The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes

by Linda Alvarez

  There was a morning chill in the air. My nipples rose to their points under my white shirtdress. I looked up and noticed an old man was looking down into my open neckline. I smiled, and he gave me a salacious grimace in return.

  Carrer de Carme, 24. That’s where my David lived. It was a busy side street off la Rambla in the Arab-dominated ghetto of el Raval. The neighbourhood was a mix of strange Old- World seedy and pop bohemian artsy. It was undergoing its predictable gentrification. David had taken the inheritance his father left him and bought him self the coveted top floor of an architecturally impressive, but structurally dilapidated building. “This is it.” He grinned, breathing hard through his teeth.

  The building was called La India, and it had gargoyles and faces of ominous indigenous women skimming its rooftop. We walked into the cool of the building’s open marbled lobby, past two sets of pillared columns and into a small metallic elevator-made-for-two hidden behind an antique glass door.

  We were finally alone, nose to nose in the tiny elevator that smelled of days of accumulated sweat. I just stood there staring at him, expressionless from nerves. David shoved his hands up my dress. He slipped his hand into my underwear and cupped my wet sex. He grazed my clitoris with his fingers. I thought he was going to take me right there. His hardness was pressing up against me. We kissed furiously as the mechanical gears roared and until the elevator car jumped, signifying that we had landed. David removed his fingers from my insides and licked them clean. “We ’re here.”

  We tumbled out of the elevator into a dark, windowless hallway with a floor of large black-and-white squares of ceramic. There were only two doors on each floor, and David’s apartment was behind the big wooden one on our left with an old metallic lion’s head knocker in its centre. Once he turned the thick golden key he took out of his pocket, I heard a click, and he pushed it open.

  In an instant, all of Barcelona’s splendid light poured on to us through the uncurtained windows with such grandeur it was like we had been doused with a bucket of golden honey. He rolled my suit case to the side and welcomed me. “You ’re home.”

  In that light, I swear he freaking shimmered. His black waves of hair painted with rays of white light. He’d be beautiful, even old.

  Light was important for David and his writing life, to psychically be away from the city’s dark and noisy streets below. I squinted, feeling a headache coming on. I desired my sunglasses.

  “Wow ” was all I could say. Some sort of low-grade aphasia had hit me with the jetlag setting in. And there was so much to absorb about David’s world without me.

  He took my hand and walked me through the long hallway of his railroad apartment. The floors were a swirling mosaic of salmons, browns and greens. Their florid hues had faded and veiny cracks of time now intermixed with their patterns instead. We passed sparsely furnished parlour rooms with white-curtained French doors. There were one-person guest beds and wooden bookshelves along with antique desks with mismatched chairs scattered throughout.

  In one of those rooms, a medium-sized suitcase and a pair of men’s fancy dress shoes sat beside the bed. The shoes were a shiny dark-brown leather, Italian, too elegant to be David’s. Feeling my stomach drop, I intuited they had to have been Sergi’s. I chose to re main silent. I didn’t want to ruin our first moments. I decided to pretend I didn’t notice them.

  He showed me to our bedroom and told me to settle in. It was a large white room, with a balcony facing an interior courtyard where neighbouring families hung out their underwear to dry. I stepped on to it and looked down. I noticed there was a black-haired Barbie doll, her stiff arms raised over her head, lying naked on the cement. A small child tiring of her must have tossed her out the window, wondering if she could fly.

  I looked around his bedroom. His style was minimalist, mostly from lack of need. A queen-size bed, covered in white sheets and a down comforter contrasted a dark wood chest of drawers, and two matching night tables. He had a bottle of water propped up on his nightstand and book casually left open. Nothing was out of place, everything had a purpose. He must have thought my place was a tornado disaster area.

  “You should eat something,” he said, in a tone that seemed sud denly formal.

  His words startled me. I realized I was standing there dissecting it all in silence.

  “I’d rather eat you,” I said playfully, turning to face him. I stepped over to him, grabbed his crotch, and kissed his neck, taking in his Mediterranean blend of olive soap and tobacco smell.

