Tide's Ebb

by Alexandra Brenton

  “Uh, ok.” But then Marianna noticed the images flickering on the television. It was one of the sex videos that Marianna had let Bradley make. I guess it’s sort of cute that he’s auto-erotic asphyxiating to us! Marianna thought, trying to make sense of everything.

  But there was something unsettling about the images on the screen. Instead of Marianna’s luscious and creamy body, Bradley had somehow altered the video.

  It wasn’t… it couldn’t be….

  Marianna stood speechless, full of shame and regret. Suddenly, she could not breathe.

  In the video, Bradley was not making love to her—he was making love to a donkey. Marianna’s body had been cut out, and Bradley had crudely superimposed himself onto a pornographic video featuring a donkey. Cries of “El burro! El burro!” filled the screen. Men with mustaches lined up behind Bradley’s image.

  Marianna was disgusted.

  “Bradley! Stop it right now!”

  Bradley hardly seemed fazed. “Marianna, darling, just a minute! It’s hard to focus on holding this chain ‘just so’ with you interrupting. I could get hurt! Stop thinking of yourself for a moment.”

  Marianna was in shock. “Bradley! You never told me you were into Tijuana donkey porn!”

  “Does that matter? Remember, I’m a banker. Now, please, if you wouldn’t mind…”

  “I… I think I’m going to be sick…” Marianna moaned, leaning against the wall.

  “Darling, please… not here. We just got new carpet. Endangered wombat fur.”

  “It’s over!”

  “Well, no, I’ve still got a little ways to go,” he said, as he continued his twisted method of pleasuring himself.

  “No, I mean, us. We’re over.”

  A wave of cognition rolled over Bradley’s face—his eyes got wide. “But my family will be so disappointed. Mumsy didn’t think you’d mind at all. She’ll be so sad! I mean, you fit the type really well.”

  Marianna’s skin didn’t just crawl, she felt like it was slithering on its belly at a bar with a sawdust floor. “I. Fit. The. Type?!” She seethed with revulsion. “I hope you two are happy together… you… you… jackass!” She turned her back to the vile scene and walked out.

  With difficulty, Bradley sprung up, his pants around his ankles. “Did I say something wrong?” He tried running after her, but his pants slowed him down, and his leash got caught on the closet door. He pulled against it—he would go after her—tell her how he really felt. His thigh muscles bulged as he strained against the weight of the closet door. But then he felt the Tiffany chain contract into the flesh around his neck, the cord taut, like his glistening abdominals. And he remembered how much he liked that sensation, so he turned back towards the TV and his own infirm amusements.

  Chapter 4 – Breaking Down

  After leaving the house, Marianna wandered Park Slope in a daze, so lost that she nearly ran into a young mother with a large travel system (which is what baby strollers are called nowadays). The Park Slope mom unleashed an impressively original torrent of expletives—a product of the explosive combination of an Ivy League education and too much time cooped-up in a million-dollar brownstone with only young children and the nanny and the housekeeper. Truly, there is so much suffering in the world.

  Eventually, Marianna collapsed onto the sidewalk in front of the dry-cleaners and cried. She was normally terrified of Brooklyn sidewalks and tried to avoid touching them. But she was overcome with grief—grief for what her life might have been. Grief, for everything that she had just lost in an instant. She sobbed, her whole body moved by this infinite sadness. Didn’t anyone care?

  Finally, Ms. Pansy Yoo came out of the dry-cleaners, clearly upset. Or was that Pansy’s sister, Eunice? Marianna could never tell the two Asians apart, for indeed, Pansy and Eunice were identical twins.

  “Move off my sidewalk! You’re ruining business!” Ms. Yoo shouted.

  Knowing what this woman could do to her clothes if she didn’t comply, Marianna struggled to compose herself and got up.

  There was only one person she could call about this.

  She scrolled down her contacts. Screech, Steve, there… there was Suzanne. “Hello. Baker, McPrice, Rhodes and Phleger. This is Suzanne.”

  Marianna had so much to say, but she could only manage an involuntary snort, which sounded vaguely like a pig hunting for truffles.

  Suzanne hesitated. “Screech…? Is that you?”

  Finally, Marianna managed to compel her mouth to form the words: “He preferred an ass!”

  Suzanne tittered. “I know! I’ve had the same problem! It just hurts so much.”

  “What? Really?!” Marianna was incredulous—could auto-erotic Donkey porn asphyxiation be so endemic to modern society?

  “Yes, lots of men like to stick it there. Freaking hurts! But let me tell you: anal sex is about the only thing that allowed me to keep my virginity through ninth grade in a Catholic school!”

  “No, you don’t understand!” Marianna protested.

  “Believe me, I do! I mean, seriously, my vagina gets insulted! ‘Am I not good enough?’” Suzanne said that last bit in a Mickey Mouse voice, which deeply disturbed Marianna. “But don’t you worry, honey—it’s nothing that a few Kegels won’t sort out! Your va-jay-jay will once again take the lead in the orifice free market! And, you know, sometimes they prefer the ass because their dicks are too small. In that situation, it’s really not too bad because it doesn’t hurt too much to put tiny schlongs in your butt. Well, not like it does with massive peeners! Look honey, I know you’re upset right now, but I can definitely give you a few tips! No pun intended—LOL!” Suzanne actually said the letters “L”, “O”, and “L”, which struck Marianna as odd.

