Trapper and Emmeline (23 page)

Two students passed by me, staring at Emmeline up the hal .

“Yeah, she’s hot alright,” one of them said.

“Little bit of a slut,” said the other with an air of worldliness. He was wearing a basebal cap so I cal ed him ‘Cap’ in my mind.

As luck would have it, they stopped right behind me. I watched Emmeline and listened to their conversation.

“You think she’s a slut?”

“I can prove it,” said Cap. “Meet me next class and introduce yourself. Tel her your name. Just talk to her.”

“I can’t get close to her.
Everybody
stands around her and talks to her.”

“No, she’s real y nice, even to guys like you. You don’t have to be a player. Just stand there and she’l eventual y get to you.”

“Real y?”

“Yeah. And after you chat with her for a few minutes, ask her out.”

“
Ask her out?
Did you ask her out?”

“I ask her every day,” Cap said. “She’s cool about it.”

“But she shoots you down?” The guy laughed.

“Yes, I get shot down. But she always says, ‘How sweet!’ and kisses me. Now I make a point to stop by her every day.

She always kisses people. I think she’s Eastern European. Just watch.”

The three of us watched Emmeline as another guy stopped beside her. He put his hand on her arm, high up around her bicep, so his wrist brushed her breast. She turned towards the new touch, and her face lit with a smile. (Incidental y, when she turned, her breast mashed into his wrist.) Emmeline and the newcomer spoke a few words, and then she leaned forward and kissed him.

Guido’s hands were not side-by-side, but one above the other. He had her whole stomach covered with his palms and fingers, from below her bel y button to under the dangling hem of her half-shirt. It was a heroic grope; nobody passing in the hal s could avoid seeing it.

“Wow, you’re right. That just looks weird, al those guys hovering and kissing her.”

“You get used to it. That guy behind isn’t even her boyfriend.”

“Of course she has a boyfriend. It was too good to be true.”

“The boyfriend doesn’t matter!” Cap said. “I mean, she’l tel you about her boyfriend if you ask, but he doesn’t make a difference at al . That guy behind her is just got to her first. Last class it was someone else.”

“You’re saying I can meet you here after your class, walk up, and grab her like that?”

“Sure, if you’re fast enough. She’s not the problem. She’s a walking, talking sex dol who can’t say no. It’s the other guys who are the problem.”

“She must work out.”

“You can find her every morning at the student gym. But don’t approach her when she’s working out, she doesn’t like that. She wil shoot you down without looking, and cal the staff if you don’t get the hint. She does
not
want to be bothered when she’s lifting.”

“Bet she’s fun to watch. I real y dig her legs.”

“I like her tits,” said Cap. “She stopped wearing bras recently.”

“That’s obvious from a hundred feet away.”

“Powerful headlights for foggy nights.” Cap’s brief sparkle of lyricism amused me. It didn’t take long for men watching Emmeline to start pul ing poetry out of the thin air. Even from this far away these guys were under her spel .

Cap said, “I could watch her al day, but talking to her is even better.
Rowr
, dude. It’s like having sex: stroking her back, squeezing her waist, tracing your fingers down her thighs, bending down to kiss her whenever you want. Al I know is that someday, I’m going to fuck her.”

I couldn’t stop the smile that crept around my lips.

“I’m real y digging her,” said the other guy. “But I have to get to my next class.”

Cap was not to be dissuaded. “Let’s walk past her. I’l introduce you.”

“No… Ah, who am I kidding? I’m in.”

They brushed past me and headed towards Emmeline. Cap licked his lips. They slowed as they neared, waiting for an opening in the crowded flight pattern.

Emmeline saw them sidle up, and cal ed out to Cap. He stepped forward, dragging his friend with him. Emmeline wrapped a hand around Cap’s neck and pul ed him close, so that he was standing against her on her right side. I watched as Cap introduced his friend to her—she held out her hand.

The friend ignored it. Instead, he impulsively leaned in with an impish smile, and kissed her on the lips. Their mouths worked together for the count of 10-Mississippi.

When he pul ed back, her eyes fluttered open again.

She said, “Wow, your friends are
friendly!”

They al laughed, except Guido, who was in his own world, nuzzling her neck.

Emmeline’s eyes flickered over to me, and she did a double take. My heart lurched when my eyes met hers. I felt a tiny flicker of satisfaction because she had been wrong about me. She’d said it would take three minutes for me to forgive her.

But al it took from that beautiful goddamn frustrating girl was one glance. I forgave her immediately, and I knew I had done everything wrong that a man in a relationship could do wrong.

She gave an embarrassed smile and rol ed her eyes. She had Cap pressed up against her right side. Cap’s friend leaned in for another kiss. Guido basical y dry-humped her from behind. He left red marks on her stomach from clawing her so hard.

She gave Cap and Cap’s friend another kiss, and as she pul ed away, Cap leaned in for more. His hand went to her chin, bringing her face back up. He kissed her again, his mouth working on hers. After a moment when she realized she wasn’t going to get away that easily, she pressed back against him hungrily.

Oh, Cap, you show-off.
He went extra long and deep on Emmeline, and relished his friend’s astonished look. He was flaunting her to everybody.

Like I did.

The kiss went for at least half a minute, which was a long time for the other guys to pretend nothing was happening. At least Guido could distract himself by slipping a sly hand up under her shirt, and rol ing it back and forth over one of Emmeline’s breasts.

Final y Cap pul ed back.

Emmeline said, “I could get addicted to those kinds of kisses!”

She told me later that whenever a man surprised her with something like that, she would say something flattering while she sorted out her feelings.

“Guys, I need to get going. I have a very happy occasion to attend to.”

