Bedtime Eyes

by Amy Yamada

  Oh, but I could. And my satisfaction came from being able to say,

  "No." Venomously, I bit his toe, but Leroy just pulled his foot away and kicked me in the face, then stood on my neck to stop me from T H E P I A N O P L A Y E R ' S F I N G E R S I j I moving. | couldn't breathe and I began to feel faint. I thought he was going to kill me, but I didn't struggle. I just lay there with my eyes closed.

  Suddenly, he grabbed me roughly and dragged me up off the floor, pulling my hair so that my head snapped back. He kissed me forcefully, and with his mouth planted on mine, he ripped off my blouse. He sucked so hard on my mouth that I thought he'd turn me inside out.

  Then, removing the rest of my clothes, he bound my hands together with his tie, and pulling my legs apart, he tied them to opposite corners of the bed. It wasn't really necessary—I would never have resisted him.

  Finally, when there was no way for me to escape, Leroy calmed down. He took off his bathrobe and sat down on the bed next to me with his legs stretched out in front of him.

  It was a blistering summer afternoon. The air was completely still, hot and stagnant. On the floor was a sweet pool of Leroy's sweat, and his body, shimmering in the light, reminded me of a golden sunflower. He put the wine bottle to his lips and took a deep drink of the cool, clear liquid. Then he quietly turned to me and spat a large mouthful onto my face, spraying the bedsheets, the white fog suddenly turning to gold, falling gently like cool rain on my skin. I gazed at Leroy through the droplet prisms on my eyelashes, a delicate rainbow cast around his body like a halo.

  Leroy began licking the thin film of wine from my stomach, his rough tongue sliding smoothly over my soft skin. The pleasure he was allowing me was not like him at all. A wind chime whispered gently at the window, the cool notes like flowing water. Without warning, Leroy sunk his teeth into my flesh. It was a delicious feeling, as though my body were dripping onto the floor like molten wax.

  "Don't leave me, Leroy. I never want to stop feeling like this."

  Leroy said nothing. He just tickled me with his tongue, running it lightly over my skin. How I wished that his tongue could understand a m y y a m a d a

  my feelings. The downy hair on my body was stuck to my skin with his saliva, each hair licked clean and facing the same direction.

  "I'm yours," I said with tears in my eyes.

  "I don't need you," he replied. "I don't need anyone."

  I gazed adoringly at his tiny nipples in the curly hair on his chest, and his stomach muscles, as hard and smooth as rocks. I wanted to kiss him all over. But even though he was within reach, I knew I could never make him mine.

  Leroy buried his face between my legs and began to work his magic.

  I succumbed willingly to his tongue, breathing shallow h in anticipation, eager to feel the waves of passion washing over me as they grew in intensity. But that didn't happen.

  "What I once accepted as happiness is now just the object of my hatred," he said, thrusting his dick into my mouth to show his contempt for me. I choked, gagging on his length, struggling to breathe.

  "Listen to me!" he barked. "Suck me—slowly and gently."

  I did as he said. I wanted him so badly, I didn't care how much pain I had to endure. But he pulled his body away again.

  "Leroy, I want you! Fuck me!" I screamed.

  He laughed sarcastically and started running his fingers over my body.

  "Please, Leroy. Please!" I begged hysterically.

  I followed the movement of his fingers with my eyes as they traced patterns over my body, but when I began to writhe and moan with pleasure, he stopped and jammed his dick back into my mouth, repeating the same pattern over and over again. Eventually I was exhausted, and although I couldn't stop wanting him, I knew he didn't want me he was just toying with me. His fingers told me in no uncertain terms that he had already left.

  "Fuc k me , you bastard!" I screamed.

  "You dirty bitch .. " Leroy's fingers stopped moving.

  T H E p i a n o p l a y e r ' S F I N G E R S * 3 7

  He gave me a look of utter contempt. I was crying now, desperate for his touch.

  "So you want me to fuck you, do you?"