  “But… I think it’s over…”

  “Sweetie, you need to calm down! A little bit of lube and some patience are all you need! Anyway, I gotta go right now! The quotation marks in this brief are all straight quotes and they need to be changed to curly quotes or we might lose this case and then the wrong billionaire will win and make even more money. You understand how crucial this is!” Suzanne hung up.

  Marianna was devastated. Even her best friend couldn’t help her. Worse yet, she had nowhere to go. She couldn’t bring herself to go back home. Home, where her heart was broken. Home. Where that happened. Was it just a dream? Tijuana donkey pornography and auto-erotic asphyxiation, both in the same room? Perhaps if it had only been one or the other, she could have contemplated going on, pretending that she had never seen the debasement of the donkeys. After all, these old money New York families usually had at least one member who fucked sheep. But, no, it was both auto-erotic asphyxiation and Tijuana donkey pornography. Marianna’s pride demanded that she not go home.

  There was only one place where she could spend the night. Reluctantly, she pressed “talk” on her phone.

  “Hello?” Screech answered.

  “Screech? It’s Marianna. I… need to stay with you tonight.”

  “Oh?” he said amused. “You remembered what I said at lunch, huh? You’d like me to go downtown?”

  “No, Screech, I live in Brooklyn.”

  “Marianna, you know that’s not what I meant.”

  And indeed, she did—Marianna knew that Screech, although he was a wholly unsuitable man, would be the perfect man for her tonight.

  “Screech, just let me stay with you.”

  “Anytime. Just come by at eight.”

  That left Marianna with nowhere to go for hours. She remembered what she had seen and again she felt short of breath. Inside her chest, her lungs started to burn, her bosom heaving as she hyperventilated.

  Is something wrong? Oh, God, I’m dying! She felt dizzy. The braying of the donkeys, the taste of disappointment... Marianna’s life as she knew it was over. She sat down on a park bench and wept.

  Chapter 5 – Just For One Night

  Screech did, in fact, live downtown. Marianna had been to his apartment before—a small one-bedroom blocks away
from the accounting firm where Screech worked as the IT guy. The doorman still recognized her. Impressive, since it had been ages since Marianna had come here. Even in her current state of dishevelment, Marianna’s beauty was clearly unforgettable.

  Screech answered the door in a velvet smoking jacket. His neck was thin, and his clavicles jutted out of the top of the jacket.

  “Screech, I’ve had such a bad day…”

  He embraced her.

  “What has Bradley done to you?”

  What was she supposed to say? How could she properly convey the gruesome images in her head? Her body convulsed with a sob, and she drew him near. His wiry frame did not—and could never—give her the same comfort as being surrounded by the arms of a more virile man. But his muscles were lean and tight, and she could feel the energy in his slightly quivering body. It was like being next to a gerbil with a fast heartbeat, somehow warm and comforting.

  “Come into the bedroom.”

  It was a small, somewhat spare room. The walls were white, but adorned with two framed prints of Monet’s water lilies. It was hot. Screech always kept his apartment practically sweltering. The bed dominated the room—it was a king-sized bed, in a room where a twin would have been adequate. It was covered by some sort of fake bear skin comforter, which exuded Pier 1 elegance.

  “Lie down,” Screech commanded her. For a small, beta male, he could be surprisingly vibrant when he was close to what he wanted. Marianna felt herself getting flushed. She luxuriated in the soft texture of the faux fur comforter. She closed her eyes. She knew it was better not to look—that it was better just to feel what she was about to feel.

  She felt Screech’s hands on her thighs underneath her pencil skirt. Screech somehow was inching the hem upwards. It was skin-tight around the middle of her thighs. Screech hooked his thumbs under it, lifted Marianna’s legs off of the bed and pushed the skirt all the way to her waist. Somehow, after everything, she could relax. She felt the moist gazebo between her thighs respond to Screech’s touch. Screech stopped for a moment to caress Marianna’s undergarments before he pulled them down, revealing the naked flower of her femininity before his gaze.

  He pulled back, and she felt her hips tilt towards him. Straddling her, Screech leaned down and kissed her belly softly. Marianna started to hold her breath. Screech moved slowly downward, flicking his tongue lightly against her hip bones and gliding towards her inner thighs. When, at last, he kissed her most sensitive part, Marianna exhaled.

  Screech was consistent in all things. His tongue was pleasingly textured—rough, but perfectly controlled, perfectly rhythmic. He performed his task with gusto, each mouthful bringing her closer to the edge of pure ecstasy. Marianna felt pressure build within her. She thrust her hips forward, harder into Screech’s lips.

  “Ooooh… Screeeech!”