  “Don’t,” he said, unhooking my hands and placing them at my sides. His eyes darted back and forth in thought. All the sexual energy from before had been drained from the room.

  “Don’t what?” I said.

  “Later, Anna.” He said it in the way a woman might if she had a headache.

  “Fine,” I said, audibly pissed.

  “We have all the time in the world to make love.”

  He always said that. “Hacer el amor” instead of follar, fuck, which I liked to say now. Like in the Almodóvar movies. He liked to correct me on this, disapproving of my crude Spanish. “We don’t fuck Anna, we make love,” he’d say with a smile.

  I always rolled my eyes at this. The thought of making love all the time killed the mood.

  “Let’s put some food into you, OK? I pre-prepared our lunch.”

  Though he was going through the good host’s manual step by step, he was still acting a little weird. I started to suspect he had second thoughts about me coming.

  “I’ll freshen up then.” My voice came out a note higher than usual.

  I turned to fidget blindly with the zipper of my suitcase, his eyes still on me. And just as that feeling of exasperation of being in this unknown place was rising, the hot tears ready to roll, David came up behind me and hugged my bent body, clasping his hands over my uterus. “I’m so happy you’re here,” he whispered in my ear.

  Once he left the room, I went into the bathroom and unpacked my toiletry bag. There was a stale smell of old plumbing that turned my stomach, and I breathed through my mouth instead. Con fronting my appearance in the mirror, I got back what I expected to see. I was green from a week’s worth of little sleep and anxiety.

  After brushing my teeth with my Tom’s of Maine mint toothpaste (David teased me about it, calling me nature chica), I dabbed on some lipstick and debated which of David’s fragrances to put on to liven me up. Lavendar, Vetiver, Musk, Figuer. The latter was a high-end French cologne that smelled of dirt and figs. I remember thinking this was funny. Figa, in Italian, is slang for pussy. I hadn’t known him to be a perfume wearer in New York. I went for the Figuer, in tribute to its symbolism.

  Finished with my mild grooming, I went back into the hallway and walked towards the sound of banging dishes in the kitchen. On the way, I saw what seemed to be his study. I decided to dip into it before re-encountering him so soon.

  On an old rickety side table adjacent to a big beige comfy reading chair sat a pair of framed photographs, the only ones I had seen in the house so far. One was of a thin, bearded man in a dress shirt and high-waisted slacks. He was standing in front of a bookstore with a proud look on his face. It was almost a smirk. It had to be his father.

  Then there was the other photo. Two twenty-something boys in matching white T-shirts and jeans laughed hysterically, tears running down their faces, with their arms tightly enwound around each other’s waists. Sergi and David, long haired and tanned, posing with that barely perceptible femininity in their stance that only I could clearly see. Sergi towered over David, who was nestled into the crevice of his armpit. Physically, Sergi was way more striking than David had ever suggested in his descriptions. And it was obvious he held the reins.

  From what I gathered, Sergi was David’s ringleader, his pimp. David was always under his tutelage in writing and when it came to getting laid. Throughout their teens and twenties they’d date the same women, bed them together, and get off on the group sex. Watching the other pump. L
ending a generous hand, patting each other’s backsides in brotherly support. I never had the nerve to ask David if they’d engage each other during these threesomes.

  An unwanted vision of David’s thin lips around Sergi’s cock appeared in my head. My hands clamped up around the edges of the cold wood frame, my heart beat faster in panic. I wanted to throw the photo against the wall and smash their big smiles to pieces. Why the hell was I jealous of a man? What did he have that I didn’t? I thought I already knew the answer.

  “Anna, come to the balcony,” David called out from a distance. The balcony spread along the back end of his apartment so you could enter it from various parts of the house: from his bedroom, the study, or from the hallway. He had quite a spread of Spanish culinary clichés awaiting me: olives, jamón serrano, Manchego cheese, grilled squid, tortilla española.

