Please

by Hazel Hughes

  “Hey,” he said, folding down the corner of the page he was reading to mark his place. He patted the bed beside him. “Sit.”

  She did. “You shaved,” she said.

  “Yeah, and showered. While you were sleeping,” he answered, pulling her down on top of him. “I thought it would be safer for you if I did.” He nuzzled her, rubbing his newly smooth cheek against her neck.

  “Mm, good idea,” she smiled, her hand unconsciously straying to the raw, red patches she had noticed on her inner thighs in the shower.

  Sebastian started kissing her neck and reached for her hand, directing it to the fly of his jeans. He was hard. Again.

  “Oh, God, Sebastian,” she groaned, aroused and exasperated in equal measure. “I don’t think I can.” She tried to pull away, but he held her to him. “I mean, we’re both dressed. Shouldn’t we take advantage of this,” she continued, as he slid his hand up her shirt, his palm warm on her stomach, “and you know, go out. Eat. Talk.”

  “Oh, I get it,” he said, flipping her onto her back and straddling her hips, “delayed gratification, right?”

  “Sure,” she said. He had pinned her hands on either side of her head, and was looking into her eyes, his face inches from hers.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice low and seductive. “I can do that.” He kissed her lips, slowly, softly. He pushed her hands up over her head, grasping both wrists with one hand. With the other hand, he began to unfasten the button of her jeans.

  Elizabeth arched her back, trying to pull herself out of his grasp. “Sebastian,” she said, “I don’t think you understand the concept of delayed gratification. The point is to, um, delay the gratification.”

  “Oh, I get it,” he said, unzipping her jeans. He tugged them down below her hipbones. Then, holding each of her wrists at her sides, he began inching his way down her legs. He kissed her navel, looking up at her. “I just want to give you something to think about, you know,” he circled it with his tongue, “while we’re out.” He traced his tongue over her lower abdomen. “Eating.” He slipped it under the elastic of her panties and then out again. “Talking.” He kissed her through the thin silk of her underwear, his tongue hot and wet against her. She moaned.

  Then he stopped and, releasing her wrists, bounded off the bed.

  “I know a great sushi place over on 8th,” he said over his shoulder as he walked toward the bathroom with the springy energy of a golden retriever. “Just give me a minute, and we’ll go. They make the best futomaki. You’ll love it.”

  Elizabeth lay exactly as he had left her, a puddle of desire.

  He peeked back around the corner at her, a cheeky grin on his face. “Come on. Let’s go, let’s go, Elizabeth. Is sex all you think about?”

  *

  After a short subway ride uptown and a brisk walk in the long shadows of the setting sun over to 8th, Elizabeth and Sebastian were seated at the bar of the tiniest restaurant she had ever been in. Behind its smoked glass door there were just two small pine tables, both occupied by serious looking Asian men in suits, and the sushi bar with four stools. There was no menu, only the glass counter with its rainbow of fish and an enormous wooden vat of rice.

  “Arigato,” Sebastian said as the lone waitress brought them a white porcelain carafe and two cups not much larger than thimbles. She bowed her head with a shy smile and scurried back behind the counter.

  “His wife,” Sebastian whispered, nodding at the man whose nimble fingers were slicing fish, rolling rice and assembling them into miniature works of art.

  She is pretty, Elizabeth thought, watching the ageless Japanese woman picking up a plate of freshly crafted sushi, each movement careful and considered, like a ballet dancer. Elizabeth wondered if she was on Sebastian’s long list of conquests. As if he had read her thoughts, he whispered in her ear.

  “Never. I respect Kenji-san too much. Besides, she’s not my type.”

  “What is your type?” Elizabeth asked.

  Sebastian filled both of their cups with clear liquid from the carafe. “You,” he said, a smile playing on his lips.

  “Right. Not Naomi?” Elizabeth ran her finger around the rim of her cup, following it with her eyes.

  Sebastian lifted his cup. “Gambai,” he said, waiting for her to do the same.

  “Gambai,” she said and took a sip. The sake trickled down her throat, igniting a pleasing glow inside her.

