by Mara White
“They’re wet,” I blurt out in the least sexy voice imaginable. I’m like an over-eager housewife blurting out her answer on the showcase showdown. Now all of my family members can clap and chant “good answer, good answer” as they inwardly cringe at my failure. I’m mixing up game shows.
“I’m no good at this,” I whisper, feeling ashamed.
“You are so, so good at this,” Mozey gasps. “That was the right answer.” His breathing has quickened, and I can hear his hand gliding along his stiff cock.
“How many fingers can you fit inside your wet cunt, Lana?” He breathes.
Oh Lord Jesus, did he just say that to me?
I slip in two, and my muscles contract around them. I slide them out and back in again, adding another. With three, I can feel the delicious friction, and my hips jerk in response. What’s the right answer to that question, I wonder?
“How many, Lana?” he says, his voice commanding and on the verge of impatience.
“Three,” I say, still unsexy but at least not nearly as abrasive.
“Good job, baby. Another right answer.”
I love that he calls me baby. No man has ever called me that, and I’ve always wanted it. I have singed with envy upon hearing men call other women that. I feel like I just won a prize. My face breaks into the invisible smile again for absolutely no one to see in the dark. I am his baby. And he’s about to come for me.
“Use your three fingers to fuck yourself because I want you to come with me. Can you do that?”
“Uhuh! Yes!” I grunt, and to me it sounds really very unsexy. But I think it works for him because I can hear the hitch in his breath.
“If I came on your body, where would you want it?”
He’s so good at this, that a little piece of me is terrified that he’s done it before with another woman. I want all of his intimacy. Even whatever happened in his past. It all belongs to me. No one else can touch it. I want to own all of it, his virginity, his every ejaculation, his every sexual thought.
“On my face,” I say, gaining momentum in the game. “On my lips and my tongue.”
I can hear his speed increase, his breath running out of his lungs. Good answer, Lana. I can tell that he liked it.
“Oh God! I’m so fucking crazy about you, Lana. Are you gonna come?”
I forgot about myself for a second because I was so captivated by his forthrightness. I love knowing Mozey likes this. I increase my speed, and my muscles contract. I want him inside of me so badly. I want to feel him spasm between my legs even more than my own spasm.
He groans loudly as he releases, and it’s the very best noise I’ve ever heard in my life. The only things missing are his noises near my ear and the weight of his wonderful body as he collapses, exhausted, onto my chest. But this is good enough. This is as close as we’ve come to ever satisfying one another in person.
I whimper a bit as I thrust my fingers inside. I’m soaked and so revved up, but my body doesn’t want my own fingers. Mozey stands, and I wonder if I he’s leaving me already to go clean off. I also wonder if I should stop and pretend that I’ve finished. But the dark outline of Mozey is walking toward the bed. Even his outline is sexy. This man was built perfectly both in proportion and virtue.
I moan because I don’t want him to touch me. I’m embarrassed I didn’t come yet, and I still need to hang onto the distance and the fact that we didn’t fuck. Social worker, my brain says.
“Keep going,” he says, and I can see his confidence just in the outline of his shoulders and neck. He puts one hand on the pillow right beside my face, and the other lands on the edge of my hip. Without caressing me with his hands, he makes our mouths connect. His tongue sweeps inside my mouth devouring the space. He takes the space like it’s his, and he owns it. He all ups and moves into the place. With his kiss I imagine his semen melting on my tongue, the salt-water taste of his sweat. All of Mozey would taste good, feel good. All of my senses are intoxicated by this man, but his physical presence has nothing on what he does to my mind. I push my fingers in deeper and open my mouth to him. I’m about to go off when Mozey whispers into my lips, “Come.”
And I’m right there to meet him.
Chapter 24
We drive south through the Mexican state of Sonora along the sea of Cortez. There’s been mostly silence between us, a few uncomfortable stares and some incredible fish tacos with mango salsa from an unassuming stand. Mozey drank a Negra Modelo, and I’m addicted to what’s called Tamarindo. I don’t know what the hell it is, but it tastes both sweet and tart, a little torture mixed with heaven.
The scenery is breathtaking both inside and outside of the car. He is fidgety. He is quiet. He is so fucking hot. This man lives out of a backpack and back and forth between a couple of pairs of jeans. He acquires and discards t-shirts, paint-staining them are the hazards of his trade. I’m in love with smelling him and just sitting this close. I’ll drive him all the way to Tierra del Fuego just to get enough.
Have you ever wanted something so much that you could burst at the seams? The very thought of his kiss from last night makes sweat magically appear on my brow. I clear my throat like a crazy person—five times in a row.
Sometimes he beats out drum rhythms from whatever he’s listening to in his ears. Once with a pen and once with his fingers. Whenever his brow creases, he grabs for his art pad and furiously scratches out something. I am memorizing everything, recording it in case it’s ever taken away.
It frazzles me to imagine spreading my legs for him, letting him take all of me. Letting the fuse burn all the way to the round, black, ticking time-bomb. Mozey between my legs would mean everything. All I can think about is his cock, the groans he made, his gorgeous and disciplined, wide-opened mouth.
