He stayed on the Island in a beach house, where the ocean raced up to meet the land, and the wind battered the thin grass flat. Sandpipers raced ahead of the surf and chased it back as it sucked in upon itself, sighing. They peeped as they ran. Palmettoes spiked the grainy ground around the house. I thought it was a miracle the place still stood, a survivor of countless storms. The pale yellow paint peeled on the clapboard. I walked up the tall steps, the house high on its pilings, its hedge against the cruelty of the sea. A pelican stood on the roof. I stood outside for several minutes before stepping in.
“Y’all like hush puppies?” he called from the bright kitchen. It was a blaze of sunflower gold.
“Sure. I’ll eat anything.”
“Greens?”
“Anything, honestly.”
“Fried clams?”
“Sure.”
“Well if you want ’em y’all’ll have to get ’em. There’s a pail and a digger out on the porch. Go get us some, then. Know how to find ’em, right?” I nodded. “Make sure you bring ’em in some clean water. Tide’s out so it’s perfect. They’ll be frisky, though. Work fast. See if you can find some crabs, too.”
I was back in half an hour, the bucket filled. He puttered in the kitchen, pots clattering, conversing as he worked, and emerged shortly with two steaming plates, topped with sliced tomatoes, dusted with pepper and parsley.
Over lunch and for part of the afternoon, I asked the questions, got my answers, sipped on the Bud he’d pulled out of the fridge.
“Ya’ll are welcome to stay and I can drive you back in the morning or whenever y’all have to get back. Nothin’ ever happens out here, anyway. They be talking about you back at the store. That’s how dull it is in this part. I c’n hear ’em talk about how y’all got lost from the other side. Should be with the country-club folk.” He laughed. “Should keep them going for a while. Might as well give ’em something more to talk about. Besides, it looks like the day is turning rough. Check it out.” He pointed out to the darkening sea.
A squall had blown up offshore and the surf rose with the tide until water licked close to the verandah’s stilted legs.
“Shouldn’t we be getting away?”
“Nah. Seen worse ’an ’at. Not likely going to go higher than ’at, and there’s a spot down the road a ways where there’s more chance of a washout than here. Might not get past that point, anyway. Might as well stay and enjoy the show. It’s best if you get out on the porch an’ stick ya head into the wind. Always makes me feel like a sea captain. A reg’lar pirate.” His twin earrings shook.
So we stood on the porch while the waves sucked at the ground and the rain sliced and swung like a curtain parted and swaying upon itself. It turned and drove itself into us like needles. A huge explosion of lightning made me jump, crashing into him, sodden. We scurried back inside.
“Damn.” He was laughing, a big boom, boom, boom of a laugh like thunder.
“I feel like a drowned rat . . .”
“Y’all look like one, too, sorry to tell ya. I’ll fetch you a towel and if you like I can throw your stuff over the drying rack. I’ll getcha something dry to wear.”
He came back with a huge towel and a sweatshirt, then passed me some flannel pajama bottoms with a drawstring waist. “You can change in the bathroom or the bedroom, wherever you like.”
“Thanks.” I chose the bath, took some time drying my hair. When I came back out, I found him standing in the same place, but dressed in a floor-length plain linen caftan. Barefoot. He looked like a prince. Like Fishburne in Othello . . . He was smoking a joint.
“Y’okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.” I handed him my wet things. He put them on the table and turned back to me.
“You want some?”
“Sure,” I said, holding out my hand. “Sure. Love to.”
“You need more research for your article?”
“I’m always open for new information.”
“What do you need?”
“I don’t know what else to ask. So I’ll just remain open.”
Lightning blued the light in the room.
“You want an exclusive?” That funny smile I’d seen in the truck reappeared.
“Like what? I thought I already had one.” He touched his tongue to his lip, again. I passed the joint back, sputtered a little. He put it down. And he kissed me. “Oh,” said I. A peck behind the ear, a suggestion laid upon the nape of my neck, an invitation pressed to my lips, an invocation upon my tongue. We stood like that for a long time, tasting. I mouthed his neck, at this darker hollow in a dark hollow near the collar bone. In that spot the smell of salt and wind was strong. I licked it. Salty, too – sweat and sea spray.
