“I don’t touch people I don’t know. Why did you follow me?”
“Because you are pretty – black and white and pink.” His eyes wandered over her face, and his mere glance felt intimate. “And you know the town. You aren’t here to see the museums, the castles. You came here for memories. I would like to make these new ones for you.”
He spoke as though he’d read her plan, imperfect and undecided, from her soul. She nervously placed her empty glass to one side and looked for the waitress. “Who are you?”
“Call me Jack. Jack of all trades.” He delivered his answer in that perfect, flat accent.
Sarah glanced at him, then away from his dark, smoky eyes. “That’s not your name.”
“No, but it will do.” This time, he caught her hand before she could avoid it. “You don’t like me, I can see. You want to run away. Do you like only girls?”
“No.” Her pulse answered the heat of his skin.
“Then why not? I’m good-looking, they tell me.”
She laughed, shakily. “And they tell me I speak perfect German.”
With his free hand, he ran light fingers along her arm, still holding her fast. “Yes,” he agreed. “Sometimes, they wish to be nice. Perhaps they lie to me.”
He was a mosaic of dark. His eyes, his hair were both painted with shadings of brown verging to black. His skin was a dusk deeper than tan, and his cheekbones that might have been German, but which were not, lifted to an angle that spoke of countries farther east.
“No,” she admitted. “They don’t lie.”
“Then I tell you my plan.” Still he stroked her arm, raising currents of warmth through her skin. “We leave here and go with the bus to the Strassenbahn – excuse me, the streetcar. We ride across the river and look at the moonlight. Perhaps you still don’t like me. Then I leave. No problem.” He called to the waitress. “Rechnung, bitte.” He motioned that he would pay their bill.
A remnant of sanity clung to Sarah, despite his fascinating voice and beautiful eyes. But just a remnant. “Why should I go with you?”
Jack turned back to her. “Because I think you want to. Though perhaps you don’t know why.”
He could be Mephistopheles, she thought. The devil who trades in secret desires. He was right, she did want to go with him, despite the warnings from her rational self. Perhaps this was her plan after all. She stood to follow his challenge.
They took the bus from the University Square to the Bismarkplatz, then changed to a streetcar bound across the river. “Vorsicht bei der Abfahrt,” called the conductor, ringing a bell. The streetcar staggered into motion, slowly at first as it rounded the corner of the Platz, pulling straighter and faster once it turned onto the road to the bridge. Sarah stood by the doors, watching the streetlights flash by, letting her body sway to the rhythm of the car. Bahn, she thought.
Jack stood close behind her. “I was not lying,” he said. “I think you are very pretty.” Gently, he kissed her bare shoulder.
She jumped. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not? I like to kiss pretty girls.” Jack kissed her other shoulder. “Skin like silk and velvet,” he whispered, grazing her cheek with his lips. Gently, he ran light fingers down her arms to cup her hands in his. Sarah shivered, remembering her dream. Oh, yes, said the stranger . . .
“Bergstrasse,” called the conductor. “Nächste Haltestelle.”
“This is our stop,” said Jack, pushing the button to signal the conductor. “From here, we can walk to the river.”
When his lips abandoned her shoulders, she felt momentarily bereft.
For several blocks, they walked in silence past the rows of old-fashioned storefronts, yellowed plaster and red-tiled roofs, broken here and there by the sheer glass window of a modern café. “You’re an interesting girl,” said Jack. “So timid. So careful. And yet, you decide to walk with me.”
“Don’t you want me here?” She kept a scant foot separate from him. Still in control, she thought.
“Very much. But I would like to know why you came back to Heidelberg.”
“It’s not important.”
“Not quite true. I saw, also in the train station, you wanted something. That’s why I followed you.”
They’d reached the small plaza marking the bridge. Sarah walked past Jack to the stone pillars of the bridge. It was full evening, and moonlight cast strands of light over the rippling waters of the Neckar River. Along its bank, the dark mantle of a riverside park separated Heidelberg from its river. “I don’t think you could possibly understand,” she said, making her voice cold and distant.
