by Christian, M
I really was hearing it – the song I'd heard for so long. A song that never, ever shouldn't be coming from an empty apartment.
* * * *
Hands over my ears, I danced back, pushed back away from the connecting wall, but the tune still leaked between my fingers – not as loud, but enough that I could pick out the highs, the lows, the silly little melody that ... that she used to sing to herself when he wasn't home.
Rose water...?
Yes, out. Yes, away. Anywhere. It didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered except anywhere but there, in that apartment. Back to my bag, back to stuffing things in that I probably didn't need but it was still a kind of movement in the general direction of gone.
But every time my hands left my ears the tune was back, the volume naturally higher, but the notes and tunes and melody clearer, crisper, more direct ... I turned, whipcording my neck to a high octave tweak of pain it was so clear, so sharp, so there ... but the apartment was empty.
I could swear ... rose water?
Hands back over my ears I caught it: too obvious not to be anything but what it really, honestly, accurately was this time – a single, long, red hair performing a leisure ballet in a hot beam of later afternoon sun. Despite everything, I had to take in the methodical performance of copper strand accompanying up and downdraft. A small part of my brain tried to justify it as a stay, a physical memory of Theresa that had somehow taken so long to come out from behind the sofa, from a distant corner of the ceiling – after all this time, to appear, to me, right at that instant.
Rose water...?
The apartment was warm, one of the things it always was that time of day, but ice still trickled down my spine, goose bumps a Braille of panic, fear, dread, on my arms. It was. The hair may have come from a forgotten part of my little room, the tune could have appeared from a forgotten part of my brain, but ... yes ... it was rose water: it was there, in my place, with me.
I didn't want to, of course. But I did, it just in a kind of base, animal hope that there'd be nothing there.
"Hello," Theresa said.
* * * *
No, no, no, no ... went my mind, the simple two-letter word bouncing back and forth between the bones of my skull, drowning out everything but the sound, plus the almost-physical shove of denial.
Hair like a polished penny, not just red but pure Table Of The Elements copper – fire and curls that bloomed out from the top of her head and down and over her shoulders. I'd once seen a docu online about smelting: how the liquid metal rushed and rapided down from their crucibles – and that is always how I saw Theresa's hair.
Just like I saw it right then.
Eyes – so few people really have them. They do, of course, all the better to see with, of course, but most of them are just drops of color in hard boiled eggs less-than-gently shoved into their heads, but Theresa's eyes were not just green – the expensive Chinatown stuff and not the crap the tourists wear – but they were how she saw the world, and see the world she always seemed to do. Theresa's eyes didn't just gaze out through the veil of her own mind and issues but she saw you for what you are – she actually, honestly looked at you.
Just like she was looking at me right then.
Her smile ... I always melted when she smiled: I always faded away and pooled onto the floor. The first time she did it I actually had to run a hand up and down my arms to make sure the flesh there hadn't dripped away. Hers was a happy smile, a joyous smile. It was a smile that I – or anyone – would do anything to make appear again. It was like pure, distilled happiness, and when it was done the world was far too dim, dark, and rain-chilled.
Just like she was smiling at me right then.
Theresa stepped forward, closing the already narrow space between where she was and where I was. Even though there was plenty of warm afternoon air separating us, I could feel the degrees climb in leaps of five. She was warm ... she didn't just run that temperature normally but she was the reality of it: never cold, never removed, never icy – she was the sun peaking over the spires of the city, a crackle and pop in a fireplace, the burst of a match to light the first romantic candle of the evening.
Just like she felt as she was standing in front of me right then.
No, no, no, no ... faded, fell away, all-but vanished in my mind. She was there – really there – just as she'd been there before. Echoes, replays, memory was all that remained.
It was months ago, Danny had stepped out for the afternoon, and she had knocked on my door to talk about the noisy neighbor above us – the one who liked his Rap far too much and far too loud. We'd seen each other, of course, more than once: smiles in the hall, pleasant tenant fragments of conversation, but with each word I knew – and she knew – that there were undercurrents, deep body swells. My hands, whenever we were together, had baked with the need to simply reach out and touch her.
Then there she was, in my place – as before and so again. Exactly like before.
The first kiss, of course, was clumsy – as they always are: one person's face moving too quick, the other's moving too slow, but as with all the great ones the first attempt ended with a throaty, shy laugh – and then immediately a new start, which was always immeasurably better.
Theresa's kisses ... there are far too few words in this clumsy dim of clicks and clucks of language to describe them. I won't. For me, forever, the best of a kiss would always begin with her sweet, silken lips, her playful dance of tongue and mouth – with everything else falling far below on the scale.
It was it had been decided with that first, clumsy, kiss and then the second, much better, one – there was only one place to go ... and we both wanted – as before and so again – very badly, to go there.
She'd been wearing a vintage store sundress, and I shouldn't remember what it looked like, felt like, but she was there, then, and I knew it was sunflowers – the brightness of which matched, almost, the sun shining through my windows – on a yellower-than-yellow backdrop. Old, it felt like it, but not the old of starch and stiffness but the old of well-worn and smooth. Buttons ... it had buttons down the front ... Chinese coins.