  “You doing OK?” he asked as I stepped out into the dry, yellow sun. A comic vroom vroom of a motor scooter from the side street below answered his question before I could.

  “Sure. Just feeling a little woozy. Probably hunger.”

  It was somewhere in the early after noon, and David was pouring us glasses of full-bodied Rioja. I could still feel his tension and I was grateful for the upcoming intoxication.

  He dragged out a metal lawn chair for me to sit down in and slowly, as if with arthritis, eased himself into his seat. The sky was monochromatically blue and the sun’s rays were penetrating my scalp. David had his sunglasses on so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could tell his wheels were turning; he was pushing out his mouth in thought.

  It was the quiet before the storm.

  “So we’re not alone, huh?” I ventured first. His silence was irritating me.

  He sighed a sigh that weighed half his entire body weight. “Yes, Anna. I wanted to tell you beforehand, but I didn’t want you to rearrange your plans or decide not to come or something crazy.”

  “Sergi’s here, I know,” I said.

  David reached for his glass and took a swig. I reached for one of his Lucky Strikes, focusing on the bomb target symbol on its packaging. Neither of us had touched the food.

  “Listen, I want you to meet him. He’s part of my past. Yes, he’s been a pain in the ass all his life, but he’s family and I can’t shut my door on him. He’s harmless. God, why do you hate him so much?” His voice was whinier than usual. He looked at me, his upper lip in a curl, his mouth slightly ajar. I had never seen him look so annoyed, so nervous.

  Then he put his head down, resting his elbows on his splayed knees, staring at the ground. He looked defeated. I caught a whiff of the Manchego.

  I have to confess that his weakness gave me a whole new sense of strength. Sergi was obviously a touchy topic, and David was beginning to seem half the man I fell for in New York.

  “Listen David,” I said calmly, using my best phone operator voice. I was good at concealing the pain when I had to. “I thought we had agreed that he was going to stay somewhere else while I was getting settled in here at least. You told me this.”

  He sat up in his seat, “His plans fell through with some other apartment, OK? And he has to be here for a few Diada de Sant Jordi book events. Lord knows I have enough extra space in this place. What’s the big deal? What do you have against someone you’ve never even met?”

  “I have absolutely nothing against him,” I said. “Really, I don’t,” I said even slower, sounding like I was gurgling underwater. “I guess I just feel kind of uncomfortable, perhaps threatened is a better word . . . with all the women and all your sexual liaisons together.” I took a long drag of my cigarette. “I’m not into being shared, you know. I just don’t need that sort of juvenile shit in my life.”

  “He’s not going to try anything, Anna. That was the past. We’re adults now. Trust me. He knows that you’re special, and that I’m in love with you. We’re done with all that.”

  David was visibly trying to pull himself together. I wanted our be ginning to go as smoothly as possible. I flashed him my big joker smile instead. I knew it looked natural, but it wasn’t. He laughed with a gullible relief.

  “You’re so nutty, Anna. You’re a real paranoid case.” He caressed my cheek, then licked it, and with the other hand he took a piece of ham and placed it into my mouth. It was salty and warm from sitting in the sun. I think it was the best ham I’ve ever tasted.

  “I’m taking you to a fancy party tonight.”

  “Really?” A shiver of excitement raced down my spine.

  “It’s Libros magazine’s kick-off party for Diada de Sant Jordi at the Ritz. Everyone will be there, including our friend Sergi. He’s giving a brief speech, which will probably be inappropriate and sarcastic. People love to hate him here.”

  “Including you?” I asked.

  He thought for a moment. “Yes, sometimes, including me. Don’t take this badly, but you re mind me of each other. You both can be charmingly arrogant on the exterior, but viciously insecure inside. Watch, you guys are going to become wicked pals.” He laughed, tears filling in his eyes.

  I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe we could all be friends.

