“I’m involved in nothing. Nada. Bupkes. White’s the color of my stable uniform. I’ve heard about the goings on there and became curious.” He hesitated. She waited. “If you really want to know the whole story, I was hot for this local woman. Gorgeous café au lait color, sexy ghetto butt, and big juicy lips. She insisted I go there before we could get together. I don’t know. A weird initiation? A test she had for me? I was looking for her everywhere and I guess I got too close to the sacrifices. I thought they only killed one chicken, but these guys were going wild. Maybe a special occasion. Guess I got too close.” He repeated. His rueful lopsided grin didn’t ease the jealous sting straight through her heart, like a poisoned dart.
“I see. I came here for peace and quiet. Celibacy was my goal. And what do I find? A wild Australian boy who fucks like an Olympian god. Like Zeus. Voodoo on the beach. What else is in store for me?”
“Just two things.” He grabbed her and placed her on his lap, holding her firmly, his steely arms wrapped around her. “First, I’m going to tell you the truth about me. You deserve it, Sofe. Then, I’m going to fuck your brains out in that sexy clearing. A god fuck. Something to take home with you. A souvenir memory.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Sophia said, thinking of the café au lait woman and his countless opportunities at the resort.
“I may have a lot of women and talk about sex, but that’s what attracted you to me. Women love to hate a womanizer, but they want a womanizer too. You wanted me because you knew deep down I’ve had a lot of women. You knew I’d be good. And, you must admit I don’t whip it out, whip it in, wipe it, and walk away. I linger lovingly.”
She was laughing long and loud at that one. “I never heard that one before.”
“The four ‘W’s’.” He grinned, lighting up her world. “Well, it’s true.”
“I wanted you because you’re a gorgeous hunk of man.”
“I can’t deny that.” He preened, pushing out his chest and tossing his head to and fro, his glorious head of shining silver hair flowing. Sophia nearly fell off his lap.
“I wanted you because you give a hell of a massage and I wanted you to finish me off. Men get happy endings. Actually, I had a female massage therapist who offered a happy ending for fifty bucks.”
“Did you take her up on it?” Noah’s interest was ignited.
“I did. She rocked my world.”
“Do you go both ways?”
“I didn’t until then. She’s been the only one. It surprised me.”
“Why don’t we get the village girl involved?”
“Hold on a minute, lover boy. Cool your jets.”
“Come on. You went for the masseuse. Be wild.”
“I’ve never done a threesome. Never even contemplated it.”
“I don’t know if she’d go for it. I bet she would. This woman breathes sex. It’s coming out of her pores. She’d be up for anything by the looks of her.”
“Let me think about it. What’s her name?” She kissed him. She took his face in her hands and kissed him again. This time she went deep. Stiffening her tongue, she thrust her weapon against his pliant tongue, twisting and turning hers against every inch of his. She came up for air, breathing hard.”
“Natasha.” He noticed her puzzled expression. “Her mother liked Russian novels. She’s from Cuba.”
“You learned a lot about her before she sent you off to the ceremony.”
“We had a long talk. Hey, Sofe,” he was enclosing her voluminous breasts from behind, rubbing vigorously, heading for the hard nipples.
“Yes?” she whispered, warming his ear with her damp breath.
“You’re thinking about it already. It’s turning you on.”
“Maybe it is.” She slid off his lap and pulled him on to the plush carpeting. “Let’s see just how turned on I am.”
Noah lowered himself down to her pussy, parting the red crinkly bush. “She might do a better job than me down under. She has the same equipment,” he said. This was his final bit of persuasion before submerging his face and putting his mouth and tongue to work. He expertly licked, sucked, and nibbled, relentless in his mission to bring her to orgasm. Listening to her accelerating groans of ecstasy, he knew he didn’t have long to wait. Her raucous finale inspired him to enter her fast with no fanfare, working for climax number two. They came together, filling the room with cries and whoops of victory.
“Looks like the threesome idea inspired you too,” Sophia murmured, replete with carnal satisfaction, rolling away from Noah to loll on the soft rug.
“That it did. That it did.” He sighed happily. “I’m a lucky man, Sofe. You’re such a good fuck.” He curled a strand of her wild red mop repetitively with his fingers, thinking about her pubic hair.
