Edge Play X

by Wilson, M. Jarrett

  “Don’t do that!” Compton exclaimed. “The alarm will sound! I will have it delivered to you.”

  X went over to Compton and kneeled in front of where he sat on the floor.

  “Close your eyes,” she said, and ever so gently, she leaned forward and kissed him on his lips, soft and smooth and malleable. He returned her affection.

  Compton spoke softly, “X, I have a request.”

  X stood up and turned away from him.

  “What is it?”

  He continued. “In two weeks I will be going to Paris on business. Come with me, X, not as my Domina, but just as my traveling companion.”

  Simeon had told X that Compton had been planning to ask her to accompany him on a business trip, and he had obviously been correct. Must be that the bug in the office really was getting them information.

  “I don’t know,” she said, mesmerized by the artwork again.

  “Have you been to Paris before?” he asked.

  X turned to look at him and gently shook her head no.

  “It’s lovely, X, beautiful. Like you.”

  “I will have to think about it,” she answered.

  “I understand,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Stay there,” X told him. “Lie on the floor and don’t watch me as I leave.”

  X went to the intercom, saying, “Mr. Steinberg, I am ready to go,” and then she exited the room.

  12.

  The painting came by certified delivery. Unsure exactly what to do with it, X simply hung it on her living room wall. After all, who would believe that she owned a real Van Gogh? She almost did not believe it herself.

  X spent hours staring at it, so it seemed, looking at it in little spurts or in longer periods of adoration, studying the color palette that was used and memorizing the peaks and valleys of the brushstrokes, the mad torrents of oil, the unexpected dabs of color here and there. And the stoic woman in the painting, her red hair wrapped atop her head in a braid, holding rosary beads perhaps in her long, thick fingers which sat on her lap beneath matronly breasts, cast her gaze not to the viewer of the painting, but to the side as if in contemplation.

  It was Van Gogh whom X loved more than other artists. Her adoration was not because of his prolificacy, or his technique, or his failure to achieve fame in his lifetime, or the fame that he had achieved posthumously, or the landscapes, groups, portraits, or self-portraits that he had painted, although X appreciated all those things. No, X was drawn to him because his visionary gift was inextricably linked to his madness, to his torture, and X, prone to experiencing a similar distress (albeit on a smaller scale) felt camaraderie in their suffering. She loved him for his suffering. As she stared at his painting, X wondered if it was possible to fall in love with a person solely through their artwork.

  After this last time of seeing Compton, the man had sent X flowers again, but this time he had sent 20 bouquets of white roses together. There was barely room in her apartment to put them all, and a few bouquets X had simply placed on the floor here and there. Soon, she would have to tell Compton that she would accompany him to Paris and get further instructions from Simeon.

  For the moment, however, X took delight in the painting and in the fact that Compton no longer owned it. Even though it now belonged to her, she did not consider herself anything other than a steward of the work. Sometimes, in periods of contemplation, X would go up to the canvas and ever so gently place the tip of her index finger upon it, knowing that technically she should not be doing such a thing, but she could not restrain herself. Just as when a gift is received from a far-away love and it is held closely for nothing other than the fact that the loved one held it, touched it, handled it, so it was that X would touch the painting and try to reach through time.

  To say that there was a melancholy that was alleviated by being in the presence of that painting, well, that would not be untrue. But there were other ways in which X tried to quell her feelings.

  The next Saturday evening, Anne came over and chided X into going out with her. Anne was dressed-up and perfumed and X knew there would be no saying no to her.

  “You must come out with me tonight, I absolutely will not allow you to stay in, you little homebody. And all these flowers,” Anne said, leaning over to sniff a bunch, “if you don’t get out of this apartment you’ll die from hay fever.”

  Anne’s attention was caught by the painting and she went over to it to examine it, saying, “That is absolutely the best replica of a Van Gogh I have ever seen.” After a few more moments, her attention was back to the task at hand. “I have the babysitter all night, and you and I are going to go out, my dear.” She was all smiles and excitement, and X gave in, happy in fact to be getting out for the night.

