by Christian, M
* * * *
The Memory rolled off Tanya's sighing body to admire her tanned flesh by the glow of his body. He ran his fingers along her belly and down to her legs. Small freckles were visible there, just above her soft, round knees. He told her he wanted to devour her, to swallow every inch of her skin, and never feel hungry again. He began with her ear, nuzzling, and then biting her lobe. Tanya shivered, despite the heat of the night, her whole body alive with desire.
"You're ready to be inside me again, I'll bet." She smiled coyly, laughing. "I can tell. I know these things."
The Memory stopped, his heart racing.
"You're her, aren't you?" he asked with a lump in his throat. "She changed her name once, long ago, you know. And she even talked about changing her last name, too. There is no reason why you wouldn't do it again."
The Memory pulled his head up, away from her ear lobe, and stared darkly into the woman's eyes. Her blond hair, tousled with passion, surrounded her face like a golden halo.
* * * *
I remembered, long ago, seeing the same image, as she'd perched naked atop her bathroom counter in the dark. Her eyes were filled with passion all those years ago, as they were now in the darkness of her bedroom, reflecting the greenish-blue light from my body.
"My God. You are beautiful," I whispered.
* * * *
Tanya looked away momentarily, lost in thought, then returned the Memory's intense gaze, biting her lower lip before speaking. "I am her," she said finally. "I'm Lane."
"I knew it. There could only be one of you. And I've found you." He lowered his head, running his tongue along her ear. She noticed tears in his eyes. "I love the way you taste, the way you bite your lip," he told her.
"You say such nice things," she breathed, then squeaked as his cock entered her. He moved it so fast, and she was so wet, that she'd barely had enough time to register his arousal before he filled her with it. He thrust it deep inside, his body slapping against hers, pounding and pounding.
"Don't stop. Please, don't stop," Tanya moaned, grabbing his shoulder blades and gouging his immortal flesh with her nails. Deep inside her mind, past her boiling ecstasy, Tanya felt a pang of guilt. She had changed her name, decades ago, but her name had never been Lane; it was Michelle.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a shuddering moan from the Memory Man as he neared orgasm. Looking down as his hardness pumped in and out of her, Tanya felt her own juices pour from between her legs. The Memory's body vibrated, his mouth dropping open in pleasure. Tanya could see he was moments away from his second orgasm of the night, with many more to follow.
"I want it all over me," she told him.
THE WOLF MAN AND THE MULELINDA WATANABE MCFERRIN
Excerpted from Dead Love
It was a first-class ticket to Amsterdam, which meant that the seats were roomy and the food and liquor flowed for the length of the flight, which departed at 9:55 p.m. from Narita Airport and arrived almost fifteen hours later at Charles de Gaulle. Slippered, blanketed, hot toweled, and doted upon, I sat in first class while the flight attendants popped back and forth from their galley like genies. Champagne at take-off, light jazz, more champagne. Then there were hors d'oeuvres: shellfish soup with fennel and sweet onions, garlic mousselines, smoked eel, salmon, caviar and, yes, more champagne. After that came the entrees: lobster and scallop fricassee with Beluga caviar and coriander, sautéed duck breast filled with dried nuts on a nest of caramelized leeks, sturgeon wrapped in phyllo with cognac and garlic butter.
"Would you like to try the Sancerre?" asked the flight attendant cum cocktail waitress cum maitre d' before serving me the salmon. She poured me a glass of the golden stuff.
My appetite had returned with a vengeance. Between that and the insistence of the attendant, I was doomed to overindulge. I became completely absorbed in ingesting. Dessert followed entrees, and after a small plate of cheeses and a tart rhubarb cobbler, I consumed nine or ten Belgian chocolates and, at the insistence of the airline employees, who were intrigued by my surprising capacity, a few glasses of fine Dutch genever.
Then there was a plane and airline change, which I made under the exacting direction of a solicitous flight attendant, and another hour to Amsterdam on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines – the sixty minutes filled with more snacks.
I was fat as a blood-happy tick and skunk-drunk when I arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam at around nine o'clock in the morning. The flight attendant had mistakenly exchanged bags with me. All those little black bags look exactly alike. She noticed her error, though, and corrected it when I exited customs.