“Shoulda jus’ given you the towel,” he said.
I stroked him through his robe, testing weight, length, breadth and started to feel giddy at the thought of slowly jerking this man off through what looked like an exotic house-dress. Was that all I’d do? Maybe he would just want to be sucked. My legs wobbled. Where would this end? The kitchen table? The paneled wall of the den? Domestically in bed, missionary style?
“Leni, are you in there?” She kicked me on the shin. Charmaine was looking at me. I snapped back to the present. The Bam Boo’s purple-haired waitress hovered.
“Yeah . . . just thinking about what you said. You’re gonna have to take my word for it. I did. We did. He’s not entirely who you think he is. Who he says he is.”
After our lunch, Charmaine came over to my house for the first time. I showed her the pictures.
Proof. Sort of.
“Damn, I could just kill you. I’m so jealous I could spit.”
“Well, get over it – it’s not like I married the guy. He was very cool. He was fulla himself, though. A regular cock of the walk . . . but he was . . .” I sighed, “. . .for two days he was the finest man I ever was with. Sometimes I get mad, thinking about it. You know, you have the fling and it gets under your skin. You want more and it’s not there.”
“Please put me out of my misery and tell me about it . . .”
“About what?”
“About it all . . . his cock. What he said . . . Sometimes I read his poetry and I start thinking stuff . . . and I want to put it there . . .”
“Oh girl, you have it bad,” I said. I felt that shift again, the rip in the universe. If I let something go, I might get what I craved. But should I? I wasn’t the kiss-and-tell sort. Still, this could be my ticket. She wouldn’t touch me. Fuck it.
So I told her. I told her everything. She so wanted to know. I tormented her. I told her about lifting the linen robe very slowly, until it bunched over the high curve of his ass, held there by my fist; how his cock drizzled wet across my rib cage. Her mouth fell open, her lips wet, wet, wet, too. Looking into her mouth I remembered taking him in mine, the smell of salt marsh and wet earth, the clay tang of him as his wrinkled sheath rolled back and my tongue snaked around him, his hands in my hair. This, I told her. With her next exhalation, I was back sprawled on his sofa, exulting in his tongue parting my lips, and his words, “You taste like the sea,” eddying over me as he dragged my clit between his gapped teeth and tortured it slowly with the very same clever, pink source of all that jive that had sprung from his mouth. “I’m floating on your sea . . .” And at this her mouth dropped open again, and in it I saw desire, and I leaned forward and put my mouth on hers, and said, “This is how it all went down . . .” On her, I redrew the map – rewrote the history of that travel. The key to this had been so simple, and so unfair to use.
She writhed on the couch beside me, ripe, like a mashy Mission fig – soft. I stroked the narrow silk gusset of her panties, slick already. She was unfashionably and beautifully unshorn, a dense mat of hair peeping all. around, spreading to her upper thighs, up the inner cheeks of her ass, the indigo ribbon of her lips glistening then parting slightly: pink, like conch, inside, a recollection of the sea.
I whispered how, for all the gushing wet
pouring out of me, he still hurt me with his thing. How it took working slowly, until he said, “Pull the skin fo’ward,” and then pushed into me in one slick motion. Farting and sucking from my stretched insides, gales of air caught and released. I bunched my fingers, two, three at a time, into her. She mewled. I pushed, felt resistance, pushed again and again until my hand was clenched around its breadth by her gaping mouth and she broke like surf on it. “Like that,” I said. “Big, just like that, Charm. I was bent over the windowsill, with my face in the glass, facing the storm, the rain pelting the window, running down the glass. He made me shoot. That never happened before. It hasn’t happened since.”
Charmaine grasped my hand, shuddered, jerked like a spastic or a Voudoun in trance, babbled in a strange tongue like that of love; then cried, hiccoughing into my chest.
