The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 (38 page)

Jeffrey says, “There wasn’t any line at the barber shop, so I was done early. I got us something.”

“What?” There’s a brown paper bag on the seat between you. Jeffrey stops the car for a red light. You let him reach in with one hand and tug something out partway.

“Juh – Jeffrey—”

It’s a dirty video. You’ve never seen such a thing in your life, except in shop windows you’d hurry past. You know Jeffrey doesn’t own any, and he gave up girlie magazines in high school, he told you once. So why? You don’t know whether to be hurt or simply astonished.

He’s grinning at you like a little boy, and you settle on astonishment. The light turns green, and he accelerates and says, “I went next door to the coffee shop, and the magazine on my table had this article about spicing up your love life—”

“Jeffrey—” You have no love life any more. Not one that involves sex, anyway.

“I thought it might be fun.” He smiles at you sidelong; he’s watching the traffic. Jeffrey’s a careful driver.

“Where did you get the tape?” you ask, trying to make this a normal conversation.

“That place behind the dry cleaner’s. It’s a rental,” he says, after he turns down Revello, the street that leads to your subdivision. “Lucille, there were college girls looking at the adult videos. The clerk didn’t even look twice at me.”

“We’re not college kids.” You don’t mean to sound so abrupt. But you talk to him like that all the time. Sometimes your words just stab out like the piercing pain you can’t control. And Jeffrey takes those words in, calm as a feather pillow. Muffling your pain. Never complaining. You can’t tell how you hold him, why he stays. Since you can’t see his motives, you’re not sure he will always be there, even though you try to believe in him. It’s been twenty-four years, and you can’t quite believe.

“I can take the video back.” He turns again, and now you’re passing your neighbors’ houses. You wonder if any of those couples, in between cutting their grass and buying vinyl siding, rent dirty videos behind the dry cleaning place. You’ve never been in there; Jeffrey always goes in to get whatever it is: John Wayne, mostly. Sometimes a caper movie, or a historical drama. You’ve only had a VCR in the last year or so, a gift from Jeffrey. You have a special remote with big buttons that you still have trouble using sometimes, if your hands are especially stiff.

Jeffrey’s pulling into the driveway before you realize you never answered him. The truth is, you’d like to do something fun with your husband, especially something different. A dirty movie wouldn’t have occurred to you, but why not? The VCR is in the privacy of your bedroom. He’s paid for the rental already. You’ve been married for years; this shouldn’t be able to shame you.

You want to do some tiny thing for your husband.

Jeffrey’s putting on the parking brake. You clumsily pat his hand and say, “Are you going to make popcorn?”

The movie is dispiriting. Some of the women have visible scars from breast enlargement surgery, and the men aren’t nearly as attractive as Jeffrey. You’re leaning back against his chest instead of your gray corduroy “husband” pillow. The real husband is warmer and smells like the barbershop and a hint of sports antiperspirant. His arm is wrapped around your waist, firm and comforting. You’ve both been criticizing the sets, the plot, and the acting ever since the tape started with some ads for films with titles like “Ass-rassic Park,” but the criticizing is fun. You’d never realized before that Jeffrey never liked skinny women with big breasts. He comments, “She looks so off-balance she’d keel over in a good wind.”

You point out the obviously fake hair of one of the men. “I thought bald was sexy? You know, Kojak?”

“Or Captain Picard,” Jeffrey says, referring to the character from
Star Trek
you’d once admitted, reluctantly, you liked. “That guy’s no Captain Picard, but he does have a pretty big, uh, phaser.”

You try to pretend you’re not laughing. Jeffrey’s hardly ever raunchy and when he is, it’s always very funny to see him blush. “Maybe the hair is a disguise,” you comment. “He’s really on the City Council but doesn’t want the voters to know.”

The only time you both fall silent is when one of the women is performing oral sex on two of the men. You and Jeffrey have never done that. Not either way. Where you grew up, people talked about it like it was dirty, like you’d get germs. That was something prostitutes did to men in their cars. Jeffrey never brought it up with you, or you with him. Now all you can think of is that the woman isn’t using her hands. At all.

