The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (8 page)

“What made her change her mind?”

“She didn’t. You were always the object of her fancy.”

“Of her hostility, you mean.”

“The more of that, the better.”

I saw then that he recognized what Johanna wanted, what Vy meant, and the wicked anticipation in his eyes made me feel sick with fear and disgust for a minute. I didn’t understand; why
wasn’t making love enough?

Did the people watching understand? – or were they, too, just curious about a need greater than theirs?

“You don’t like that, do you?” Vy asked me when we moved to a space of our own, between two massive pillows.

“I don’t understand it. Why isn’t fucking enough?”

I waited for an answer, but she was suddenly impatient with my earnest innocence. I saw pity and scorn mix in her eyes, and – just as suddenly as she’d entered it – she left my
life. I was stunned. I expected the floor to open and swallow me. I knew her well enough to know it was a definitive exit.

Looking around at the moving shadows, I wondered wearily why I was there among them. I was overcome by a feeling of lostness. Vacancy. Sitting there in the middle of the orgy, I argued with
myself: marriage and freedom. Life sexualized. The sweet power of lust. The evils of jealousy.

Let it be over
, I thought. I just wanted to escape, to take Mora home and lock the door. I needed her – and she was my wife. My wife.

I found her with her legs over the black guy’s shoulders, split open for him as he drove deep into her, spanking her ass with each powerful thrust. I knelt beside them and whispered in her
ear, “It’s time to go home.”

I hit her, and she sneezed, but I hit her again, and her head bounced against the metal cyclone fence. It was just before dawn on Ninth Avenue. Bleak, so bleak. There was an
excavation behind the fence and I wondered if I had the insane strength to pick her up and throw her into it – and if there was enough loose dirt to bury her with. I hated her with the
white-hot intensity of a jealousy freed at last from civilized constraints.

“
You mother-fucker-bastard-son-of-a-bitch
!” she screamed, wailing like an outraged child, rubbing her knuckles over her bruised cheek.

“You had to fuck so much, you couldn’t come with me even at five in the morning?” I shouted, hitting her again.

“Just because you couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse doesn’t mean
I
have to stop!”

She grabbed my jaw in her strong small hands and twisted my head toward her. “
Look at me
,
Richard
! Just look at me! My nose is bleeding and there’s snot . .
.”

I pulled out my handkerchief to give to her – like a good husband – and she knocked it to the ground.

“Did you have to yell that I was crazy to the whole club, just because I wanted you to come home with me?” I was so hurt that I thought I would vomit right there at her feet.
Self-disgust choked me.

“Fuck you! You bastard, to hit me,
fuck
you and your feelings! I don’t
care
how you feel any more!”

She came at me with her fists and feet, pummeling me in the belly and on the chest, kicking my shins.

“All I wanted was for you to come home with me,” I pleaded, holding up both hands to protect myself.

“I was coming, God damn it!”

My eyes filled with hot tears. “But what about us? You love me and I love you, and that should mean
something
.”

“This is my life, and this is how I want to live it, Richard.”

The morning sun struck her wet face. I couldn’t hit her, and I couldn’t hold her. She wasn’t mine.

“Come home?”

“I can’t stop now. I can’t.”

HOTEL ROOM FUCK

Maxim Jakubowski

How they first met is unimportant.

Or, at any rate, another story altogether.

A different one.

Here, they both arrive at Kennedy Airport on different flights from Europe, barely one hour and two terminals apart. Initially the flight she had suggested taking was bound for Newark and
cheaper, but he had been unable to coordinate his own travel arrangements to match hers.

After retrieving his case from the luggage delivery area and verifying her flight details, he kills time wandering through the busy, rundown hallways and alleyways of the building cluttered with
passengers in various forms of transit. Idly wondering what she might actually look like. Checks out the stroke magazines in the news concession. There’s a new one he’s never come
across before, called
Barely Legal
. He nervously glances aside as he leafs through it. Time passes slowly. A double cheeseburger and fries and a large coke take up another ten minutes.

He finally makes his way toward the terminal where the Sabena flights disembark, dragging his own case behind him on its dodgy wheels. A screen announces the arrival of her plane. She must now
be queuing at passport control.

