by KT Morrison
“What?” he asked her, catching her staring at him while he was buttoning up.
She shook her head, tried to bring reality home again. “You know what Jess wants? I have to go...I can’t help you find it...”
“I have that picture on my phone. Some religious ark or something. I’ll find it...”
“How do I look?” she said, twirling for him.
“Fucking incredible,” he told her.
“No, seriously, Max...any telltale signs?”
“No...” he said, frowning and looking her up and down. “Your hair is messy...”
She smoothed it back, took her elastic out and redid her ponytail. “My legs, Max. Am I showing...signs? ...”
“Oh Maggie,” he said, reeling at the realization of what she was asking him. He looked at her legs carefully all over and she felt strangely naked and exposed. Tightened her nipples right up again.
“Your skin went all goose bumps,” he said.
“I know,” she said. She crossed an arm over her chest under her poncho, “I’m still so...horny...”
He took her in his arms and kissed her again.
She whispered, “Feel my heart.”
He put his hand on her chest and she said, “Feel how fast it's beating?”
“You make my heart go crazy too, Maggie. Why...why do you have to leave?”
She laughed, “I’m buying my wedding dress.”
He groaned. There was no argument. They were going to be married. She needed a dress. Her mother would be waiting. You did not want to let Carol down. Max wasn’t invited. This was mother and daughter as weird as that was.
“There’s no way around it, Max.”
They scrambled out of the prop room and trotted back the way they came. Back at the Jeep, Maggie tossed him the key to the theater. They’d spotted the ark that Jess needed, but they didn’t have time to lug it out of the prop room. He’d have to return for it.
Maggie’s luggage was simple and unpretentious, a plain black nylon bag with a few items of clothing she needed. Everything else she might need would be at home. The bag was slung over his shoulder and Maggie grew noticeably upset when she saw the time on her phone read 1 P.M.
They ran to the front of the building, up a flight of stairs, under the yellow leaves of low-hanging branches. He yelled to her it wouldn’t leave on the nose. Told her not to worry. He hated to see her upset.
When they emerged from the path and out to the front dooryard of the theater they saw the big, blue, double-decker bus closing its doors. The motor charged high diesel revs as the driver prepared to lurch out onto University Lane.
“No, no, no,” he heard her whine with panic.
Accelerating past her, he threw his body against the side of the bus and slapped at the door as frantically, but as politely, as he could. The brakes hissed, the bus jerked. When the doors scissored open, he went straight to apologies.
“Sorry, sorry, so sorry.” The bus driver’s angry face stared down, but he was disarmed. With a wave, Max also apologized to the passengers he could see peering down on him from the seats near the front.
When he turned, he saw his poor Maggie, face flushed red with worry and embarrassment, hands clasped together at her front, thin fingers looped through the handles of her luggage.
“Aww,” he couldn’t help a cooing of affection for his little girl. He waved her to him and she stepped down off the curb. Putting his arms around her, he said, “It’s okay, we made it on time. It’s okay.”
She nodded, her chin poking him in his collar. Tears were briskly wiped from her cheeks as they pulled back, and Maggie averted her eyes. He kissed her forehead. “I got you here in time. It’s okay.”
“Thanks, Maxy,” she said softly, and she kissed him under his chin.
“I wish we had more time,” he sighed. “I wish you didn’t have to leave.” Mostly though he wished they hadn’t done what they did right before she was to leave. In the sober resolve of his refractory period, he wished they had displayed more discretion. Somehow as their plan to watch her cheat came hastily, and dirtily, together there was no consideration of pragmatism. Once he had the visual in his mind of her and Jay together, pretending she was cheating, his belly, his balls, were steam driven engines being fed the fieriest coal. Once the talk had begun his lust was hurtling at breakneck speeds. Now it was done, and he was feeling some fear...not some fear, but honestly scared...that she was leaving.
Not that he didn’t trust her, just he didn’t want to be without her.
