by Jac Simensen
Gordon reached for the bottle. “I don’t think I should have any wine—I’ve got more reading to do this evening. There’s just one more day before the bar exam. Let me pour for you.” He held the bottle up and looked at the label. “My, my—this is really special: Le Musigny. I know what it is but I’ve never had the opportunity to taste it. It’s quite a rare white wine and very expensive. You didn’t buy this around here, did you?”
“I didn’t buy the wine. My father had a large collection of fine wine, mostly French and Italian. He kept it in a secure, temperature-controlled warehouse and would call up to have bottles delivered to the house, or—more often—to his country club. I had the warehouse manager ship a dozen mixed cases here when I moved. He sold the other eighty or ninety cases at auction.”
Gordon poured the golden-hued wine into Devon’s glass. “I’m afraid I can’t turn down the opportunity to sample this rarity. Just one glass shouldn’t damage my memory any more than it already is.” He filled his glass halfway and raised it to the light.
“To your success with the bar exam,” Devon toasted as they clinked glasses.
~*~
Gordon used the last toast point to scoop up the remaining morsels of lobster salad on the green plate. “That was the best lobster salad I’ve ever had.” He dabbed at his lips with a linen napkin. “The touch of hot sauce is unique—nothing like we’d ever do with lobster in New England. Your Hattie is quite a cook; you two should open a restaurant.”
Devon grinned. “Maybe someday, when I’m ready to do something useful. More wine?”
“This burgundy is superb—so good, I wasn’t able to stop myself at just one glass.”
“Let’s finish it,” she suggested, and without waiting for Gordon’s response, divided the remaining golden liquid between their glasses.
“Of course, you do realize that if I screw up the exam, I’m gonna blame you. Hattie’s lobster salad and your extraordinary burgundy led me to ruin—that’ll be my excuse.”
Devon laughed. “The jury won’t buy it, Counselor—ignorance of the law is no excuse. Come on over here.” Devon rose from her chair and moved to the sectional. “Bring your wine and I’ll give you a quick preview of our system. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the experience.”
“Okay, but after all that wine and great food, I’m not sure I can move.” Gordon followed her instructions, stepped to the far end of the couch, and clumsily set his wineglass on the side table. “Okay—made it this far.”
Devon smiled. “Everything runs off this remote,” she said, holding up a larger than usual television-remote-like device. “First, the background.” Unseen recessed lights threw a soft indirect glow across the entire room. “Next, the shutters.” Electric motors whirred and the external, slatted shutters slithered down, covering the large windows and canceling out all sunlight. “You’re comfortable?” Devon asked.
“You designed thess?” Gordon slurred the words.
“Clarisse did, with some computer-science grad students. Now, the audio.” The sounds of gently running water—a stream or brook—poured into the room. Then gradually, over several minutes, it built to the deafening roar of a waterfall. “Pretty cool, huh?” Devon shouted as the sound began to recede.
“Now the picture show.” Devon still shouted, even though the sound level was at a more comfortable level.
The three large monitors filled with images of horizontal, multicolored lines, the images passing uninterrupted from one screen to the next. Almost imperceptibly, the lighting in the room gradually dimmed as the images on the monitors became more intense. For over five minutes, the horizontal lines changed colors, alternated between thick and thin, migrated from one monitor to another, and then took on jagged shapes, shapes of thunderbolts, saw blades, and a phallus. The lighting had completely shut down, and the only illumination was now coming from the three monitors. Sounds that had begun as a series of single, computer-generated tones followed the frenzy of the monitor images and gradually escalated in tempo and intensity to become dissonant music. Suddenly, the abstract, pulsing lines on the three monitors vanished and were replaced by rainbow-hued, kaleidoscopic clouds, shifting shape and color like Escher’s dragons. The music became soft and melodic—cloud music.
“You okay?” Devon asked.
“I’m having trouble visually processing this,” Gordon attempted to say but was unable to transmit those words from his mind to his mouth. He couldn’t see Devon but sensed she was nearby.
