Then suddenly the tennis pro slides that left leg forward, as if he is about to volley, and her legs part and they are an exact match; the flexed leg is lined up perfectly so that his bulging quadricep is meshed right between her legs in a fit that is all heat and pressure. She barely realizes that she has grabbed a hold of her husband’s hand and jerked it right past his face, knocking his mouth out of the way and replacing it with the flatness of his open palm. She shoves it right up against herself and it feels exactly like the pressure of the tennis pro’s quadricep. She barely hears her husband’s protest; he even tries to adjust his hand, but her grip is so viselike it can’t budge. All she hears is the tennis pro’s deep smooth voice – as if he is beseeching her to take the ball earlier – telling her to hump his leg, that he is not going to do anything but keep his quad locked against her as his hand runs through her hair. All she feels is his hot breath bathing her lips, his perfect unchanging pressure against her pussy, the constant forward and back of her frenzied pelvic thrusts, the squirt of her juices that flow down his leg, the reassuring, electric touch of his hand through her hair. “Work it,” he tells her. “Grind it,” he says. “Give it to me . . .” She screams, perhaps waking her kids, certainly startling her husband, who tries to jerk his hand away, but she uses two hands to nail his palm down, to keep the pressure right where it is as she peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys the last three Wednesdays right through her and out, like giant, arcing, billowing pipeline waves exploding onto some way cool Hawaiian surf beach.
Done, she casts off her husband’s hand as if it is an errant piece of driftwood and settles into the pool of sweat and juice her passion has created. He is speechless, looking at her as if he has found himself in bed with someone unknown. She closes her eyes. “Thank you,” she mumbles softly. He moves away somewhere amid the tumult of sheets and covers, then quiet, covered, settled, snoring. She is half uncovered but she doesn’t care. She needs to cool down once again. She needs to rid herself of the beehive frenzy in her brain that is asking, What the hell is going on?
She knows she has been a little ditzy with her voyeuristic outings to the tennis court, but she had no idea it reached this deep, that it could be more than the cheapest of thrills for a settled, forty-one-year-old, married housewife/mother. It scares her, scares her that she has just hung ten on a stranger’s surfboard and rode the wave all the way in . . . scares her that now she is beached and not sure where it all could take her . . . scares her and thrills her all the same.
She is up before anyone the next morning, out of bed, showered, so much skip in her step she mops the kitchen floor even though it’s cleaning-lady day. Her kids don’t really notice. She makes her husband a hot breakfast. He tells her that’s OK, he’s fine with his usual bagel and coffee. But she plops down the eggs and sausages anyway, kisses him on the cheek. He eats. When he senses her watching him, he busies himself with some papers in the briefcase by his feet. He, seemingly, is ready to let last night pass, to accept it as something as aberrant as two moons in the sky.
When the family is gone, during the half-hour she has free before the cleaning lady arrives, she retires to her bed, and, for the first time in a very long while, masturbates. She starts with lingering caresses across her breasts, down her tummy, between her thighs, rehashing last night’s fantasy, recalling the vibes. When she begins to finger herself with some real zest, she starts to remember every mental photo she has made of the tennis pro since she first met him, from the hands to the quads to the abs to the calves to the skimpy Speedo, finally to what’s underneath the Speedo as she catches the last wave in just as the front doorbell rings. She quickly gets herself together and answers the door feeling so transparent that as the cleaning lady enters all she can do is babble, “I’ve mopped the kitchen floor,” before hurrying off to the bathroom to pee.
For the rest of the week, during the spotty free time she has home alone, she masturbates. There were times in her life, teen years, when she was single, when masturbation was part of her regular routine: hard water spray in the bathtub, pillow crammed up between her legs as she lay face down into the mattress. A brief period, in her early twenties, when, like Bob Dylan, she went electric. But after the kids started arriving she rarely felt motivated for a solo roll in the hay.
On the next Wednesday afternoon, at the end of her daughter’s lesson, she pays the tennis pro $100 and surprises even herself when she asks, “Do you think I could get a lesson from you sometime?”
