“I am now,” he said, his smile taking the edge from her fear. “I returned as soon as I could.”
“I have thought a lot about you,” she said. “I liked our last date very much.”
“I hope you are not just saying that because you want me to believe you,” he laughed and poured her schnapps.
She relaxed in the chair beside him, returning the pressure of the hand that still had not released hers. How was it that just seeing him, just feeling his touch again should lift her spirits so high, should flood her vision with images of home and family, tree-lined lanes and every good thing? Giddy. That was the word for it, that feeling of an ever-present giggle of happiness within one’s chest. That was how she felt. That was how Paul made her feel just seeing him.
He leaned over and kissed her, a tentative press at first, then a light stroke of his tongue against hers, just a taste. Her mind reeled as her body honed to him. As he pulled away, Julie inhaled his scent and smiled. He smelled like some incense she could not place, a manly spice that sweetened the air.
“Did Rutger tell you what I want to do tonight?” he asked her and she nodded, feeling her cheeks burn with more modesty than she would have thought herself capable of.
“I will do anything for you,” she said. “Anything.”
They drank their schnapps quickly, in silence, and then he led her out of the Mandrake around a corner and down Friedrichstrasse, past the noisy little crowds at the doors of the restaurants and clubs. She imagined that the street girls watched her with envy as she passed them, on the arm of her handsome Paul, and she pretended that she was his mistress, silently wishing it true.
Arm in arm, they walked past the last of the clubs, out of the garish light and into darkness, the next light ahead of them marking the entrance to a little park with a lime-bleached statue. A rising wind blew papers against the iron fence and Paul put his arm around her. She huddled close to him. Many times she had walked with dates to this park and they had found a bench where she would use her mouth or hands on them. More than once, the man with her had been robbed here.
“Paul, I want to go with you, but this park is not so safe.”
He laughed. “It will be all right,” he said. “I want a quiet place we can talk without being heard.”
She let him lead her through the open gate and to a bench just beyond the statue. He held her close, his hand gentle on her breast, finding the nipple through the wisp of her blouse and the cotton of her brassiere. She loved his touch, loved that it was different from all the others she had known. She kissed him openly, giving him more than she had given any man in a long time.
Beyond the golden sphere of his embrace, she heard footsteps in the last moment of approach. Paul pulled back from her and turned toward the sound.
Julie knew one of the men as Red Maik, quick with his knife and fond of pain. The other one she had seen, though she did not know his name. He looked like a white-faced monkey with little, mean eyes.
“Lovers,” Red Maik crooned with contempt. “So sweet. You can go back to your kisses when you have given us what we want.”
Paul glanced at her with a crooked, sheepish smile. “You warned me,” he whispered, then turned to the men. “You want money?” he asked them, a trace of amusement in his tone.
“Leave him alone, Red,” Julie said. “Please.”
“Give us enough—” Red Maik ignored her “—and we’ll let you keep your pretty clothes.”
“All right,” Paul said calmly, as if he was buying bread, then he reached into his pocket. His hand came out with something no bigger than a cigarette lighter. It made a popping sound and both of the thugs dropped to the ground like puppets with cut strings, not even twitching, still as death.
Paul bent over them a moment, pressing fingers to their necks.
Julie stared, stunned. “Are they . . . ?”
“No. They’ll be fine in an hour,” Paul said as he rose. “Probably won’t even remember what happened.”
“What did . . . ?”
“I stunned their nervous systems for a moment.”
“But how?”
He put his arm around her and led her back out of the park and toward the lights with long strides that carried them away from the scene quickly. “It is very important that I did not hurt them. Julie . . .” he started and the tone of his voice held the weight of dire importance. “How old do you think I am?”
Forty, she thought. “Thirty-five? Maybe a little older?”
“Close enough,” he said, then released a long breath. “In another sense, Julie, I am no age at all. I have not yet even been born.”
Julie’s steps slowed. “A joke? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a man called H. G. Wells?”
She shook her head against his shoulder, a veneer of ice slowly sliding down her spine.
“You know how a ship travels on the ocean, yes? I am from a place where men have learned to voyage like that across years, centuries.”
Paul tightened his hold on her shoulders, pulling her lightly back against his side. “All my life, I have read about Berlin . . . here, this year, this street, and I have wanted to come here.”
They reached the narrow front of a café between two clubs. He led her in and paid the waiter for a private booth in the back. Paul ordered wine and looked around carefully before he spoke more.
“We can travel backwards in time, but such travel is stringently monitored and restricted because a person who goes into the past can cause great harm with even an action of kindness.”
She watched him, listening to his words and tone, wanting to believe him.
“Just like here in Berlin where everything has a price, where I am from there are those who sell such trips for enormous fortunes in spite of such travel being against the law. I have . . . I had . . . I will have a great deal of money and influence, but I had nothing I cared about in my world, so I paid men for this illegal travel and I came here.”
He was quiet for a moment while the waiter brought the wine and poured it.
“I came here to be with you.”
“You knew about me?” she asked, again wanting very much to believe him.
‘“I knew about Berlin, about this time, what it was like. I didn’t know about you until I saw you . . . was it only last week?”