The two men who met me at Schiphol Airport were handsome. They looked like twins, both tall and well-muscled. They had light brown eyes and brown hair, though the one called Alain wore his loose and long. The other, Albert, had shorter hair, and it was streaked with gray. Alain, also the slightly broader of the two, was Lou Lou's half-brother. She'd described him to me on the way to Narita almost two days before.
"You'll recognize him easily, Erin. He looks like a wolf, amber-eyed, very calm. Alain can take care of everything." I detected more than sisterly affection in the description. "And he'll probably be with Albert who looks a lot like him, but a bit more, uh, predatory. So the two are really easy to spot."
I wondered what Lou Lou had said about me that made me so easy to identify. The two men walked up to me without hesitation, nearly bumping into the flight attendant, who was saying goodbye with a smile. Alain greeted me by running his hands over my breasts where they lingered for a moment. They swept down over my chest and toward my hips. Then he leaned toward me and whispered, "Safety precaution. Consider yourself frisked." He smiled a wide, white-toothed smile. "Better than a handshake," he added. "You like it?"
I did. And I'd liked the flight and I really liked the airport, but maybe it was the genever and creamy Dutch chocolate that had punctuated the experience; I'd really liked that a lot, too.
Amsterdam smelled delicious. Even there, at the airport, it was full of sugary, yeasty, robust, meaty smells. I could lose myself in them. In Tokyo odors were wasabi-hot and vinegar-thin. They were sometimes so sharp they were piercing. This country smelled different. The smells here were so thick they made my head spin.
I nodded, closed my eyes, inhaled, and let myself be carried away by the surprising olfactory extravaganza. Such a tangle, although one fragrance seemed to muscle out all of the others: licorice. I could smell the sweet-salty scent of licorice drops on Alain's breath just above me, very, very close – so close I felt I would drown in it. "Welcome to Netherlands," he murmured to the top of my head, and I knew I had found my way home.
His friend Albert watched us with disapproving eyes. "Come on, Alain," he said hastily and not quite kindly. "Let's get this little baggage out of here."
Grabbing baggage (me) and bag (the nondescript black carry-on that the flight attendant had returned), they escorted me out of the airport.
"A marvel of engineering, Amsterdam." That is how Alain described the centuries-old settlement bullied up against the ingenious Zeiderzee-turned-Iselmeer as we emerged from the train station and into the klieg-like brilliance of the Stationsplein at ten a.m. It was a city quite unlike Tokyo. In Amsterdam, a chill-laden breeze blew in off the northerly situated "southern sea," carrying with it the saltwater smells that fumed in over the dike and across its freshwater prison. It was a noisy city cobbled in stone and rattled by bicycles. Sunlight leaped in shiny spangles off the water of the canals. The streets were cluttered with a multinational mish-mash of people that gave the community an oddly derelict look. And everywhere, from every nook and cranny in the waterlogged town, emanated a stew of intoxicating aromas. Small cars and canal boats spewed diesel fumes. Indonesian and African eateries released spicy clouds of perfume from behind beaded doorways. There was the smell of coffee, of sugar, of chocolate, the smell of tobacco, of fresh paint and sweat and salt and fish. There was the smell of waterlogged wood, of fries and cologne, the
smell of sex and of cannabis.
Darting from the Central Station, Alain and Albert steered me expertly past buskers, through throngs and over bridges spanning the electric surface of the water, then along the wide and populous Damrak, before bearing right for more settled, albeit seedier terrain. In less than a heartbeat we were in Amsterdam's Red Light District, the filter through which all newcomers stream. It is bordered on the west by Warmoesstraat, the oldest street in the city, and sprawls in a clutter of alleys and streets across Oudezijds Voorburgwal and Oudezijds Achterburgwal, the two canals that marked the one-time perimeter of the medieval town. We dashed past one brightly painted doorway after another, past sex shops and peep shows, past glass-windowed rooms in which women primped and posed provocatively in various states of undress, and finally, through the splintered red threshold of a storefront with the word "Tattoos" emblazoned upon its narrow window in yellow and blue enamel.