Later I made her some of the coffee he’d given me; a gift in parting. One of his friends fronted him the expensive Jamaican grind. The stuff cost a fortune. I kept it, sealed in my fridge. Rationed it.
We smoked one too, and I petted her hair, twisted the ends and rewrapped the scarf around it so it stood up in spikes like dragons’ tongues. She looked like a queen. She checked my work in the mirror, and was surprised. “You did a good job.”
“I have hidden talents.” We laughed.
I haven’t seen Kayo since that time. A year. We keep missing each other. I’m always where he’s not. I don’t feel like I’m entirely done. Like the poor SOB jonesing twenty minutes after his first stem of rock, I’m not done. It keeps me on edge. Moist and restless.
I can hear her stirring upstairs. The place is already beginning to heat up. It will be a clear, calm day, perfect for summer idling. I know that part of the past is why she continues to see me, sometimes calling in the night for a fix. We keep apart unless it’s to fuck, or in this case to flee into the country. Anais and June . . . Much as I’d like to, I can’t call it making love. We’d have to be in love with each other. Seems we’re both in lust with him. It’s not a fair trade. We don’t talk about him, either. That would be too much an acknowledgment of this two-sided triangle. Kayo’s the lacuna, the space between, the spirit in the bed. That’s my dry, hollow place. If I shut my eyes I’ll allow her to be my diviner and I’m her channeler, her shaman. The water flows from the cracked pot, out of the space within its walls. I talk to her. I know the words. Blunt. My fist is his cock – my tongue is his too. It fills her gap. I know what it felt like. I can take her there – almost. I wish it were enough. One day I might have to deal with her finding him herself, except not by accident. She’ll go looking. Then, I don’t know what will happen. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t told her, but in this game the end justifies the means. It’s what I dealt for.
In the meantime we revolve about each other in an uneasy orbit, listening to the loons laugh like unhinged spirits on the lake. Pretending. I make her herb tea. I must make a trip into town to get some coffee. I’m out.
The Human Dress
O’Neil De Noux
Cruelty has a Human Heart,
And Jealousy a Human Face;
Terror the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy the Human Dress.
from “A Divine Image”
by William Blake
Walking along the Bay St Louis levee, my new Nikon dangling from my neck, I found exactly what I was searching for. A black man sat fishing next to an old dock. It was a typically warm Mississippi day, bright and windless. The man, who looked to be in his early to mid-twenties, was handling the heat well. He had stripped down to his shorts. I wasn’t as lucky with the heat. Wearing a white blouse and a black wraparound skirt, my long dark brown hair tied in a pony tail, I was so hot I felt perspiration dripping down my back.
As I descended the grassy levee, the man looked up and smiled at me.
I raised my camera and said, “Y’all mind if I take your picture?”
He seemed surprised, but was eager to oblige. He wasn’t having much luck fishing. He told me his name was Freddie. Tall and slim, Freddie had a wide smile.
Kneeling on one knee next to him, I focused on his dark face and felt my skirt opening around my legs. When I sat down, I could see that my skirt had opened a great deal and Freddie had noticed also. I closed my skirt and took another couple pictures. But my mind wasn’t on the pictures anymore, it was on the rush I felt when I’d noticed him looking up my skirt.
In the past, I had caught men looking up my dress and it always gave me a thrill, especially if they were black. Once, at a shoe store, while I was trying on sandals and wearing a skirt that was much too short, I discovered the black man helping me in and out of my sandals was staring right between my legs. I became so turned on, I tried six pairs before leaving.
Sitting only a few feet from Freddie, I decided to go for the rush again. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my camera atop my knees. I looked through the camera lens at him and snapped away. My skirt slowly opened around my thighs. Through the lens, I could see him peeking at me. I felt a flush cross my face because I knew the white panties I wore were very sheer.
After an exciting minute, I put my camera next to me and leaned back on my hands. I closed my eyes and lifted my face toward the sun. The heat on my face matched the heat building within me. I could feel him staring at me. When I looked back, he was looking at my ass. With my knees as high as they were, the entire bottom of my panties was open to view.
