Carried Away

by Whitney Williams

The pillow made a loud sound, but I don’t know if it was laughter or something else. Pillows are like that.

  Gretchen and I were both worn out. As we crawled up on either side of Henry, she and I first laid down next to him, resting our heads behind his broad shoulders, our cheeks pressed into his terrycloth robe, our weak and weary eyes locked in an equally inviting and piercing mutual gaze. But our hands continued up to the collar of his robe, pulling it down to kiss his neck, out to kiss his shoulders. I pressed my hand into his bare back, and his muscles felt strong and ragged from all the worries gathered in them then squeezed out by Gretchen’s gentle hands, then gathered again, like a sponge wrung out under water.

  She was dragging her chest down his back and carefully kissing every single vertebra, loving him both like a wife who loves her husband and like a mother who loves her child. I slid my hand under hers and asked her to teach me.

  She entwined her fingers with mine, both hands, and curled up next to him, tucking her knees up beneath her along his side. She pulled our hands down to rest on either side of his spine, near his hips. That drew me into the same position opposite her, our bare shoulders pressed together and arms crowding each other’s breasts.

  “Start from inside,” she said, pushing our knuckles into his skin, rising onto her knees for more force. She walked our fingers up either side of his spine, whispering, “Spinal erectors.” Continuing up to the center of his back, she said, “Dig deep. Don’t be afraid to push.” Up between his shoulders, she had her full weight on him, only using her toes against the bed for balance. “Stay inside. Stay with the erectors. Work them out slowly.”

  She walked us up and down his spine again and again, both of us up off the bed, shoulders and hips rubbing together as we shifted weight. “Be patient,” she whispered. “Don’t let go until he relaxes.” She told me his skin would redden before it started to hurt him, that sometimes she couldn’t kneed out even his erectors before it was too late. I felt them soften under our hands with each procession up and down.

  At the top of his back, she started moving our hands outward, pushing past knots under our knuckles. “Not yet,” she whispered. “Those are rhomboids. We want the serratus. There.”

  I could feel it, not the coarse, lumpy knots, but something smooth and tight underneath. She unwound her fingers from mine and stepped into the bathroom to get some oil. I kept following the serratus in and out, bending it away from its tight lines. After holding oil between her hands to warm it, Gretchen spread it up his back from the bottom, up until she was under my hands again.

  “Now the rhomboids,” she said and took my hands, sliding the knots between our fingers, back and forth, until they attenuated.

  “This is work,” she whispered, turning to look at me. I didn’t understand why she said that at first, but as we moved around his back and shoulders, she named the muscle groups and the type of worries he carried in them.

  There were so many more muscles than I ever thought, and she named them all, guiding me along them one by one, returning to the major groups again and again to stop them from contracting back into angry knots. By the time she pulled his arms down to his sides, my own arms felt like useless rubber, and my fingers were going numb. She was so strong! She moved us to sit up above his head and started pushing down into his shoulders. His scapular levators worried for his family, sternocleidomastoid clutched desperately to stop time from slipping away, and splenius capitis carried the weight of the world.

  Up on his skull, the occipital muscles, she rubbed in slow circles with her palms. She pushed my hands aside, like she didn’t trust me with that part, and she knew their burden but wouldn’t say.

  By degrees, those circles expanded, and she was simply caressing his head, softly humming a gentle tune. She moved her hands slowly over his body, reaching down around his neck and under his chest, out along his back. I moved around to sit straddling his hips and started caressing him too.

  “Finish with the outside,” she whispered when we were both leaned in over him, our necks crossed. I followed her lead, bringing my torso down low, dragging my breasts across his skin, raking the washboard of my splayed fingers under her nipples, pressed against him. She was aroused too.