“Sorry,” she said over his shoulder, toward the driver. “We got lost, we ended up behind the building.”
Then into his ear, she said, “Maxy, I better go.”
“Okay,” he murmured, his turn now to feel red-faced, eyes welling with potential tears. “I’m going to miss you.”
“It’s just a few days,” she said weakly.
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said, a smile tugged at her clamped and worried mouth.
They kissed one more time and he let her go from his tight grip. Climbing the stairs up into the big bus he watched her bare legs work. Saw up her skirt the exact right amount to surge excited life back into his tortured penis. A sudden, strong urge to jerk off in the Jeep hit him, but he'd told her he wouldn’t do that.
Then she was up, wiggling her fingers to him in a timid wave and the driver shut the doors between them. The motor roared, dust kicked up from under it, and he watched the behemoth lumber out to the road, signal left, merge onto University Lane.
He waved and smiled, but the windows were tinted jet black and he couldn’t see a soul inside.
Somewhere near Satans Kingdom, the bus snaking the 63 alongside the Connecticut River, she began to relax, and the tightness that had gripped her began to loosen.
While it was hot, what they had done worked away at her as she sat watching Vermont’s countryside pass by the glazed windows. When hatching this plot with Max, the idea that she would have to sit in public with her ‘dirtied snatch’ made her wild inside. Now she was doing it. The reality was not sexy.
She was sitting in a reserved seat, on the bus’s upper deck, facing two strangers, another one at her left. A narrow rubber table with cup holders stood between them on two tall aluminum legs. The man sitting next to her was middle-aged, buttoned-up, woven leather belt with his cellphone holster clipped to it. He was a dad. Across from her, on the left, was a woman who would be someone’s grandmother. Head kept down, she read a Danielle Steele novel so dog-eared Maggie was convinced she had bought it at a garage sale. Every once in a while her eyes would dart up and look at her over her wire-rimmed glasses and they would smile. Directly across from her was a guy about her age, heavyset, wearing all black despite the sunny weather. Tinny music bashed from his headphones while he read a Superboy comic. Every once in a while their feet would touch.
This morning she had sex with two different men. Both of them had ejaculated inside her. One of them had ejaculated twice. Inside her, and also all over her thighs and knees. The idea that she’d been sprayed with so much semen had begun to turn her stomach a little, and being in proximity with these relatively innocent and upstanding citizens had worked a nauseous bolus up from the acid of her stomach, higher and higher til it was wedged very close to her esophagus, somewhere near her collarbone.
Playing at her neck, her fingertips grazed along, trying to ease away some of the discomfort. Occasionally, a tingling, green wave washed over her. Her neck would go hot and wet and she thought she would have to go to the bathroom and vomit.
Every time one of them looked at her she recoiled. So frightened they would see her filth. Or her lovers’ filth. Some evidence of the absolutely, terrifyingly, dirty things she’d done this morning. Her legs were clamped so tightly together that even in the cool climate-controlled air of the bus she was hot and clammy, every slight movement reminding her with a waft of fresh cold air on the dampness the tight seal had created.
> It was somewhere after the Massachusetts border, before Satans Kingdom, she couldn't take it anymore. She excused herself (not that any of the passengers she sat with cared), and went to the bathroom. Her reflection was ghastly. Instead of feeling sad and sick, feeling tragic and shameful, she chuckled. Brightened at watching her face smiling, the smile went wider. It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that bad at all. The things they did, they did by will. Everyone wanted it. Everyone was in on it. Except for Jay, she supposed. Though he got what he wanted. Didn’t know he was being watched, but he got what he wanted. Boy, those things he said...
She balled up wads of rough brown paper, wet it with soap and scrubbed her legs, wiped at her folds gently. Took more paper, dried herself, dried her sex very well. Laughed at the funny faces she was making as she scrubbed, bent to the side with her hand stuffed up under her skirt. Having fun with it chased some of the sickness away and by the time she returned to her seat that lump in her throat that had threatened to launch her breakfast up and out of her crying mouth had disappeared. The sun was shining, she felt physically satisfied. She did homework.