Buttons that came off – as before and so again: one, two, three – and with each one her smile became more and more brilliant, the heat from her more and more feverish, the glow from her eyes more and more dazzling.
As it was then, so it was again, beneath that worn-to-silk sundress was ... nothing. With each coin undone, with each button slipped slowly from its hole she revealed herself to me. The first one put tension on the next, the swell of her breasts pushing outward. By the third there was a valley of naked skin, a plush swell of belly all the way to a shimmering valley of cleavage. I remember – and so thought again at that moment – that I wished time would slow, almost stop: nothing more than just to let me take her in inch-by-inch and never, ever stop.
But she was impatient, burning with heat from the fire roasting from inside her, and with a quick shift of shoulder and shoulder, the dress slipped free – tumbling down to the floor.
No ... words. But I still had to try, had to at least make an attempt to say what I saw back then and saw again in that moment: plush and plump, full and alive, voluptuous and cushioned, Theresa was a pocket Goddess, a full-breasted Venus. Her nipples were dark and swollen to the point of faded purple. Down below was a quickly tangle of darker-red curls.
As before, we kissed; as before I dipped my head to kiss – so gently – one nipple and then the other, and with each kiss a new kind of tune, a new kind of music from her. A music that I would do anything to hear again and again – a music of pleasure that reach down deep into me and, then as before, plucked the string connecting my everything to my cock.
My clothes were the next to go – as before and so again – my comedic dance a slapstick parody of her elegant slipping of sundress from shoulders ... and we laughed, together. And, again, I would have done anything, everything, to have her laugh again and again – a new kind of musical pleasure than, somehow, made my cock even
harder.
Then – as before and so again – she was kneeling on the floor, returning the favor of my kisses to her nipples ... but with more. Much more. Opening her mouth, widening her smile, she took my cock in her mouth. At first she did nothing. Nothing at all. She just held me, hovering in the hot warmth of her mouth – but then she began: at first with the tongue that she had just kissed me with, but then with a slow, steady, and rhythmic suction. It was like she was then – as before and so again – to understand me, to get to comprehend that part of my body.
Which she did – as before and so again – until I felt like my engine body was going to shake, quake, and rush out in a quivering, quaking orgasm through my cock and into her mouth.
But she didn't let me. No ... instead she – as before and so again – pulled her mouth away and, after a few playful strokes of my wet cock, she stood back up.
We ended up on my bed, which was naturally unmade and shameful but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered, nothing at all – as before and so again – but both of us getting to somewhere at least moderately clean, fairly comfortable.
He got down on her hands and knees, presenting the peach of her ass and again, I almost came from just the sight of her deeper-red curls and the shimmering moisture that was there. Without preamble, chat, or anything beyond – as before and so again – I got down behind her and touched the head of my cock to the wetness there. No penetration, not at first. Again I wanted that moment to last forever – to be an eternal moment of my cock touching the hot moisture of – but as before and so again my body had drives of its own and I eased myself in, inch-by-inch, until I was all the way inside her.
Maybe it was a memory of what she had done, maybe it was again just wanted to savor it all, I held myself there – pushing back into the muscles of my body the need to thrust and keep thrusting until a blast of liquid bliss – but in the end I failed, or succeeded, and I began to push and pull, thrust in and out.
It was – as before and so again – a moment of transcendence, the measure of everything before and since. The way she moved, the deeper-toned music coming from deep within her, it was a cascade of pure, deep, pleasure.
When it happened – as before and so again – it was mutual, connected, universal. Something that never happened before. I felt my body reach that point, the limit of everything I could have ever hoped for ... just as she moaned, her tune becoming a scream and then cry of involuntary shivers and quakes.
As before and so again, we collapsed together: our sweat and sticky afters mixing in a slippery intimacy – our breathing coupled together in heaviness that was so-similar to the coupling we'd just had.
That time, back then, we slept for most of the night – until, in a burst of frightening panic she'd remembered where she was, what time it was, and what she'd done. The tears didn't start until she had her dress back on but they didn't stop – even after she pushed me, and my attempts at consonances, away in a hard shove that stole my balance and left me a sore and bruised tumble on the floor.
That was then. That was way back then. I tried to talk to her, after, but where there'd been smiles and too-bright eyes there were instead coldness and fear.
Two weeks ... two weeks later I heard what she'd done ... in the bath, with too many pills.
But that was then. Now though she was coming again, quaking and quivering and shivering and moaning and crying and trembling and shaking and shuddering – as was I.
But this time there would be no sleep, no rest. This time my front door was wide open – and Danny was standing there, watching the whole thing.
* * * *
It wasn't the same: it hadn't happened that way. Not at all. I can't remember if I screamed or not – but I probably should of. Shock and shame, shame and shock, a bolt that was a combination of both turned and twisted into a bright white burst of more than emotion.
I do know that I think I ... went away: Danny was there, watching us both with his own electrified expression on his face, the same mixture of shame and shock, shock and shame – and, on the bed with me, still reflecting the daylight in her sweet sweat, was Theresa, her own mouth wide and quivering in shame and shock, shock and shame.
