Time's Harlot: The Perils of Attraction, Seduction, and Desire

by Brenda Kuchinsky

  Sophia lost track of time and reason as Maria kept her promise to take her to heaven. Afterwards, she was mindlessly stroking Maria’s gelled head, resting on her soft belly, when the bell rang. It took several moments for her to realize it was Bernie. Maybe he would go away. She had no idea Maria would be such a fast worker. She should have known from the massage table.

  The bell kept ringing and ringing, piercing the postcoital serenity that had settled over the room like a comforting fleece blanket.

  Sophia removed Maria’s head from her belly, told her to put herself together, pulled her panties and jeans up, answering the door as she was zipping up.

  As soon as the door swung open, Bernie, coincidentally clad in black jeans and a red shirt, sensed that he was interrupting something. Suspicion clouded his eyes.

  Sophia introduced him to Maria. He grudgingly shook hands, sniffing the air delicately like a bloodhound on the trail of something promising.

  “Has the party started without me?” he asked, looking at Sophia’s disheveled mahogany locks.

  “Nonsense, Bernie. Here’s a drink,” Sophia said, handing him a scotch and leading him over to the desecrated couch.

  “Well, actually you are interrupting, Bernie. I just finished tonguing and sucking Sophia to ecstasy. I suppose you could join in with your cock and show us what you’ve got.” Maria plunged right in, slowly enunciating every inflammatory word.

  “You were having sex with Mommy?” he gasped.

  “What’s he yapping about? Mommy? Who’s Mommy?” Maria asked.

  “It’s a long, complicated story,” Sophia said.

  “He must be one of your johns,” Maria said. “You don’t think those models talk? They know what you’re doing back there. Young men sauntering in and out of OEDIPUS INC. That’s some sex therapy you’re offering up.”

  She smirked at Bernie. “Okay, Bernie. This is your lucky day,” she said, swaggering as she was swallowing the last of her scotch. “I’ll show you how it’s really done, Momma’s Boy.”

  She tossed Sophia down again and unceremoniously unclothed her. Maria’s hands were all over Sophia’s naked body as she climbed on top of her and began kissing her, thrusting her accomplished tongue deep, giving her a taste of her own juices mingling with the smoky scotch.

  “Take your clothes off Momma’s Boy and let’s see what you can add to the mix,” she taunted, releasing Sophia’s mouth and pinning her wrists in a steely hold, as she looked backwards at the dumbfounded Bernie.

  Ferocious fury suffused Bernie’s face with a brick red heat. “Daddy’s supposed to be gone when I’m with Mommy. What are you doing here, Daddy?” he shouted in a primitive rage. “Get off of her. Get off my Mommy,” he said, lunging forward with a well-aimed but puny punch to Maria’s kidney.

  Maria roared like a baited bear. She shook herself, stunned at the blow. Rising from the horrified Sophia, she swung hard, knocking Bernie backward with one terrific punch to the chin. His head struck the coffee table’s marble edge. He lay perfectly still, his neck snapped, his life gone. Snuffed out in an instant.

  Fourteen

  Sophia sat across from Amanda, marveling at her skeletal form. It fascinated her. She needed to keep her control with Amanda. No offhand remarks, no true feelings, and especially no criticisms. Stick to the surface. Amanda’s eyes could go from masked to murderous in seconds, leaving Sophia shrinking from her killer gaze.

  Why? Why? Why do I put up with this bullshit? The woman was unhinged. She couldn’t have a normal conversation with her. She never knew what would make her furious so she bit her tongue. Idle, safe chit chat was the order of the day. It was like being in a straitjacket. It reminded her of her mother. The son must have developed chain mail armor by now, she thought.

  Amanda’s voice, dull and heavy, overlaying the eternal simmering rage, cut through her wandering thoughts. “I don’t know what to do with him. Ten years old and he’s peeing the bed,” she bemoaned her fate.

  “I must be psychic. I was just thinking about Keith.”

  “Well if you’re so psychic, maybe you can tell me how it’s all going to end with him,” she asked, her deadly monotone smothering the air with stifling heaviness.