You could do that. You don’t need your hands to do oral sex. “Suck his cock,” they say in the movie. When you think of doing that for Jeffrey, those words don’t seem so disgusting.

“Turn it off,” you say.

He does. “Tired, Luce?”

He kisses your temple. It’s been a while since you’ve sat in bed together, touching like this. You touch all the time, but all of it is him helping you get out of bed, get into bed, climb stairs. Like a nurse and a patient, not a husband and his wife. Jeffrey kisses your neck, and it feels just as good as it used to feel. Better, because it has been so long. You love the scratchiness of his cheek as he nuzzles under your chin. You say, “Tired of that movie. It was terrible.”

“I thought they’d at least look a little more enthusiastic.”

“Maybe they were bored. I mean, if all they do all day, every day is have sex, it would be like . . . like . . .”

Jeffrey says, “Wonder Bread? White rice?”

You say, “Generic dog food?”

You both laugh, then silence falls, because sex hasn’t been like Wonder Bread for either of you for a long time. Jeffrey kisses your neck again, and you lean into him a little more, and say, “Unbutton my blouse for me.” You’d dressed up for the doctor visit, which meant something other than your usual decorative T-shirt and sweats.

Jeffrey says, “I bet I could do that with one hand.” His arm tightens around your waist. You guess he doesn’t want to move from this current comfortable position; neither do you, but if the two of you don’t move, the picture in your head, of his cock in your mouth, will never happen.

“Can you take all of my clothes off with one hand?” You’re wearing a loose skirt with the blouse, and had awkwardly heeled off your sandals when you got home. Nylons are one thing you’ve never missed.

Jeffrey looks a little surprised, but he doesn’t ask that you’re up to, which you’d thought he might. Maybe he knows. He shifts your body carefully back against the husband pillow and kneels on the bed beside you. He starts unbuttoning your plaid blouse, with one hand, just like he said. His other hand, big and hot, rests on your hip.

Your skirt and underwear take some work; you have to lift up a little; it would have been much easier if you’d been standing up, with a wall or Jeffrey there to lean on while you stepped out of it. But neither of you makes that suggestion. His free hand moves to your waist. When Jeffrey unclasps your bra, you can see his hands are trembling, just a little. Then you’re nude, and staring into his beautiful brown eyes. You hold out your arms and he comes to you.

The embrace is pretty uncomfortable, but you’re able to stroke his back a little with your forearms. There’s some kissing, and you savor the taste of mint toothpaste and the scrape of his afternoon beard on your face. When Jeffrey sits back and starts unbuttoning his shirt, you notice with surprise that your nipples are hard and tender, and not from cold, either.

Jeffrey keeps glancing at you as he’s undressing, and you can read his desire and worry like a road map. He’s about to say something, but you want to be in charge. You want to have control over something in your life. Before he can speak, you say, “Hurry up and come here.”

“You sure you don’t want to finish watching that great movie first?”

You pretend to think about it while he’s stepping out of his khakis. You look at the clear delineation of his shape underneath his Y-fronts, and you remember how silky-soft his skin is over his penis, and the soft hair on his balls. Finally you say, “We can turn it on again if I run out of ideas.”

Jeffrey sits down next to you and puts his hand on your thigh. “I got a few ideas myself,” he says.

“You picked the movie. I pick that you—” You consider how you might manage this. You swing your legs over the side of the bed. “Come stand over here.”

“You’re in charge.”

You smile. “Yes, I am. I want to try this,” you say, when he’s standing between your spread legs. The height’s just about right. You can see his cock that you used to love touching so much give a little bob hello. You lean forward and lick once over the slit at the tip, your own kind of greeting.

Jeffrey sucks in a breath. You let your tongue dip in deeper, and find that you’ve pushed a little too hard; his penis is trying to escape, it’s so encouraged. You look up at Jeffrey’s face, which is wide-eyed and a little pink, and tell him, “Hold that still for me.”