“Uh, well.” He drops the racquet from his chest to his side. “Sure.”
“I’ll call you.” She turns to her daughter and nudges her toward the exit. She used to play once a week in a league, held her own, but has never been much more than a “B” player. She didn’t even look at him when she asked and now she just wants to get out of there. Who cares if her daughter stares at her with that look she and the other kids have at bar mitzvahs and sweet sixteens when adults try to dance to hip hop.
In the car she finally catches her breath. Uncharacteristically, she lets her daughter fiddle with the radio, go back and forth between stations. He said yes. She knows for sure he doesn’t teach adults. He has to know she’s just a “B” player. Why would he say yes? Long ago, as a teenager, she allowed herself kooky perceptions of things: if she wrote just the right letter, Billy Idol would write her back; high school senior class president Dick Hanover would go out with her if she only had the nerve to call him and let him know who she was; her breasts really would get larger if she followed the daily exercises outlined in a teen magazine and when that happened she would find true love. As a young adult she dreamt of keeping her entry-level publishing job, even after having babies, and becoming an accomplished editor. But now she can barely remember when she hasn’t been sensible Old Mom: “You’re not leaving this house without an umbrella”; Practical Sweetie: “If we do the addition and go reasonable on the tiling and bathroom fixtures we can still get back what we’re paying if we ever sell the house.”
Can she even handle a lesson without making a silly, dribbling teeny-bopper out of herself ?
She calls him. She sets up the lesson. It’s three weeks before he can fit her in. She frets periodically during that time, feeling for sure she is making a mistake. Yet she still gets up early – her husband now pleased – to make a hot breakfast. She gives in, finally, to her eldest’s request to allow text messaging on her cellphone. She allows the younger daughter a credit-card clothes-shopping spree and her son to forego not one but two piano practice sessions. She lets her husband’s up toilet seat slide in the master bathroom and has not initiated sex since that fateful Wednesday night.
The result of her new leniency is that both girls are helping her more around the house. The boy has been easier to manage. Her husband brought home flowers. She feels a lot calmer. “Nicer,” that’s what the younger girl said. “You’re being so much nicer.” She also starts up at the gym again and drops more than a few pounds.
Then it’s time and she’s there, on his court, in the morning, no one she knows up in the lobby, her new leaner self. She has ironed her pleated skirt and taken extra care to make sure she has on both underwear and tennis panties.
He asks, “What stroke would you like to work on?”
“What?” she stammers.
“What’s your weakest shot?”
“Oh. My serve.”
“Let’s work on that.”
“Let’s.”
He has her serve a few and stands to the side and slightly behind her to watch as they weakly bloop over the net. These skirts are stylishly short but she feels as if the back flies up as she hurls herself upwards for the ball. She wonders if he is getting a clear view of her tennis panties.
“Let’s break it down,” he says, all business.
He shows her how to position her feet with her shoulders sideways to the net. He shows her how to bring the racquet all the way back behind her head, as if she is scratching her back, then she m
ust reach up with it and step forward with her back foot. She does all this and he explains that it will give her more power, because she is getting more body rotation through the ball. He makes her mime the motion a half-dozen times, pointing out little corrections here and there. He easily engages her while he speaks and seems genuinely excited when she gets something right. She comes to understand how that step forward into the court will empower her. For a second she becomes so intrigued with the prospect of having a harder serve that she almost forgets who she is with, forgets to steal a quick glance at his legs or hands.
Then he tells her she is finally ready to hit the ball, but when she tries to put everything together and focus on making a serve, the careful rhythm he got her into breaks down and the ball bounces meekly off the frame of the racquet before she even has time to step forward. She expects him to laugh. But he smiles kindly, says it takes practice, and if she’s willing to practice, she will indeed improve her serve. He breaks it down for her again, has her rehearse each movement, and this time she does make contact but forgets to step.
