grabbing Buck’s hair and using it to pull his head upright. He looked into his father’s
gaped-open
mouth, pulled up one of Buck’s eyelids and peered into the hollow shine of a vacant pupil.

“He seems totally dead.” Jack gave me an apprehensive smile that was only half-joking. “We didn’t accidentally kill him, did we?”

I walked over to join Jack in peering down the wine-stained
tunnel
of Buck’s throat. “I didn’t give him enough to kill him. Should I have?”

Jack stared at me for a moment, wide-eyed, while I tried to
appear
earnest, but soon enough I’d broken into hysterical laughter and Jack followed. We began a comical procession of lugging Buck to the bedroom; occasionally his head would bonk up against the wall of the hallway and one of us would say, “Oops!” Then we’d laugh so hard we’d have to put him down for a bit until we regained composure.

When we finally pulled Buck up onto his bed, I began
unbuttoning
Jack’s pants. Jack started to stand but I pulled him back down with me to the mattress. “Don’t you want to go to my room?” Jack asked.

“Let’s do it in front of him. He’s out, believe me.” Spying a glass of water on the nightstand, I grabbed the cup and poured a small amount of water onto Buck’s forehead. There was the quiet
slapping
sound of droplets hitting against skin, then a few whispered laughs from Jack. “See? He won’t wake up no matter what we do.” I dropped my bra over Buck’s eyes, followed by my panties—if it had been his father’s face that was bothering Jack, now it was covered up. But this felt like a form of aversion therapy that Jack needed to undergo. He was clearly still stressed about his father having found us, about Buck’s having masturbated inside of me, and here was a way to prove that neither of those things mattered: that Buck, in fact, was helpless.

Jack didn’t seem to understand the empowering angle of the setup. He had an erection but his eyes kept scanning the bedroom, eventually returning to the body lying next to us. “I … I don’t think I can do this,” he finally said.

“Close your eyes,” I said. Taking him deep into my mouth, I began sucking with a zeal and precision reserved for when I needed to get my way. Soon he was moaning, gingerly thrusting against my tongue. I turned around and placed him inside me, climbing over Buck’s body so that my arms and legs were on either side of Buck’s torso as Jack pounded through to climax, the mattress
rocking
. Buck’s slippered feet hanging off the bed’s edge moved from right to left in a steady flutter.

When we were finished I asked Jack to get me a pen and a piece
of paper. While he was gone, I took off Buck’s slippers, pants, and boxers, leaving him completely naked from the waist down save for his socks.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked when he returned. His voice was tinged with fear; he was staring at his father’s penis.

“I can get credit for tonight without ever having to touch him.” I wrote a note, unsigned, that read,
You were great
—
thanks
and left it on Buck’s nightstand. I had the urge to reach inside my panties, grab a fingerful of Jack’s spunk and trace it across Buck’s lips, but I didn’t want Jack to see me; he wouldn’t understand why I was doing it.

I found it odd that Jack didn’t call me either day that
weekend
. Usually there’d be at least one offer, even if the window of time was so short that he knew I’d reject it. (“Just come over,” Jack would sometimes plead. “He’s having a beer in the neighbor’s backyard. It’s enough time for something. I could put my thumb inside you. You could lick my shoulder blades.”) When Monday came Jack entered right with the bell and seemed distracted the whole period, staring at either the ceiling or the floor but never anywhere in between. It was enough to raise my anxiety to the extent that when Jack approached my desk after class and stated he had to talk, I got an immediate diarrheal cramp and felt tears beginning to sting my eyes. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Your dad woke up okay, didn’t he?”

Jack’s forehead crinkled slightly. “Yeah. I um, wondered what we’re going to do for Valentine’s Day.”

It had always been my most loathed of the holidays since sex with Ford was inescapable. But perhaps Jack’s interest foretold a conversion on my behalf; I might now get to experience it as so
many others did—a day of carnal gluttony instead of torture. I sat down at the desk and reached into the top drawer, pulling out a bowl of candy and offering him some.

“Blow Pop?” He shook his head but I took one and began
unwrapping
, imagining the lollipop tracing against the blond fuzz of Jack’s abdomen like a sticky wand. Stretching my lips across the sucker, I twisted it between them in a hyperbolic way as a visual aid and removed it with a dramatic
pop
. “Valentine’s, sure. What did you have in mind?”

The actual holiday
fell on a Tuesday, meaning Buck’s schedule afforded Jack and me only an hour to complete a quick act of
sixty-nine
and a game of Nintendo Mario Kart, but Jack insisted on a weekend excursion. I hardly remember how Ford and I observed the occasion, mainly because I’d drugged myself after getting back from Jack’s house; Ford had switched shifts that evening to arrive home earlier, and we’d gone somewhere bland to eat, then had the planned act of cornball sexual variety Ford always insisted on for Valentine’s—he liked to have sex on the living room sofa while
facing
the entryway mirror, our warming skin making small squeaks of friction against the couch’s leather. I nearly vomited as I watched the ceiling fan spin above me in my dizzied state; it was only the next morning that I noticed the roses and diamond pendant he’d given me on the counter. He was asleep when I left for work so I called from school to thank him on my lunch break. “I’m glad you like the necklace,” he answered. “Last night I couldn’t tell if you did or not. Did you get a little buzzed?”

Indeed. By the time I’d dismounted the couch, the room had
been whirling so fast that I’d had to crawl to the bedroom. Ford had already gone to take his usual postcoital shower; I suppose he hadn’t noticed the extent of my temporary handicap. Did it ever register with Ford that I often seemed to be drifting in and out of
consciousness
during sex? Was this denial or apathy on his part? “I guess so,” I answered. “But that’s what one does for a celebration.”

The following Saturday I told Ford I had to attend an all-day continuing education workshop so Jack and I could drive to a
roller-skating
rink on the other side of the bay. Something about the
colored
lights turned our faces into those of strangers, allowing us to momentarily transform into two different people. It was delightful to round a corner, whip back my hair, and through it see not Jack but a boy very similar to him whose entire body was fair game for my roving hands. No onlooker appeared to sense anything out of the ordinary—whether I seemed younger or Jack seemed older enough to normalize the difference between us, I’m not sure. I still didn’t feel it was safe enough to push our luck and join the throngs of teenagers sloppily making out in the arcade room. But when we had a tandem fall and hit the polished wooden floor in an intertwined pile, Jack got the beginnings of an erection as we struggled to stand back up on moving wheels and our torsos kept hitting into one another. I led him out of the ring and we dry-humped behind a coin-operated prize machine until it lit up in a manic flurry of color and sound that almost gave us a heart attack—a young child had approached from the opposite side and put in a quarter. We stayed for a minute and watched her play, feeling the bittersweet pain of heat draining from our genitals. She operated a metallic claw
inside
the machine and tried to close it over a stuffed animal, and when it missed by only centimeters, it seemed a fitting metaphor
for our orgasms that had just slipped away. To recover we bought Slurpees and cotton candy that dyed our mouths blue, and I felt a near-pharmaceutical rush at the weightless feeling in my chest as we sped across the floor for a few final songs, seemingly falling and speeding up at the same time.