  1 looked up at Leroy, tears in my eyes, and nodded. He spit in my face.

  "Why don't you just kill me?"

  "No," he said quietly, "I can do better than that. I'll leave you instead and you'll miss me so much that you'll grow to hate me. All you'll have left is your memories of me and booze."

  His eyes were so cold.

  "Leroy, don't leave me! I want you! You're the only one I've ever wanted!"

  Somehow I thought that he would continue making love to me, even if it was only out of sympathy. But he just turned from me and said, "Looking at you now, I can see what I must have been like two years ago."

  Silence. I stared at him, stunned. I wasn't crying anymore. I could see that he no longer despised me. There was no hatred left in his eyes.

  He started to untie my hands, his big, thick fingers carefully undoing the knots, but my struggles had made them tighter. I watched transfixed as his fingers continued to work. Eventually he managed to pull apart the knots and free my hands.

  "I love you, Leroy."

  For the first time in my life I meant it. I was absolutely exhausted and my wrists burned, hot and painful. Leroy looked down at me on the bed with a sad but serene expression in his eyes.

  "And I once loved you, too."

  It was just an accident. Leroy lifted me up and my hand brushed against a bronze statuette by the side of the bed. My fingers clenched it and I I j 8 AMY Y A M A D A

  brought it crashing down on his head in a sweeping arc. He dropped without a sound. It was only a knickknack—I could hardly believe that such an insignificant lump of metal was enough to kill him. He lay motionless on the floor in front of me. There was surprisingly little blood.

  "Leroy . . . ?" I whispered.

  But there was no reply.

  People treated the accident like a big deal. I suppose one of the reasons must have been that Leroy was a famous jazz pianist, but at the same time, everyone wondered why such a talented guy would try to rape a nobody like me. In the end they decided he must have been crazy.

  My sentence was light. The large, purple bruises around my wrists and ankles where I had been tied up painted a vivid picture of rape.

  The police questioned me about the deep cuts on his hands. They said they looked like someone had tried to sever his fingers with a knife, but I said very little about it. Their opinion was that my actions were simply self-defense, and I nodded in agreement.

  I guess you could say that it was self-defense. But I was protecting my sanity rather than my body. In the end, that's exactly what I did.

  When I got home, D.C. was blazing, furious about what Leroy had done to me, and angry with me for going to see him in the first place.

  I was so tired I slept for days. When I finally woke up again I managed to have some of the soup D.C. made for me. He fed me himself, holding the spoon up the way he might feed a tiny bird, smiling at me every time I managed to get some down. It was a great relief to me to I $ d A M Y Y A M A D A

  know that the hand holding that spoon had just ordinary fingers with no special power to work miracles. I even found myself laughing at D.C.'s jokes.

  Now I can smile again, but I can clearly remember that scene under the window at the end of spring. While I still love to laugh and enjoy myself, deep in my heart I know that I am just one of those dying flowers left under the azalea bushes after all the nectar has been sucked out of them.

  J ESSE

  She ain't pretty. She's okay, I guess, but she ain't pretty at all."

  That was Jesse's first impression of Coco. And to her, he

  . - looked like a little fiend. Just eleven years old, but over the coming months he would prove to be the cause of constant grief and pain.

  Coco was looking at Jesse's face as he jabbed repeatedly at his scrambled eggs with a fork, and
already there was an uneasy feeling somewhere at the back of her mind.

  Rick, on the other hand, was in a good mood. He had been happily swigging gin since early morning. But the very sight of the gin bottle made Coco feel sick after their heavy session the night before, so she was drinking iced water from a large pitcher instead.

  "Ah, come on, look at her face. You can't tell me she ain't cute. I just can't stop kissing her. And she's so damn sexy, I can't keep my hands off of her," said Rick to his son, then kissing Coco again.

  The smell of the alcohol on his breath made her feel sick and she barely managed to keep herself from retching.

  Jesse looked at his father contemptuously and threw his fork down on his plate. He hadn't touched his vegetables at all. He stood up from the table, and turned to Coco.