  She quickly reached her peak, a sudden release of all tension, followed by the long rolling waves of a high tide of pleasure. Screech smiled at another job well done. Marianna’s body was pulsating for several minutes afterward, loose and languid, all of the tension of the day melting away.

  And then the best feeling of all, given the circumstances: nothing...

  Chapter 6 – Rebound

  Marianna didn’t go to work the next day. She stayed snuggled under the fake bear skin comforter until noon. Then she dragged herself up. She looked out Screech’s window to the city below, staring vacantly, like a self-indulgent heroine from a vampire romance novel.

  How can I live with this shame? I can’t tell anyone.

  She went back to bed. When she woke up again, it was dark. There was a bowl of chicken soup next to the bed—it was cold to the touch, but it warmed Marianna to know that Screech had thought of her.

  Her phone rang suddenly. Marianna’s ring tone was an adaptation of “Party in the USA” played on a glockenspiel. It was meant to be both festive and soothing. But it was also loud and startled Marianna.

  Who’s calling now?

  “Hello?”

  The voice on the other line was gruff, yet still high-pitched: “Marianna, do you know that, last night, a brief went out to the Southern District of New York with quotation marks that weren’t curly?”

  “Sam! Oh my God!” Marianna’s throat tightened—U Penn Jason had probably fucked things up again. “I can’t apologize enough. I’ll be right in.”

  “What is wrong with you? You get paid $200,000 a year. You need to get the curly quotation marks right. You know what the judge will do to us when he sees those straight quotation marks. And whatever the judge does to us, I will do to you. That is all.” The phone clicked, and the call was done.

  Marianna glanced at her Blackberry—she had slept for two days! She tensed up in the big comfy bed. She had to get to work. She threw on her two-day old clothes and rushed off to catch a train to midtown. Upon arriving at the office, she wasted no time on pleasantries or being admired by Tye, the mail boy. Instead, she attacked her briefs, fixing Harvard commas, finding straight quotation marks and generally doing the hard, substantive work that constitutes the practice of law in a prestigious international law firm.

  This pattern repeated itself the next day. Nothing escaped her attention at work. Afterwards she came back to Screech’s, and he had food waiting for her. And then she was his dinner—a task that he approached with a gourmand’s delight, as if her femininity had three stars from Michelin. Which, Marianna thought, it probably would, if Michelin rated vaginas.

  The next few days were indistinguishable. This was comfortable—at least when she didn’t think too much. There was a rythym and logic to being devoured by work during the day and being devoured by Screech at night. And some part of Marianna looked forward each night to Screech’s lusty ministrations.

  After about a week, boxes of her clothes arrived at Screech’s. She didn’t know how Bradley knew where to send them, but it was an unpleasant reminder. It made her relive that fateful day. Even Marianna’s Louboutins felt dirty, knowing that Bradley had touched them.

  In the midst of all this, she also remembered Bradley’s arms—so broad and larger than Screech’s thin torso. Bradley’s arms around her shoulders felt better than Screech’s hands pulling on her thighs. After everything, how could that be? It was too much to think about.

  And indeed, whenever Marianna thought about Bradley, the breath again escaped her lungs.

  Chapter 7 – Date Night

  “You want to go to dinner next Saturday?”

  It had been nearly three months since the incident, and Marianna had stayed with Screech every night. But although he pleasured her as much as any woman could be pleasured, they had never gone on anything resembling a date. Which was fine with Marianna.

  So she surprised herself by blurting out “Oooh, can we go to Dorsia?”

  “Baaaa-by, anything you want.”

  Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the use of the petname. She hadn’t thought about the consequences because Dorsia was Dorsia. It was only the best restaurant in New York. She doubted that an IT guy could get a reservation there. But if he could, it would be worth letting Screech think they had a future together.

  “Well, I’m going to have a special surprise for you there.”

  Marianna cringed. Why, Marianna thought, does Screech have to have a special surprise? Would this ruin their unspoken agreement? Why, in short, couldn’t Screech just stick to oral sex and moral support?

  But over the week, Marianna’s excitement began to build. Dorsia was prestigious. But more importantly, it had been a long time since Marianna felt beautiful. She had never gone this long without excessive attention from men, and this disturbed her. So when Saturday night arrived, Marianna banished her misgivings. She was ready to go all out.

  It took her hours to get ready. Marianna absent-mindedly sang a pop song about hand grenades, which was her favorite song, as she finished primping in the bathroom. Her dress for the evening was a shimmering floor-length red Pamela Rolland with a scooped back. Marianna
admired herself in the mirror. Her breasts were as pert as ever, her hips round and inviting. She looked gorgeous. She walked out to the living room, where Screech was pacing back and forth, iPhone in hand.

  “Screech?”

  Screech was playing Angry Birds, but he stopped in his tracks, as if startled while masturbating. “Marianna…” he paused.

  “Yes, Screech?”

  Somehow words failed him.

  Of course, Marianna knew that she was impossibly alluring, but Screech’s reaction was gratifying. It was at least five minutes (and a quick trip to the bathroom to jerk off) before Screech could compose himself enough to speak or put on his shoes.