She nodded.
“For me, almost three years have passed. It took me that long to arrange a second trip. I have given nearly everything I owned to come back to you.” He took her chilled hand and raised it to his lips, the light kiss giving back some warmth.
“What did you mean when you said it was important that you not hurt Red . . . those men?”
“Anyone who travels back in time must be very careful. I am told that little actions show no harmful effects. The scientists argue details, but most agree, time is like the ocean, it fills in what is moved or taken away . . . but a big action can cause huge changes in the future. There are men – like policemen – who stand . . . outside of time and watch for such things. If I had killed Red or his friend, I would be in very serious trouble.”
She drank her wine and thought about all he said. Her decision didn’t trumpet or flash, it simply settled like satin on skin, and for that, Julie trusted it. If Paul was mad, it didn’t matter. She loved him. “Making love on a stage is not a big action?” she asked with a small smile.
“No. I won’t leave anything behind me but a memory of a man in a mask enjoying the greatest of pleasures with a beautiful woman. Telling you all I have told you is far more risky.”
“Why do you want to make love to me on the stage?”
“Where I am from, we are watched always, but rarely ever seen. That will be hard for you to understand. You are often on a stage. Men want you. For me, there is no more exciting thought than to be on that stage with you, sharing a human, intimate act, and being watched by strangers, and knowing that those who watch us will be aroused, and knowing too, some
might think it offensive and wrong – but won’t turn away. That is what I paid for.”
She looked down, sad and disappointed. He touched her chin, raised her face to meet his gaze. “Before I came here,” he said. “It could have been with any woman and I would have been happy. But, after I met you, after what we shared in Paradise, it can only be you. In all of time. In every place that has ever been.”
Her smile bloomed like a white rose on a perfect summer day. She was twenty-six years old, and had never been so happy in all her life.
The Mandrake was packed with men and women, every table filled, some of the crowd drunken or sedated with opium and hashish, some manic from cocaine. The air swelled, alive, and as Julie stepped onto the stage, she gazed upon a show palace that seemed as vast as Germany, so much bigger than the little club had ever seemed before. The tiny band played American jazz, wild and free flowing, and Julie danced around a velvet lounge that had been placed at center stage.
She wore a set of scarves that fell away from her like petals, five misty veils, not seven, each of them the color of pearl, shining and translucent. By the time she had shed three of them, her body shone beneath the filmy silk. Beauty and divinity radiated through her, into her. She was a temptress, a depraved saint, a goddess, a woman. She didn’t dread what awaited her, not this time. She anticipated with growing excitement the act that had always before seemed sadly necessary, horribly sordid and somehow pathetic.
Rutger watched from the left wing, his evil clown face grinning, but his eyes hard as black glass.
Paul emerged from the right, masked in a luminous white satin mask and clothed in a thick red velvet robe. He moved with grace, the steps of his dance naive but beautiful, rising to the music’s spell like a cobra to a charmer. Julie saw the crowd’s attention focus upon him and she saw his excitement, understood something of what he wanted here, a rite of affirmation she wanted now as much as he did.
She cast the last two veils away and sat on the couch, spreading her legs in a manner that would have been lewd had she not been in the throes of the spell she shared with Paul. She wanted him to see her, open and wet, and she wanted the crowd to know she glistened there for him, anticipating the glory of his cock.
Paul dropped his robe and his beautiful member stood out like a pole, the scepter of a priest, of a god-king, eager for union with his goddess. Julie’s hands ran over her body, offering herself to him, to the watchers, inviting them into the act, to share the sacrament of union. She leaned and licked down a thick cock vein, and cupped his balls in her hand. She smeared the glistening tip on her painted lips, then parted them and took him in. She savored the salt, the musk, the mysterious smoky spice that was uniquely him. She worshipped him, filling her mouth, sliding him into her open, greedy throat, then flickering her tongue as she pulled away. Rapture fell like fog over her, and she sensed the same spell upon the crowd. She leaned back to let a line of saliva between her lips and the swollen head of his prick shine silver in the footlights.
The crowd stilled.
She sucked him, oblivious then to the men and women who watched, though she basked in the power of their watching eyes, their breathing that matched hers and Paul’s. Looking up at him, at the smooth, white mask he wore, she grinned, realizing he could be any man under it, but the reality, the truth that pounded in her bones and muscles, her veins and skin, was that this was Paul, and he was there for her. This moment was his.
And hers.
He pushed her head back, disengaging his stone-hard prick from between her lips. He stroked her cheek, leaned to kiss her with deep passion, and then moved to mount her, his left hand under her right thigh, his right hand opening her pussy to him, testing her and finding her wetter than she had ever been.
She surrendered to him, reverent and wholly focused on what they shared. No performance, no lines, no music beyond what hummed in her blood and breath. This was life as it was meant to be led, daring and bold, heedless of everything except the instant, the future not even a concept, certainly not a real place or time.
He penetrated her with slow fervor, thick and long, sliding deep, beyond past lovers and even her dreams. His tender touch was that of a seducer taking a virgin, confident and strong, yet infinitely careful as he began to fuck her with masterful strokes.