  I can’t even take her voice any more. It’s all control, control, control, Sophia complained inwardly.

  Amanda was looking at her expectantly, her eyes beginning to register rage.

  “If he’s suffering from enuresis, he must be anxious”, Sophia suggested. “Inordinately anxious. Take him to a therapist. How about Molly? She’s good with troubled children. Take him to a psychiatrist. Try a tricyclic antidepressant like Tofranil while you’re working through the issues.”

  “What’s he anxious about? We have everything. We’re the dynamic duo. I devote myself to him. He devotes himself to me.”

  “Maybe he’s feeling claustrophobic. Too much of just the two of you,” Sophia suggested. Sophia backed down when she saw Mount Vesuvius about to erupt. “You’re right. What could make him so anxious?” Sophia said. Facing reality was not Amanda’s strong suit.

  Amanda complained about the people with disordered personalities in her practice. She failed to see these traits in herself. The intractable, the incurable, the entrenched personality disorders stymied her not only because they were difficult, but also because she was one of them and did not realize it. She identified with them.

  The fact remained. Keith was a sacrificial lamb. Amanda’s be all and end all. Peeing the bed as a cry for help wasn’t going to help him. It would probably just make matters worse.

  “I’m going to the bathroom.” Amanda, unfolding her long scrawny body, interrupted her train of thought.

  I wonder if she throws up. Nah, she thought, looking at the remnants of Amanda’s Spartan breakfast of dry toast, egg white omelet, and black coffee. I know. She’s a hermaphrodite. I bet there’s a penis sharing space with that clitoris. She’s gone off to play with her mini-dick, she laughed inwardly.

  Had she said that aloud? The scruffy kid at the next table with the stringy long hair, nose ring, eyebrow stud, and colorfully tattooed forearms was staring at her as if she were a peculiar specimen.

  Last night came flooding back as she was contemplating Amanda as hermaphrodite. She envisioned Maria telling her about the models. Then, in an instant, the horror show.

  Lifeless Bernie, enraged Maria taking charge, and she, a helpless mess. She kept screeching with high-pitched hysteria like a clamorous whistling tea kettle on the boil, “Is he dead? He can’t be dead. Is he dead? He can’t be dead.” Until the ever efficient Maria, acting as if dealing with an unexpected dead body was all in a day’s work, slapped her still.

  “Get some clothes on,” she had commanded. “Get me a rug, not too big, not too small,” Maria ordered, checking for a pulse on Bernie’s wrist, holding a mirror up to his mouth to capture the non-existent fog of his non-existent breath.

  “Are you kidding me?” Sophia asked, staring dumbly at Maria’s methodical ministrations. “That’s what they do in the movies,” Sophia protested.

  “There’s a good reason for that. It works. Can you think of a better way to hide a body in plain sight?”

  “Bernie’s a body. I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, believe it. It’s not my fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not his fault. Maybe it’s his fault a little bit. He incited me. But not to murder,” Maria said gruffly, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Maybe it’s your fault too for heckling him, for having a pissing contest,” Sophia said, regretting the words as soon as they were out, wishing she could bite them back. She realized she was more than a little bit afraid of Maria.

  “Shut up Sophia and get me a fucking rug. Can you do that? Can you make yourself fucking useful and do that?”

  And the next thing she knew they had rolled him up in her beautiful red, blue, and gold bedroom Oriental and carted him out to Maria’s Hummer. Her mind a blank, Sophia watched Maria’s taillights receding in
to the inky night.

  “Are you all right?” Amanda asked, looming over her, her cadaverous face spooking her.

  “I’m fine. I just had a tough night.”

  “You looked like you’d seen a ghost. Come on. Let’s get out of here,” Amanda said, picking up the check.

  “My turn.” Sophia took the check out of Amanda’s hand.

  “Next week? Same time? Same place?” Amanda asked.

  “Yes,” the cowardly Sophia assented, already scheming as to how she could get out of it.

  Fifteen

  The last few strokes of the whip, whistling merrily through the air, left Jacob quivering with joy.