He finds a seat to the right of the luggage pick-up area, from which vantage point he will see all the passengers come out of the corridor from immigration. He holds his breath one moment.
Suddenly, the whole thing doesn’t sound so wise after all. What if, what if?

The Brussels flight crowd stream through the corridor. So many of them: the plane must have been quite full. They all saunter down the short flight of stairs towards the luggage carousels.

She is among the last to emerge. A dozen times already he has convinced himself she wasn’t on the plane. Had been playing a game with him all the time. Had missed the flight by barely a
minute or so back in Europe. Had been discovered by her masters and held back in captivity. Had come to her senses and realized this whole New York thing was quite pointless after all.

Finally, a slip of a girl with luminous features makes her way past the security guard posted at the top of the short flight of stairs and tiptoes her way down, concertina’d almost by two
burly six-footed businessmen in charcoal-coloured suits and matching attache-cases. Her dark blue skirt is short, swirls around her knees. Her T-shirt is white, its thin material clinging to her
skin. Even from where he sits, he can see the outline of her nipples through it, or is it the rings?

Jesus, she is so young!

But he knew that already, didn’t he?

As she reaches the bottom of the stairs and her involuntary escorts scatter into different directions, she looks around the luggage enclosure, seeking him.

Her eyes alight on him. The sketch of a smile spreads across her lips.

He stands up. Smiles back at her.

His heart skips a beat or two or three.

She stands there motionless, as the arriving crowds mill all around her, a statue of perfection at the centre of the hurly-burly of the airport.

She slips her rucksack from her shoulders. He moves toward her, feeling all around him freeze, like a slow motion scene in a movie with the soft rock soundtrack missing and replaced by a
cacophony of disruptive languages in a cocktail of voices.

Inches apart.

The heat from her body reaches toward him, a hint of spearmint on her breath.

“Hello, Thalie.”

“
Bonjour
.”

She leans over, kisses him on the right cheek.

He briefly imagines she’s telling herself he’s so much older than she thought, fatter, less than handsome.

“For a moment, I thought you weren’t coming,” he says as, behind her, the luggage begins to accumulate on the conveyor belt.

“I said I would come,” she answers. “Why should I not?”

“I’m just rather insecure,” he says.

“I’m a lot of things,” she smiles. “But not that.”

“So, no regrets?” he asks her.

“Not yet,” she tells him. “You asked me to come. Here I am.”

“Good,” is all he can summon as an answer. Then, “What does your case look like? We’ll look out for it.”

“I haven’t one,” she says, pointing at the rucksack at her feet. “This is all I’ve brought. Some changes of underwear. For my first time in New York, I thought it
would be nice to buy some new clothes while I’m here.”

He smiles. “We can buy them together. That would be nice.”

“Sure.”

“They must have been surprised when you checked in back in Brussels, no? Travelling so light?”

“I just said I was a student.”

“I see,” he says.

She bends to retrieve her rucksack. “Shall we?” she asks.

“Yes.” He picks up his case. “Let’s go and find a cab.”

The driver must be from Haiti, he reckons. His radio is tuned to a station full of static, reggae and rap and French patois.

She sits close to him on the back seat. He tries to recognise the perfume she is wearing.

JFK Boulevard. Van Wyck Expressway. Jamaica. Queens. Past La Guardia and the mortal remains of some long past exhibition by a dirty lake. The car is held up for fifteen minutes on the approach
to the Midtown Tunnel. The driver puts a hand through the partition requesting toll money. He still has a pocketful of coins from his last trip to America.

In the darkness of the tunnel, she places her hand on his. Since meeting up at the airport, they have barely spoken. Mostly about the weather: here; back in London; back in Belgium. How their
respective flights had gone. Had she managed to sleep, and how he had spent the time reading. The in-flight movies and meals.

Small talk at its most banal.

They finally drive out of the tunnel into the canyons of Manhattan and he breathes a sigh of relief. In the hotel room, he knows, he will be more eloquent, less shy and tongue-tied.

The traffic in the cross streets slows them down further as they navigate the traffic lights up to midtown.