“Big clouds,” he said at last. “Big clouds.” Gordon was confused. He closed his eyes, but incredibly intricate fractals continued exploding, growing, and twisting behind his eyelids. He saw bright neon colors, and shafts of light turning into complex, awe-inspiring hallucinations.
From somewhere in the now-dark room, Devon gave a deep, guttural laugh. “Time to begin our journey,” she called to him. Then there she was—her face and shoulders filling the central monitor. The clouds crossed over from the left and right monitors to fill the space behind her head. The cloud music rose in volume and intensity as the camera pulled back to focus on her naked body, standing on a fine-powder-sand beach, with azure water lapping at her feet.
“You do remember, don’t you?” Devon called. Gordon was unable to tell if she was speaking to him from the couch, or if her voice came from the image on the screen.
“You remember?” her screen image asked as her hands lifted her firm breasts. “You remember?” she asked again as she stroked her shaved vulva. “I was blonde then—blonde just for you.” The image shifted from the beach to a bedroom. Devon was lying naked on silken sheets. The headboard and everything beyond Devon’s immediate image was blurred and indistinct.
Gordon tried his best to focus on the monitor as the music became more engrossingly complex, driving the approaching psychedelic thunderstorm that was forming in his head. And then she was kneeling next to him on the couch, her lips next to his ear, and her fingers stroking his penis through his trousers.
“I took you in my mouth and sucked you dry. You remember, don’t you?” She breathed heavily into his ear as she unfastened his belt and unzipped his chinos. She slid her hand under his jockey shorts and wrapped her fingers around his fully engorged penis. “You do remember?” she asked again.
The screen image echoed the cry. “You do remember, Gordy? We were so perfect together, our bodies joined like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—on the beach, the sand packing into my butt, threatening to become sandpaper in my vagina; in the car, pounding against the old leather upholstery, its animal smell an aphrodisiac; in the urine-scented ladies room of the Sand-Dollar, the zipper of your jeans cutting into my thigh, with each thrust—cutting painfully, beautifully, perfectly. Then you went down on me on the sloping back of my Jaguar in the parking lot at two o’clock while the greasy truck driver emptying the dumpster watched. The truck’s hydraulic, mechanical arms lifted the dumpster aloft, above the truck, reaching up as if in prayer above the driver’s leering face in the cab, and then dropped the dumpster load into the truck’s filthy maw. The driver watched us screw while he masturbated.”
Devon’s screen image in the bed was joined by a naked, slim man whose face was shadowed and unrecognizable. The same image filled the two side screens, but each from a different angle. The man lowered his head between Devon’s legs and she leisurely began to flex her abdomen in waves of pleasure. Devon’s image writhed in ecstasy on all three monitors as she approached orgasm, her partner’s tongue and lips foraging in her vulva, searching out her clitoris. She grasped her partner’s head, pulled him in even closer and began to moan. “Yes, Gordy! Do it.”
Devon moved from her kneeling position on the couch to the carpeted floor, removed Gordon’s boating shoes, and then pulled his chinos and undershorts down to his ankles and over his feet. Whatever attention Gordon had left was focused on the three screens until Devon slid back his foreskin, and then began to simultaneously stroke and kiss his throbbing penis. Gordon watched her red lips enc
ircle his cock. Although he felt the pleasurable stimulation of her rough tongue rubbing against the underside of his hypersensitive glans, he found it confusing to accept that those sensations were real. Instead, he felt it was more likely that he and Devon were performers on a fourth monitor. He focused on the circular smudge that her bright lipstick had left around the circumference of his shaft as he approached ejaculation. Devon sensed his excitement and pulled back. “Not yet,” she whispered. “I need you inside of me.” She firmly guided Gordon’s body from the edge of the couch onto the carpet.
