A Taste of You

by Jennifer Stevenson

  Sacker Tart, the team captain, comes up to me and asks if I’ve been holding back on her, because she wants to see that kind of speed all the time. I promise that she will. I’m not even angry at myself anymore. Apparently my body can do more than I thought it could. I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s what I’ve been learning for the past year since I joined derby.

  The fans are screaming. My team is crazed with our snowballing victory. The prana is knee deep in here, and I’m higher than a 7-Eleven full of stoners at midnight.

  Pint-size Stun Bunny lines up next to me with a gleam in her eye, and I think, Okay, I’ve challenged the league speed demon and she’s going to lick me now.

  I feel good, in a reckless, insane kind of way. It’s the prana talking, and I don’t care. I feel drunk. Only it’s a good kind of drunk, not a soggy, self-pitying, self-destructive kind of drunk.

  The whistle goes. I feint toward the wall of ass to my left. All their blockers cluster left to wall me in. Then I jink right, bore past their outlying blocker, who has forgotten to look over her shoulder at me, and I’m out, free! I blaze away from the pack, pouring it on, breathing deeply and evenly. Again I am half a length ahead at the turn, and cut through the pack like chocolate through a goose. The girls on the bench are on their feet, shrieking and clicking their wrist guards.

  I decide I’m going to skate like this in the next bout.

  Then I think, There won’t be a next bout, ’cuz you’ll be in Hinky Guantanamo and nobody will set eyes on you again ever.

  I score five more points and slap my hands to my hips, calling off the jam, and give up the hat panty, but I feel plenty good enough to block in the next jam. I don’t know what’s got into me. I’ve never felt like this before.

  It’s as if everything’s behind me and coming closer, Ma’s hospital bills and Agent Nick and Dr. Katterfelto and his fakey German accent and his diagnosis of my screwed-up chakras, does my life not suck enough? I want to skate as fast as I can, and hit some girl like a ton of bricks.

  As I slide across the track to help Venus set up the opposing jammer, Bull Jumper, for a one-two takeout, I see Agent Nick’s face in the audience, front row of the suicide seats, right at the corner. His jaw has dropped and his eyes are wide.

  You melonhead.

  With a big, solid J-block, I send Bull’s ample body sailing into his lap. His metal chair goes over backwards, with him sandwiched between the chair and Bull’s thrashing skates.

  Venus high-fives me. We race to catch up with the pack. As I skate, I’m chanting in my head.

  What I’m chanting is “straighten up and fly right.”

  o0o

  I find a message on my cell after the bout. Agent Nick. “Call me.” I ignore it. For the first time since I-don’t-know-when, I go to the after party with the girls.

  The Bellyfat Bar is located underneath the El, which means it’s appropriately loud for the after party. Skaters are dancing on tables, goofing off with the fans, laughing and throwing back car bombs, and I feel good. I’m not paranoid or angry or depressed.

  I’m out with the girls, a little dizzy with the enormity of it. I’ve wanted this for so long.

  Venus is full of the most amazing stories. She has a hot English boyfriend who shows up to bouts. She tells extravagant lies about what they do in bed. Everyone laughs incredulously except Sacker Tart, who looks thoughtful and a little wistful. Sacker Tart is a porn star in her day job. She’s by far the most glamorous of us all. Like me, many derby girls are schoolteachers.

  Except for Pound of Venus, the big blonde anti-magic cop. I stay aware of her without seeming to watch her. Her boyfriend shows up and murmurs into her ear. Paranoid, I stretch my super-hearing to pick up what he’s saying.

  “It’s time for our meeting.”

  Venus frowns. My blood runs cold. “Wait until this crowd thins out, partner,” she whispers back.

  Holy crap, he’s her partner, and another anti-magic cop.

  I’m sunk. I order another drink.

  So of course we end up sharing a pizza in the bar. That is, Pound of Venus is eating pizza and I’m nibbling the olives off the top. They don’t make me sick or anything. It’s just not the food I need.

  “Don’t you eat?” she says to me, raising her eyebrows. I can smell suspicion coming off her, in her energy.