  “Naomi was just a, I don’t know. A toy. A way to pass the time. And I meant what I wrote. I was thinking about you the whole time.” He put his cup down and nudged her knee with his, looking at her intently. He leaned in and lowered his voice, his hand on her thigh. “When I was kissing her, I was thinking of you. And when I was sucking on her tit with my fingers inside her, I was thinking of you. And when she was down on all fours and I was fucking her from behind, sliding my cock in and out of her, I was thinking of you, picturing you moaning and thrashing under me, imagining what you’d look like when you came.”

  Elizabeth uncrossed and recrossed her legs, aroused despite the fact that he was describing having sex with another woman, or maybe because of it.

  “Wow. Well, I hope the reality wasn’t a let-down,” she said, dryly.

  Sebastian laughed. “Far from it.

  “I wonder what Naomi would think of hearing herself described as a toy,” she said, not looking up.

  “Oh, don’t think I wasn’t the same to her, Elizabeth. She has as much feeling for me as she does for the latest ‘it bag.’ Less, probably.” His tone was matter-of-fact. “You know who she’s like?” he continued, toying idly with a strand of Elizabeth’s hair.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “She’s like your Madame Bovary. She’s bored by her life. She tries to distract herself from the pointlessness of it all by shopping or partying or fucking. She says to herself, ‘Oh, I’ll be happy when I get this role or when I fuck this boy or when I get that pair of shoes.’ Right? But then she never is.”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, Madame Bovary was trapped by the parameters of her very proscribed middle class life. Naomi can do anything she wants. Opportunity, talent, looks, money. She has it all.”

  “Exactly,” Sebastian said tapping the counter hard with his index finger. “When you have it all, there’s only one thing left to get.”

  Elizabeth looked at him quizzically. “What’s that?”

  “More.”

  *

  “Now, this is going to hurt,” the bearded man in the kerchief said. “But not too bad.” The way he was holding the tattoo gun reminded Elizabeth of either a surgeon with a scalpel or a sculptor with a chisel, she couldn’t decide which. “Scar tissue doesn’t have any nerve endings, of course, but the nerves in the skin around this,” he ran a calloused finger lightly over her scar, “well, it’s like they try to make up for their dead buddies or something. They’re extra sensitive.” He smiled at her, flashing a set of teeth too even and white to be real for a man of his age. With his steel-colored beard and road map of wrinkles, Elizabeth had him pegged between sixty and seventy-five.

  “By the way, the name’s Thor,” he added, extending his hand.

  “Elizabeth.”

  “We’re about to get real intimate, Elizabeth,” Thor said, pulling a pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of his t-shirt pocket and putting them on. “I don’t know about you, but I like to be on a first name basis with people I’m intimate with. Seems the boy here,” he winked at Sebastian, who was leaning against the wall watching intently, “forgot his manners and didn’t introduce us.”

  “My bad,” Sebastian said.

  “Indeed.” Thor was fitting a needle into the gun, looking down his slightly crooked nose at the gleaming tool that resembled a torture device or a dentist’s drill, which in Elizabeth’s experience were one and the same.

  They were in a sign-less, windowless tattoo parlor on the edge of Harlem. Visits to Thor were, according to Sebastian, by appointment only.

  “He
’s my New York guy,” Sebastian had said, after he made the call to confirm the appointment that afternoon. “He’s the best. I got a guy in LA, too. He’s good too, but Thor’s a true artist.”

  Though they had just gotten dressed, Sebastian unzipped his jeans to show her. “See,” he said, pointing to a delicate blue-black curlicue at the base of his penis. Elizabeth squinted. It looked like a J and a D intertwined. “That’s Thor’s work.”

  He put his finger on another curl of ink. Two K’s this time. “That’s Rico’s. The LA guy.”

  Elizabeth compared the two tattoos. She had to admit that Sebastian was right. The second tattoo just didn’t have the delicacy of the first. She pointed to another one, near the crease of his inner thigh. “Who did this one?” she asked. It was clearly an A and an S, but it looked like something a high school student would have scrawled on a notebook or a bathroom wall.”

  Sebastian shook his head, frowning. “Some hack in Topeka. Never again. Now I save all my tats for Thor or Rico.”

  “Should we do you first, Seb?” Thor asked now, gesturing with the needle. “So that Elizabeth here can see what it’s like and maybe wipe that terrified look of her face?”