  They went to a bar that Anne liked but that X had never visited before. She and Anne entered the establishment and sat at the long, polished bar, putting their feet onto the copper footrest below. The Christmas decorations were out in full force, the holiday just a few days away. Long strings of white lights hung below the crown molding of the ceiling, creating a weightless luminary halo; garlands of pine decorated with wide scarlet bows draped the wood above the lighted shelves that showcased the various liquors. A few of the waitresses wore Santa hats.

  It was a busy night, and the bartenders worked nonstop pouring drinks for waitresses who hurried to the bar with their round trays precariously balanced on their inner forearms. Finally, one of the bartenders made his way over to them.

  He wiped his hands on the apron tied around his waist and then said, “What can I get you ladies?”

  Anne answered, “White wine, please.”

  “And you?”

  “A Dos Equis,” X said.

  Then the bartender went away to get their drinks.

  As the women watched him pour the wine and then the beer, Anne commented, “Handsome, isn’t he?”

  X smiled in agreement with her. The man was handsome. Not especially tall but rugged and strong, an assemblage of masculine lines. He brought over their drinks and put them onto little cardboard coasters.

  Anne started to reach into her purse but X stopped her.

  “My treat tonight,” X said, handing him a bill.

  Anne didn’t protest, aware that she had helped X in many ways and that now her friend was returning the favors.

  “I might as well let you,” she said, “especially with all the sales you’ve been making. In my professional opinion,” Anne said, raising her eyebrows in the way that always made X chuckle, “you are going to have many good sales from here on out. Cheers!”

  X took a drink from her beer and watched the bartender. She liked it when he laughed.

  “And all those flowers at your apartment—I am not even going to ask because I know that you will not give me the answer.”

  “I should have given you a bunch,” X said.

  “No, my dear, relish them. When you are as old as me it will give you something to look back on fondly and remember how beautiful and desired you were.”

  “Oh, Anne, you aren’t so much older than me,” X said.

  Anne brushed her bobbed blond hair back over her ear jokingly. “I guess I’m not so decrepit.”

  X laughed, thinking that it felt good to laugh again. Drinks and laughs, they were a good combination.

  They talked about the gallery, Anne telling X about her plans for her work. Anne had quite easily become her manager and she was doing a good job at it. Aside from that, Anne was motherly and nurturing, and those traits drew X to her. Despite their closeness, X couldn’t bring herself to divulge to Anne that soon she would be accompanying Terry Compton to Paris. She didn’t know how to explain it, especially with her senses veiled with alcohol.

  The bartender came back and they ordered another drink.

  “That bartender,” Anne told her as he fixed their drinks, “he owns the bar. Doesn’t he look like he could be a Roman soldier? He just has those features, those deep Roman eyes.”

  He came
near to her and X surveyed him closely, shooting him a smile. He shot one back.

  “It’s true,” she said to her friend.

  They talked about politics and the other artists at the gallery.

  But then Anne said to X, “You have been so successful lately. What is behind all the melancholy?”

  Anne had a way of seeing what was going on under the surface, and her ability reminded X of her own mother which made her mourn for her absence.

  She looked into the back of the bar where the pool tables were and watched as people played under the stained glass lights. Merrily, a young woman rubbed chalk on the felt of the cue and laughed. A couple gave each other a long, slow kiss under a sprig of mistletoe as a few patrons cheered them on.

  “It’s nothing,” X said, “I always get glum in the winter around the holidays.”

  Anne was polishing off the last of her drink. “There’s nothing better than combating that than a good romp in the sack, love.”

  With that, Anne’s cell phone began to ring and she fished it out of her purse. It was the babysitter.