  She had moved to sit directly above him, leaning back against the headboard with her legs spread around him. When I moved forward, reaching far under his arms to touch her, she closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and drug herself closer to me with her heels. That slouched her lower and turned her pelvis upward, drawing her groin firmly to the top of his head. He moaned and started moving his head, teasing her. Minutes later, when my hands went under his chest again, he pushed himself up. I reached farther forward to get my weakened hands behind her and pull them under her, helping her to slide beneath him as far as she could, her legs spread wide.

  He lowered himself back down onto her, turning his head aside to lie on her chest, under her breasts, then he passed his arms over her legs and reached up to rest his hands on her shoulders. Gretchen’s arms folded in to cradle his head and shoulders while his hands slid down, caressing her, pushing and squeezing her around, toying with her nipples.

  I lay down fully on his back with my head between his shoulder blades, stroking his calves up and down with my feet. I kept sliding down and tangling our legs, keeping pace with the rhythm of Gretchen’s musical moans and whimpers. Reaching behind her shoulders, he pulled her closer until he could kiss her chest, her shoulders, her neck. With my cheek pressed against his lower back, my hands slid back and forth past his waist and hips, and I wedged my knees between his legs, pushing them apart.

  I continued down, and he continued to pull her to him. Her head lay flat at the top of the mattress, turning back and forth as she squirmed under his relentless lips. My hands slid down his thighs, across the soft backsides of his knees, down to hold his meaty calves, then back up, sliding the backs of my hands inside his thighs, up to my breasts, up higher to touch him.

  I didn’t know what that felt like for him, so I moved gently, more tickling than fondling, under, around and back, everywhere. I was supporting my weight with my shoulders on his thighs and my throat between his buttocks, so my forearms jostled my breasts with the movement of my hands, dragging my nipples around on the soft, cotton sheets. I started sliding one hand up and down the length of his penis and beyond it to brush Gretchen.

  With every kiss, he brought her farther under him, closer to him, until I had both my arms far between his legs, pumping slowly in and out, stroking him and tickling her. Her legs kicked outward haphazardly as if to try to give me more of herself, but her body kept moving slowly closer, at his pace.

  Finally they touched in my hands. I teased them against each other, turning my hands over and around, up and down his shaft, rubbing open her labia. Her hips twisted with increasing desperation, but he would not bring her in faster. As they ground together more firmly, I guided him into her, and his hips began to move, gently reaming the tip of his penis into her vagina while she repositioned her feet this way and that, trying to find a way to pull herself down sooner. He was in.

  I slid one hand back to his scrotum and the other forward to find her clitoris with my thumb. I stayed with him as he started to move slightly in and out. As his strokes became longer, faster, I had to push back onto my elbows so he could move freely. That gave her both of my hands.

  With my attention focused on Gretchen, I heard the continuous fanfare of her voice, clear and smooth as a trumpet with the breath of a harmonica, shrieking air in and screaming it out. She was so beautiful! Even her ecstasy was graceful, her cries operatic. I wanted to devour her and to hold her everywhere at once while she spasmed again and again.

  I rolled onto my back, turning my face up to watch their irregular piston strokes. I pushed myself in until I could explore with my lips and tongue, then reached one hand over her to find her clitoris again, stretched the other arm to claw at her breast. I reached and grabbed so desperately I overextended my shoulder,
tearing and cramping the muscles in that side of my back so badly I had to walk my hand down her with my fingers in order to swap the positions of my hands so I could ruin my other shoulder too.

  She was shuddering, delirious, exhausted, but Henry kept riding her until her squirming stopped and her limbs lay limp like a ragdoll thrown to the ground. Then he abruptly withdrew. Before I could get my head out of… Before I could back off to see anything, his hands were around me. He pulled me up and tossed me on top of her with the back of my neck against her sternum and my wrecked arms hanging loose aside. He hooked his arms under my knees to turn my pelvis up, then he was inside me, sudden, deep and fast, moving at the frenetic pace with which he had just been flogging her. I wasn’t ready, but I was, but I reeled madly with excruciating euphoria!