He rustles the map that I told him we wouldn’t need. I guess he’s old fashioned. He plots the drive with a pencil like my mother always did on our shitty summer trips to the KOA campground. He’s toked his inhaler twice in a row, taking hits so deep into his lungs I begin to wonder if he catches a buzz. I shoot him a dirty look over my steering arm.
His shit-eating grin is enormous. As big as the boner I imagine in his pants. He bursts the grin, and it pops as he exhales. He’s laughing and shaking the cartridge like a fiend.
“Lana, quit trying so hard to be a grumpy bitch.”
“Quit acting like a twelve-year-old. You already make me feel all kinds of old.”
“Do you want to try to make it to Culiacan? I think we could do it—no problem. I’ve got some Redbull if you want one.”
“How far is it?” I ask, pressing random buttons on the GPS like I’m factoring the driving time and I know what I’m doing.
Mozey shakes his head and laughs at me some more.
“Like fifteen-hundred kilometers, more or less.”
“That means nothing to me. Please, habla English.”
“Like seventeen to twenty hours by my guess. I thought you were supposed to be Russian.” He’s chuckling at my expense.
“Twenty hours? Jesus! Do you even drive?”
“Yeah, I can drive. I’ll drive! We’ll switch!”
We battle back and forth like a couple that’s dating, or married, or better yet—on the brink of divorce. What do I know? We haven’t even begun, but we peck and caw at one another like two old crows.
He ends up reclining the seat all the way to nap before we switch off and it’s my turn to rest. I watch the rise and fall of his chest almost as much as I watch the highway, which is empty except for the occasional semi or passenger bus. I watch how his hand curls as it drapes off the side of the seat. I watch how the other hand moves occasionally, gliding along the cotton of his t-shirt, palm down and splayed out on his broad chest.
I sigh inside with so much looking at him. Is it unhealthy to worship someone? Because I
think I might be worshiping Moisés as we speak. I long to know everything about him. I can see those hands when they were pudgy toddler hands seeking the comfort that we all seek. I know that his past was a painful one, but he somehow turned out so good-natured and sweet. I had it easy in comparison, and I’m the one that’s ill tempered and chronically moody. The drawings he created in Tijuana were painful ones. I need to be strong enough to ask him about those things. But for now I’ll just watch him sleep.
A truck whizzes by and pulls my attention away from him. Away from the beauty that is Moisés in dreamland. There hasn’t been a sign of civilization for over an hour. I’ve only seen a stand offering barbecued goat. A stand in the middle of nowhere. Where did they come from, and how far did they bring the goat? I’ve got to pee so bad my bladder is numb. I’ll have to pull over and make ends meet.
I ease over to the shoulder when the earth dips down rolling away from the highway enough for me to hide and pee. I start talking to myself as the car rolls to a stop, and I undo the seatbelt. It’s now almost dark outside, and the landscape is fading. There’s only a star-filled sky against darkened earth, with the zipper of the highway stretching righteously up its gigantic backbone. Mexico still scares the shit out of me. I shoot Mozey one last look, hoping the lack of motion has pulled him from slumber-land. His warm, brown eyes are staring right at me, with just a touch of smile beginning to break.
“I love waking up close to you,” he says and raises his arms above his head, simultaneously stretching his legs. I hear his tendons and fascia snap with excitement. I search my brain for a romantic come back, but I suck at talking about feelings and my bladder is trying to prove equations about distance and water weight.
“I have to pee.” Oh, how romantic, Lana! Make him swoon with your gross bodily needs.
“Okay, let’s pee.”
I feel like he’s always smiling, like somehow he’s always amused with whatever I say. In part it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, and at the same time, it totally unnerves me. Moisés de la Cruz does all sorts of funny things to me.
Our pee steams in the cold night air. Apparently the temperature drops down to nothing as Mexico goes to sleep and the sun takes its leave. Mozey finishes way before me and I get self-conscious, thinking he might be watching. My urine stops its exodus midstream. He laughs, and his sneakers crunch on the gravel.
“Lana, don’t tell me you can’t pee in front of me.”
“Go wait in the car!”
“Last night you masturbated in front of me,” he says as if he’s talking about dinner.
I whimper in response and try to push out the pee. I guess he’s got no problem just mentioning the thing that’s been eating away at me. I ignore my feelings and his comment, and the stream agrees to cooperate again.
“Is it wintertime here or is it just cold like the desert?” His laugh makes me start and scares away my pee again.
“Mexico is to the US as the US is to Canada. We’re not in South America,” he says, still laughing and now kicking up rocks in the gravel under his feet.
“How’d you get so smart for a—“
“A what? Mexican? Immigrant? Last time I checked, Lana, you were from someplace else too.”
“That’s not what I meant. I was going to say delinquent.”
“Oh, that’s generous of you. A juvenile delinquent.”
He walks back to the driver’s side, and I toss him the keys. I keep my comments about being careful and questions about a license all to myself. I lie down in the reclined seat that’s still warm from his slumber and heavy with his scent. This is paradise. This spot is all I need.
“Mo, will you tell me your story to put me to sleep?”