  She closed her other ear with her fingertip, masking some of the noise from the bar. When she finished her conversation, she said, “Oh, damn. Charlie’s got a fever. I’m destined to never have a full night out.”

  X started to grab at her purse.

  “But you stay here, I insist,” Anne said. And although X didn’t want to be there without her, she didn’t want to return home, either.

  “I’ll wait outside with you for the taxi and have a cigarette,” X said, “and then I’m going to go inside and finish getting drunk.” They were hanging on each other laughing.

  When X returned inside, her place at the bar was still open, and the man she had nicknamed The Roman was there, waiting to pour her another drink.

  13.

  X spent the remainder of the night flirting with men and playing pool. None of the men she spoke with, however, piqued her attention enough to want to leave the bar with them. So, as the bar was getting near to closing, she asked the bartender if he could give her the number for a taxi.

  He handed her a couple business cards for taxi services that he kept behind the bar.

  “Do you live around here?” he asked.

  “Not that far, ten minutes away, maybe fifteen.” X pulled out her phone and started to dial.

  He was washing glasses quickly in the sinks, moving them from one basin to another before putting them onto a drying area.

  “Because,” he began, “if you don’t mind waiting around until the bar closes, I’ll give you a ride home.”

  She considered his offer and the implications it might have before answering, “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

  He poured a beer and set it in front of X, its bubbles rising up through its warm amber. “We just have to close out our drawers and get the drunks out of here,” he said. “A cleaning crew comes in the morning before we open.”

  People were starting to make their way out, and after the last one left, the owner locked the door behind them. He and the other bartender closed out their drawers, deftly counting bills and coins before putting everything into a small zippered bag. Waitresses scurried around with empty glasses and pitchers or wiped off tables. X’s presence at the bar seemed to go unnoticed. Surely, she knew, she was not the first woman who had waited around for the owner.

  Bored, X went to the back where the two pool tables were, selected a cue, put some money into the table, and released the balls. She started to shoot at the striped ones, and as usual, was terrible.

  When the man came back, he looked relieved to see X at the tables.

  “There you are,” he said. “I thought maybe you left.” He surveyed the table. “Shooting stripes, eh? I’ll give you a head-start.”

  He picked up a cue and immediately shot a solid into a corner pocket. He kept going until X was sure he would clear the table. Then, finally, he missed a shot.

  “There you go. Your turn.”

  A couple of the waitresses walked by, waving him a quick good-bye.

  “Turn out the front lights on your way out,” he said to them, and X heard the door closing behind them.

  “Is everyone gone now?” she asked.

  “All ours,” he said.

  X took a shot and the ball ricocheted off the rail.

  “You are shooting all wrong,” he said. “Try again.”

  She walked around the table and started to aim at the cue. The man came behind her and leaned over her, putting his hands over her own and helping X to position the cue stick.

  “You want to have the cue hit the edge of that ball to send it into the pocket. Simple geometry.”

  He guided her shot and the ball went in.

  “See,” he said. “Simple.”

  “Simple to you, maybe.”

  He watched as X set up her next shot. This one went in.

  “So,” he said, “what do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a painter,” she answered, pausing to take a drink from her beer.

  “A painter,” he echoed. “Do you paint pictures or walls?”

  “Pictures, mostly,” she laughed. “And you?” she asked to make him laugh as well, “a professional pool player? A hustler?”

  X missed her next shot and he lifted his eyebrows. He chalked the end of his cue, spreading the blue color over the felt.

  “You’re winning,” X said.

  “Well, how about winner takes all.”

  He bent over and started to clear the table.

  She took another sip of her beer.

  “Tell me, what is the ‘all’?”

  The man cleared the table and then gingerly grabbed the cue ball and slid it into a pocket.

  He came over to X, wrapped his hands around the curvature of her ass, and lifted her up to the side of the table. The man stood between her legs, the limbs open and inviting.

  X motioned over to a sign that sat above the cue rack that said No Drinks or Sitting on Tables.