  Everything blurred together after that. I felt hands and lips all over me. Then I was turned somehow and touched in places I had forgotten existed moments before. By the time he finished with me, my hips were as useless as my shoulders, leaving me helpless to untangle myself from the heap in which we laid. I should say, rather, helpless to cling tighter to them in case they ever slipped away.

  The moon rose late, huge and red, low over the ocean, which I heard again softly in the quiet stillness. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, it was the sun that rose low and red, floating in the water. I closed my eyes again.

  Later in the daylight, Henry stirred and rose, the two of us sliding off of him as we slowly woke. He got away, but I pulled Gretchen in closer and held her sleepily in the late dawn. He returned to feed us breakfast in our mutual delirium, then wriggled back in-between us and slept the morning away.

  I’m not sure how many more days we spent there. There was no more diving—that one day had been enough—only sand and surf, the deck and the hot tub. Gretchen wept every time we made love to her.

  “Made love” feels like the right idiom there, but generally I think it’s a silly one. What else did we make? We made macaroni necklaces at summer camp. We made reservations for dinner. We made so much noise our neighbors called the cops. And to whom did we make it? We made a cheque to the county for vehicle registration. We made a promise to little Timmy that we’d come back to get him out of the well. We made a temple to Gretchen out of seashells and kelp where he bent her over the altar and fucked her like a freight train.

  So yes, she wept every time we did that and glowed like the full moon every hour in-between. It was her dream, I realized, a honeymoon of sorts with her lifelong love. I didn’t even feel awkward being there because I loved her too. I remember her face by the light of a driftwood fire down on the beach, before the moon rose, with every star in the sky shining down on her. She threw her head back and laughed, her hair rippling like the hungry flames.

  That was Gretchen, and that is how I will always remember her. Sometimes I wish I knew the name of that beach so I could go back there and visit her. She’ll be there forever. That is her heaven.

  --Gretchen--

  Dear Diary,

  Are you tired of hearing about Reggie? No, I still haven’t written to him, and I won’t be tempted anymore. I saw his picture on television. He was shot down over Kuwait. They didn’t release his name to the media, but it’s him. I know it’s him. I cried a little when I saw his picture, and I don’t know why. How many years has it been? Even back then, he was the kind of fellow who looked a lot cuter from a distance than from within earshot. I picked him because I didn’t love him, because I wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t be tempted. So why am I sad that he’s gone?

  That’s all I had to say. I just wanted you to know what happened. Things are no different, really. I still won’t write to him. I’ll probably still think about him. Maybe nothing changes. Maybe it’s just me.

  - gg

  Chapter Six – Choose Your Words Carefully

  --Sally--

  Gretchen flew us to Dubai in the jet. She put on a black niqab and abaya over her conservative gray dress before getting out of the plane. She came back with a full burqa for me. She explained that the customs agents wouldn’t ask to see my face if I wore it and said nothing. She was right, and I made my first border crossing without being hidden in a suitcase. The jet was rented, so Gretchen had to fly it back to wherever it came from. I smiled to see her kiss Henry goodbye. It was much more than the sweet little peck I remembered from the first time I saw her. We waited to watch her take off and fly away before going to our hotel.

  It’s hot in the desert, but my burqa was light and breezy. Henry still wore his linens from the beach house, but he put on a long, straight white coat over them. When he put the shemagh on his head, he looked like all the other men. I didn’t see many women. Most of them wore muted cloaks and headscarves, but some wore the full black veil and cloak like Gretchen had. It was a different world. Hong Kong had been different too, but not like this. I could tell there were elaborate social rules I didn’t know. That frightened me a little, and I gladly hid in the burqa.

  When we walked into our hotel, Henry stopped and turned me to look at him. In a quiet but stern voice, he said, “Do not under any circumstances leave this building without me. If you do, you are off the reservation, and I cannot protect you.” That frightened me more than a little.