  Barcelona’s springtime literary love fest, Diada de Sant Jordi, is Cataluña’s take on St Valentine’s Day. The holiday takes place on 23 April, the anniversary of Cervantes’ and Shakespeare’s deaths. It spotlights love’s finer accompaniments: books, roses and playing hooky from work. I loved this take on the holiday; it was a welcome switch from America’s garish pink Hallmark cards, helium balloons, or the obligatory heart-shaped boxes of chocolates perfunctorily sent to one’s cubicle.

  Way back in the dark Middle Ages, the legendary and valiant Saint George (Sant Jordi) was said to have rescued his Catalan city and his pouty princess from a fire-breathing dragon that plagued the people. He stabbed the beast in the heart with his long sword and killed it. Now in tribute to all that reptilian bloodshed, and the miraculous rosebush that blossomed from it, it is the custom that men give red roses to their ladies. In return, the ladies give books to their men.

  Local booksellers and flower vendors cram the length of la Rambla and other streets, and everyone in Barcelona finds a good excuse not to do a stitch of work. Instead, people stroll the streets with their lovers, browse for books, crowd the plazas and eye the fashionable authors of the day.

  It is also a big day for cultural critics and the literati to see who got invited that year to sign their books around town. The high-society Svengalis behind the Sant Jordi events had chosen Sergi as one of the honorary invitees, while David with a new book out, had been slighted in his own hometown.

  David acted like it didn’t bother him. He pointed out that he and Sergi had been invited previous years during the height of Crack’s popularity. I knew some part of him felt hurt. Could he be so above this kind of sibling rivalry? Was he already content with his literary credibility? I didn’t know whether I’d ever be.

  Deep down I already knew I was a better literary critic than I was a writer. I had graduated with an MFA in creative writing from a top school only to see all my friends get offered immediate high-profile book deals with their theses. I reworked my thesis over and over until I killed it. When I finally published it with some trendy indie publisher based in Brooklyn, it was so overwrought, so self-conscious, that one critic labelled it “cold and overly stylized”. Somehow, this kind of criticism had never touched Sergi’s dense work. His new book on Hadrian, an impenetrable thicket of pompous jargon and historical assumptions, was oddly more popular than David’s last heartbreaking novel about alienation.

  After David had caught me up on all the literary gossip on the terrace, we scurried into the bedroom. Talking about the book fair was our post-fight, verbal foreplay right before we finally sprang into bed and spread each other’s folds open – the tension had been so ripe. We then passed out in a sundrenched, red wine stupor, our sweaty bodies laid out naked above the sheets after a much-needed fuck.

  The balcony doors were open to their full gl
ory and I awoke to the soothing feeling of sunlight warming my bush. The sensation made me want him again, but I didn’t want to wake him.

  I needed water. I grabbed David’s Chinese robe and straightened myself up before exiting the bedroom, thinking, perhaps hoping, I’d run into Sergi on my way to the kitchen. This time the room with the shoes’ door was practically closed. I assumed Sergi had been here while we were napping. I tapped softly on the door and called out hello. There was no answer, so I pushed the door open.

  The shoes were gone. The suitcase was now an explosion of white dress shirts, sleek belts and identical pairs of dark denim jeans. Sergi was obviously in a rush to get in and get out fast. There were copies of his books strewn on the floor. I picked one up and stared at the black-and-white author photo. It was a more recent photo than the one I’d seen in David’s study, and he was still just as stunning, having grown more distinguished with age. He had grown facial hair, and I immediately thought it was a vain attempt to look smart, less pretty boy.

  White sheets of paper with elegant and scripted writing were scattered hastily over the unmade bed. They looked like drafts of his short speech for Libros magazine’s Sant Jordi event that night. Maybe he wasn’t as spontaneous as David had suggested.

  While I showered before the party, I imagined what my first words to Sergi could be. I chose my outfit carefully. I didn’t want to look like another literary social climber in a flowery minidress and pristine pumps. I decided to go for a black-fitted pants suit instead. I let my braless breasts hang free in their teardrop position, rounding out the edges of my jacket. Black pointed flats provided maximum comfort while walking Barcelona’s dark streets with the boys later that night.