He runs his fingers through his hair and throws a curious look my way.
“You really want to know?”
“Every single thing.”
And that is how I hear the story I never wanted to hear. The story that just about kills me to know. The story of baby Moisés and how he made it to the States. Probably the saddest story I’ll ever live to know.
Chapter 25
Mozey
“We came across when I was six. My baby sister, Brisa, was only eighteen months old. My father had come to the States years before. He left the first time when I was a year. My parents got together young. Where they came from there were no jobs. You either eked out a living from the earth or you moved. I grew up in a neighborhood called La Neza. It was on the northern outskirts of Mexico City; it’s a shantytown really. It grew out of nothing, poor people arriving looking for work in the city who couldn’t afford rent, so they flocked there and built homes for themselves out of whatever they could find. They didn’t have electricity or any running water. My dad still had to pay rent for the two room cinder-block structure they lived in. Just because it was a ghetto, doesn’t mean there weren’t landlords.
Then I came along. They couldn’t afford to take care of a kid, so my dad went to work in Los Angeles. He found a job as a waiter. It was a long time before he contacted us. He was supposed to be sending his money back to support us. But I think once he started his new life, he really just forgot about us.
My mom was young and didn’t have any skills. She ended up taking in laundry and scrubbing other people’s dirty underwear from dusk to dawn. There were always tubs of water all around us. To me the whole world smelled like that blue block of laundry soap. I remember when her fingers would split open and bleed. I knew she was unhappy and missed him. I knew she was scared all of the time. So scared that sometimes I still hear her crying in my dreams.
A couple of times she got threatened, and once they came in and robbed the place. She took us on a bus all the way back to her hometown. Some rural farmland in the middle of nowhere. Her parents, my grandparents, sent her back after just a few days. They said that my dad would eventually send for her and that we had to wait. But the years went by, and he came and went a few times, but he never thought we could make it across the border alive. Every once in a blue moon he’d send money. We’d watch it go out as quick as it came. I thought that money was magic. Fucking mystical dollars, the weavers of our destiny.
I was probably five when she started taking in “dates.” She only broke down and did it after she was raped. I sat on the other side of the wall and listened to it and not because I wanted to. I listened to her cry and softly call my father’s name while anonymous assholes had their way.
You can’t protect your mother from men when you’re only five years old—no matter how bad you might want to.
Brisa was born not long after. My mom delivered at home, and I was scared shitless. She screamed and cursed at her midwife, scratched her arms and pulled her hair. Brisa was yellow when she came out, totally jaundiced. There wasn’t a doctor we could afford, and the midwife promised the yellow-color would eventually go away. We took her to a neighborhood healer who reluctantly passed an egg over her in exchange for the chicken it came from. She burned incense and chanted a prayer. Either it worked, or Brisa naturally grew out of it.
My sister could have been fathered by anybody, even the landlord. He came pretty regularly to collect ‘the rent’ from my mom. But my mom was convinced Brisa was my father’s daughter. Maybe she was delusional. She had to hang onto something. “All you have to do is look at her nose,” she would say. And Brisa did look just like the picture my mom had hanging on the wall of me when I was in diapers.
I loved my baby sister whether she was full blood or not. Taking care of her gave me something else to think about. I looked forward to her growing up—to a time when we could actually play together. I was the one who watched Brisa while my mom turned “dates.” I learned how to change her and how to rock her to sleep in my arms, how to quiet her when she was hungry by letting her suck on my finger.
The way we were wasn’t any way to live, and one d
ay, my mom decided she’d had enough. One night she just didn’t go to sleep, and she stayed up sewing our names into our clothes. I don’t know how she was so fearless or where she found the resolve. She got money from her family and some from my dad’s. She wrapped Brisa to her body, and we only carried one bag. We road La Bestia North and the trip nearly killed us. It was cold. It was evil. The trip was fucking torture. I think that what saved us again and again was Brisa and how she was tied to my mom’s body. It kept away the men and kept all of them from robbing us.
I swear my mother didn’t sleep, not a single minute during the four days it took us to get to the border. She clung to us and she clung to the train. She was so determined and stared death right in its face. She was so brave—was the same age that I am now. The trip terrified me but I was happy because I thought we were going to be reunited with my dad. I believed that in America we’d finally find safety. That men wouldn’t hurt my mom there and that we’d be protected by my father. That we’d all smile around the breakfast table like they did in the television commercials.
That mural in TJ on the side of the strip club wasn’t just a coincidence. What I drew there happened in real life. My mom had to pick up a few jobs to raise the money for the coyote. I remember her whispering over and over, “Don’t let Brisa cry, Moisés. They won’t give me the job if they know you’re here.” I did my best to hide both of our sobs.
The coyote we ended up contracting was probably dirty. He had to be considering what little she could pay him. The ones that aren’t just fucking you over charge more for a real crossing.
We were thirteen thick in the back of a van. Old people, kids, babies and parents. All of us scared shitless, already ruined from the journey. But we were willing to risk death to change our luck. She gave him every last cent we had, and then he took more in a gas-station bathroom while I held Brisa in the corner and cried, and he called me a pussy.