  Our hotel was an alpine ski resort in the middle of the desert. At first I had thought it was so heavily air conditioned because of the heat. Then I saw an ice sculpture. The building was roughly a triangular prism, enclosing a huge atrium with balconied rooms overlooking it. The atrium was snowing. I later learned that it only snowed every eight hours. They had massive ice blowers up in the top floors. The indoor gardens were filled with firs and other conifers. It was a downright winter wonderland.

  The crackle of a wood-burning fireplace filled the lobby, which was decorated to feel warm and inviting. I didn’t see a lot of trees from the airplane, and I wondered if the wood was imported. It had to be. It smelled like pine or cedar. Once I had finally soaked it all up and came to grips with the astonishing reality of it, I accidentally said under my breath, “These people are insane.”

  “Yes.” Henry laughed. His laughter stopped abruptly when he whispered, “But not all of them know it.”

  When we checked in, the desk clerk said there was a package waiting, which Henry must have expected because he asked to have it brought up with our luggage. It was a huge trunk, bigger than a footlocker. When we got to the room, he told me to open it. The trunk was about half full with carefully folded clothing. I stood up, lifting an elegant, sequined gown that looked like it would fit me. Half of my brain had calculated what had happened, but the other half knew it to be impossible.

  I’m sure I was gaping stupidly at the gown when Henry said, “We had them send the first batch to meet us here. Some of it will take longer, but this should be a good start.”

  I held the gown to my shoulders and spoke, trying to convince myself it was real. “It’s beautiful.”

  Henry walked across the suite and turned a high-backed chair away from the hooded gas fireplace in the corner. The room was rather chilly, but that didn’t seem to me like the most efficient way to heat it.

  The hotel’s madness made me doubt that my beautiful new dress was real, so I looked down at it to check again. Taking off his coat, sitting and propping up his feet, Henry said, “Let’s see what you got!”

  I have never had so much fun playing fashion show. I drug the trunk into the bedroom so I could make a grand entrance after putting on each new outfit. I won’t bore you with the extensive details, but I assure you there was at least one of everything. And there were gloves: long and elegant, sheer and sexy, casual and modest.

  I love wearing gloves. I had worn gloves almost every day since I was able to buy my first pair. For that past week, my hands had felt even more naked than the rest of me. Since ancient times, the fragility of a woman’s hands has marked her social status, and for me, the feeling of gloves around my hands reminded me every moment of every day that I was preparing
to make my dream come true. Fastening the pearl buttons of a full-length, suede mousquetaire, assured me that it had.

  Lingerie and toys were at the bottom on one side. I modeled a few outfits and decided to surprise him later with the rest. For my finale, I came out dressed in full princess attire. I put it all on as fast as I could, but it still took some time. Princess hair would have taken too long, so I just pulled it back before setting a silver circlet on my head and letting it fall behind me.

  The deep purple ball gown had a wide, off-shoulder bateau just low enough to show the lacy frills of my white, strapless, almost-demi bustier when he stood over me. There was a ruby pendant I thought would look nice, but I remembered the feeling of his hand sliding down my neck and shoulder, and decided to leave it out.

  The petticoats were kind of odd. They weren’t very full, which was nice because I could layer them up however I wanted, but they all opened fully down the side with a big O-ring toggle closure at the waist. I wore two, closing one in front and one behind.

  The gown’s closure was a rear lace-up. Usually a draw is decorative and there is a zipper somewhere, but there were no shortcuts in any of these clothes. The draw plunged all the way down my back (and a fair bit farther) in a wide V, but its too-wide silk ribbon overlapped to conceal the bustier underneath. That also laced up the back, but instead of normal eyes or loops, they both had rigid hooks. I decided those, as well as the toggle closures, were meant to make them easier to take off. That thought made me grin and turn a petticoat so they both closed behind.

  I glided into the sitting room then curtseyed low enough to show him more chest than bodice. “Good evening, my handsome prince!”

  “Good evening, my fair lady.” He stood and walked toward me as I slowly rose and released my skirts. He slid one hand around my waist and lifted one of my hands with the other. “Come and trip it as we go, on the light fantastic toe.”