“Of course not, since you will not talk about it. But I have a string of guesses. Did a man attack you? Is that why you are afraid of sex?”
She flinched. “I’m not afraid.”
“Yes, you are. A blind man could see this. And yet you want it, very much.”
The dark mongrel of Satan stood behind her, quoting the secret text of her life. Sudden anger twisted the words from her mouth. “How could you ever understand? I had a baby–”
She stopped her mouth with her hand, horrified she’d said what she never permitted herself even to think. She spun back to face Jack.
Jack lifted his chin, his eyebrows arching to make new shadows in the lamplight and waited for her to continue.
“No,” she said. “I can’t. I can’t tell you.”
He nodded as if he did understand, after all. “I have my own secret,” he told her. “Not so big, perhaps, but I will tell you what you guessed earlier. My mother, she is German, but my father is from Turkey. My name I use in public is Jehan, but my real name, the one my father gave me, is Kemal. Please call me that if you like.”
Small confessions eased the tension between them. Sarah leaned back against the stone pillars, listening to the calm wash of the river against the tiled shore. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Perhaps to say that I do understand.” He hesitated. “Do you know the word Gastarbeiter? My father was one. It means guest worker, a very pleasant word you might think. And yet I have heard Germans, good Germans, shout that word as if it were a bomb that could explode my soul. I was born here, and yet I will always be outside the others. Like you.”
A rivulet of breeze ran over Sarah’s skin, stealing away her anger. “I had a plan,” she whispered. “I came to make new memories. I thought, if I spent a week here, and nothing bad happened, then I could forget what happened before. I could go on with my life. Stupid, isn’t it?”
“Not so very stupid. Can you tell me what happened?”
“I was young,” she said. “Young and reckless. I met someone here – another student – and I wasn’t careful. Not the first time, not any time we made love. When I found out I was pregnant, I went back to America.” She spoke faster to let the words escape. “I gave the baby up for adoption. It was a little boy –” Her voice broke into tears. “I don’t know where he is. It’s not allowed.”
For a moment, she pressed her hand against her mouth, kept her brimming eyes fixed on the ground, waiting for his reaction.
Kemal sighed. “A simple story. It cannot begin to describe the complications. I’m sorry for you.”
Sarah wiped her eyes. “I don’t know why I told you that. I must be crazy.”
“It is the night. It makes the secrets harder to bear. And perhaps, you begin to trust me, a little.” He stepped closer, to brush the hair from her face. “Cry a little. It will make you feel better.”
She let the tears spill from her eyes, over her cheeks. “Call me Sarah. That’s my name.”
“Sarah.” He spoke with quiet satisfaction. “A pretty name, for a pretty girl. But you are wrong, Sarah. You want to erase something with nothing. There are the days I think I should leave Germany, I should go to Ízmir, where my family now lives. And yet, I remember it is only some Germans who hate me, who would put me in a cage. I have friends here and memories I would not lose.”
From the lamp and moonlight, Sarah s
aw the answering sheen of tears on Kemal’s face. Astonishing. Her own grief dissolved at the sight. She stepped lightly to him and put her arms around his shoulders. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
He brushed her lips softly, a light caress, as if he couldn’t believe she let him. “I wanted to kiss you at the train station,” he whispered. “So soft, so sweet. Like a dove.” He marked each word with another kiss, each longer and more demanding, until he wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest.
Sarah listened to the strong rhythm of his heart against her own. Her plans shifted to new patterns, and she realized they were simply a recognition of her desire. “Kemal,” she whispered. “I want to make love to you.”
“Sarah, Sarah . . . What are you saying?”
She started to tremble, this time in anticipation. “I want new memories. Good ones. Ones that make me smile.”
Kemal kissed her forehead. “You might shatter, and what then? I don’t want to hurt you. What about the last time? What about the baby?”
He wanted her to tell him his doubts were wrong – she felt his own desire shimmering through his clothes. “I won’t shatter,” she said. “And we’ll be careful, both of us. Kiss me again, Kemal. Once more, then we go.”
“Yes, we must go.”