  “It’s like a warm balloon expanding inside of me. I feel so happy and loved when I get what I deserve, wretch that I am,” Jacob enthused. His blond hair, darkened by a profusion of sweat, plastered to his head, and his slick bony body spent, he whispered, “Come here, Mommy, and lie next to me.”

  Sophia, looking like a lubricious Batwoman in black leather thigh-high stiletto boots, a swirling ebony cape, and a shiny bat mask complete with pointy ears, threw the whip on the floor, grimacing as she massaged life back into her left arm and wrist.

  Jacob scrutinized her every move, grinning with anticipation.

  She heard the sharp intake of breath when she removed the boots, when she twitched off the cape, and when she discarded the bat mask, shaking out her carmine curls to a wild width.

  Wordlessly she approached him. He was shaking like a drowning rat. Menace was in her every move. She ripped off her bra, freeing her mammoth mammaries. She unsnapped her flimsy garter belt, flinging it aside along with her equally flimsy panties, and slowly retrieved the fallen fishnets, stripping them off her feet, her crimson painted toes flashing.

  Watching this private strip show, Jacob’s eyes glued to Sophia, he began to experience the swelling growth of his member, a state impossible to attain under ordinary sexual circumstances.

  Eyeing his incremental growth, Sophia, the fishnets wound around her fingers, crept forward slowly, allowing the anticipation to build.

  With an unexpected swift feline movement, she pounced, smothering Jacob with her breasts, inserting a nipple between his searching lips, while she wound the fishnets around his neck, choking him ever so lightly, growling, “Get inside me son. Now. You’re as hard as a rock.”

  He climbed on top of her, turning her under him, stocking still wrapped around his neck, conquering his own maternal Everest.

  She grabbed hold of the stockings from her new vantage point beneath him, continuing to squeeze his neck rhythmically.

  “Hurt me. Hurt me. Hurt me,” he begged.

  She let go of the fishnets and began pinching his buttocks viciously, bringing him to a crescendo of pleasure.

  He rolled off, a smug expression suffusing his face. You are the best, Mommy,” he said, his adoring eyes bathing her in their light. I could stroke your boobies all night. I love them. I could suck on these juicy nipples until I got milk out of them,” he said, latching on to one and then the other with his grasping fish-like lips.

  “We’re running a teeny bit late, Jacob baby,” Sophia said, disengaging deftly from him after checking the time. “Our usual in two weeks?” she asked, glad that it was Sunday and she was done for the week.

  “Can I come every week? I can’t get it up any other way. Please?”

  “Actually I have a recently vacated opening on Saturdays,” she offered, visions of a lifeless Bernie flashing through her mind’s eye. Every other Saturday, that is. We can alternate Saturdays and Sundays.”

  “Mommy, you’ve made me so happy.” He beamed, getting dressed quickly, pulling his purple polo shirt over his head, the yellow oversized polo horse and rider logo, screaming, I’m a privileged WASP, or pretending to be one, thinking Yiddish but dressing pseudo-British. He reached for his Armani wallet in order to extract ten one hundred dollar bills, which he gratefully handed over to Sophia.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Jacob said, closing the door he had partially opened.

  Sophia was already picking up, eager to get showered and head home. For a moment he was speaking to her bare backside as she leaned over to pluck the detritus of the evening’s activities from the richly carpeted floor.

  Aware of what an unflattering pose she struck, Sophia straightened hastily and turned to face him. “Yes, Jacob?” she asked, noticing his obsessive glare spotlighting her breasts. She could still feel his slithery lips on her nipples.

  “Here’s an invitation for you. I know you don’t like to discuss other clients, even if some of us know each other well. But a few of us agreed to chip in so we can have the pleasure of your company next month at our autumn equinox ball. It’s at Versace’s mansion. Funny, he’s been dead two years now and we still call it that. It’ll be absolutely spectacular and we all want you there. Please say yes.”

  She was gobsmacked. Why would they want her at their ball?

  As if reading her thoughts, Jacob blurted out, “We worship you. You’ve given us our stiffies back. You’re our goddess. Our inspiration. You don’t judge us. You’re what a mom should be like. Our very own MILF.”

