by Jane Nin
“I see,” said Jack, “anything else?”
“I always thought art restoration looked fun,” I said. “Then again, I could just run an olive orchard. I don’t know,” I concluded, “I’m interested in lots of things. Just really far from qualified.”
“I understand,” he said, and he didn’t say anything else, and I was glad we were moving off the subject. School sounded fun, but the prospect of working at the same time—taking out more loans—prolonging the years of just barely scraping by—was frankly daunting.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked, after a few more minutes of silence.
“Sure,” he said.
“You were married before, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, and I could see he hadn’t been expecting that question.
“What happened?”
“You really want to know?”
“I’m curious how you go from a storybook New York Times social page wedding, to picking up a woman you’ve never met in a bar and flying her halfway across the globe so she can fuck a bunch of strangers.”
“The short answer is, it’s both easier than you think and harder than you think to ruin things.”
Elegant, enigmatic, seemingly wise: this statement was so perfectly Jack. Which also meant it left me hungry for more.
“How about the long answer,” I pressed.
“Maybe later,” said Jack, after a thoughtful bite of meat and bread.
I wanted desperately to know him, to understand what he was, who he was, what he, seemingly so good at things, had managed to ruin. But I would wait for his story, and not pester him for it. For a little longer, at least.
After a leisurely breakfast we picked our way down a steep little path down to the beach. The water was warm and nobody seemed to be around so I took off my clothes—I felt Jack watching—and walked out into it.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d swum in the ocean. Certainly I’d never been tempted to swim in the swampy, polluted waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And before that? I remembered a vacation to Southern California, with a man I was provisionally dating, and his insistence that we get in. But the Pacific had been cold, and neither the swim nor the affair had lasted long.
This, on the other hand, was the opposite. It was as if the ocean had been poured just for me. It was cool but only enough to counteract the woolly heat of the noontime sun. The sky was this perfect cobalt blue dome over us. And not a soul in sight, still. It was like infinity, but safe. It did—it made me feel like I could do anything, be anything. Like the world was kind and infinitely full of perfection. I had always thought of it as the opposite: cruel or indifferent, and unyielding. Of course I knew both were true and that the trick was that wherever you were, it became impossible to remember the other. Impossible to believe in it. And yet, it still existed.
The world was kind, and the world was cruel. I was a virgin, and I was a whore.
Because what was a virgin, really? It wasn’t about whether the sacred vestibule of your vagina had ever been violated by some cock. It was about whether you could trust, and how completely. About whether you could love like you had never, ever been hurt.
This last realization dawned on me with a tremendous physical force and I felt my arms and legs go weak. I didn’t know if I could love like that. How do you forget pain, after all? I’d never so much as suffered a broken bone but the knowledge of heartbreak was all through my body.
Tears welled in my eyes and rolled generously down my cheeks to join the kindred waters in which I floated. I was weeping soundlessly but it was hard to breathe in, which made it more difficult to keep my mouth and nose above the waves.
I wasn’t frightened, really. I was sure if I slipped below the water my little philosophical mood would yield to the more urgent necessities of survival. But as I gasped I did accidentally inhale a mouthful of ocean and it set me to coughing, and I tried to paddle more but already I felt my breathlessness in my muscles—they were not as strong as they should be. And maybe, for a moment then, I actually grew scared, because a thought flashed across my mind, the phrase, drowned from crying, and I found this downright hysterical.
So despite all of this, I began to giggle, or whatever version of giggling can be accomplished when one is already half-underwater and short of air, and unfortunately the fact that my giggling spent even more of that air made me slip completely below the surface, just for a moment—the fact that things were about to get actually dangerous, and all because of me just thinking too many thoughts—it only made the situation more absurd, and funnier.
But I managed to flail my arms and legs enough to get my mouth and nose above the surface once again, and I gulped some air, and I also laughed aloud, and I heard my voice in the air—a ridiculous, girlish laugh like a child watching a cartoon character fall down some stairs—and that contracted me with even more laughter, and again I sank, and this was when I realized I had better start swimming for the beach, to a place where I could stand.
What I hadn’t figured on was that some current I’d drifted into had other notions. I paddled and kicked and seemed to make no progress. I was tiring quickly, too. More and more of my breaths were half-mouthfuls of water, and each bout of coughing left me limper, more vulnerable to the ocean’s whims. I thought maybe I should just try to float, and let it carry me out while I recovered some strength, and so I rolled over onto my back and tried to do just that. Float. Breathe. Breathe.
I wasn’t laughing anymore. I closed my eyes and tried to still my panic. I could swim, if only I could get my muscles back. But you are so tired, my brain fearfully warned. No. Concentrate on just breathing, just staying calm. I didn’t even want to look at how far I’d gotten from shore.
I just closed my eyes and tried to keep existing. Breathe, I reminded myself, breathe.