  “Sure,” Sebastian pushed himself lazily away from the wall.

  “Just drop yer drawers, boy,” Thor said, “You don’t need to get in the chair. This won’t take ten minutes.”

  Sebastian did as instructed, stepping wide and letting his jeans fall down around his boots.

  The tattoo, which covered Sebastian’s groin from just below his navel, looked from a distance like out-of-control pubic hair. It was a swathe of twisting, curving curls of ink in varying tints of standard blue-black, wrapping around the shaved skin of his pelvis and inner thighs, that on closer inspection was revealed to be hundreds of pairs of tiny, cursive initials.

  Elizabeth had commented on it on their first night together as she knelt in front of him. “I’m guessing that this is your version of a notched bed-post,” she said, marveling at the number of initials, tracing them with her fingernail.

  “It’s not like that,” Sebastian had said, grabbing her wrists and pulling her to her feet. He looked into her eyes, and said, earnestly, “I like to feel that the women I’ve been with have become a part of me. You know, that each encounter, each act – whether it’s a one-night stand or an affair that lasts for years – has changed me, on a molecular level. It’s my way of honoring them.”

  Now, watching Thor deposit tiny drops of ink under the surface of the soft skin of Sebastian’s abdomen, tiny drops that when joined together would form the letters E H, Elizabeth wasn’t so sure how she felt about receiving this honor. She also wasn’t sure how she felt about getting a tattoo of her own.

  They had been lying in bed the day before. The curtains were closed and, in her half-delirious, sleep-deprived state, Elizabeth had for a moment not been sure what time or even what day it was. Sebastian was lying with his head on her chest the way Keenan sometimes did when he was sick and needed comfort. She was stroking the fine spikes of hair at his temples, letting her heart rate slow back down to normal. Sebastian had run his index finger along her C-section scar and said, casually, “You should get some ink.”

  That was it. There hadn’t been any further discussion about it, but when he had called to make the appointment with Thor, he’d told Thor’s receptionist to book a full hour. And then, in the taxi ride over, Sebastian had handed her a drawing done on hotel stationery in blue ballpoint. It was a curving string of vines and leaves, delicately drawn. He had looked at her, his eyes wide and hopeful. So, here she was with her jeans pulled down below her hipbones, reclining on a padded vinyl chair waiting to make Sebastian a permanent part of her.

  Elizabeth looked over at him. He had his eyes closed as Thor worked, but other than a slight furrow between his eyebrows, she could see no indication that the procedure was hurting him. Above the low humming of the needle, he and Thor were carrying on a conversation about motorcycles, though, granted, Thor was doing most of the talking.

  Words like “pipes” and “fork springs” drifted through Elizabeth’s consciousness as her eyes scanned the small, white room. Other than the chair, Thor’s rolling stool, and a waist-high stainless-steel trolley that held Thor’s array of torture implements and a few medical supplies, there wasn’t much in the way of furniture or décor. There was a sink, an autoclave, a full-length mirror and a set of speakers set high on the wall, out of which jangled the chords of a blues guitar, but that was it. The Spartan studio was in stark contrast to the sensory overload of the lobby where they were greeted by a receptionist, her globular breasts rising above the deep v of her leather bustier. They had been ushered right into Thor’s studio, but Elizabeth’s impression was of black walls plastered with posters of heavily inked naked torsos of both sexes, a red velvet sofa and a glowing chandelier made entirely of minibar empties.

  “There,” Thor said, leaning back on his stool and admiring his work. Sebastian turned to look in the mirror, a sly smile lighting his eyes. He pulled up his jeans, but didn’t zip them, and moved closer to where Elizabeth lay on the chair.

  “Um, nice,” Elizabeth said, examining the tiny patch of skin, no bigger than the nail on Gwen’s little finger. The area around the initials was puffy and pink and the letters themselves looked shiny and slightly wet. E H, she read, resisting the urge to touch. The curl of the second leg of the H was wrapped around the initial next to it. Elizabeth idly wondered who T K was.

  Sebastian smiled at her. “Thor never lets me down.” He ran the back of his fingers over her cheek. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “Right,” Thor said, rolling over on his stool. “Why don’t you put some gauze on that while I get started on this young lady?” He peered at her over the top of his glasses. “Unless you want Holly to do it for you?” He winked at Elizabeth. She guessed Holly was the name of the receptionist.