“I want to believe you. Now let’s move to the bed and talk, big boy.” When he stood, she gazed fondly at his substantial dick, lying limp, resting between two firm balls amid a spray of fine blond pubic hair. He dyes his hair, she thought, in passing. She watched him move. He brought the champagne and flutes to the nightstand, patting the bed, asking her to come to it.
“You’ve anesthetized me. I can’t move. You’ll have to help me up.”
“You just want another good look at this bad boy coming towards you,” he said, waving his cock. He pulled her upright and smacked a rounded buttock resoundingly when she walked towards the bed, sending a shock wave of sexual stirring to her groin.
“Ooh. That hurt. But in a good way.” She rubbed her stinging cheek.
Noah propped up their pillows, replenished their flutes, and handed one to Sophia.
“Now you can tell me the second thing.”
“What?” Noah asked, downing his champagne and pouring a final glass.
“You said you wanted to fuck me in the magic clearing again and that you’d tell me the truth about yourself,” Sophia urged.
“Right. The truth. The truth shall set you free. The naked truth. First, I need some food, more of this fun stuff, maybe with some vodka thrown in, if you have it. Has the anesthesia worn off?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “I’ll be right back.”
While she went off to raid the well-stocked fridge, he put on his drawstring pants and retrieved her robe.
Sophia returned with two platters, one for meats and caviar and one for everything vegetarian. Four types of cheeses, brie, stilton, smoked Gouda, and aged Irish cheddar, three types of crackers, grapes and strawberries loaded down one platter. Cold cuts, Sandy Lane’s irresistible sourdough bread, pickles, and caviar with sour cream and blinis loaded down the other. She placed the platters on the bed. Local conch salad, similar to ceviche, was also on offer. She returned with an ice-cold bottle of Stolichnaya and a cool bottle of Bollinger.
Once Sophia was ensconced on the bed with a Stoli fortified flute of Bollinger in one hand and a large wheat cracker piled high with brie in the other, she turned to Noah and once again asked for the truth.
“The truth? You can’t handle the truth,” Noah wisecracked, quoting Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men.
“Enough evasion,” Sophia said, feeding Noah a caviar infused blini and gently brushing away a few tiny black eggs from his lower lip before she held his glass to his lips, waiting for him to sip before handing him the flute.
He speared a pickle with his fork and began. “I’m not an Aussie and my hair’s not this unique shade of gray. I’m a blond surfer from LA. Venice Beach to be exact. I’m that poor little rich boy, who did grow up poor and then Pa ended up with scads of money, but no happiness. My dad, was a struggling artist, who had no time for me or Mamma once he struck it big. She supported him. She worked her ass off for him. Then he talked her into risking twenty thousand dollars on marketing, aggressive PR. Twenty fucking thousand dollars and she was so into him, she said yes. And here’s the kicker. It worked. Some New York style gallery picked him up. Los Angelinos love to hate New Yorkers. But, they loved him. It made the gallery. De Koonig meets Chagall
. Can you imagine a more horrid mess made of two mismatched styles? Ugly meets beautiful. Clunky meets delicate. Realism meets fantasy. Yuck.” He sank back on the pillows, disgust written all over his face.
“Wasn’t that a good time, though? The big risk paid off? They lived happily ever after? Rolling in dough and fame?”
“Hah,” he spat out. Mamma found out he was fucking the gallery owner. A cool androgynous blonde, who wore only black overalls and white geisha face make up. She weighed about a hundred pounds. Mamma was a voluptuous redhead. She found out about the girlfriend. There were many others. He was a mean fucker. Once he was rich, he liked to rub my mother’s face in his promiscuity. Flaunting conquests. Sometimes he’d bring a date to dinner, pretending she was a business associate. The tight dress, the longing glances, and the footsie under the table gave it all away.
“How could your mom handle it?”
“She couldn’t. Although, looking back on it, she must have been a masochist. She was into self-loathing. She used to cut herself. She drank too much and took a lot of pills. She killed herself when I was fifteen. Overdosed.”
“Poor Noah.”
“I didn’t feel a thing. They had both ignored me for so long. I didn’t know how to feel.”