And then there was Jack. There was splashing beside me and then I opened my eyes and saw his face. We made eye contact, so he knew I was alive, and conscious, and then his arm was beneath me, his grip tight on my upper arm. He didn’t say a word. Just swam, hard, holding me afloat beside him. I closed my eyes again, felt the water dragging against me as his powerful strokes launched us forward, forward.
“Put your legs down,” he said finally, and I did. There was soft sand just below us. He didn’t let go of me. We stood for a moment as I breathed more freely, my shoulders and head above the water.
“Can you walk?”
I nodded. He continued to hold me as we took slow steps toward the shore. As the water grew shallower I realized just how weak I’d gotten out there, and before we were even clear of it I dropped to my knees, and he knelt beside me, and I began sobbing outright.
I was naked and on all fours, weeping into the ocean.
“You’re okay,” said Jack. “Hey, it’s okay.” And he stroked me, and kissed my wet shoulder, and then I leaned into him and he held me tight.
He was still wearing all his clothes.
We sat like that for a very long time, until I began to shiver, despite the sun. So he stood, and helped me to standing, and then we walked up the beach to where the sand was dry, and he stood there, dripping, and gently toweled me off. Then he spread the towel on the sand and I flopped down onto it and watched him as he peeled off his sodden clothes and stood naked in the suddenly blinding light.
He dried himself, then spread his own towel out and sat beside me.
“What happened?” he said, after a little while. “I thought I heard you laughing.”
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t… it wouldn’t make sense if I tried to explain it, probably.”
He was quiet. “I’m glad I heard you,” he said.
“Me too,” I said, and I rolled over and pressed myself into him, throwing my leg across his thighs, and the breeze skimmed across us, and little grains of sand tickled our feet and calves, and the sun poured down like forgiveness, and together we drifted off to sleep.
16.
After
some time I stirred. We were in shadow now, the sun having traversed westward, behind one of the walls of the little ravine that created this private strip of coastline. It wasn’t cold, but the tide was moving closer, erasing the beach.
Beside me, Jack was still asleep. I sat up and surveyed his body—his muscles and downy hair, the prominent bones of his knees and shins, his half-hard cock—so solid and yet so fragile.
Our rules notwithstanding, I couldn’t help myself—I reached for his cock. I ran the edge of my hand lightly along it, from the base up to the tip, and it hardened, and he stirred, turning his head and squinting up at me. I danced my hand away from his erection and instead traced my fingertips across his stomach, down his sides. He shivered a little, ticklish. His cock grew another increment, as if begging for my touch.
More boldly now, with him watching, I reached for it again, running my thumb and forefinger up its sides, then letting my thumb linger to slide around the little drop of wetness that had appeared at its tip.
He didn’t seem to be stopping me. The mere fact of this made me wet. I bent to kiss him on the mouth now. His lips were dry and salty, as were mine. I plunged my tongue into his mouth and he gently sucked it, and then I withdrew, and nibbled at his lip. Now he reached up and cupped the back of my head and kissed me harder, his tongue searching for mine, his breath hot against my upper lip, and as we kissed I reached for him again, now wrapping all my fingers around his cock and slowly, slowly pulling until I released the head. He moaned into my mouth.
Breaking the kiss, he held me away from him and looked at me: my face, my bare breasts, the little swell of my belly. “You’re so beautiful,” he said.
“So are you,” I replied, and again I bent to his mouth, drinking his kiss. Again I encircled his cock with my hand and slowly stroked upwards, evoking another helpless sound from his perfect throat.
He bit my lip between his teeth and then let go. “Stop,” he said.
“Please,” I said.
“No,” he said, and took hold of my wrist and moved my hand away from him. Then he sat up and reached for my knee and pushed it gently to one side, spreading me open, exposing how wet I’d become. “I want to make you feel good,” he said.
All I could do was nod assent. I lowered my back to the towel as he crawled over and knelt between my legs. He teased my pubic hair for a few ticklish moments, and then he reached up one hand and laced his fingers into mine. Then he dipped his tongue into my salty, honeyed slit and again he moaned.
We both moaned. I opened my eyes and saw his shoulders and his bare back and the blue ocean beyond, and I felt the strong, sweet, tender strokes of his tongue against the swollen lips of my labia and across my straining, yearning clit, and I was just about to surrender every last shred of my awareness of anything—who I’d ever been, what I’d been frightened of, that life couldn’t just be this, forever—when I heard children’s voices floating over to us on the wind.
“Stop,” I said, sitting up quickly.
Jack sat up, too, wiping his chin, registering my alarm. “What’s the matter?”
“There’s—” I listened. Had I just imagined it? Ruined this on purpose? No. There they were again. Voices. “Can you hear that?”