Devon straddled Gordon’s hips and guided his swollen organ inside of her. She unhurriedly rocked back and forth, while at the same time flexing her vaginal muscles, tightly contracting her vagina around Gordon’s penis while she moved and then, seconds later, pausing and relaxing the muscles. Gordon intuitively responded by tightening his sphincter muscles each time she squeezed. Every tiny pressure was exquisite. With each thrust and movement, Gordon felt his psychic energy flow through his penis and into Devon’s body. The outcome of their internal pas de deux was an extended period of near-ejaculation that lasted for minutes—finally ending, for Gordon, in a trembling psychedelic explosion.
Devon lowered her body to Gordon’s chest, her sweaty breasts compressing against his, her mouth near Gordon’s ear. They were both panting and out of breath. “You do remember?” she asked again.
And Gordon remembered. In his experience, there was only one woman who could so precisely control her vaginal muscles.
“Maggie,” he whispered, breathing heavily. “Maggie.”
24
“Wake up! We have to talk,” Nila animatedly called as she rocked her sister’s unresponsive body back and forth in the large bed.
“Get away, Ian! It’s not morning yet,” Della sleepily groaned. “I’m exhausted. We’ll do it later, after I wake up.”
Nila laughed. “Doo-Doo, it’s me, not Ian—and you have to wake up, right now.”
“Nila, what are you doing in my room?”
Nila pulled the blanket and sheet away from Della’s naked body. “You’re in Miami at a hotel and you have to wake up right this minute.” She smacked Della’s butt.
Della partially opened her eyes and looked around the room while Nila drew the drapes to admit the midmorning sun. The sunlight bounced off the crystals of a large chandelier and danced in rainbow colors on the beige walls and furniture.
Della pushed herself up on one arm and hesitantly lowered her legs over the side of the bed. “What time is it?”
“It’s ten in the morning here in Miami. It’s about four in the afternoon back at home. You’ve slept for nearly ten hours—Gordy’s just left.”
Della yawned and stretched. “My head’s all fuzzy,” she mumbled.
Nila smiled. “That’s the jet lag and champagne, silly goose. You do remember the party—Mary and Milton, the models, Gordy, and the babies?”
Della’s face brightened. “The babies! Oh yes, your darling babies—of course, I remember.”
Della slid out of bed into a standing position and stretched upward on her toes. Although her complexion was several shades lighter than Nila’s and her hair a pastel brown, there was a clear family resemblance between the sisters.
“You need to be wide awake. Mum called back a short while ago and Dad’s going to be ringing us at half-ten; there’s not much time.”
“Our dad?”
“Dad’s here in Miami and he wants to meet with us.”
“Our dad, really?”
“That’s right—our dad.” Nila grabbed Della’s wrist and forcefully pulled her toward the bathroom. “You brush your teeth and put something on while I tell you what’s going on.”
“Okay, okay, don’t pull,” Della complained. “I’m wide awake now. Our dad, huh? Really?”
“Really—our dad.”
Nila stood in the doorway while Della brushed her teeth. “First off, Mum said that our grandmother recently died and that in her will she left some valuable jewelry to me. Of course whatever it is we’ll share.”
Della spat out the toothpaste and rinsed her mouth. “Our gran’s been dead for years.”
“Not that grandmother, the one in Africa. Mum said her name was Juba.”
“Oh, that one. I don’t remember anything about the grandmother in Africa. Are you sure?”
“You were a tiny baby when we left Ghana—you wouldn’t remember. I was older than you, but don’t recall much about a grandmother, except that she was the one what put the cat tat on my belly and got Mum all steamed.”
“Oh yeah, your cat tattoo—I remember the story about where you got the tattoo.”
“So, Dad just went to see Mum in London and told her about his mother dyin’ and her jewelry. He said that before she died, his mother made him swear that he would personally deliver the jewelry to me and that’s what he wants to do. He’s come to Florida and is staying at a hotel in Miami. Mum called and asked if it would be okay for her to give him my phone number. I agreed and so she set it up for him to call us at half-ten. That’s in exactly thirteen minutes. He wants to arrange a place where we can meet later today, Mum said.”