“What happened to you? Did you live with your dad?”
“No. He’d moved on to another androgynous babe. Maybe he was queer. My aunt Gabrielle, Mamma’s sister took me in. She had no kids and a nasty husband who travelled a lot for work. Guess they both liked awful men.”
“What was that like?” Sophia got up to refill his glass, adding a shot of Stoli. She stroked his hair, feeling compassion for this poor soul. Her psychologist psyche had kicked in full force.
“Weird. I once watched her undress. She had red hair too like Mamma and like you. Same big tits and ass too.” He stopped and looked at her as if he hadn’t really noticed her before. “She was back from a date. She cheated on Mister Monster every chance she got. Anyway, she was peeling off her stockings, which she unhooked from a garter belt. She had on an old fashioned mint green garter belt. I thought I was watching an old movie. Then off came the mint green silky slip, the mint green see-through bra, and the mint green boxy, fancy panties. She still had the garter belt on with the dangling pieces. Even her bed spread was green. Forest green. I’m getting hard just thinking about it. Her big luscious boobs with the fat nipples bouncing out of her bra. Just like that. One, two. Her red pubic bush, lighter than the hair on her head, framed in green silk, shining, guarding that sweet pussy.”
“Sounds like you had her.” Sophia was aroused, but didn’t want to admit it.
“Oh, I had her all right. She saw me watching and she grabbed me by my stiff cock, gave my pubic hair a good tug, and trundled me onto that green spread. She introduced me to sex right then and there.”
Sophia watched the tip of his fat, red tongue run a slow circuit around his lips, leaving them glistening. Her nipples came to full attention. Her groin was telegraphing her brain to grab that hard member, which she had watched swelling to maximum fullness through his thin cotton drawstrings. Instead, she reined herself in and said, “That was sexual abuse.”
“Sexual abuse my ass. That’s a good one, Sofe. It was a dream, I didn’t even know I had, come true. All her experience. Until, I couldn’t take it anymore. After a while, she was smothering me. Once I had a girlfriend, she lost interest and kicked me out. I moved in with the girlfriend. She was four years older. So much for family.”
“What happened to dad and you?” Sophia was stroking his bare, smooth chest, making feathery circles with her left hand, keeping it occupied and away from pulling her ear.
Noah sneered. “Pa was too busy pretending he liked girls. I don’t know if auntie told him anything. After Mamma died, I don’t think they talked. Maybe I was paranoid. Or, maybe I didn’t want to think he cared so little for me for no good reason. At least fucking my aunt was cause for mean spiritedness. He cut me off with fifty thousand. And that was that. Good bye, Pa.”
“So why the fake Aussie bit?” Sophia asked.
“The women love it. And the weird gray hair. It makes me special. Blonde surfers are a dime a dozen.”
“Aah. Clever boy.” Gigolo skunk, she thought.
“You loved it.”
“I did. I did.”
“Sofe, I’ve got to get going. We don’t have much time. What do you say to tomorrow in the clearing? You, Natasha, and me. We’ll heat up the night.”
“Okay. I can’t refuse you, lover boy. You make me so hot.”
Noah’s face transformed with a sunny grin. He slid off the busy bed, came around to Sophia, took the glass out of her hand, and enflamed her with a languid tongue kiss.
He already had the gleaming door open when Sophia asked, “How do you know Natasha wants to make it, if you never saw her at the ritual?”
He turned around, ready to dart off, “Oh, trust me. I know. Don’t worry about a thing, silly fussbudget.” And he was gone.
Forty Eight
Mathilde and Ada were alone. With the object of their desire gone, kibitzing with the other alter kackers on a bench on the beach, they were not at war for the moment. They were enjoying a ceasefire. They strolled peacefully towards Meridian where the Holocaust Museum sat in all its desolate glory. The designated address coincided with the war years, 1933-1945 Meridian Avenue. Gravely symbolic. Yet, many town elders nixed erecting such a morbid museum in an area renowned for Sun and Fun. Gloom means doom, they predicted. Why, the beach was steps away. The remembrance group won out, victorious because of the idea that it was bashert, fated because of the potential address.
