“Yeah, well, you don’t worry about them. This is about you and me. I’ll take you home when we wake up and then we can do one more spin on the Jeff-mobile.”
We quit talking then and relaxed into the floor naked and still entwined. He took me home in the morning and we did things to one another I don’t think they have names for yet.
I’ve been in lust with Jeff since I met him in a straight club several years ago. We tried dating but we both had monogamy issues. We broke up but kept seeing each other whenever the physical urge took over. If he was dating someone when I called, he’d start whispering to her about his secret unfulfilled fantasy to share her with another woman. We’d both end up at The Deep and then buck-naked several hours later. Most of the girls were enjoyable, to say the least, but the last few were what wet dreams were made of.
I figure sooner or later we’ll get tired of all the games and just settle into middle age doing freaky things with one another. But hey, even if we don’t, I have an amazing number of memories. And those videotapes. But that’s a whole different story.
Courtship Rituals
Tananarive Due
Because he was so tall, Reid was the first person Martine spotted as she emerged from the plane’s ramp at Miami International Airport: a lanky giant standing over the waiting knots of Cuban families and sun-reddened college kids on Christmas break. His grin was all teeth, boyish. He’d grown a goatee since she’d seen him last, and it suited his shoulder-length dreadlocks so well that his new look was a revelation. Goddamn him, she thought. Beautiful in yet another way.
“Oh, girl, I’m so glad to see you,” Reid said in a breath, wrapping his arms around her as if he could meld the two of them together. Pressed tight to him, she could already feel his penis semi-rigid beneath his linen slacks, the irrepressible lump nesting against her lower stomach. A promise.
Reid was wearing the thin, crimson-colored turtleneck she’d sent him for Christmas, but the cologne she smelled at his collar was not from her. Without wanting to, she’d already noticed a dark-colored bruise at Reid’s throat he’d tried to hide beneath the turtleneck, and her spirits ebbed. She’d hoped, this one year, he might not have other women at the house.
“Rough stuff?” she asked, breaking their unspoken rule.
Gently, half-scolding, he patted her shoulder. “The driver’s waiting out front. I know you love stone crab, so I’ll have some Monty’s brought in. Hope you’re hungry.”
Of course he wouldn’t answer her, and she was sorry she’d asked. She felt her jaw tightening, but she forced herself to let the tension go, something she was unable to do with the same grace and ease as she got older. Still, she wasn’t about to let anything—or anyone—ruin her weekend. Her trip to Reid’s winter house each January was a tradition, and she anticipated it the way a child pines for Christmas presents and sweet potato pie.
“I’m starved, baby,” she said, glancing toward his face, away from the bruise.
Reid smiled at her like an angel. That’s my good girl was written in his eyes.
Since college, Martine’s plan for Reid had been this: At some undefined time in the future, they would give each other more than soul-filling words, dizzying creative bursts, and occasional sex during hurried, accidental encounters whenever they both happened to be in New York, or in LA, or like that one freakish sidewalk sighting in Minneapolis they still laughed about. (She’d been in town to interview for an arts grant; he’d been there for a meeting with Prince, back when he had changed his name). Eventually, she predicted, they would stand still for each other. She’d known this, so she hadn’t felt anxious. They both had their lovers when they needed to be held, but that had nothing to do with Them. If an idea struck them, they called each other from their lovers’ beds in the middle of the night. “Damn, you turn me on when you’re so fucking brilliant. I won’t be able to go back to sleep for thinking about you,” he might say, or she might say, or perhaps they said it in unison. Reid was her soul-mate, after all, and in many ways he was as fine a soul-mate as she could have molded from her own rib and the earth’s dust.
Reid worshiped her, almost literally. He never screened one of his films without shipping her a tape of the rough-cut first. Six years ago, indirectly, Martine had been responsible for the stink when he had refused to sign the studio’s first choice for the lead in Judas because she had casually remarked to Reid how wooden the actor was. “You, Martine,” Reid told her that night, “are the other half of my psyche. Without you, I’m naked and blind.”