And then ... then she was not naked and shimmering but instead the sundress that had just a moment before been a tumble of bright patterns on my dirty floor was on her again – and her hair which had been a crumble of red – was back to its life before passion. She was standing too close to the door as well, walking into towards Danny.
And Danny ... I must have gone away, must have blanked it out, because the shock and shame, shame and shock was gone, and he was just, only, and simply Danny – his arm gently out to accept the waist of Theresa, who accepted his casual loving embrace without even a glance, a fraction of a moment back towards me, still naked on the bed.
I think I called one of their names – why, I can't say. Shame and shock, shock and shame – one of the two: Theresa to cry my apologies, my love, my heart ... and to Danny to scream for forgiveness...
I jumped and tugged and pulled with my pants, somehow a tiny thread of decency hanging on there so I didn't run out into the hall flapping in the still air. But when I got them on, and made it out into the warm and motionless air of the hall, I saw both of them in the old, and cranky elevator, staring out as the doors so slowly began their hesitating and rusty closure.
Two sets of eyes. Two people looking out. Theresa's were as they always were: bright and clear and beautiful – but while they had always looked, and seen, though everything to get at the essential stuff deep down inside instead they were the same color, the same clarity, but now they looked out at me – but instead ... instead ... instead ...
Dust motes dancing in the air, twists and spirals of dead hair on their way to a final resting place on the floor – the debris, the cast-offs, the remaints, of everything and everyone were there for those eyes. But not me.
But Danny – for a fraction of a moment, he did see me. His own eyes, like old copper pennies, shimmered and shone – cooking down into dark, old, metal by the heat of pure hate.
Then the doors closed and they were gone.
* * * *
One step could have been too slow, so I dropped, three at the time, down the stairs, hoping with each jarring smack of feet on cement that I would be able to beat them to the bottom – though I didn't know why.
I missed them, but not by much. Slamming open the door to the lobby, I saw Danny and Theresa gently parting other doors – the ones that led to the fading afternoon light of the city beyond.
The lobby wasn't busy – it actually never was – but there was an old lady I didn't recognize standing between me and where they were. Even though she must have seen me coming, she didn't move, didn't look up. I hit her – not hard – and her face showed icy-cold fear, like a some long-dead relative with a grudge had decided at that moment to take up an old grudge.
I didn't think much of it. Instead I ran – from there to the big front doors. But when I got there, I saw no one but Fixture, stilling as he always did, on the side. The city, up and down the street, was rolling over into late afternoon: the traffic – both driving and walking – thick with people on their way home. All of them, behind the wheel or simply navigating the sidewalks, had swallowed them up – leaving nothing behind.
"So good to see them together," Fixture said. "You forget that there are moments like that ... not ash and dirt but good stuff, too. Easy to forget that."
I didn't know what to do. "You're right," I said to him, just to hear the sound of my own voice.
"Fortune cookies?" He laughed, a throaty, deep sound. "I could see that. Little slips of hope in a cookie."
I ... it took a second to see the break there, the fracture between what I'd said and what Fixture had said. "I wasn't walking about fortune cookies..."
"Makes you think that it could be out there, as well," he said. "That's the best thing about it, I think. Not just that you see folks like that but that becaus
e you do you think that, yeah, maybe my hand in one like hers ... someday."
I'd been looking at the traffic – driving and walking – for any sign of them and not really looking too hard at him. But then I turned and saw that he was talking to someone else, a young man in a baseball cap I didn't recognize. "Yeah, man, you're so right."
"Worst thing," Fixture was saying to this other guy. "Is to feel that you just aren't there – that you don't matter, you know? That you've been pushed out of everything ... just a face with all those other faces." To the last he waved out at the to-ings and fro-ings.
"Fix ... hey, Fix!" I said, loudly, straight to his face.
But he didn't turn, didn't look away from the guy in the cap.
"FIX!" I all but screamed, yelled – my hands grabbed his shoulders but the tattered old coat he always wore might have been chiseled from marble.
I tried to move him but he wouldn't, couldn't. I reached beyond him to the other fellow, but he, too, was immobile. Out of frustration, I hammed on Fix's back – but all that happened was my hands beginning to hurt.
Then I was back inside, away from the eyes that glided past me, the visions of the city turning in for the night. Eyes that didn't even flicker over me.
I ran to the elevator, punched and punched and punched again at the button, but it never came. No bell, not even the distant grindings of ancient gears and cables meaning it was busy on another floor. Nothing.
The stairs were higher, stronger – like the cement that had jarred my legs and ankles had gotten even harder, firmer, even-less-forgiving.
I have to get out. I have to get away. The repeat of the thoughts were kind of reassuring – so I kept them tripping back and forth in my ... but my key didn't fit. I twisted and turned and shook it in the lock. It had been one of the few good things about the place: the elevator was creaky and well-past-retirement, the plumbing moaned and complained, the walls were tissue, but the lock always worked. Always.
Then it did, but not without moaning and complaining that the toilet and sink would have envied – and I was in.