Breathless, they rode the streetcar through the city to Sarah’s hotel. Sarah clung to the pole by the door, letting the rattle of the car shudder through her body. Its muffled, clattering rhythm lifted the absence of years. Kemal pressed against her back, his arms wrapped around her waist, his cheek against her hair. Bahn.
Once at the hotel, Kemal went to the restaurant and returned with a bottle of wine. “Quickly, quickly,” he said, as if she might change her mind. In her room, he kissed her greedily, tenderly, stopping just once to pour the wine. “Sarah,” he whispered. “It’s so good to be here. Are you certain? Are you afraid?”
“No, it’s wonderful.” She nearly sobbed.
“Hush. We’ve been too impatient. We have all night to kiss, make love, whatever.” Kemal led her to the bed and gave her the wine. “Drink slowly, and remember this. Remember everything we do.” Taking a drink from his own glass, Kemal set his lips to hers and let his wine pour into her mouth. The crisp, light wine calmed her. “You are delicious,” he said. “I want to kiss more.”
Anticipation ran taut throughout her body as he laid her across the bed. Slowly, Kemal parted her legs and kissed the back of her knee. “I like this very much. Do you, Sarah?” He lingered over the syllables of her name, then moved his lips over her skin, kissing first one knee then the other. Then his tongue skimmed her thigh. Sarah moaned.
“My poor, little girl. I but kiss you and you are coming.”
“It’s been so long.”
“Yes, I know.” He kissed her foot. Ran a staccato of kisses from her ankle, past her knee, under her skirt to her panties. “These must go.” He lifted her bottom, slid her panties from her, and tenderly kissed her sex. “You are very, very wet,” he observed.
Sarah moved as if to protest.
“No, I like this,” he said. “I would like to think you are always wet. If not, I would like to make you so.” He nuzzled her belly, then dropped his mouth over her sex. “A treasure.”
Sarah felt as if they’d always been here, had always made love. She ran her hands over her breasts and down her body, to run wildly through Kemal’s hair. “You’re beautiful,” she said. “I can hardly believe it.”
“Tell me a story, Sarah, while I feast on your body.”
Her tears threatened to return. She ordered them away, but said, “All my stories are sad ones.”
“Then tell me a sad one, and we will try to make it better.”
Maybe we can, she thought. Sarah picked the first story, the oldest one of her life.
“When I was ten years old,” she said. “I read a story about a little girl who slept without her pajamas, so I decided to try this myself. It was wonderful – the sheets were like a great, cool hand laid over my body. I’d never felt anything like it. I wanted to laugh, and I think I did, but suddenly, my mother opened the door to my room. She pulled the covers away and shouted, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Sarah curled a lock of Kemal’s hair around her finger. Kemal’s slow, tender kisses spread a warmth through her belly.
“She told me I’d been wicked – she used that word, wicked – and she told me never to do that again. But three years later, when I was thirteen, I dreamed I stood at my window, watching a boy who stood in the street. In my dream, I lifted my nightgown over my head and stood there naked, hoping the boy would see me.
“He did. He turned around and looked at me with very serious eyes. I felt cold, then hot. I didn’t do anything else, I just stood there, knowing he could see my breasts.”
Softly, Kemal drew a line of kisses down her thigh. He crossed to the other leg, travelled back to her sex, up to her belly. “I love this part of you,” he murmured.
“I had this dream again and again,” she continued. “Each time in a different place, each dream more exotic and daring than the last. One time, I was standing in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, on the sidewalk, people passed by, looking at me. This time, I pretended I didn’t know they could see through the glass. I undressed very slowly, making certain I kept my eyes to the floor. I walked from one side of the room to the other, as if I were looking for something. I felt their eyes on me, but I pretended to be indifferent.”
“You didn’t want responsibility.”
“That’s right. I wanted to be wicked, but I didn’t want to be punished. I thought, if I were like a picture, they couldn’t blame me.”
“And who are they, Sarah?”
“People. I don’t know.”
“People like your mother?”
“I guess.”
“Do you still believe you are wicked?”
“Sometimes.”
Kemal lay his head on her belly and drew caressing circles over her skin with his fingertips, kissing the silver web of scars that marked her pregnancy. “When you had the baby, did you feel wicked then?”