He seemed to truly believe this, and at times, so did she. She’d found that she enjoyed being worshiped, and that she had a worshipful streak of her own.
Her last two documentaries wouldn’t even have made the art-house circuit if it hadn’t been for Reid Samuel’s name and connections. And Sisterlove, in which Reid had invested, had been picked up for cable release in the summer—also Reid’s doing. The way Martine looked at it, theirs was a relationship of desperately trying to repay their mounting debts to each other. It had been that way since they first met at NYU film school, and nothing had changed in fifteen years.
Yet, everything had changed in fifteen years. That was the part Martine detested.
What Martine had not counted on, what had not gone according to her plans, was that Reid had become famous. Now, she wondered why she hadn’t seen it coming all along.
He was half Trinidadian and half WASP, with a round-tipped nose and skin the color of creamy coffee, but he was the sort of black man whom white people did not consider black; distinctive enough to be exotic, yet viewed as essentially harmless except by the weak-minded, who were repelled by his rapier intellect and generous looks the way dogs glower at larger adversaries from a safe distance. Every time she accompanied Reid to one of his monotonous star-fucking parties, she noticed at least one tight-lipped person shrink away from him as though overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of his presence. Most others—those who wanted to learn, those who wanted to jockey for positioning, those who wanted to warm themselves in his glow—valued even a smile or a quick word from Reid, and they were downright giddy if they found themselves in the midst of a conversation huddle Reid was conducting, where truth-telling alone made him a genius.
She still felt amazed when she watched Reid hold court, as he deftly sidestepped egos and kneaded the brightest minds into frenzies. His lovely, refined West Indian accent seduced all voices of dissent. “Yes,” one of Reid’s observers was likely to cry, yanked out of a stupor brought on by boredom or an empty wine glass, as surely as if Reid had dropped to his knees and brought his moist, full lips to the stranger’s crotch. She wasn’t the only one who saw Reid exactly for who and what he was. He was greatness unfolding before their eyes.
So, she had expected Reid’s fame, then, perhaps. Only she hadn’t expected what it would bring out in him.
Once they arrived at Reid’s waterfront Mediterranean-style house, Martine noticed strawberries waiting for them; the berries were fresh and damp, stacked in a lush pyramid in a shallow white china bowl in the most conspicuous spot in the foyer. Reid had always enjoyed living well in a way that had never mattered to her, probably because he’d grown up so poor. “Hey, nice touch! Does your housekeeper feed you berries while she fans you?” Martine teased as she reached toward the dish.
Reid didn’t answer, his face suddenly grim as he moved the berries out of her reach. He didn’t seem to have heard her joke.
His housekeeper, Lourdes, appeared in the blur of her ivory-colored uniform, taking the plate of fruit in a rushed, fluid motion. Reid leveled a severe gaze at Lourdes. “How the hell did these get in here?” Reid asked, his voice so low Martine almost couldn’t hear.
“I don’t know, sir. Lo siento mucho.”
“Martine almost ate one.”
“I’m so sorry, sir. I am.” Lourdes met Martine’s eyes for a fleeting moment with a smile that was both a greeting and an apology, and then she hurried away.
Without a
word, Martine waited for an explanation, but there was none. His gaze preoccupied, Reid let his hand find the small of her back as he led her east, toward the stairway.
“I think is time I give you a proper welcome, oui?” he said in a sing-song voice, a perfect imitation of his grandmother. He nudged her hip with his erection.
Martine liked the sound of that, but she was still bothered by his sudden mood shift. Reid’s mother had cleaned houses herself, and Martine had never seen him snap at his staff. “You OK?”
Reid finally looked at her, and half his mouth drew upward into an unfinished smile. “Yeah, sorry. Things are on the crazy side right now. Lourdes is taking a leave after today. Maya is just too much for her to handle.” He sounded tired.
Try as she might, Martine could not ignore the unfamiliar name. “Maya…?”
“You’ll meet her in a bit,” Reid said, his smile reaching a sweet perfection.