His big hand wraps around the bottom of his shaft, and you start licking around his little cap. He doesn’t taste bad, like you might have thought. He tastes mostly like the rest of his skin. A little sweeter and muskier, maybe. And a hint of pepper without pepper’s heat.

Carefully, you open your mouth and suck the head past your lips and it feels so good, so solid and warm and sweet, that you want to bite down and chew and swallow and then do it all again. But you don’t do any of that. You suck gently for a moment, then your neck cramps up and you’re bent over, whimpering, and being bent over hurts your back between your shoulders and down above your tailbone and Jeffrey is having to lift you onto the bed and gently, gently straighten out your limbs as tears of frustration roll down your nose and all over your face and onto the pillow, and curses spill out of your mouth like the tears.

Jeffrey massages your neck and back until the muscles loosen up. You’ve done the exercises, everything your physical therapist told you, but it isn’t enough. It will never be enough. You’ll never be healthy again, not like you were.

Jeffrey gets up and goes and sits on his side of the bed, the right side.

You say, “Why do you stay with me? Jeff? Why?”

He says, “Because I love you.” He reaches into your purse, there on the nightstand, and pulls out the twist of paper wrapping your severed wedding ring. “I married you in sickness and in health. And I meant it.” He takes your ring and puts it on his pillow. “With my body I thee worship. Remember that?”

He’s looking at you like you’d always dreamed someone would look at you when you were a little girl, and for many years after, until the company picnic where you saw him with a pitiful bag of potato chips and he saw you with your silver platter of deviled eggs.

Your body isn’t worthy of much worship. It has surgical scars and cellulite and varicose veins, and a few misshapen brown spots from a childhood in the sun. You wonder how Jeffrey can worship your body when you can find nothing in it that is satisfactory. You close your eyes. You’ve gotten used to doing as Jeffrey says. Usually he’s right. If only you could just give in and let him do your thinking for you. You’d have no doubts then, no emotional pain, no regrets or grief. His love for you would be enough, until he was parted from you by death. “I remember,” you say, softly.

He smoothes your hair and strokes the side of your face, leaving warmth and taking away mourning. He’s smiling. “It’s time for some worship, Luce.” He settles back against the headboard. “Can you see me?”

You can see mostly his lap. His erection has perked up. You consider reaching for it but a twinge from your sore muscles keeps you still. Maybe it’s worth the pain, to have him in your mouth again in that intimate kiss.

You see Jeffrey’s hand come down and cover the head of his penis and close up tight. “Like this,” he said. “It was like this, only better. I could see you liked it.”

“I want to suck you in all the way,” you say, the words tumbling out, a blush heating your face. “I want to . . . suck your cock. Rub it like I want to rub it with my tongue.”

Jeffrey rubs and you can see his belly go taut and his back arch, just a little, and you see his big, strong hand tensing, so rough and dark over the tender skin of his cock. You remember the first time you saw his hand on your breast, in this very room, in the afternoon sunlight.

His hand tightens, tugs, holds; his fingers relax and he does it again and again. You can see his shoulders tighten each time his hand pulls. You want him to come and you can see he wants it, too.

“I want you to come,” you say. The words spill out and his cock twitches in his grip. “Tell me you want to come.”

“I want to come,” Jeffrey says, his eyes staring into yours and his hand quickening its motions. You’re pretty sure you’re not breathing. “I want to come for you.”

“Faster,” you say. “Faster, faster, faster,” once for each stroke, and it’s like your words are your mouth and his hand and you can almost feel that satin flesh on your tongue and then his cock is jerking and spurting and it’s like you did it. You.

“God, Luce,” Jeffrey says when he’s done. He’s made a mess but you don’t care. He reaches over and pats your hand and gets sticky semen all over it, then he carefully arranges himself along your body and it’s the best feeling in the world. “You are so fine,” he says in your ear, and that’s better still.