They finally reach the hotel he has booked them into. Not the usual one where most staff in reception know him already, but one close by. He pays the cab driver. A porter rushes forward to
assist with the luggage. There is only his case, propped in the cab boot against a worn spare tyre. She carries her rucksack by its strap, and straightens her blue skirt as she steps out of the
yellow vehicle.

He catches the porter’s glance. Feels suddenly like a guilty, dirty old man, with this young girl at his side. Twenty-five years’ age difference. I am a cliché, he thinks.
Damn it, he’s not going to feel guilt now, is he?

At reception they make a big fuss of him. Ten years since he has stayed here last, according to the computer.

The elevator. The long corridor festooned by Andy Warhol prints. He inserts the electronic card key into the slot, the door flashes green and opens.

“Welcome to New York, Thalie,” he says as a wave of infinite tenderness washes over his heart.

There is little for him to unpack as she uses the bathroom to freshen up from the journey. He listens to the water splash behind the door as he hangs his shirts and jackets in
the cupboard. It’s only mid-afternoon.

She emerges. Smiling sweetly. Now she looks even younger. Wonderfully slim, her loose dark hair falling over her shoulders, reaching midway down her back. Her waist looks as if he could hold it
within his two outstretched hands. Her breasts jut against the thin material of her white cotton T-shirt, and his eyes can’t avert the hypnotic shapes that strain the alignment of the
whiteness. He guesses at the strap of a bra over her shoulders, but the cups must be soft and barely disguise the ever-aroused state of their contents.

“Are you hungry?” he asks her.

“Not really,” she answers. “I snacked on the plane. But it wasn’t very nice, I must say.”

“It never is,” he remarks. “Because of the time difference with Europe, I always find it better to have a meal when I get here, as late as possible. Puts one’s body clock
on New York time. Otherwise, we’ll end up waking in the middle of the night and we’ll feel even more tired.”

“If you wish,” Thalie says. “Is it what they call jet-lag?”

He nods. Gazes at her.

Her eyes are pale brown, a delicate colour variation he would give heaven and hell to be able to define. The knot in his stomach grows ever more painful with every passing minute. Eventually, he
knows, he will have to get to grips fully with this crazy situation he has somehow engineered.

“Shall we go out? Maybe down to the Village. Have a walk. I’ll show you around. Maybe see some shops for you. Have a bite to eat.”

“Whatever.”

It’s spring. The sun is out. Everything feels unreal.

They walk. It feels like miles, but neither of them are tired. They browse. He can’t help visiting a few bookstores. She gets a top at Urban Outfitters, but will not let him pay. He
introduces her to the dark chocolate with dark chocolate Häagen-Dazs bar which is not available in Europe. They have an early dinner, around seven, in a Ukrainian restaurant on 2nd Avenue,
near the corner of St Mark’s Place. Night falls. They are about to catch a cab back to their hotel when a pea-coloured chenille sweater catches her attention in the dimly-lit window of a
thrift store. This time, he insists on paying. As they exit the shop, she pulls her purchase out of its paper bag and slips it on.

“It’s suddenly grown colder, hasn’t it?” she remarks.

“Yes,” he agrees.

There is sea of yellow cabs cruising down the Avenue, all with their lights on. He extends his arm to hail one. The driver is from Lithuania, and insists on practising his English on them when
he discovers that his passenger hails from England. He has relatives in Swindon, and is surprised to learn his passenger has never come across them.

There is a new porter on duty at the hotel door. To avoid judgment on their apparent age difference or the risk of being told he cannot bring young ladies into the hotel – a thought that
has dominated his mind throughout the cab ride up from the East Village – he exaggeratedly holds his card key aloft as they walk into the hotel. Possibly guessing his embarrassment, Thalie
holds his hand in hers, whether to compound his self-consciousness or reassure him, he is unsure.

Green light.

The door opens.

The room is not overly large. The sparse furniture purports to be antique, a Picasso face is spread across the left wall, the narrow double bed – by no stretch of the imagination anywhere
near king-size – dominates the landscape that is going to be theirs for the next four days. Heavy brocade curtains are drawn. It’s a quiet room; he is not sure whether the window gives
on to 44th Street or not.