Della hastily grabbed a hotel robe from the back of the bathroom door and walked to her suitcase, which was lying open on a chair. “I guess I should feel excited about meeting my father for nearly the first time in my life.” She shrugged. “But somehow I’m finding that I don’t really care.” She pulled on underpants and an old, worn Rolling Stones tour T-shirt from a long-ago concert at Wembley Arena. “Ian gave me his prized shirt not long after we met. It was to commemorate our mutual loss of virginity, he said—romantic, he is!”
Nila laughed and helped Della with the robe. “You’re still happy to be living together?”
“Ecstatic. Ian’s the most gentle, randy, loving man I’ve ever known—and funny, too. Sometimes when he gets me laughin’ I can’t stop, and wind up wettin’ me knickers. I think it’s likely we’ll marry; he wants to get a book published first and then quit his temp jobs. I don’t mind, though. I’ll have him just as he is.”
“We’ll take the call in the other room,” Nila said. “I asked Mary to join us, because she knows Miami and might be able to help us choose a place to meet if we have to. I asked her not to speak; I think Dad’s only expecting to talk with us.”
Della entered the sitting room and plopped onto a couch with her legs drawn up under the robe. “What’s he like, our dad?”
“Don’t really know. Mum destroyed all the photos she had of him and of us with him when we lived in Ghana. I did see a wedding photo, once; it was tucked into a book of poems in Mum’s closet. I don’t think she knew the photo was in the book. He was likely about the age I am now, with a darker complexion than mine. As I recall, he was good-looking—but that’s all I remember.”
There was a soft knock on the door. Nila opened it and found Mary with a finger held to her lips.
“All clear,” Nila whispered. “He hasn’t rung yet.”
Mary embraced Nila, quickly stepped to the couch, and sat next to Della. “This is so exciting!” she gushed, wrapping an arm around Della’s shoulders. “And so mysterious.”
Nila’s cell phone chirped. “I’m setting this to speaker,” Nila said. “Mary, there’s paper and pen on the coffee table if you want to ask a question. You two ready?”
Della and Mary nodded in unison as Nila pushed the talk button.
“This is Nila Rawlings,” she said in a higher-pitched voice than normal.
“Nila, this is Hubert Rawlings—your father.”
“Hello, Dad. Mum said that you’d be ringing me up. I’m very sorry to hear about your mother. Della is, too.”
“Della’s there with you?”
“Uh huh.”
“Hi, Dad—it’s me,” Della called.
“Your mother didn’t tell me that the two of you were together in Miami.”
“We’re getting fitted for our wedding dresses this afternoon—both
of us.”
Hubert sounded surprised and confused. “You’re both getting married in Miami?”
“No, Dad—it’s just me gettin’ married. Della’s my maid of honor and the wedding’s at Castle Key—that’s an island on the other side of Florida. Not ’til October, though. We’re getting our gowns made by a famous designer who’s here in Miami.”
“I see; your mother didn’t say. She told you about your grandmother’s passing and about her will?”
“She said that my grandmother left me some jewels and that you’d promised her you’d deliver them to me.”
“Yes—her name was Juba, your grandmother. I have four pieces of jewelry for you. They’re quite valuable and are in the hotel safe. I’m staying at the Madison, in South Beach. Do you know where that is?”
“I don’t know where anything is. We only arrived yesterday.”
“Maybe you could come to the Madison this afternoon; any taxi driver will know where it is. Then I can get the jewelry out of the safe and tell you about your grandmother’s will.”
Mary took up the pen and furiously printed in large letters on the hotel stationery: NO! PRESS MUTE NOW!
“Hold on a second, Dad. Someone’s at the door.” Nila pressed the mute button and looked toward Mary.
Mary shook her head. “No way, girl,” she said. “You don’t even know what this guy looks like. He could be anybody—someone who’s not your father. This could be a scam. Tell him to come here and meet you in the lobby at three.”
Nila nodded and pressed talk. “Sorry, Dad. That was my fiancé’s sister at the door—she’s looking after my babies while we’re having this conversation, but she can’t continue to care for them this afternoon. If you want to meet with us today, I’m afraid it will have to be here, at the hotel where Della and I are staying.”