  “Sometimes,” I say, trying not to look scared. “Mostly I drink.” This gets me another look.

  If she has the smallest clue what I am, I’m screwed for real.

  She doesn’t respond.

  After two more car bombs, I relax.

  Venus is crowing to everybody about my speed. “You rock,” she says, thumping my shoulder with a fist. “We’re gonna kill those bitches from Stump City.”

  I lift my car bomb. “Here’s to killing Stump City.” We all drink to that. The energy in this bar right now is so sweet, so good. I wonder, in some rebel corner of my mind, if I’ve been wrong all these years. If I shouldn’t have just relaxed and had some fun.

  The girls all look at me as if in answer to this thought. I feel a sudden surge of good energy, with a little extra tingle in it.

  They’re looking behind me.

  There’s warmth on my back. I feel my face change before I can control it, and I turn around, and yes, it’s Agent Nick, touching me, smirking at all the female good humor staring at him.

  “You didn’t call back,” he says. “I worried.”

  “I was busy,” I say. There goes my mood. He just stands there, radiating self-satisfaction and delicious, delicious energy. I take a tiny hit off him before I can control myself. Oh, God. So good. I only meant to bring him down a little, keep his dick from leading him into saying something that will lead me into saying something that will get me in even worse trouble.

  He doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t even droop. He flushes, looking at me, and his energy output surges. I smell the wood on him as if he is the only warm body in the room.

  “Introduce us, Hélan,” says Sacker Tart, and baby-faced Fist Kist says, “Yeah.”

  I raise my eyebrows at Agent Nick and he obliges, calling himself Nick Jones without the agent in front of it.

  “That was very impressive, ladies. Your bout.”

  “Are you a derby virgin?” Sacker asks innocently. Sacker looks sleek and beautiful even with helmet hair and mouth-guard slobber on her cheek.

  “I was,” Nick says in a heartfelt voice, “But I’m not anymore.” He’s smiling as if he doesn’t know how to stop. The horndog.

  I’d be jealous, only I know that the wood is for me.

  For two cents I could beat myself over the head with my mug. Instead I order another. Agent Nick takes advantage to draw up a stool and join us, ordering beer. The girls scoot over so he can sit next to me.

  I feel like the candy store has parked itself in my pocket. Oh-God good. Bad. I don’t know.

  Agent Nick drapes his arm across the back of my barstool and murmurs in my ear, under cover of the chatter and the sidelong looks, “How’d it go at the doctor?”

  At least one girl nearby sends us a look that says, Doctor?

  I roll my eyes at the ceiling. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Your thumb drive isn’t answering,” he added.

  So it was a bug, or a tracer or something. “I threw it away,” I say.

  He looks shocked. “It was very expensive.”

  I shrug and smile, feeling drunk and loving it for the first time in years. “I should have told you. I lose things.”

  He leans very close to my ear and murmurs, “It could be a tracer anklet.”

  He draws back to see the effect of this.

  “No,” I say, looking him in the eye with my Vampire Look, “It couldn’t.” This should reduce him to something I can swat down, but he actually seems to expand a little. Does this guy not understand rejection? I’ve met his type, but most of them are, well, drunker or meaner, or both. Everything I do to him seems to make him hornier.


  Now that’s interesting, says a completely ungovernable corner of my brain.

  “Later,” I say firmly. “Drink your beer. It’s getting cold.”

  And for a miracle he seems to accept this. He takes his arm off the back of my stool where it has been lying so temptingly, and picks up his beer and drinks, looking demurely around at the girls who are talking about everything except what they’re all thinking, which is undoubtedly, Hélan Vittle has a boyfriend?! Sacker in particular is getting runny over him, and I’m not being metaphorical here, I can smell it. Pound of Venus has a semiprofessional cop eye on him that makes me wonder if she has sussed him.

  The waitress comes. I drain my car bomb and order another.

  But they finally relax, and I relax a little more, and Nick talks like a normal person to Tuda Juster and I tease the bench coach about her new tattoo and it’s fun again. I absolutely refuse to think about what a terrible, terrible idea it is for me to be drunk in public with friends. God, did I just call them friends? They must be friends, or I wouldn’t feel this good. Wake up, Hel, there’s a Federal agent at your elbow. Who has the drop on you.

