Genevieve
Page 8
“I haven’t done anything bold.”
“Too bad.”
“Why?”
“With my mood, as long and tall and cute as you are, I might’ve done something bold.”
Thunder roars.
I ask, “Where were you born?”
She gives a one-sided smile. “I was born in a manger surrounded by liquid crackheads and chain-smoking alcoholics who had been displaced from their motherland, physically and mentally abused to the point that would create a warm smile on Willie Lynch’s racist face, a tear of happiness in his racist eyes as his spirit watches us devour ourselves with self-hatred, a smile that turns into a never-ending laugh as he sees us living day-to-day with misdirected aggression, hopelessness raining from above as prayers go up and come back unanswered because the savior’s phone is off the hook and He is not accepting our I-pages.”
I look at her body art, her hair, her neo-soul style, say, “You’re a poet.”
She asks, “Did you understand it?”
“Not really.”
She laughs a little. So do I.
Her cellular phone’s ring tone interrupts us.
She holds my gaze, gives me an innocent smile, the kind that can turn a wise man into a fool. Without taking her eyes from mine she lowers her smoke from her face and answers with a snap, “Deuce, stop calling me. What the fuck you want? For the last time, I told you I haven’t seen no damn U-Haul truck. None of your business where I am. What is the problem with my charge card, asshole? I’m trying to get a damn room, that’s why. None of your business where or who… You know what? Fuck you. No, fuck you, your bitch ass.”
She turns and storms away, still arguing, heads down the hallway into the bar.
She is familiar, the incarnation of the women I grew up with in Fresno, the women who frightened and excited me all at once. The women who looked at me and saw nothing.
I take to the men’s room, but the water won’t come. My mind is elsewhere. Still in the hallway. When I’m done trying I fight the urge to hurry back to the lobby toward what is right, and instead I walk to the door that leads to the bar, circle the room looking for the crass woman.
There is a door that leads out toward the streets facing the library.
I move in that direction, then stop when sanity taps me on my shoulder.
Near the back of the room an interracial couple is laughing over whether or not he should use Viagra. A dim light is over their heads and candles are on the table. I stop where I am, looking out into the rain for the girl and eavesdropping all at once. The couples at the table are not old; she just wants more time on the meter. He is heavy and European, glasses and a thin beard, wearing Dockers and a Polo shirt. The woman he is with is Indian. She has large breasts, plenty of cleavage, has a pleasant face, borderline full-figured, her skin as dark as the night is long. Next to them, a heavy-set Spanish woman and an Italian man. He has on jeans and a white button-down collar shirt. She wears a green blouse that has no sleeves, open enough to show off her pearl necklace.
I walk the perimeter of the room, searching for the woman with the untamed hair.
My eyes go back to the two couples.
The interracial couple lean closer, no longer laughing, now kissing slow and easy, the sensuality between them igniting the room. Next to them the Spanish wife and the Italian husband are touching, his hand on her breasts, foreplay on a dark and dreary night.
Both couples are close, the women next to each other, tables touching as if all four are in the same party, and all are well-tanned, look well-to-do, like old money and plantation-sized homes, sitting in a cozy darkness surrounded by the sounds of a rampaging Mother Nature.
At first I don’t understand, then I do. The Spanish woman’s movements tell the story of the unseen. Her Italian companion has slid his hand underneath the table and his finger is stroking the wet folds of her vagina. She trembles and coos, jerks as if he is lifting that finger in a come-here motion, shifts as electricity is surging through her body, holds the edges of the table as if she is pushing her hips against his finger, her eyes looking greedy, daring him to do more.
I envy them, wish I could bottle their intensity and bathe my wife in their passion.
The Spanish woman shifts, moans out something in her native tongue, then she laughs.
The white man protests in a rugged whisper, “What are you doing to my wife over there?”
The Italian replies, “What do you think I’m doing? I’m finger-fucking your wife.”
My mouth drops open as my curiosity shoots off the meter.
The Spanish woman laughs. “Honey, mind your business. Go back to talking about whatever you were talking about. I’m drunk and I need to come, so mind your own business.”
“I’ll have to finger-fuck your beautiful wife then. See how both of you like that.”
The white man frowns. “You’ve got big fingers.”
The Spanish woman purrs. The Indian woman moans.
In between moans the women dip their fingers in their alcohol, feed their lovers, that hard liquor smell and sex permeating the air in this dark chamber. The two women stare at each other and smile the smile of true vixens. They lick their lips like they want to take this to another level.