“So what kind of fish do you catch here?”
“Drum. Redfish. Trout.” Freddie finally looked at my face. “Sometimes even flounder.” He lifted his line out of the water, checked his bait and put the line back in.
Freddie continued stealing peeks at my panties as he fished. I looked around and made sure we were alone before slowly removing my shoes, one at a time, crossing my legs like a man as I did. With my shoes off, I raised my knees high again and made sure my skirt opened all the way. I like wearing wraparound skirts because they are cool and breezy. I’ve had plenty experience sitting and keeping them closed. Except for this day, when I worked at my best to open it.
I didn’t want to be too obvious, so I grabbed my camera and changed the film. Folding my legs, I sat cross-legged, like an Indian, placing the camera in my lap. Sitting like that caused my skirt to open to the waist. I could see, as I changed the film that my panties were totally exposed. My full mat of dark pubic hair was easily distinguishable beneath my sheer panties. And, since I’m Italian and somewhat hairy, a great deal of my pubic hair was sticking out the side of my panties. I could feel Freddie’s eyes right on my crotch, especially when I finished with the camera and put it aside and leaned back on my hands.
My heart raced as I sat with the entire front of my panties exposed to Freddie’s peering gaze. After a full minute, I decided it was time to increase the heat. I reached over and pretended to scratch my inner thigh. Then I pulled my panties aside a little and toyed with them. Freddie quit pretending he wasn’t looking.
I grinned. “I’m sure y’all have seen a woman’s panties before.”
I moved my fingers to the top of my bikini panties and pulled them up as if to straighten them. That only succeeded in exposing more of my dark pubic hair. I felt very naughty.
“It’s so hot,” I complained.
Freddie suggested I take a dip in the bay.
“That’s OK,” I said.
He decided a demonstration was in order and jumped into the dark brown water. I turned my legs to him and wiggled to the edge of the bank, letting my feet soak in the warm water, all the way to my knees.
Freddie swam back to me. I lifted my butt and pulled my skirt completely out from under me. Then I moved my knees apart to allow him a better view of my crotch as he swam up and stared. Freddie startled me when he touched my foot.
I yanked it back and then laughed.
“Thought it was a crab.”
I put my foot back in the water. Freddie tickled it and I pulled it away again. He reached for my other foot;
it didn’t take long to realize he was pulling my feet apart to open up my legs. I leaned back and let him, asking him not to tickle me, but telling him he could rub my tired, hot feet. He did just that, massaging my toes as he spread my legs.
I had him where I wanted him, at my feet. Then again, he had my legs where they wanted them, open.
Freddie moved between my legs and splashed a light spray of water on the front of my panties.
“That feels good,” I purred.
The warm water cooled my super-heated crotch. He lifted a handful of bay water and poured it there.
Massaging my foot, Freddie’s face crept closer, just inches from my crotch as he stared at my panties. He lifted another handful of water to drop on my crotch. I leaned back on my elbows and turned my face to the sun again. Freddie poured more water on my panties, and when I looked back I could see his head between my open legs, ogling my wet panties. I’d seen wet T-shirt contests on TV, but I never expected to be the feature attraction of a wet panty show.
Even from my angle I could see my soaked panties hid little.
Freddie began to drop water on my thighs, all the way down to my knees and then rubbed the water against my skin, his fingers rolling up my thighs until he reached my panties. Another handful of water on my crotch was followed by a soft touch.
“That feels nice,” I said breathlessly.
Freddie gently rubbed the front of my panties. I felt his fingers working against my pubic hair. I bit my lower lip and looked at him. He smiled back; and I started pumping my hips.
I was so turned on, I felt my heart thundering. I reached around and removed the band from my pony tail and shook my hair out. My heavy breathing increased and I closed my eyes again.
Freddie’s fingers moved slightly and slipped into my panties. I shuddered as he fingered my pussy lips.
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “Yes!”
Freddie’s free hand began working my panties down as his magic fingers manipulated my clit. I panted as my hips gyrated against his fingering.
He pulled off my panties.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 Page 47