  Yeah, and I want the drop on him.

  My mug slips out of my fingers at this thought and he catches it before it can hit the table.

  “Girl, you can’t hold your likker,” says the bench coach in amusement, and I think, How wrong you are.

  “Good thing I can hold her likker,” Nick says, and I turn to him to tell him to give me back my drink and he leans in and kisses me.

  It’s like having a train come straight at me and touch me warm and soft on the lips. His energy is bigger than the sun. He’s hot and pink in the face. He smells like man. I do not even think of taking a hit off him.

  He pulls away, looking surprised, and then kisses me again, harder, and I grab the back of his head and open my mouth to him.

  I’m falling into his warm human flesh, the sweet strong pulse in his chest, in his throat. I smell oil from his car keys on his fingers where they touch my cheek. I want to crawl down his shirt-front and sleep on his chest. I want to purr.

  I come down to clapping, hoots, and cries of, “Get a room!”

  “Busted,” he says breathlessly when our mouths part.

  I look straight into his eyes. They’re glazed over with lust. “Yes. You are.”

  I’d like to say that I have a hazy idea of getting the drop on him somehow if I can just get him into bed, but honestly all I want is to get him into bed. Now. Soon. Before I sober up and panic, or God forbid start to cry, because there are tears in my future now, for sure. Let me have one quickie with the Federal hottie before that happens. Before my life is officially over.

  I could stop now, I suppose, but of course that won’t happen.

  I look at the table and calculate hazily what my bar bill must be. “Four Irish car bombs and part of a pizza? I make it about fifty bucks.”

  Nick pulls out a roll and tosses a fifty on the table. “C’mon,” he says “let’s get you home.”

  More hooting.

  I throw a ribald glance around the table, rolling my eyes and smiling foolishly.

  They’re all looking at me with something I can’t figure out. The bench coach seems concerned, and Venus passes me a special wink as if from one ridiculously oversexed slut to another, and Sacker just looks envious.

  I can’t bear it, I duck my head down and blush and let Nick lead me out of there.

  My legs aren’t working as well as they did two hours ago. As I lean on him, I say, “How does a nice guy like you get in with a bunch of jerks at a secret agency?” My words are slurring.

  He doesn’t answer. He tucks me into his battered Cherokee, then gets in on the driver’s side, and I wonder why the whole car doesn’t go up in a cloud of orange and black smoke, because he is hotter in here than he was in the bar. His skin has swollen until he looks tight and red in the face. I can tell from here that if he gets any harder, he’ll mess his pants.

  “My place or yours?” I say, trying to seem nondrunk.

  He looks at me. I feel his glance spear me clear through. It feels good.

  I say, “Mine.” Because I may not ever sleep in that bed again, and it would be nice to spend this last night there.

  A shadow passes over his face. What have I said? But he puts the car in gear and we go. I feel the tightness in my body now, too, so that every bump in the road is like a fingernail-flick on a harp string. Nick drives straight to my apartment, as I knew he would, because of course he knows where I live. I feel fate rushing at me like a wall.

  He takes the key out of my hand and opens the door, and then I see that the shadow has taken him over. He looks down into my face. I see pure human concern there. Not a speck of cop.

  “What?” I say, panicking.

  You can’t stop now. It’s taken me forty-three years to get here.

  He says, “You’re drunk. I can’t.”

  I say, “You can. I’ve been drunk before. And I’ve never done this.” Taken a man to my apartment. My lair. Did I say any of that?

  “You’ve never done what?” Oh no, he’s getting a conscience. How can a man do that? I thought they were all ruled by their dicks!

  “No. Please,” I say, now desperate.

  I think I see myself the way he sees me. Seventeen, drunk, begging for it, practically jail bait. And apparently I’ve just convinced him I’m a virgin, too. No wonder he’s having an attack of conscience. He’d be screwing a teenager when he is already coercing her into working on an undercover op.