  I go

  A M Y Y A M A D A

  "I don't eat vegetables for breakfast, okay? You got it?"

  Coco was too stunned to reply. Jesse picked up his jacket and headed'

  for the door.

  "Hey, Dad. Don't worry about me—I'll get lunch at Alex's place okay? You just have fun."

  The door slammed shut behind him, and Coco was left alone with Rick in the kitchen. She was relieved that Jesse had gone. She looked over at Rick, sitting at the table. He suddenly looked down shyly, downed his gin, then stood up and went into the next room. Feeling sexy, Coco went into the bedroom and got undressed, then slipped under the sheets wearing nothing but a tiny pair of panties, and waited for him. She knew that he wouldn't be far behind, that he would follow her into the bedroom and want to continue where they had left off the night before.

  This was the moment Coco enjoyed most after spending the night with a man for the first time: when you sober up the next morning and you're over the initial excitement. It's only then that you start weighing up whether you can actually get along with each other or not. And it is only when you are released from the extraordinary power of sexual curiosity that you can begin to properly appreciate each other's body.

  Coco looked herself over in the mirror. She brushed her hair back from her face with satisfaction. Yesterday's makeup was almost completely gone, but she knew she was at the age when she looked most attractive without it. She buried her face in the pillow, and some of the lipstick smeared on it from the night before came off on her cheek.

  She posed herself seductively on the bed and waited for Rick, but Rick didn't appear, and after a while she started to get a cramp in her leg because of the unnatural position she was in. Eventually she got tired of waiting, and crept out of bed and peered around the door, only to find Rick standing in front of the washing machine, a glass of gin in his hand, watching his clothes spin round and round in the drum.

  j e s s e

  Coco let her breath out in exasperation. She considered herself to be an expert when it came to men, but there was no chapter in her version of the Sex Bible titled "Guys Who Wash Their Clothes After Sex." The way it was supposed to be was that the first time she spent the night with a man, they would wake up the next morning, get some breakfast, and then he'd drag her back to bed again, staring deeply into her eyes as they made love, gently whispering his undying devotion and corny phrases about how they were made for each other.

  "Is anything wrong?" she asked.

  Rick dropped his glass with a startled yelp and turned around to face her.

  "Did I surprise you?"

  "A little . . . " he said hesitantly,

  "Do you enjoy doing the laundry?" she asked, as she stooped to pick up the pieces of broken glass from the floor.

  "Sure, a-a-a little..."

  Rick was stuck for words, and for some reason, he reached in the washing machine, pulled out his wet shirts, and started wringing them out by hand.

  Maybe he's embarrassed, she thought to herself. How old had he said he was? With an eleven-year-old kid, he must surely be in his late thir-ties at least. So what could be wrong with him? It was too late to start being embarrassed after they'd already slept together.

  "Come on," she said, taking his hand and nodding toward the bedroom door. She led him into the bedroom and slipped under the covers.

  Rick closed the window blinds and started taking off his clothes.

  His hands were cold from the wet shirts, and as he began to caress the back of her neck, she could still smell the soap on them. Rick had been out of bed for a while so his body was colder than hers, but as he began to warm up, he gradually started to conform to her Sex Bible rules.

  I $ d A M Y Y A M A D A

  Rick and Coco had met each other for the first time the night before While their friends had been partying wildly in the club, the two of them had spent most of the evening talking quietly together and ex-changing intense looks.

  Rick paid her lots of compliments, but that was nothing new to Coco—she was used to guys coming on to her. W h e n he left her at the bar to go to the toilet, he kept turning back as if worried that someone else might move in on her in his absence, and that was what attracted her to him. When he got back moments later—he had obviously rushed—he looked so pleased to find she was still there waiting for him.

  Drinking seemed to ease Rick s nerves. Coco, on the other hand, was quite at home with this kind of situation; it was such a normal part of her everyday life that she even began to let her mind wander a little, wondering what sort of tired line he would come up with to try to get her back to his place when it was time to go home. But it was more out of curiosity than any sense of excitement. She was just taking it easy, savoring the start of yet another new love affair.