8
Transit
Thursday, October 5th
Using the keys Jesse had given Maggie, he let himself back into the theater, worked his way across the stage, went along to the prop room.
The fluorescent light buzzed overhead still, the flicker gone with the lights warm. Looking down at the spot where he and Maggie had sex he gave a little laugh. Right at the doorway. Room full of props to fuck on, they couldn’t wait, did it right up against the door they’d closed behind them.
In the prop room, there were all sorts of things that had been built for performances through the years. Near the back sat a box the size of a steamer trunk. It had handles on both ends, long wooden poles that reached out from the sides. It was supposed to be the Ark of the Covenant or something; vaguely holy looking, with gilded edges and drawn symbols. It was light, only made to look heavy. Still, with the long poles that sprouted from either end, the thing proved awkward to get down the hall once he passed the stage. Got it there without breaking it, stuffed it in the Jeep, but had to pull the roof back for it to fit. Jesse was lucky it was a nice day.
A funny warmth spread through him as he inched through university traffic, making him heavy, sinking him into the Jeep’s bouncy bucket seat. A warm satisfaction. Sore from his workout, but rewarded with some muscular tightness, sexually charged and simultaneously drained. Satiated maybe. Satiated and yet hungry for his next meal. Sunglasses on, top down on the Jeep, he eyed girls as they walked along the paths by the roadside. So many young hot girls and yet, in his first year, he’d found the gem. Long legs in jeans, skirts, shorts even on this warm fall day. He’d got his share in high school. The girls were fun to look at and a good chunk of them might be half-decent in bed.
Young Max Milton however, one fine fall evening almost three years ago, met a beautiful, bubbly, Asian girl, and it was frankly love at first sight. In his first two months at Farmingham he’d only had sex with one college girl but after he met Maggie, he didn’t want anyone else. She was smart, talented, demure yet uninhibited in bed, she was kind, she was wealthy. Now it turned out she was as dark as he was, as into the things that he would never have asked for in his life as he was. Her sexual gifts to him were enormous. None of the girls on the street could hold a match to his fiancée. All she’d needed was a gentle pushing.
It was out of Brattleboro, somewhere an hour down the densely forested road into the mountains that his warmth was washed out by a cold dread. Working over all that happened during their morning his heart began to race. Not in a good way. The tips of his fingers tingled and his breaths came fast like he was hyperventilating. There were no cars around so he pulled to the gravel shoulder and stopped. He gripped the wheel, focused his mind on what the panic was. He was awash with shame and regret...and something else. It was the something else that was driving his heart faster and faster.
Fear. It was fear he had.
“Shit, Maggie,” he hissed into the Jeep. Shit. He’d told her to jerk off a stranger. Dirty talk. Dirty talk when his cock was hard and inside her and he was filled with bubbling lust at the awful thing they had done together. Now in the daylight, sitting alone without her, he was panicking. He didn’t want that. It was a sexy thought, but he didn’t really want that. She had to know. She knew it was dirty talk, right?
But did she? What were the rules these days Maxy-boy? You let her fuck the hottest guy on the planet. Let her fuck your panty-melting best friend. Those were things that should just be dirty talk. But they were bitter reality now.
A truck loaded with timber roared by and buffeted the Jeep, the interior swirling with dust and grit. The freight train sound jangled his nerves, made his heart pound even more furiously.
With the radio not working he had his phone tucked into the cup holder and one earbud stuck in an ear. Yanking it out, he gathered up his phone and shot her off a text. He waited but no reply came. He sent another.
She knew better. She wouldn’t do that. Maggie was no slut, not for real.
Not til you came along, Max.
He put the Jeep back in first, let it out and rolled back onto the Number 9, headed for Farmingham.