  He pressed the small invitation in its heavy linen, cream colored envelope with Mommy tastefully penned on it in flowing purple ink, into her hand. Pecking her on the cheek, he took his leave.

  Sophia stood shivering in her nakedness, opening the envelope, her curiosity piqued. She never registered the particulars because the invitation was decorated with a bouquet of black roses, artfully raised, the sight of which, caused her to drop the invitation and plop her startled derriere onto the nearest chair.

  Sixteen

  Sophia was reclining in corpse pose after an hour and a half of sweating and breathing through her yoga poses. This final resting pose, usually so restorative, often evoking mystical visions such as her own mini turbaned swami in lotus position emerging from her third eye, hovering beneficent and wise over her, today treated her to morbid visions of Bernie. Bernie, incensed at Maria’s intrusion. Bernie, lying awfully still in an unnatural position with his neck snapped. Bernie, rolled up in her gorgeous Oriental. The cigarette tip glow of Maria’s taillights vanishing, taking Bernie to his final destination.

  It was impossible to lie still. She started twitching. Eyes still closed, she was startled when the teacher pressed on her shoulders, administering the brief massage.

  “Relax,” she whispered, touching her lavender infused fingers to her temples, before moving on to the next yogini.

  Sophia was hurrying to her mother’s place after yoga. Her mat in its carrier was bumping rhythmically against her. I need a gallon of that lavender oil to calm me down.

  She had not heard from Maria since the incident. What had she done with the body? She was going to stop by the massage studio. Not for a massage, but for an explanation.

  She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t eat. She could barely listen to her patients. She was drinking too much. The scene kept looping through her head. How had she made it through a whole week?

  The shabby building loomed up ahead. She breathed in the bracing sea air. Her mother’s shrill screams filled the air, drowning out the pounding surf’s rhythm.

  Sophia dropped her yoga mat and raced for the door. She pounded up the two flights of dingy stairs, stymied when she reached the familiar grimy door and found it locked.

  “Open up. Ma. Ma,” she screamed, banging her fist on the peeling rusty door.

  The door opened. The despicable Rudy, breathless with laughter, stood there in his inevitable clown costume, still grasping the door knob with one hand, while with the other he fondled a frisky white mouse complete with quivering whiskers, pink eyes, and a tiny crooked comma of a tail.

  “Meet Remy,” he said, acting like the proud owner of a prodigy. “I named him after the adorable rat in Ratatouille.”

  “Why are you standing there introducing me to a mouse when I heard Ma’s bloodcurdling shrieks in the street? What’s
going on? Where is she? Don’t just stand there like a besotted buffoon.”

  “Calm down. No need to get nasty. Ada just went ballistic when the unannounced mouse crawled out of my pocket and onto my hair. He loves to play in my hair. Even with this dumb clown hat, he finds hair on the side. Don’t you Remy?” he drooled over the tiny creature, cooing like a smitten father.

  He removed his pointy Pagliacci hat with a flourish, affording the mouse a veritable hirsute playground. He giggled uncontrollably as the mouse frolicked in his hair, his cute little rodent nose shivering with glee.

  “I tried to surprise her with this adorable guy. A client gave him to me because the kid got sick of his new toy. She went nuts. I had to stop her from climbing on to a chair. Can you imagine if she fell? And what good was that going to do her? I put him back in my pocket where he has his cheese nibbles. But she won’t stop going nuts. You came just at the right time. Maybe you can do something with her. I’m taking off.” He didn’t look back as he rushed out the door, holding on to his mouse pocket protectively.

  Sophia sighed with relief. Entering the apartment, she closed the door gently, knowing her mother would be suffering from the aftershock of a tsunami of hysteria.

  Didn’t Rudi know her at all? Maybe he knew her all too well and got a big kick out of the whole drama. He was the nasty rodent. And that clown suit was becoming his second skin.

  “Ma?” she said, entering the bedroom where Ada, dressed in the inevitable kimono, this one burnt umber with yellow dragons, was slouching on the edge of the enormous bed, which dwarfed the whole room.