  “What will the owner say?” and then the man leaned down to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave into his kisses.

  His kisses moved down her neck and then he pulled her shirt over her head, continuing his journey down to the smooth tops of her breasts, reaching behind her back to unfasten her bra before letting it drop onto the floor next to his feet. Rough stubble brushed against areola and breast, the man gently biting their tips between his teeth.

  X wrapped her legs around him and moved her hands under his shirt, over his flanks and up his back. He took his shirt off, too, and then threw it onto the floor.

  And then: hands rolled over arms, chests, shoulders, clavicles, ribs, abdominals, butts, thighs, and genitals; mouths met and then migrated; neurotransmitters bonded to receptors; organs expanded in width, depth, and size; clothing was removed and flung aside; rates of respiration increased.

  “Have you ever fucked on a pool table?” he asked. X noticed that there was the tiniest of crevices between his front teeth.

  “No,” she said as she reclined back onto the green felt of the table.

  “Neither have I,” he said, laughing. He leaned forward and started to kiss her belly.

  X tried not to think of Compton or Simeon but an occasional image of them would pass through her mind before she would quickly push it away. X, quite simply, wanted to escape from them in body and in mind; she would fuck her brains out. She thought that this interlude would just be a one-time thing, a bewitching distraction, unaware that this man would play a part in her life for years to come.

  Naked now and intoxicated, X stretched her arms out over her head and arched her back, giving herself to the man who groaned in pleasure as he buried his face between her legs.

  There was the ceiling, an old painted tin ceiling, the paint stained from when people still smoked inside the bars, and there was the feel of the smooth felt on her back, of the rail under her ass as he ran his tongue over her flesh, relishing the taste of it, th
e unique and pungent nectar, hovering above her delicately and almost weightlessly like a bee above its flower. X’s legs were wrapped around his head, petal like, her ankles touching the nape of his neck as she allowed him to lick her, to swirl, flick, and poke his tongue over the hill of nerves until she had nearly reached its climax, and then she pushed his head away.

  He stood, wiping off her juices onto his thick forearm. X sat up and they were kissing again, X tasting her own lingering flavor as she worked her hands down to his giant of a penis and wrapped her hand around its girth, the veined stalk nearly twice the length of Mr. Compton’s.

  “Not bad,” X said, giving him her assessment in conjunction with a squeeze.

  He laughed. He knew he had a big dick.

  His tongue ran over her earlobe and then she reclined back onto the table, taking him with her. The man, then, so slowly, ever so slowly, pushed himself through the gates, warm and pliant under his movements, the helmet of the glans followed by the long juggernaut of shaft, a battering ram making its way into the sovereignty (descriptions which would have made the man proud), and once inside, he lingered, still for a moment, as was his habit when first entering the kingdom.

  X reached up to his face, running her hand over the stubble on his cheeks and then over the cleft of his chin. When she ran her fingers over his lips, he opened his mouth and took them inside, sucking them.

  There was a look of concentrated ecstasy on his face as X felt his hands running up the underside of her legs, making their way up to her ankles, and as he grasped them, he fucked her as if performing a musical composition, an opus: slow (adagietto) and then fast (allegro), hard (forte), gently (sanft) and playfully (scherzoso), the tightening stringendo accelerating to a stretto, every movement executed passionately (passionato) as he wrapped his arms around her thighs and pushed himself deeper into her.

  The man reached down and used his thumb to create a tremolo, as if playing the same note over and over, knowing that she would orgasm soon, feeling it in her body and sensing it in the abandoned sound of her moans becoming a crescendo, their soprano mixing in harmony with the bass of his own, so he allowed himself to succumb to her being entirely, he stroking the little pea of nerves until X convulsed with pleasure. Seeing her orgasm brought him over the precipice as well, and right before he came he pulled his cock out of her and shot his ejaculate onto her belly, stroking his big penis to get out all of its juices (coda).