Julie moved with him, shameless and defiant of anyone to condemn her for this act, this glorious union. They moved together, the music and the band matching their rhythm as they quickened, Paul’s cock sliding almost out of her and then deliciously back in. He gripped her hips and kissed her breasts as he rocked them both toward paradise.
She fell, endless and otherworldly toward the rush of orgasm, the timeless oblivion of a really good come bright as diamonds before her closed eyes. She clutched at him, her nails raking across his shoulders as he threw back his head, grimaced, perspiration at the edges of his mask glistening, and then he emptied his heat into her, lost in a gush of blinding joy. She tightened around him, fighting the need to cry out. Then she rejected the last shred of modesty and gave her bliss voice. Her scream rose, a hymn of ecstasy to soar above the celebrant jazz of the band.
Paul held her, sweating, his arms tight around her as the audience applauded, whistled, and uproariously called for encores.
Close to her ear, so close no one could possibly hear him, Paul christened her soul, saying “I love you, Julie.”
“Paul, my Paul,” she whispered back, tears pushing at the gate of her lashes. “I love you too.”
Later, Paul and Julie sat in the small cook’s garden behind the Mandrake Club. Two big white moths fluttered around a smoky light of the oil lamp Julie had set in the middle of the crude wooden table they shared. Pending sunrise dulled the stars and seeped red like distant fire. Rutger swaggered through the kitchen door, a bottle of schnapps and three glasses in his hands. He pulled up a crate and sat, his clown face smeared in a painted snarl.
“To you, Paul,” Rutger said, raising a glass of schnapps. “You’ve made me a wealthy man.”
Paul still wore the white mask. “I should stay here,” he said, his tone almost serious. “Make us both wealthy men.”
Rutger drained his glass with a hoot of laughter. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You know you can’t do that.”
Julie leveled her gaze on Rutger, hating him for that one statement. She held Paul’s hand in a death grip.
“I do not think I will ever come back,” Paul said, and Julie saw a trace of tears in his eyes behind the mask. Her heart splintered as Paul’s hand clenched her fingers, hard and determined as stone.
“Oh, you will be back, brother,” Rutger said again as he poured another generous shot. He smiled lopsided and strange, and lifted his glass to Paul. “I will see you in just a few weeks. You will find a way.”
They sat quietly. Julie hated Rutger more for not going away and leaving her alone with Paul. After a while, dawn turned the garden rosy and banished the moths. Paul hugged and kissed Julie, his lips warm and alive, the tender contact conveying more than words. Rutger paused in his cleaning, grinned drunkenly, and gave a curt nod as Paul released her and slipped into the grey morning. She watched him as he walked up Zimmerstrasse, vanishing into the pale light all too soon. Gone.
For the entire month of July, Julie waited for him. She disappointed many men by politely declining their company, always giving them very good reasons, but in her heart, she knew Paul would walk back into the Mandrake, and back into her life.
Julie believed with all her soul that she and Paul belonged together, and she clung to the simple hope they could be together. The desire became a steel thread that sewed her life to meaning.
One morning in early August, Julie wove her way through Saturday morning crowds toward her apartment, carrying a small straw shopping bag filled with bread, cheese, and beer. A shabby beggar watched the crowds from the narrow doorway of a closed bakery, and after she passed him, she heard shambling steps behind her. She glanced back to see the ragged
man following her. Her heart danced nervously as she picked up her pace, then looked back again, hoping to assess her odds should she need to fight him off.
The handles of the straw bag slid down her arm to the ground as she recognized her follower. The beggar, Paul, thinner and harder, dressed in rags, closed the distance in two measured strides.
Her pulse blasted in her ears and her breath would not fill her lungs. She panted on the verge of keening, tears springing to her eyes and a million questions on her lips.
Paul shushed her before she could speak, then asked her for money. She stared at him, shock and a moment of insanity brushing against her cheek. She shook her head and he walked away from her, not glancing back. She looked up and down the street, picked up her bag and followed him toward her apartment, still many blocks away. She lost sight of him sometimes, but then he would reappear, begging coins from a tourist, loitering against a wall. When Julie reached her apartment building, Paul materialized at the door and slipped in.
Hidden from the crowds, he caught her in a heated embrace. “I had to,” he said, kissing her hard, hungry. “I had to return.”
“I know,” she managed before nipping his lower lip and closing her arms around him like iron bands.
“Will you go with me?” His eyes probed hers. She saw more lines around his eyes, the cuts of cruel time at the corners of his mouth, but love, unbound and courageous, shone on his face.
“Anywhere,” she told him.
“Nowhere,” he answered her. “We must go somewhere no one sees us, somewhere safe.”
“Anywhere,” she repeated.
“Listen,” he said, his rough fingers caressing her cheek. “I know so much more than I did before. Someday, darling, I will tell you all the things I have done to come to . . . now, here. I cannot go back. I have committed so many crimes. You and I, Julie.” He swallowed hard. “We must disappear.”
Julie saw beyond the years that must have passed for him, saw how his time away had tempered him like metal. She hugged him hard, unwilling to trust her voice with her feelings.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books) Page 20