  I try to summon up my Vampire Look, the one Bela Lugosi uses when he tells Van Helsing, Come ... here. But I feel my throat tighten. It’s not going to work.

  “Please,” I say. “If you won’t — would you just come in? Keep me company? Hold me?” I shut my eyes. It’s all falling apart. I can’t even self-destruct satisfactorily. “I’m really stressed. I could use some human contact.”

  Oh God, that came out wrong. I don’t want to use him. Well, I do. But I’m not even asking him for the last drop of his life force. I just want to touch someone. I want to be warm, skin to skin, for a while.

  “No sex if you don’t want,” I add, putting myself out there in a way that scares the frink out of me.

  He pulls me into his arms and holds me.

  And that’s the end of my resistance. He’s huge and warm and gentle. We stumble into my apartment. He shuts the door and we move to the couch and sit there, side by side, until somehow I am curled up in his lap with my face in the crook of his neck, weeping uncontrollably, and he is petting my head and pouring his warmth into me.

  I can’t remember when I’ve felt this good.

  I must have fallen asleep because next thing I know he is laying me down on my bed. I have the presence of mind to grab at his shirt, but he puts his hands over mine and says, “You’re cold, let me get you a blanket.” I let go, and of course he’s gone then. The blanket comes over me, clothes and all, and I feel his warm lips on my forehead, and he’s gone.

  The front door closes. I wake up all the way. Then I turn over in bed and sob into the pillow until I’m screaming.

  Chapter Ten

  I’m badly rattled all day next day. I’m so freaked out and scared after last night, I am ready to ask Jilly for advice again. That’s how bad it is.

  But today is not a good day for that. When I arrive at the hospital with Popeye’s Chicken, two spicy thighs with an extra biscuit, dirty rice, and a jalepeño pepper on the side, something Jilly is forbidden but which she has been begging for, she is already eating her horrible hospital meal. Except it isn’t a hospital meal. It’s steak and thick-cut french fries and something a restaurant no doubt calls cole slaw but it looks more like a work of art, with long red and green and white threads of cabbage lying over one another in an expensive pattern. Somebody else has bought Jilly dinner. I’m betting it’s that married surgeon, and my blood pressure jacks up another notch and a half. There is an open champagne bot
tle on her little roll-away bedside tray. It’s empty.

  “Jilly,” I say, my heart sinking. She’s drunk.

  “Hey there!” she sings out, swigging from a champagne flute. “I sent Roger out for more bubbly. I’ll tell him to pick up another glass,” she adds, picking up her cell phone off the sheet. She holds the champagne flute closer to her chest. Her eyes glitter.

  I put the chicken bag down on the bed and sink into what is no doubt Roger’s chair. His alpaca overcoat is here, thrown over the back. I can smell his chief surgeon smell, cologne and scrub and a little of last night’s expensive wine working its way out of his pores. He can’t have been gone more than five minutes.

  So he drinks, too.

  Jilly goes on the offensive. She always does when she’s drunk. “Why so glum, chum? Why so gloomy, roomie?” She bends her head closer to me. “What’s your trouble, bunky?”

  I don’t have what it takes to resist her. Nick is falling in love with me, and he doesn’t know I’m what I am, and he will hate me when he finds out. I need a mommy, bad.

  Even a bad mommy will do.

  As if she can hear this thought Jilly hands me the flute, half-full of champagne. I’m overwhelmed by this gesture. I take it and drink it all down, every drop, and I set it on the tray and then put my head in my hands.

  “Boy trouble?” Jilly says. She’s insidious. How does she know all this?

  “That Fed,” I say to the floor.

  “He any good?”

  “I think so.” I almost say, How am I supposed to know? But I’ve kept Jilly in the dark about my sexual adventuring, comma, lack of, for forty-three years. I don’t think I can talk about my cherry right now. I feel intensely frustrated and swollen all over, like a walking warning against teen sex. Should have waited until I was seventy.

  I say five percent of what’s in my mind. “I can’t get him to — you know.” I clench my shoulders, hiding my face, waiting for Jilly’s contribution.

  “Have you been cooperative? On his thingy,” she explains, and I know what she means. “Case.”