My God, Martine thought with alarm, this man is actually in love. Or he thinks he is. The two feelings, Martine knew, were wholly interchangeable. Her stomach felt stony, but she forced out a trite, breezy response: “Gee, Reid, why is it that the women in your life never get along?”
Reid only chuckled, offering nothing. She knew better, but she prayed that Maya was only Reid’s new Rottweiler. That would be nice, for a change.
But Martine forgot that thought, and everything else, once they reached the guest room and she felt Reid’s warm, wide tongue tunnel its way into her ear. As he gently pulled off her blouse and then her bra, Reid lapped at Martine’s skin, setting small brush fires on her neck, her nipples, her navel. His movements were so lavish they almost seemed studied, but with a rhythm that was pure instinct. His tongue felt as broad as the palm of his hand, and it seemed to wrap itself around her. Her nipples were already as hard as raw peas, nearly aching from arousal, and they thrilled under Reid’s vigorous, eager licking. He flicked, circled, and then sucked at her with his mouth and tongue in concert, pressing his torso against the ridge between her legs. Martine felt a tide of pleasure traveling from her breasts to her swelling clitoris, which was already anticipating the arrival of Reid’s tongue. Reid’s fingers made teasing butterfly motions against her pubic hair, and Martine squirmed. “Please,” she whispered, already begging. “Please, Reid.”
Smiling, Reid obliged her.
Reid was the first man who had ever performed oral arts on her, back when they were still in school, and he’d had the gift long before he’d had much practice. Many men had pleasured her with their tongues since—and some of them with true originality—but it was only when Martine was with Reid again that her body knew it was back at home. Coaxed by his tongue, something inside of her unlocked.
A dart here. A dart there. Unexpected plunges into her vagina, then a quick, delicious exploration deep between her buttocks. Suddenly, to Martine, everything between her legs collapsed into moisture, wetness, and each of Reid’s rapid-fire motions became indistinguishable from the last. She felt herself quivering, vibrating. His tongue had taken her now. She was his instrument, and he had tuned her. He was making her sing.
Martine screamed so loudly that any passerby would have mistaken her cries for the last pleas of a woman certain to die.
The year Judas was released, soon after the film won all those Golden Globes and critics were slobbering all over Reid as if the Second Coming had arrived at last, he called her one night very late, in a hushed, reverent tone: “She’s here.”
“Who?”
“The Thai woman. Didn’t I tell you?”
He had purchased a woman in Thailand. She was a prostitute he’d met on vacation in Bangkok, and he’d literally bought her from her pimp for twenty thousand dollars. Absurdly, the way a new parent would show off his child, he e-mailed Martine pictures of the plain, boyish-looking woman. She couldn’t be older than twenty. She spoke very little English, he’d written—mostly dirty words. He was deliriously happy.
That was the first time he had ever made her truly angry. “Isn’t that slavery, Reid?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s a rich woman now,” he said.
After that, he stopped calling Martine with news about the woman and the carnal talents she’d learned since her introduction to the pleasure business when she was fourteen. Soon after, when his prize had borne him two sons, it seemed she didn’t want to be a whore anymore; she wanted to be a wife and mother. Reid admitted to Martine that his obedient little Thai woman had suddenly become liberated and had threatened to take his children back to Bangkok when he moved two of his girlfriends into the house. To appease her, Reid bought her and his sons a condo on South Beach, ten minutes away, and he set out in search of less mundane pursuits.
One of his new girlfriends, he said, had been born without legs. She threw temper tantrums if he didn’t have sex with her three times a day, and the sex was amazing. He spoke in great detail about the benefits of the flexibility allowed by her missing limbs, but she had stopped listening by then, trying to blot out the image in her mind of Reid’s muscled arms lifting a legless woman’s torso up and down the length of his beautiful cock. Her beautiful cock.
No wonder the Thai woman moved the children out, Martine thought.
She learned to stop asking questions.
