Trapper and Emmeline (7 page)

By the next day, I’d forgotten what we talked about. Forgotten the
whole thing
. If you ever want to remember something, don’t have sex with Emmeline for six hours. She blew out the back of my head. The drinking didn’t help either.

I glanced up as Emmeline entered the computer lab. Then I did a double take.

She smiled smugly. “Was today not the day?”

“The day for—?”

“The day that I’m supposed to start wearing short skirts, and nothing but, for weeks?” She cocked her head to the side and threw out a hip.

She was in a single-piece dress, with straps over the shoulders and two Vs of fabric covering her breasts. Her skirt ended at the top of her thighs. She couldn’t have shown more leg if she’d been wearing tiny jogging shorts. The skirt was ruffled, and flounced away from her body when she moved.

“You look fucking lovely,” I breathed.

“Slutty enough? Is ‘slutty’ the word?”

“Slutty is
my
word. You just look innocent. Drive-me-mad innocent.” I shook my head, and she smiled. “How has your day been going so far?”

She ticked off her fingers: “I got looks on the subway. I got looks in my classes. I got looks on the way to the lab. I got propositioned in the coffee shop.”

“It’s going wel , then,” I said.

“The Great Experiment,” she intoned. “Are we hanging out after your shift?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. Here,” I stood up, giving her the computer station I’d been fixing. It was right by the door, the first place people passed when they entered. “Take this station. Rule one: always get the most prominent place in every room.”

“Why’s that?” She slid into the seat, the hem of her skirt playing over her thighs. Oh boy, did I want to run my hand over them. Then I realized, with a flush of joy, that I could. We were a couple.

“So nobody wil overlook you when they walk in. They can also stare at you from the hal s. If they’re looking out the door, they have to look past you.”

“So we want everybody to see everything I do?”

“Yep. You’re on display, always.”

“I’l remember that,” she said.

“The goal is to stop remembering. So that it becomes second nature.” Standing above her, I could look down the front of her dress, to the smooth olive-tan skin in the cleft between her breasts.

“Yes, that’s what they did, too.”

“What?”

“The guys on the train, staring down my top. Someone gave me his seat, and after a few stops I had al these people staring down my top. It felt like a Candid Camera bit.”

“Tel me,” I leaned in and whispered, “are you wearing panties?”

“Yes.” Her eyes fixed on mine. “Should I not be wearing any?”

I shrugged. “Try it this way for a few weeks. Four. By week number five, you’l go without.”

“Okay.”

That’s al there was. Simple as that:
Okay.

I studied her, wondering exactly how real al of this was. By week five we could be broken up. Or we could be angrily possessive of each other. I might no longer want to show her off to the world. She might get sick of the alien male attention she col ected when she showed so much skin. Al things considered, “Okay” was a safe answer.
So why the hell not?

I continued. “But that’s for the future. For now, wear panties. So you don’t learn any bad habits, like how to bend over graceful y, or avoid stairs.”

That made her smirk.

“Trap, I woke up this morning in my bed—I barely remember getting home. You must have bought me a cab? I thought so. I was wearing the most outrageous pair of jeans you could imagine. You let me go out in public in those jeans! But—I remember cutting them up myself. What did you slip in my drink?”

“It was a historic night,” I said.

“Was I a hit?” she asked, her voice tentative.

“I had to beat the men off you.”

“Good! But wil you tel me exactly what I did after the alcohol started flowing? I have memories of a few real y cute guys, so I know it wasn’t you or your roommates.”

“Ouch!”

“Real y, I need some gaps fil ed in. I was real y nervous last night, and I drank way too much. I remember people touching me on the dance floor.”

“You were amazing, Emmy. You were nothing less than the hottest, funniest, craziest girl in the bar. Everybody was in love with you. Every man wanted to have your babies. The bartender never charged us a dime. You were enjoying yourself like it was your last day on earth. It was great, and hopeful y next time we won’t drink so much.”

“You’l have to tel me everything, okay?” She seemed a little less concerned now.

“Check the pictures on Facebook,” I said, and turned away with a smile.

“No shit! Again?” she said, ful voice.

“You posted them.”

“Fuck!” She slammed her fingers onto the keyboard. People turned and looked at her. “Sorry, everybody. This is a drunk Facebook picture emergency. Get ready to tel me I don’t look fat.”

It was her first time online since my friends had posted her naked pictures. In the intervening time, outrage continued to spiral through her connected circles of friends, even though the pictures themselves were long since yanked by the website. Now, Emmeline had more pictures, posted by her, of her goofing around with different men during what looked like an epic night of drinking. Those pictures would be harder to explain away.

One picture showed my roommates and me at a table with five empty pitchers and a forest of beer bottles. In her drunkenness, Emmeline had captioned it,
One of thes guys is my nerw borfrind. Which one I don’t remembr! I’ll try em
all! Say hi!

Her breasts were epic in the photos. It couldn’t look anything but epic, with her cooperative bra and her destroyed blouse.

Several pictures hinted at the butt of her jeans—little wedges of skin caught at angles, nothing clear. Only one picture featured her ass ful on. Luckily it made her look like a supermodel, as if she were posing for a thrash-chic magazine. Stil , the number and variety of pictures implied that, through the night, her ass had been a col ege-girl gift to the world.