A haggard blond man looked up from the arm of a young female upon which he was inscribing an enormous blue moth with a needle on the end of a mechanical arm that whirred and sang. He paused in his work and flashed us a gap-toothed smile.
"What's up, mates?" he asked.
"A delivery – airmail," Albert said gaily.
"Marvelous." He gave a quick slap to Albert's hand and went back to his customer. "Pretty girl," he added, nodding toward me. "Want a tattoo?"
I did. I held my arms out in front of me, insides of my wrists turned upward, but Alain grabbed me by the forearm and turned me toward the door.
"No time for that," he said quickly, and we headed back into the street.
Our next stop was a coffee shop, a shadowy place, carpeted in moth-eaten oriental rugs. Again Albert greeted the proprietor. The stocky, brown-haired man gave him a hug and handed him a menu. "Something for you, Albert," he said.
"And we have something for you," answered Albert and the two men knocked fists.
"And who is this?" asked the shopkeeper noticing me for the first time.
"This," said Alain, "is Lou Lou's lovely friend."
"Mmmm," said the man, handing something to Albert with a grin, adding, "You're supposed to smoke it here."
"Since when?" said Albert.
"Since never."
They laughed and we left.
"Bye-bye, Lou Lou's friend," said the man.
Alain was actually whistling as we walked home past ring after ring of canal. Bridges framed canal banks lined with bicycles and festooned with flowers. Skinny dormer-style windows beckoned at the top of narrow canal houses. Tight alleyways boasted murals of elaborate graffiti. Magical little doorways opened up onto inner courtyards with well-groomed rose beds and closely clipped lawns. I was tantalized by the city, ready almost to abandon my hosts, to follow this young girl on her bicycle, that old lady with her dog, but I didn't because we were heading home.
Home was a houseboat on the water, not far from Nieuwe Doelenstraat and the mouth of the River Amstel. At one time Amsterdam's outer limit, this was the old home of the Kloveniers Doelen and the city's famous Nightwatch. The streets in the area were crammed with hotels and boutiques and tourists and noisy little cars, along with the ubiquitous bikes. But the houseboat was strangely quiet inside, a splintery brown and red cradle rocking on the much-trafficked waters of the canal.
I was lifted onto the deck by Albert, who handed me, just like a piece of luggage, over to Alain after he carefully handed over the black suitcase that Lou Lou had given me.
The houseboat smelled of licorice drops and hashish and developing chemicals and was sparsely furnished and crammed with art. In the main room, which held only a table and two rather worn chairs, photographs covered every surface. Matted enlargements of photographs leaned against the walls. Next to the stainless steel sink of the simple galley-style kitchen sat two short crystal glasses, a bottle of a licorice-flavored spirits called absinthe, and a decanter of some kind of red wine. On a clothesline that stretched the length of the kitchen was a long line of prints pinned next to each other like boxcars in a train. The next room was a bedroom. It had a big bed covered in a white tapestry cloth and a few odd antiques half-hidden from where I was standing. Albert and Alain disappeared into this room, shutting the door behind them.
I hardly noticed. I was still studying the pictures that hung from the clothesline in the kitchen. From these photos stared a bold, fashionably suited woman who, frame by frame and with no change in position, attained a greater and greater state of undress until she was finally nude. Then the process reversed itself, except that instead of clothes, tattoo after tattoo was added in the sequential frames. Large brown velvet moths settled upon each of her breasts. An orchid opened on one shoulder, a striped gecko displayed the inside of its mouth on the other. South Sea islands showed up on her belly and disappeared into the shaved split between her legs. A sea serpent slid down her thigh. Constellations unfurled on her right arm. On her left arm, winds chased clouds to the wrist. And so on. In the last picture, she was completely covered in tattoos, including her neck and her face. The tattoos were beautiful, like Japanese woodcuts full of waves and wildlife and fat-petalled flowers. The color in the photos was supernaturally vivid, and I felt myself responding to them with a dry mouth and an odd kind of thirst.
A horn bleated over the water through the window behind me, and I turned my attention again to the black and white prints that littered the room with the table.