“That was your old serve,” he says. “It can take a lot to get rid of old habits. Let me show you.”
With that he is directly behind her, so close she feels his breath on her neck, senses the tightness of his abs near her back. He is positioned exactly as she is, mirroring her. He grips her right hand and is able to go all the way around the hand and racquet handle with his fingers. His lips are close to her left ear as he repeats, “Let me show you.” Only this time she feels his voice through her body, perhaps because he is so close, but also because of his change in tone. No longer businesslike, his voice is a whisper, cooing, beckoning. “You bring the racquet back like this and the weight will shift to the back foot.” Her body is pliant and he moves everything for her. When her weight falls back, it is nearly nuclear as the pronounced arc of her butt cheeks presses against his crotch. She feels the outline of his penis and balls against her rear. It is such a pronounced feeling that she wonders if he might be the slightest bit aroused, or just extremely well endowed. He does not back off from her pressure, merely continues with the service motion as they step forward together. He extends the racquet, only now his weight falls against her, and she feels the pressure at her backside, his chest at her back, breath on her cheek, arms and shoulders enveloping hers as they put the final touches on the swing and follow-through around her waist, which leaves them in a momentary embrace.
Does he really teach serve this way? Does he know what’s going through her mind? Is he playing with her or can he really have some interest . . . in her? The only thing she’s sure of is that she’s soaked through her own panties and for all she knows the tennis ones, too.
During the car ride home she feels ridiculous for thinking the tennis pro is even remotely attracted to her. While teaching her daughter he had simply been an object, the scantily clad model in art class, she the painter only able to observe from a distance and at best dally with the brush. That night with her husband, the tennis pro had indeed become touchable, as if he had stepped from his pedestal and come directly to her. But that had been fantasy. Was it her hyper-fantasizing that had her imagining he had been aroused against her?
In recent years she has become convinced that tennis players must be the best lovers. The sport requires the trimmest of bodies, great hands, extreme intensity, the intelligence of a chess player. Why else do all the pro players have the most beautiful wives and girlfriends? Pete Sampras is married to an actress. Andy Roddick is married to a model. It is not because of the money their men have, the glamour, the fame, or that their spectator reactions are aired over international TV during major tournaments. Brooke Shields didn’t need Andre Agassi’s money or fame; she married him for one big reason. “A Zen master”: that is what Barbra Streisand said after taking her turn before the marriage. She is sure Barbra wasn’t talking about Andre’s tennis. And now he has Steffi Graf, who surely has the inside track of what tennis players have to offer.
But what if the tennis pro is simply another beer-guzzling, sports-watching, channel-hopping, crotch-scratching, gas-passing man? What if he laughs at even the subtlest suggestion on her part that they take it beyond the tennis court, making her feel ridiculous, silly, and old? Or even worse, they somehow go to bed and it is rough, brief, or selfish and rids her of all this rejuvenated desire, breaks the tension of her need and returns her to the nervous mom, the disenchanted wife who just keeps putting on weight? Aside from her kids, when has the having ever been better than the hoping?
She remembers a long time ago reading an article about the sex appeal of Mick Jagger – someone she also had a major crush on. The writer had interviewed a woman who was obsessed with Mick and found that no matter who she slept with, at best, she found herself saying, “This is good, but it’s not Mick Jagger.” Then the time came when she found a way to meet Mick and go to bed with him, but in the middle of it all still thought, This is good, but it’s not Mick Jagger. But what if, just imagine, how amazing would it be if the tennis pro is?
She finds herself calling him on a Tuesday at noon when she knows he is getting off the court for his lunch break. She intends to set up another lesson, perhaps this time work on her backhand, which would surely keep him on his side of the net. Yet she doesn’t ask for a lesson. She asks him if he would like to go out for a cup of coffee on Wednesday evening around 7.30 p.m., which is the night and time of her monthly PTA meeting at the elementary school. He doesn’t miss a beat, let out even the slightest inkling of surprise or shock. He simply says, “Why don’t you come to my apartment. I have an espresso machine.” She takes down his apartment address. This is absolutely the zaniest, craziest thing she has ever done. For she never did write Billy Idol, call Dick Hanover, find true love; and she quit her publishing job two months before the birth of her eldest child.