A captivating sculpture graced the museum’s forecourt. The unique four story high, green bronze supplicating hand, reaching to the heavens, supported by an upper arm crawling with a myriad of attenuated, starving, desperate men, women, and children, impossibly lifelike, was an eye-opener and a conversation-stopper. It dominated the space. Go no further and still feel the impact, the crushing truth of man’s inhumanity to man. The Sculpture of Love and Anguish.
Mathilde and Ada, in companionable silence, looking like a female Laurel and Hardy sans the bowler hats, approached the outstretched arm slowly. They came here many times on their own to remember. However, this was a first. Mathilde and Ada together. Would that change their experience? The sculpture, the calm water and water lilies, the descending entrance to Hell, and all the horror within, a pale shadow of the experienced nightmares, yet real enough to both reassure and re-terrify them every time. They were not alone and they were the survivors. They didn’t talk about their experiences often, but they did not want to forget.
Mathilde, miniscule at the base of the hand, stopped and addressed Ada. “Humph. Where’s the love? All I see is anguish,” she said, her screech softened by her contemplative mood.
“He made it with love. Treister, the sculptor. It hypnotizes me every time. Did you go to the opening ceremony? Over nine years ago now. Elie Weisel talked. A beautiful man. He’s a voice for us.”
“No. I wasn’t here yet. I see suffering. Tsouris. The hand is reaching up to der Obishter, but no one is watching. Everyone is turning away. Where’s the love? Where’s God? Nobody loved us. Not the Europeans. Not the Americans. Not God. Nobody. We went to the slaughter house like animals. By the millions. Six million.”
“Max and I were still together nine years ago in February. We were here together to remember, to listen to Elie Weisel remembering, to see the arm reaching to the sky. We ended it later that year. It’s the anniversary this month.”
“You didn’t love each other?”
“It’s not that. We couldn’t get along. We fought about everything, big and small. I couldn’t take it anymore. There was an emptiness between us. It kept growing bigger. Then it was like a tree split by lightning. It’s when I couldn’t sing anymore. I was suffocating. Singing is my life since I was a little girl. I couldn’t sleep. I even couldn’t eat near the end. It had to
be.”
“And now?” Mathilde’s eyes radiated jealousy.
“Now it’s better. We’re good friends for a long time, but we can’t be together.” Ada shrugged her philosophical shrug.
“Now that Rudy is gone. Are you lonely?” Mathilde’s laser glare wanted to reach into Ada’s brain, expose her innermost thoughts.
“Of course, I’m lonely. Max is not Rudy. Rudy and I had something special.”
“What about sex? Do you miss it with Max?” Mathilde stepped closer to Ada, invading her personal space, breathing Wolfie’s briny tuna salad all over her.
Ada backed up. She couldn’t resist leaving the possibility open, needling Mathilde. “Certain things a woman never talks about.” She arched her shapely eyebrows and tilted her head. A woman of mystery.
Mathilde restrained herself from stamping her feet in hot frustration. She changed the subject abruptly. “Do you think you could climb up to the fingers? Do you remember the climbing camp training? Nicht einfach. You’re older and fatter. Much older and much fatter.” Mathilde’s hawkish eyes glowed with a foul malignancy.
Mathilde caught Ada, who had been mesmerized by the arm once again, off-guard with her characteristic nonsensical conversation shifts. She drew irrelevant ideas and thoughts out of the air. Did she ever tell Mathilde about her climbing? She didn’t remember. Ada shrugged. “Bist du in ganzen ferruckt? Who thinks of climbing up the Holocaust arm? Where do your meshuggene ideas come from?” Ada faced Mathilde, her bulk casting a shadow over her. Was the war back on? Already? Maybe she could have Max back. They couldn’t share. That was for sure. Was he worth fighting for? There were plenty of faygeleh eager to take Rudy’s place. But, no. She was mourning Rudy. No one could take his place. Not now. Not yet. Ta was so much more attractive as a single man with a girlfriend. So manly, so firm. She shivered. Good sex at their age. Go figure. She was so confused.
“You’re not listening to me,” Mathilde said, pouting petulantly.
Time's Harlot: The Perils of Attraction, Seduction, and Desire Page 20