I sneak away, the same as I did when I was a child.
I want to be like that with my wife, finger-fucking her in a room lied with people, pleasing her underneath the table. I look at the women and make them Genevieve, make the men me.
The Indian woman sings her victory. The Spanish song of orgasm comes in as a chorus.
A symphony of moans sends chills through my groin.
Back at the front desk, Genevieve is just getting to the counter. She doesn’t have the room key. Computers went down for a moment. The thunder and lightning.
Genevieve turns away from the counter, sees me standing next I to her.
I am disturbed.
Genevieve asks, “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You vanished.”
I hesitate. “Bathroom.”
“Stomach okay?”
Again I hesitate. “Yeah.”
I take her hand in mine, run my fingers across her palm.
She looks up at me with a weary smile.
She loves me. Her love should be enough.
Minutes later we get on the elevator, the bellman in tow. Before the door closes, a huge hand catches the door. The Italian man from the bar. His friend staggers on behind him. The Spanish woman and the Indian woman get on next, high heels clicking against the marble floor. The elevator is small. We’re all shoulder-to-shoulder. They reek of alcohol and the stench of love. Genevieve’s eyes are down, preoccupied with her own impenetrable thoughts. The men argue about the war in Iraq, the Italian man being for Bush and his friend against Bush’s policy.
The white man says, “ ‘Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword.”“
“Quoting Shakespeare will not change my mind.”
“Your problem is that you are, my friend, a sore loser.”
“I’ll agree, not everyone who praises Allah is a terrorist, but all terrorists worship Allah.”
“Is that right? How soon we forget about Timothy McVeigh. I believe he was Catholic.”
“Sore loser.”
“I am not a sore loser. Ask your wife.”
“Maybe I’ll ask yours.”
The women are talking with their hands and ranting about Martha Stewart being in jail, joking about her wearing Blahniks with her prison garb, both laughing about it.
They push the button for the second floor and the elevator hums before it rises at a slow pace. At the second floor, as the door eases open, the Italian man looks at my wife in an evaluating way, smiles and winks and me, does all that before he gets off.
I hold my wife closer.
NINE
AS SOON AS I GET TO THE ROOM I HEAD FOR THE SH
OWER. GENEVIEVE gives me space, starts unpacking a few things, getting her laptop set up so she can get on the Internet and check e-mail. I’ll do the same in a little while. We’re both workaholics and tech heads. But I need some space. After traveling there are certain things a man needs to do without a woman in the bathroom. I ease my bladder and bowels, then shave my body with my electric shaver. Genevieve hates pubic hair, hates hair underneath my arms. I’ve come to agree with her, love the cleanliness. Hair traps odors. I do the same with a few rampant nose hairs, and make sure no hair is growing on my ears. Then I take a cool shower, stay in until my body temperature is regulated.
Twenty more minutes pass before Genevieve comes back to the room. She is glowing. Sweat on her brow. She fans herself and, without looking at me, complains about the heat.
I ask, “Where did you go?”
“Went to complain. Look at those plantation shutters. They’re coming apart. And this carpet, see how it bunches up by the door? I went out on the balcony and it’s been overlooked.”
“Genevieve, don’t give these people a heart attack.”
“The carpet is atrocious. Have you looked over the bed?”
“For what?”
“Are you blind? Can’t you see the smoke detector is hanging by the wires?”
I inspect the room with her. A creature of detail, she points out the things she complains about. As usual she is right. The lobby of the hotel is wonderful but our room is bleak. Like a woman who looks pristine on the outside, her soul in need of renovation. Hotel Genevieve.
She continues to protest, says, “And I had to see what we could do for food.”
“You could’ve called room service.”
“No room service.”
“No room service?”
“I went down there and gave it to them good. For two hundred a night, you would think they would’ve told us the kitchen was closed for renovation before we made our reservations. The Pickwick doesn’t have room service, but it’s in Five Points, plenty of places to eat.”
I open the plantation shutters, then open the door to the balcony. Our seventh-floor view is four lanes of empty street and Energen Plaza. I step out and spy toward downtown, watch the rain falling hard and wind blowing mercilessly outside. Thunder adds sounds to the background. A fourteen-foot U-Haul comes down the street, being beaten by the tempest. There is no traffic, so the U-Haul stands out. Since that bombing in Oklahoma, in this post-9/11 world, every moving truck looks suspicious. The driver struggles with the weather, looks like the truck is about to crash. The truck pulls over, emergency blinkers on. Then I hear a siren. The sudden wail pierces the darkness, and like the rain the scream comes from all directions. The city is terrified.