Though the ass picture must have been a shock to her, because she saw for the first time how her jeans kept no secrets from the crowded bar, Emmeline sat back with a relieved groan.

“It’s okay folks,” she said to everybody, her voice stil loud. “It’s okay. I look good.”

She meant it as a joke, and got some laughs. But the guy next to her, a bearded student who seemed serious and intense, said in al seriousness, “Yeah, you certainly do.”

Emmeline glanced at him. “I can explain this picture to my people. I’m not drunk in a bar with someone’s hands on my ass. No. Rather, I’m being stylish, doing an ironic pose, and looking fierce while I do it.”

“If you say so,” the guy answered.

“I do say so, sir. That’s an actual style, you know.”

“The butt hanging out thing?”

“Yeah. Thrash chic. And the butt is not
hanging
out.” She glanced at him sideways. “What do you think of it?”

He couldn’t peel his eyes off the screen. “You look amazing.”

“Here’s another.” She tapped an arrow key and brought up the next picture. Her eyes stayed on his face. She drank up his reaction.

For his part, the man was loving life. He leaned closer to Emmeline and studied her picture on the computer screen.

He noticed something that she had missed, and me as wel , when I checked out the images earlier that morning.

“What about the nipple? Is that part of the style too?”

She turned back to the screen. “Wel , no. Ha-ha. No, that’s just me losing track of my body.”

The picture was from over Emmeline’s shoulder, pointed at her from above as she looked up at the camera with damp hair and an open-mouthed smile. The angle made her cleavage look as expansive as a tabletop. And at the edge of the dizzying bra-scape, slightly camouflaged by the unfocused background of the picture, was her hard nipple jutting into the air. You didn’t see it until you decided to look for it, and then it was obvious.

“That’s not too bad,” Emmeline said doubtful y. She glanced at me and rol ed her eyes. I shrugged back. I was a few stations away but listening to everything.

Emmeline’s new friend was stil leaning close with his forehead next to hers. But now he’d drawn his eyes off the screen and was watching the real thing. His obvious interest was turning her on, and her nipples were hard—which was a body state her dress seemed to enhance rather than hide.

“I’m sure nobody wil notice.”

Emmeline didn’t notice him staring, or if she noticed, didn’t care. She considered the picture on the screen. “I guess I’l just leave it for a while. See what happens. You think nobody else wil point it out?”

“Nah. It’s not obvious at al ,” the guy said. “Hey, can I friend you?”

We stayed an hour later than we planned, exploring the fal out from our first day of being boyfriend and girlfriend together.

Emmeline accepted more than two dozen new friend requests, from people from the bar the night before, a few students around her in the lab, and a crowd of people from her past who she had trouble remembering: old work-mates and classmates from high school. Nurses, doctors, and insurance people she knew from the years she was sick.

Professors from col ege. Even ex-bosses who told her not to worry about being so,
so
naked. It would al blow over soon—

and she should visit the office again soon and let the guys take her to lunch.

“I can’t believe what a shit-storm this is,” she whispered. “This is completely enthral ing.”

“Enthral ing,” I repeated.

“That’s a real word, Trapper.”

We even found her naked Facebook picture on a meme-generating website. She was labeled,
Roommate’s
Unavailable Girlfriend,
and website visitors could write humorous captions that belittled the viewer, and then save them as pictures to their own websites. She was ecstatic about this. “Look, I’m a superhero! I’m no longer just a little girl.”

She emailed a meme-picture to me: “Oh, you need scissors? / Let me take off my clothes and ask your roommates for help.”

As she read, smirked, and typed, she unselfconsciously crossed and uncrossed her legs. Her toned arms reached out to the keyboard. She leaned forward, or leaned back. Her knees were mostly together, but they parted occasional y when she moved. The smal movements combined to make her
enthralling
to watch, a natural temptress.

People drifting into the lab noticed her also. Their eyes lingered as they moved past. She quickly accrued a raft of guys around her. Al of them staring studiously at their monitors... but al of them angled towards her, too. They kept her constantly engaged at a low level, using any pretext to turn towards her and ask personal questions. Whenever she shifted in her seat, they al glanced over at the same time. The tempo and length of the looks were obvious to me, a man. Men may hunt differently, but we share a hunting language.

Week 3: A Toy for All Men

“I hate it when you don’t talk to me,” I told Emmeline. “When you clam up, it real y makes me insecure.”

“That’s not my goal.” She looked frustrated. “I just don’t want to ruin your idea of me.”

“That couldn’t happen,” I said.

“Girls are nastier and more perverted than boys. We just hide it better.”

“I find that hard to believe, but it sounds promising.”

“Boys don’t real y want a perverted girl. They want a nice girl who does perverted things. Tel me I’m wrong.”

Actual y, that sounded right. The thing I liked best about Emmeline, putting aside her traffic-stopping body and her strengthening fetish for showing off, was that she was bril iant, funny, sweet, and loveable. I supposed that was four things.

Four things I would miss if she were as openly sleazy as my roommates.

I could only give her a shrug.

She shook my arm. “That’s Trapper for ‘yes.’ You don’t know what I’m thinking most of the time.”

“Emmy, I’l know what you’re thinking as soon as you me.”

And that was precisely our problem that morning. She had been dodging my questions since we met after class. We walked down the sidewalk next to Washington Square Park, hand in hand. The sunlight lit us through the trees, and she glowed inside the beige smock she was wearing.