On the table were stacks of pictures. These were studies of shadow: women naked behind the lace-like curtain of wrought-iron gates; dark and light-skinned women in Escher-like poses; women peering fearfully from behind the stark black verticals of prison bars. I flipped through image after image. There were studies of objects – everything from eggs to delicate flowers – bearing bar codes; of wraith-thin wrists marked with numbers; of license plates; of signs reflected in windows; of tattoo artists in action; of South Sea islanders, their bodies covered in complicated designs.
The photographs were extraordinary. They were full of conflict and contrast and profound sensuality. Page-turners, you'd call them. I found myself drawn to the next, then the next. Meanwhile Albert and Alain were in the bedroom examining the contents of the suitcase. I was fascinated with the photographs. They were fascinated with it.
A mule is a beast of burden. Part ass, part horse (generally preferred in the jackass-mare combination), mules are bred for employment, and bred they must be because these hybrid creatures are sterile. They have the lovely, long ears and the delicate little feet of the ass and the strong, well-muscled body of the horse. But their special appeal lies in the way they take to the harness, a tendency attributable to the horse. However, unlike the horse, mules are enduring creatures. They handle hardship well and, like their wild ass ancestors, will stubbornly harbor their strength. Needless to say, these low-maintenance creatures are the darlings of work camps, mines, and military zones. They are, in fact, the beast of choice where requirements dictate that labor be both dependable and expendable. In smugglers' parlance, mules carry drugs – well, contraband of any kind, but in most cases drugs. For example, the suitcase that the stewardess had exchanged with me had heroine in it, shrink-wrapped to defy the dogs. But the more significant and far more valuable item that I carried to Holland was a microchip tucked away, deep inside me. And I, whether I knew it or not, was a mule.
Alain walked out of the bedroom with a big smile. Albert was carrying a tote bag. "Look, Alain," he said, "I'll call you. I'll make the arrangements."
"Fine," said Alain. They were both in a very good mood.
"He's a fabulous photographer isn't he?" Albert said warmly. Then he gave Alain a quick slap on the ass.
When Albert left, Alain walked to the kitchen, poured a glass of absinthe and lit a pipe's worth of hashish. He looked up for a moment to the clothesline strung with photos, studying the succession of images, dissecting them with an artist's eye. "So, Erin," he said over his shoulder, "my sister likes you a lot. She says I shoul
d take care of you. Do you need taking care of?"
He turned from the photos and directed his gaze at me – the same studied gaze he'd used on his pictures. I could not bring myself to look away. He was examining me with a photographer's eye, camera eye, eye of the needle. He peered through my little black dress with his x-ray specs. Woman as still life, I did not move. He took a long, deep hit from the pipe and put it down. The weedy smell of hashish filled the room. Then slowly (slow-mo camera moving in for the close-up) he walked toward me, his eyes on my face, on my dress, on my bare legs. At the table he placed his drink in an empty space, carefully moving his precious prints out of harm's way. Then he leaned down and touched one of my legs, running his hand lightly over it: calf, knee, thigh.
"Muscular," he observed. "You're a dancer."
He pushed the black dress up over my hips, belly, and breasts and discovered it was all I had on.
"Hmmm," he said, "yes, I could see that." The man with the x-ray specs pulled my dress up over my head.
It must have been close to noon. Outside, on the canal banks, city noise – voices, autos and bicycles clattering over cobblestone streets – had escalated. Inside Alain's houseboat home the ambient din was reduced to warmish snuffles and murmurs. Sunlight flooded the rooms, bounced off white walls, bleaching black to ghost-gray. Alain had me pinned to the wall, his hands, like his eyes, roaming over every fold and curve of my body.
"Beautiful," he whispered, "compliant. I like that in a woman."
I was far more than compliant. His artist's hands moved over my flesh, and it was like striking a flint. He took off his shirt, stepped out of his jeans. He had a lean body, sinewy, but not thin. Somewhere deep within me a trigger was tripped. Maybe it was the way the houseboat rocked on the water. Maybe it was the smells of absinthe and licorice drops on his breath or red light district pheromones raging across canal after canal along with potato chip and mayonnaise smells and the pungent whiff of cat piss. More likely it was the cheese, the chocolate and the gin, the nakedness of the wolf man and the sweep of his hands. A switch had been flipped. Everything went autopilot.