She stood and pul ed away from Guido. Her skirt fel back down over her ass—it had slid up her thighs and then her ass as she slouched deeper into Guido’s embrace. He caught her chin for one last kiss. And then she spun back to Cap’s friend and kissed him again too.

She final y broke away, leaving three shel -shocked boys behind her. They stared with unhinged looks and wet open mouths, gasping almost, before gathering themselves back together. If they were like me, they would be buzzing for days off the scent and touch of Emmeline.

Emmeline’s eyes pinned me down. She had a fiery, chal enging smile and a huge sway in her hips. She patted herself down as she walked, doing an inventory of her body, pul ing it back to herself after she had flung it to al the men in the hal .

It was fifteen minutes after the end of class, and for al that time she had had no personal boundaries. Strange hands ran into each other in their haste to explore her hips, stomach, arms and legs. It was a grab-fest straight from the drunkest hours of Mardi Gras, only dressed up in genial conversation and given a veneer of decorum because nobody acknowledged what was going on.

I turned and walked. She drew up next to me.

Her eyes flicked over, and then away. “You horndog.”

“I know,” I said. “So?”

“I
own
you,” she said, with a downright evil smirk.

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“Me? Owned?” The idea seemed to amuse her. “Wel , I do like when you tel me what to do.”

“Me too.”

“And I like when you’re there to tel me to stop,” she said pointedly.

It seemed to early for The Talk. But I gamely answered. “Yeah, what’s with that thing where you can’t stop yourself?

That’s a huge deal-breaker for me.”

We took a few more steps in silence. We knew we were stil being watched up the hal , so we acted casual.

“I lose track of myself,” she said final y. “I’ve been thinking hard about it. I realized I would have to figure this out on my own, because I didn’t know if you would come back to me. Trapper, you know I would not have come back to you, if you did what I did.”

“I would have begged and cried until you were overcome with lust.”

“What I think I discovered is that I just disappear sometimes. When a man wants me, or we’re teasing in the library, or I’m pressing up against someone in the subway—I go away. It stops being about me, and I only have feelings based on what the man wants. I get off on men wanting me. I come by making other people want to come in me.”

“You’re a generous lover,” I suggested. That was the hilarious understatement of the year, but she knew what I meant.

“No. That’s what scares me, Trapper. It doesn’t feel like I’m being empathetic. It feels like something
pathological.

You’re the one who unlocked it, Trapper. When I went to your apartment that first day, and you were drooling over the woman’s ass hanging out of her ripped up jeans—I should have let go of your hand and turned around. But the things you said resonated in me, somehow. Something inside me was picking up your wavelength, and echoing it back. It felt like destiny cal ing—I couldn’t
not
hear it.

“And then your roommates took my picture and showed it to the world, and you were so cool about it. Seeing you turned on by this new stuff—it flipped a switch over. I realized I was turned on too.”

She had clearly been thinking about this a lot. She looked at me, her face serious. “If you’re not part of it, Trapper, it’s just a set of powerful urges I can’t control once they get started. But I don’t want to be that sort of woman, locked down to a sex drive. If you are part of it, we have an adventure for life. We have an amazing ride. It’s something we can laugh about.

We can drive each other crazy.”

“Is it just you? Is it special? The switch that flipped over?” I wondered if Emmeline was an anomaly among women.

She gave a lost laugh and gestured to herself. “I don’t think most women do what I do. Maybe
that’s
my radioactive super-power. But if it’s not, I hope I have another brain tumor, and it’s lighting up new parts of my brain. The neurons that only glow for most women burn like fry-cookers for me. I hope it’s that, and not some defect in my personality.”

My toe caught the floor as we walked and I nearly stumbled. I felt inexpressibly sad for her. By this point I had gleaned enough information about Emmeline to understand that most of her teen years were about a brain cancer that had metastasized into her stomach and lungs. Or vice versa. My mind always shut down when she shared a detail of her teen years—I felt completely out of my depth.

Chemotherapy for metastasized brain cancer is not as helpful as radiation, so (as she said it once) they
Chernobyled
her in radiation like a comic book hero. She ful y expected to get super-powers someday soon. Then they started chemo too, when the cancer spread. She was a strong girl and she felt she was supposed to live, because her mother hadn’t. The years were a terrifying fight, or so she thought. She discovered shortly after Prom that the doctors were just trying to make her comfortable, and ease her symptoms. Her father never told her she had been transferred to hospice.

But then one day Dr. Anderssen entered her room and said she was in remission. His face was wooden, as if he was lying, but he was merely stunned. People didn’t recover from cancer as progressed as hers. Indeed some of her doctors stil believed she was sick, and urged her to continue treatment, even a year and a half later.

Emmeline was almost two years in remission, and something I did made her hope for a relapse.

“Can you stop the urges?” I asked quietly.

“Shit no!” she said. “I can’t and I don’t even want to try. Listen, Trapper, before I met you and lucked into this thing, my plan was to exist as long as possible. To be the most perfect girl that ever existed, as a sort of thank you to the universe. I hoped that I would grow up, have adventures, make a family, and only die
after
al that. I had no clue that I would have a chance to…
make magic
like this. To completely fucking
live.
To be so completely engaged in the world that I could live with animal sensation and sex instead of thinking about dying al the time. It was just an amazing relief. Sometimes I go overboard with it.”

She glanced at me and burst out laughing. “Don’t look so destroyed. You’re hoping for the tumor, right? I know I’m talking crazy: I’m scared, but I’m having fun. I disappear around strangers, but I tease them. I’m afraid I can’t stop, but I don’t want to stop. I might be dying, but I’m completely fucking alive.”

“I feel like shit.”

“Don’t feel that way.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “None of this works without you. You keep me together.

You keep it sane, and you stay faithful to me. Do you understand? I’m asking you to do the hard work, because I know your