  Sebastian laughed. “Nah, not this time,” he said. Elizabeth glanced at Sebastian’s tattoo before he turned away and wondered if Holly’s initials were part of it.

  Thor spoke while he inserted a new needle, throwing the old one in a bin marked “bio-hazard.” “You like to read, Elizabeth?” he asked.

  Elizabeth nodded, eyes on the needle, which was, on closer inspection, several needles soldered together. It looked too big and too sharp to be anywhere near her skin.

  “She’s a writer,” Sebastian said from where he was leaning against the wall again, legs and arms crossed, jeans zipped.

  “That so?” Thor said, pressing a carbon tracing of the design Sebastian had drawn onto the skin of Elizabeth’s scar. He held the skin taught with one hand and turned the needle on. “You write anything I might have read?”

  “Not unless you like chick lit,” she said.

  Thor laughed and touched the needle to her skin, his eyes on his work. “Can’t say that I’ve given it a chance,” he said. Elizabeth felt a hot sharp pain, like the surface of her skin was being sandpapered by the tip of a pencil. “I’m more of a Clive Cussler man, myself,” Thor continued. “You read any of his stuff?”

  “Not yet,” Elizabeth answered, looking over at Sebastian. He hadn’t moved, but he was staring at her intently, a small smile on his lips. She inhaled sharply as Thor moved off the scar tissue to the skin surrounding it.

  Elizabeth tried to focus on Thor describing the plot of his favorite Cussler epic, closing her eyes against the pain. Occasionally, she would glance over at Sebastian, who continued to watch her.

  “There,” Thor finally said, after what felt like an interminable amount of time but was in reality not much more than half an hour. “Have a look.”

  Elizabeth stood up gingerly, wincing.

  “Perfect,” Sebastian said, standing behind her as she stared at her reflection. The fine lines danced in a delicate horizontal diamond across her pelvis, like a ribbon of black lace a hand’s width under her navel. A thought flashed, unwelc
ome, through her mind. What would Steve think?

  “Thor,” the receptionist’s high, nasal voice came from the other side of the studio door. “Those guys are here to see you again. About the Superlow.”

  Thor had antiseptic, surgical tape and a roll of plastic cling-film in his hands. “I’ll be right out, Holly,” he said. He looked at Elizabeth. “Is it alright if I have Holly do this?” He lifted his hands with the medical supplies in them.

  “I’ll do it,” Sebastian said, taking the supplies from the older man.

  “Great,” Thor said, removing his wire-rims and standing up. “Good to meet you, Elizabeth. Always a pleasure, Sebastian. See you next time you’re in town.”

  “I doubt it,” Sebastian said. He was standing behind Elizabeth, his hands on her still naked hips.

  Thor paused with his hand on the doorknob. “That so?” he said, giving Elizabeth a long, measuring look, taking in her wedding ring. “Well, stranger things have happened, I suppose.” He winked, closing the door behind him.

  “Come on,” Sebastian whispered into her hair after Thor had left. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

  He led her down the short hall to a bathroom not much bigger than the toilets on an airplane. A pedestal sink and ancient toilet were squeezed into a tiny space that, unlike Thor’s studio, was in sore need of a coat of paint and serious encounter with Mr. Clean.

  No sooner had Sebastian flicked on the light and locked the door than he knelt down in front of her and, grabbing her hips, ran his tongue over her fresh tattoo. Elizabeth gasped in unexpected, searing pain.

  Sebastian immediately moved lower, yanking her jeans and panties down below her knees. Standing up, he thrust his first two fingers into her, reaching deep inside her as he rubbed her clit with his thumb. Elizabeth moaned, intense pleasure overcoming pain. Just as she was about to come, Sebastian lifted her onto the sink, spreading her thighs with his hips. He peeled her sweater up and over her head, not bothering to roll it down her shoulders, effectively binding her arms behind her. He flicked his tongue over the flesh rising above the cups of her bra, biting her nipples through the thin fabric. His movements were fast and urgent, almost violent, as he unzipped his jeans, tore open a condom wrapper, rolled it on, and thrust into her.