The table was draped in a white tablecloth beneath the orange glow of lawn torches at the bank where Reid’s yard met the intercoastal waterway. Martine and Reid had been alone at the table for ten minutes, sharing a bottle of a sweet South African Riesling, when Maya appeared.
Martine had often read about people described as elfin, but she’d never met anyone who so literally fit the description until Maya slipped into her seat. She was not even five feet tall and must have had the bones of a sparrow to look so delicate. She wore tight-fitting jeans and a black nylon T-shirt that clung to her nearly nonexistent breasts. But she was too feminine, too lithe in both form and movement, to be called boyish, not like the Thai woman, Panida, had been. Especially now, with a smile on lips glowing with a deep, natural rose. Her skin was either deeply tanned or naturally honey-colored.
The woman was not beautiful, but she was certainly appealing, so Martine wondered what her imperfection was—unless, of course, Reid had finally found someone who attracted him on a basis higher than novelty. Reid clasped Martine’s hand, stroking in a slow circle with his thumb, probably to help put her at ease.
“Did you enjoy the strawberries?” the woman asked Reid, ignoring Martine’s presence at the table. Martine picked up a trace of an accent she couldn’t identify.
Martine could see only Reid’s profile, but his jaw was so rigid that it looked like a stone carving. He must be staring at this woman with a level of rage she had never seen in Reid. This pleased her, until she remembered the symbiotic relationship between fury and love.
“What are the rules, Maya?”
“I was just being nice, that’s all. I missed you.”
“Bullshit. What are the rules?”
“I swear, Reid, I just wanted to—”
“Oh, really?” Reid said. He moved a hidden hand from beneath the table, and Martine saw that he was holding the bowl of strawberries, like a misplaced movie prop. Two strawberries jumped from the plate when he dropped it to the table. “Why don’t you have one, then?” Reid asked, his grin steel. “Please. Help yourself.”
Maya’s jaw shifted as though she were chewing gum, her smile gone. “I hate to ruin my appetite after what’s-her-face went through so much trouble to get those crabs. Maybe later.”
“You better remember the rules. Is that clear? Or next time, you will eat one.”
Martine could feel heat rising inside Reid’s palm; his anger radiated through his skin. Martine felt an impulse to pull her hand away, but she didn’t. She sat in the line of the poisonous energy being stoked between Reid and this woman, as though it pierced through her. It left Martine a paralyzed, mute observer. And wholly invisible.
Maya had stabbed her salad with h
er fork. “All right already. I didn’t do anything to the goddamn berries.”
“Promise?” Reid asked her.
“Promise,” she said.
With that, not breaking his gaze toward Maya, Reid fumbled for one of the plump strawberries and tossed it into his mouth. He began to chew.
Maya grinned. “You’re a brave little SOB, too.”
“That’s what you love about me, my witch.”
Jesus, what the hell was going on between these two? Martine shrank against the back of her chair. The interaction between Reid and Maya had shifted from anger to something very different, to a heavily charged magnetism that made her curse herself for coming out to Reid’s to be a part of his freak show. A part of her was horrified.
Then, of course, there was the part of her that was thoroughly intrigued.
Martine felt movement in the bed, and it woke her up. Until now, she had assumed that Reid had fallen asleep too. She checked the clock on the nightstand, a ticking rosewood antique with glowing hands, and saw that two hours had passed since they’d come back to her room after dinner. She’d forgotten how calculated Reid could be, lulling her to sleep in his arms, then easing himself on to his next order of business. He was never finished, never ready to rest. He always had something else, or someone else, to attend to.
“Stay,” she said.
He kissed her forehead, then stood up and wiggled into his boxers. “See you in the morning. Sleep as late as you want,” he said.
“Jesus.” She didn’t hide her annoyance.
He paused, as if to ask her what was wrong. But since he already knew, the only thing left was an explanation. “Maya expects me.”
Lucidity began to creep back into Martine’s brain, now that the combined amnesia of lovemaking and the disorientation of sleep were wearing off. “Who is that woman? Tell me her story. I know you’re dying to, since she’s got you so whipped you can’t even spend the night.”
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