“I felt – oh, god, I felt a thousand different things, all miserable – but yes, I felt wicked. As if God had punished me for taking pleasure.”
She felt the warm pressure of Kemal’s head, and the rumbling of his chest when he spoke. “Americans are ashamed of so much,” he said. “All day long, they scream sex, sex, sex. And yet, they are afraid when someone notices. Sarah, there is no god in heaven that would call pleasure wicked. Only the unhappy do this, when they try to deny others what they dare not feel.” He ran his tongue over the lips of her sex, easily recalling the warmth of her first excitement. “Listen,” he kissed her shuddering belly. “It is now almost nine-thirty. The next train comes from Frankfurt. It will have at least a hundred passengers – I know this. I want to make you scream from pleasure.” He pressed a kiss inside her thigh. “I want everyone to hear.”
Sarah’s resistance faded with each kiss. Her throat hurt now, and she was panting quickly. Kemal covered her sex with his mouth and sucked. “You are delectable.” He slid hands over her hips to her waist, driving his mouth against her. The edge of teeth tickled her, then his tongue, thick and firm, reached inside.
“I’m coming . . .” Her throat opened in relief. She wanted to ask him where he’d learned this. Each caress was practised, as if he’d studied her for years. Then, he pointed his tongue deeper, and she couldn’t think anymore. “Fuck me,” she cried. “Oh, please fuck me.”
“Not now. Not yet.”
Through the window, a thin, rising whistle announced the approaching train. Hundreds of people, she thought. Listening to me scream in pleasure.
“You are coming again,” said Kemal.
“I haven’t stopped. Lick me faster.”
He obeyed, with an expertise that nearly frightened her. Now she couldn’t hold it back. The moan rose from her belly to her chest, travelling through her aching throat to burst out,
savage and incoherent, until she lost the ability to speak and could only howl. Dimly, through the window, she heard the train pull to a stop, its brakes shrieking against the rails.
“Sarah, Sarah . . .” Kemal chanted her name like a song he’d just discovered.
“Don’t stop, Kemal. Please don’t stop.”
“Dear Sarah, we’ve just begun to make love . . .”
Bottomless on Bourbon
Maxim Jakubowski
He had often promised to take Kathryn to New Orleans. But it had never happened. They had spectacularly fallen apart long before the opportunity arose. In fact, the travel they had managed to do in between feverish fucks had proven rather prosaic. So much for promises. They hadn’t even visited Paris, Amsterdam or New York either.
So, whenever he could, he now took other women to the Crescent City.
For sex.
And fantasised about Kathryn’s face, and eyes, and pale breasts and cunt and more.
New Orleans was for him a city with two faces. Almost two different places, the aristocratic and slightly disheveled languor of the Garden District on one hand and the hustle and bustle of the French Quarter on the other, contrasting like night and day. The touristic charms concealing darker, ever so venomous charms. The heavy placid flow of the Mississippi river zigzagging in serpentine manner through the opposing twin shores of Jackson Square and Algiers. The gently alcoholic haze of New Orleans days and the enticing, dangerous attraction of fragrant New Orleans nights. Nights that smelled and tasted of sex.
He loved to see the women sweat as he made love to them, enjoyed the feel of bodies sliding against each other, in moist, clammy embraces as sheets tangled around them. He took unerring voyeuristic pleasure in watching them shower after, washing his seed away from their openings, cleaning away his bites, the saliva that still coated their nipples, neck or earlobes which he had assaulted with military-like amorous precision.
Those were the memories he treasured. Stored away for all eternity in his mental bank vaults. The curve of a back, the soft blonde down slowly being submerged in a small pool of perspiration just inches away from her rump, highlighted by a solitary light bulb, as she kneeled on all fours on the bed and he breached the final defences of her sphincter and impaled himself in her bowels. The sound of a moan, of pleasure, of joy. Ohhh . . . AAAAHHH . . . Chriiiiiist . . . The tremor that coursed through the girl’s taut body as he discharged inside her or as she rode the ocean waves of her oncoming orgasm.
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