Not far from the city she woke from a dreamy nap. The view outside of the window had changed from lush greenery to brick-faced Boston outskirts. Looking around groggily she saw not much had changed with her compatriots. The grandmother across from her was further into her book, the dad typed away on an old Thinkpad, the guy from comicon was finished his Superboy and now he sat listening to his music with his arms crossed.
Her mouth was dry, so she licked her lips. She had drooled it would seem, and she wiped at her chin. Superboy gazed absently downward, and she followed to see her bare legs. The skirt had ridden up while she slumped sleepily and the hem slipped above mid-thigh. Squirming back with haste, her eyes went wide at the thought that her sex could have been revealed. It was very close.
It should be arousing—if she and Max were dirty-talking she would have been excited at the prospect. Two things: maybe she needed Max present as a witness, or perhaps she needed a more provocative voyeur. This guy with his wispy mustache, while not reprehensible, did not set her on fire.
Her iPad sat on the table, face up, screen blank, but she did not remember putting it there. Last thing she remembered she was studying, reading about Toulouse-Lautrec, the next she’s waking with her pussy almost bared and drool coming out of her mouth. How the mighty have fallen. She retrieved the iPad, brought it to life, saw messages from her Max.
Max: Don’t do it, Maggie. You know that was dirty talk.
Don’t do what? What was he talking about?
Max: Maggie. Seriously.
She looked out the window, frowning, trying to imagine what he was freaked out about. It hit her.
Jerk off a stranger, Maggie.
As if she would do that. Her Max was freaking out now, and it was pretty amusing. Half an hour after those two texts he had texted again.
Max: Okay. You’re being funny. ha ha
This one made her laugh silently, hard enough that her shoulders began to shake. It would be so easy to respond with, Ha ha, get real! Or, I know, I love you, miss you already, Maxy! Instead, with a wicked smile, she slipped her iPad into her black bag under her seat and watched the city go by. They were almost at the train station.
She bought a Summer’s Eve douche at the South Station drugstore in Boston. What had her life become?
Then, in another effort to salvage some of her dignity, she slipped into the ladies room before her train arrived and put some goddamn panties on. But on the platform, while waiting for the train to Rhode Island, she saw a hunk.
He wore a suit in Glen plaid, shining caramel brogues, a real live flower in his lapel. He had tanned skin and a young, rugged face; his hair was perfect, short back and sides, top combed back, thick and wavy, chestnut brown with blonde highlights
from the sun. He stood reading a New York Times held in one hand, a leather briefcase that matched his shoes in the other. The kind of young man every woman on this platform was giving furtive looks.
Checking her messages on her phone—pretending to—she snapped a picture of him.
Now she texted Max.
Maggie: Come on, Max. Don’t back out. It’s so hot. Imagine it
She tucked her phone in her pocket, laughing to herself.
She caught the hunk’s eye now, and he looked her up and down, smiled and nodded. A little thrill whipped through her.
Now, were she to wake and find him staring at her accidentally exposed vagina the effect would definitely be different. What would that have been like? Deathly embarrassing, Maggie, be honest. Truth was, had she woken, saw him staring at her between her legs she would have been mortified. He was almost too sexy.
What if he smiled and nodded after he'd seen her pussy? Hmmm? That was interesting. Suppose she was embarrassed and yet he consoled her. God, maybe he would hold her gaze while he reached over and one of those masculine, tanned hands gently lowered her skirt so it sat where a lady’s skirt should sit. Her hand went to her mouth to cover her ridiculous smile, and she shied away from the hunk.
When the train arrived she purposely got herself into a different car.
Never in her life had she a one-night stand. Or a tryst. Never had sex with a stranger. That was something that hadn't interested her. Other girls had talked about it. Not to her, but it was something she couldn't escape overhearing. The idea of being with a stranger was scary. That handsome man on the platform was drop-dead gorgeous, but what if he was a weirdo? Didn't look like a weirdo, did he? Nope. He looked smart and successful, like he knew what he was doing in the boardroom and the bedroom. Like he might discipline her, make her bend to his sexual will.