  Rick drank like it was going out of fashion, and Coco found herself keeping pace with him. She used the opportunity to find out more about him so she could decide whether or not she was going to spend the night with him. While teasing and joking, she skillfully slipped in all sorts of personal questions.

  Coco soon discovered that Rick wasn't married. Well, that was a good thing, because she had no desire to sleep with married men. Not because she didn't want to be a home wrecker: Coco just wasn't interested in other women's castoffs. Married men were so unimaginative in bed. There was no passion. It was always just sex by the numbers. Nothing made her skin crawl like a married man telling her he "couldn't live without her."

  Rick could tell that Coco liked him and it was obvious that he was JESSE

  l47

  t h r i l l e d to have such a beautiful woman all to himself. And that made Coco feel good, too.

  As they talked, he tickled her now and then, and she squealed excitedly like a little girl.

  "If you come back to my place," he told her, "I'll tickle you from head to toe—with my tongue."

  That gave her some idea of the kind of lover he might be, and at that point she decided she would probably spend the night with him.

  Then, when he tried telling her he was younger than he really was, she could tell it was a lie, and it put her off. It was the sort of thing she would expect from a woman, not a man, so she changed her mind. She didn't want to waste her time. Experience had taught her that there was no point in starting an affair if it wasn't going to be good.

  Let's get out of here and go to my place," he finally said, as if the matter had already been settled.

  "Maybe next time," she replied flatly.

  His face fell and he looked down at the floor, dejected. Coco could see that he was crushed, and she felt bad. She tried to console him by telling him that she didn't sleep with anyone on the first date.

  Yeah, right, she thought to herself.

  But Rick fell for it.

  He seemed to resign himself to the fact that he wouldn't be taking her home, and dropped the topic of sex and started talking about his son, Jesse, instead.

  With his head to one side and an almost embarrassed look on his face, Rick told her how Jesse was the most handsome boy in the world, and that they were more like friends than father and son.

  That piqued Coco's interest. She didn't know any kids.
Her knowledge of men was almost complete, but she knew nothing at all about young boys. She wanted to see Jesse so much that she suddenly

  / o 6 a m y y a m a d a

  decided it would probably be worth sleeping with Rick just to get the chance.

  When she stood up, saying, "Okay, let's go to your place," Rick couldn't believe his luck. After a moment of surprised silence, he leapt up out of his seat and hugged her.

  "Thank you," he blurted. He had no idea why she had changed her mind.

  As soon as Coco walked through the door of his apartment, she told Rick she would like to meet Jesse. He was delighted. He opened Jesse's bedroom door noiselessly and beckoned her silently.

  "Isn't he a good-looking boy ?"

  She didn't know what to say. He had Asian features, and looked like a monkey to her.

  "Yeah, mmm ..." she replied, disappointed. She couldn't tell Rick what she was really thinking, and of course she didn't mention the part about the monkey.

  She could tell that Rick was plastered just by the way he poured her drink. She watched him absendy, deeply disappointed with the boy.

  Sex with Rick turned out to be anything but disappointing, however, and she soon forgot all about Jesse sleeping in the next room and gave herself to the moment.

  Rick spoiled Coco. He treated her like she was a little girl and

  / she loved it. She was tired of the kind of love-hate relation-

  % ships she'd always had with men when the relationship was equal.

  Whenever they went out somewhere, there was never a moment when Rick wasn't touching some part of her. And when she was falling asleep, he would keep tapping her cheek to keep her awake.

  Everything was very simple with Rick—nothing was hidden. There were no sycophantic sweet nothings or psychological games, and Coco found that refreshing. Although she felt awkward at first, she soon found that with Rick there was no point in trying to preserve the love-struck pretense she usually used with other men. It was the first time she had ever felt good enough just to relax and be herself with a man.