I hurry to the bathroom door, ask Genevieve, “Is that a terrorist alert?”
“Tornado warning.”
“What do we need to do?”
“Unless you’re Thor or Storm, nothing we can do.”
I ask, “You call your family?”
“No need waking anybody up.”
I raise a brow. “You think they’re sleeping through the Armageddon?”
She firms her voice. “In the morning.”
“Let them know we made it in.”
“In the morning. In the morning. In the morning.”
The siren dies. The rain falls strong and steady. We get in bed. I can tell that she is exhausted. I’m exhausted too, but I’m wired. What I saw downstairs has left me with fire in my belly. I move around like a restless kid. My mind alive with the excitement that comes from the chance of experiencing nirvana someplace new. The rain and the thunder and all the danger outside, even the possibility of being struck by lightning as I come hardens me. Being in a place where countless others have had sex turns her off, but it stimulates me to no end.
I am on a strange bed that holds the memory of countless hours of lovemaking. Countless illicit fucks. If a hotel room could talk it would speak in orgasmic moans. The walls whispering for all who come here to come here. While rain falls from the heavens, I imagine that in every room congress is in session. That the thunder is their orgasms, lightning their spasms.
I touch my wife, rub my flesh against her flesh.
She gives me a gentle moan. That is her yes.
I kiss her, pull her T-shirt away from her body, lick her skin, take her breast in my mouth.
She says, “Turn the air up.”
“Magic word?”
“Please.”
I do.
When I come back she’s on her belly, ass in the air.
I say, “Turn over.”
“From the back. I like it from the back.”
Her saying she likes it from the back has deeper meaning. That means she doesn’t want me to make love to her sacred spot with my tongue, doesn’t want me to lick around the edges and create figure eights, that she’s tired but accommodating, ready to get down to the nitty gritty.
I touch her from the small of her back down over the curve of her rising backside. Her ass is modest, very nice, very toned, very well proportioned, as is everything about her. At times she seems so tiny, as if sex with me, when I’m in that final moment, the one that takes us back to being primitives, as if those thrusts should hurt her, as if, if I let go, I could kill her with my passion.
I ease on top of her and she reaches down, takes me, puts me inside her.
She’s not as wet as a river, but her vagina isn’t a desert.
I kiss her back, touch her skin, start to move in and out of her hollow.
She whispers, “Wait.”
I stop moving. “What?”
“Turn the TV off.”
I shift around, slip out of her, hand patting the covers, until I find the remote, fumble for the off button, give us blackness and create the silence she needs to focus on the task at hand. That moment, that coitus interruptus breaks our momentum, makes me too aware, almost dissipates my desire. I hold in my sigh, one that is heavy with disappointment, the fallout from my own expectations, happy she’s on her stomach and can’t see the cold expression in my face. If I stop it will be an issue. So I go back and try to recapture the moment before.
She puts me back inside. She’s wetter this time. Not a river, just wetter.
I hold her waist, move slow, stay in first gear, massaging her in-sides.
Tingles rise and my disappointment melts from my expression.
Genevieve doesn’t moan, not at first. Never does. Never feels like I fill her up the way a man wants to fill up a woman, never make it into uncharted territory. Or maybe I don’t make it into territory that has not been charted by me. Makes me wonder about the men who came before me, how big they were, how they stirred her from the inside, how I compare, if others gave her better pleasure, if they made her hysterical, made her back arch, made her yell things and become sensually barbaric, if she went insane and did things to them that she doesn’t do to me.
I’m good. Have multiple techniques and more than enough passion to prevent me from coming across as a technical fuck. Genevieve is so damn sexy to me. I love her and I love making love to her, love the bonding that sex brings, love pleasing her and relishing in the shared pleasure. I’ve read all the books on pleasing a woman, everything from Kama Sutra to books by lesbians. I can use my tongue and make her float, I understand how to listen to her body, I know all that. But I want to dip into her emotional well.
Our libidos are unequal. Mine runs at about a nine. It’s been that way lately, humming along in fourth gear. My awakening. As if my body were going through some change, this fire inside me never dying. Genevieve hums at about a five. That means I crave her twice as much, need her twice as often, leaving me feeling rejected and neglected.
Yes, I know that there is more to loving than sex. Much more to a relationship than putting my dick in her hole and stirring, stirring, stirring. But intimacy, those erotic moments I crave, that is part of the foundation, one thing that can turn a marriage into a house of cards.