On Wednesday, she delights the whole family by declaring it favorite-food night. She serves her husband chicken cacciatore, her boy pizza, and her daughters a scrumptious salad with plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit, including egg whites and pieces of chicken and ham. They vote to have favorite-food night at least once a week. She laughs and says maybe. They all laugh with her, amazing as it seems, one big happy family.
Then she’s gone, a special hug for each of her family. Her husband tells her to have a great time. She’s soon at the door of the tennis pro’s garden apartment, perfumed, ready, not allowing herself to think too much about what could happen. She has not masturbated since he agreed to the first lesson and just his touch might be enough for her to explode and get the hell home.
“Hello,” he says, clad in jeans and a navy polo shirt, no socks, bare feet slid into soft leather clogs.
“Hi.” She ducks quickly into the apartment.
He closes the door behind her, directs her to a couch in the living room, which is off the dining area, which is off the kitchenette in this modest but clean apartment. On the coffee table is a plate of neatly arranged butter cookies. She sits. He makes his way to the kitchen, returns with two mini cups of steaming espresso on plates also holding two little silver spoons. He places the plate in front of her, sits next to her, puts the other plate in front of him. He looks at her intently, doesn’t say anything. Her palms sweat. She doesn’t know what to say and fights back the impulse to bring up her daughter’s progress as an icebreaker. She knew this was going to be awkward. She lurches forward for her cup and takes a quick, steaming sip of espresso, burns her tongue, says, “Delicious,” before the flavor even registers. She knew this was going to be a mistake. He sits back, smiles, his feet sliding out of the open clogs, one leg crossing over the other. And she sees them: the toes on both feet, gnarly and bumpy from years of pounding on the court, one big toenail puckered purple from fungus. Her shoulders sag. Idiot! She could have gotten at least six months of mileage from simply looking forward to a once-a-week lesson with the tennis pro, with perhaps another six months if she could really be sure he didn’t mind.
He gets up from the couch and goes over to the stereo, housed in a cabinet occupied mostly by tennis trophies. He picks out a CD, pops it in. She instantly recognizes Frank Sinatra and “Strangers in the Night.” With a dimmer switch he lowers the living room lights. “Would you like to dance?” he asks. She wonders if he lowered the lights to be romantic or if he thought she would be more comfortable in the dark where they could not be seen from the street through the large, exposed living room windows. But then she realizes that he asked her to dance – a slow dance, a dance to a melodic song dripping with romance and the possibility of the unknown. She is alone in the living room of the tennis pro: the man with the body, the hands, the man who had inspired what has to be some of her all-time best orgasms, the man who just by pressing himself against her during a serving lesson caused her to moisten herself like a fifties schoolgirl at an Elvis concert. And now he wants to dance.
In the dark she can’t even see his toes. Her “yes” comes out like a whisper.
He has her by the hand as she stands up from the couch. Then he pulls her close. Not too close so as to be impolite or presumptuous. Presumptuous? They both seem to be presuming way more than is safe.
They dance, slowly, seductively, she able to follow easily his lead. As they move, mostly in one spot in the center of the darkened living room, she feels the coordinated rhythm within him that she saw so clearly on the tennis court. She feels the same sensuous heat that bathed her during their serving embrace. He pulls her closer – another embrace, a close dance position only lovers feel bold enough to attempt. Then, as the song nears its end and slips into another Sinatra favorite, they look deeply into each other’s eyes and he kisses her. It is a warm, full kiss that starts with the softness of his lips, then burns, like the espresso, with the fire of his tongue. When he is done she cannot immediately say what is on her mind because her breath, literally, has been taken away. He lets her recover, no rush to him at all, as they sway to the music. Finally, she ekes out, “Why me?”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books) Page 4