That he could was evidenced by how quickly he dashed to his damp clothes and pulled them on. I scrambled to do the same. We were just decent when a raft drifted into view—two parents and two kids, paddling lazily through the surf.
Seeing us standing there, the children waved.
We waved back, ridiculously. My pussy throbbed, aching for the return of Jack’s touch. “Uh-oh,” I said, as they began to row ashore.
“Hotel?” said Jack.
“Yes,” I agreed, and he grabbed our towels and we began to ascend the steep little trail that took us back to the top of the cliff. We were in the sun again, and it was hot, and I was realizing I was very hungry.
When we reached the top I turned and looked down at our beach. The family was climbing out, the kids already were dashing eagerly across the rocks, peering into the little pools of cupped seawater.
Jack reached for my hand. I took it, and we walked across the dry, crackling brush, the last few blazing, burning meters to our hotel.
We were sweat-slicked, salty and starving as we stumbled into the coolness of my room.
“I need a shower,” said Jack, and I wanted one, myself. By the time I emerged, clean and cool and wrapped in my towel, and saw him sitting on the patio again, combed and nicely dressed and talking on the phone, I realized we were no longer about to make love.
17.
At dinner—at some quiet little beachside bar—Jack informed me that everything was set.
“Set?” I echoed.
“For the party,” he replied. “We’ll travel tomorrow morning, check in, and hopefully have time for a nap before we start getting you ready.”
“Getting me ready?” I repeated, again.
“You’ll be a centerpiece, of sorts. Unless—are you feeling like you want to stop playing?”
The notion of being a centerpiece was titillating. I was curious. But then, wasn’t too much curiosity a killing thing?
I wanted to keep playing. I wanted to stop. I wanted him to want me to stop.
“Don’t you want me to stop? Or will you ever?”
He laughed, but not like it was funny. “I’ve wanted you to stop from the very beginning.”
I was dumbfounded.
“Well, no,” he corrected himself. “From the second time. Since Canada.”
“Why didn’t you say so?!” I exclaimed, upset. My mind was racing backwards, replaying each scenario in an entirely different light.
“For one thing, I could see the game excited you.”
I blushed. I felt ashamed. If the game hadn’t been exciting to him, maybe I was just a whore.
“No, no,” he said quickly, “don’t feel bad. I set it up! It’s good you were excited—you were supposed to be. That way I haven’t been using you, exactly. Though of course, I have been, in a way.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, miserably.
“I have a demon, is I guess the best way to explain it,” said Jack, as if that were any kind of explanation.
And so he proceeded to tell me about his wife.
He’d met her when he was in New York and freshly out of college. She was still a student. A bit of a late bloomer, she hadn’t even had a boyfriend before. As for him, he’d gotten around, as the young men of Wall Street do, but he fell hard for her and barely looked back. She was beautiful, smart, ambitious, devoted..
“And mine,” said Jack, shaking his head, “she was completely mine. Other men worried about their girlfriends’ exes. Rebekah had kissed her prom date goodnight, in her words, ‘with tongue.’ That’s how innocent she was.”
I tried not to react. This was the fantasy. He’d married the fantasy. I didn’t want to hear about her. But of course, something had gone wrong. I clung to that as he continued.
They’d been married four years when she made a confession: she was curious about other men. What they looked like naked, how they fucked. She asked if Jack would be willing to help her explore—maybe find a swingers club, something like that, something safe and discreet.
“But I said no,” explained Jack. “Worse, I lost my temper at her for saying anything. I couldn’t see it as simple curiosity—the same curiosity I’d had the chance to exorcise before I’d met her. I’d taken the strangers home. I’d fucked all the different kinds of women, I’d tried the positions. I’d had the obligatory threesome, the sex in a club bathroom, the sex in a cab. It was all what was expected, and I’d done it, and I’d enjoyed it. But now I was married and I loved my wife and the notion that she wanted to do any of that—the notion that she could be curious about anyone other than me, her wedded husband… Well, it hurt my pride, I suppose. And it hurt my fantasy of her.”
Following her confession Jack found himself growing paranoid. Was she thinking of other
men when they fucked? Was she looking too long at the waiter? He watched her constantly and fearfully. He checked her browser history, read her email. Most of all, he became miserable. He tried, initially, to be more sexually attentive—though she’d assured him that wasn’t the issue—and yet found himself plagued by performance issues brought on by the notion that he had to perform.
Meanwhile, she seemed to be doing nothing wrong. She tolerated his fearful, accusatory silences when she was home late from work, the barely contained rage with which he’d make then stalk across the room with a drink. She accommodated the need for pharmaceutical aid in the bedroom with barely a blink of an eye—though she’d long since ceased to initiate anything. She was, after all, a good wife, trained to honor and cherish—or at least to suffer his foul moods silently, following the brief moment of honesty she most surely had come to entirely regret.