Him Page 4

  ‘You have to have it this way. I know that about you,’ he whispered in my ear.

  ‘Of course,’ I whispered back.

  ‘I’m not kidding,’ he said, pushing his cock deeper inside me. ‘You don’t have a choice. You are the kind of woman that has to be fucked like this.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was still holding me up against the wall.

  ‘You need to ask me to fuck you this way.’

  ‘Will you fuck me this way?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said withdrawing his cock.

  ‘Fuck me deeper,’ I said. I’d lost my mind. So completely lost to passion. I needed HIM inside me. I needed HIM so much.

  ‘Say it again,’ he said, thrusting his cock into me. ‘Louder. I need to know you really mean it.’

  ‘Fuck me deeper!’

  ‘Yes. That’s it,’ he said. By then he’d withdrawn his cock almost all the way, and when he thrust it back it went so deep inside me that I gasped.

  ‘Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me!’ I was crying. We stayed like that for what seemed like hours. He pinned me against the shower wall. My nipples were engorged simply from the sensation of having his penis planted so deeply inside me. It was painful and exciting. All I knew was that I needed HIM to be doing just this.

  ‘Do it again,’ I commanded and he did.

  8

  He’s going to Paris. Paris?

  Love is not a hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!

  John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

  This is what I understood: my life had been on hold since the day my mother got sick. After she died, I continued to live but only marginally. And then I met HIM. HIM. It was only after he came into my life that I could see how cut off I’d been from the rest of the world. I had taken the mournful road.

  He and I ate breakfast in the room, then left. He kissed me softly in the hotel lobby. He did not set up another date, though I’d hoped he would, so by the time I arrived at college I was on the verge of tears. The students sensed I was vulnerable and remained quiet and passive.

  When I got home later I couldn’t stop crying. My tears were the inevitable aftermath of a tryst with HIM, the price I paid for being with HIM.

  I quickly changed out of my work clothes and put on an old pair of pajamas. I looked into the mirror and thought I was the exact opposite of the pretty, sexy woman who’d been fucked over and over at a downtown hotel the evening before.

  I lit a fire and sat on my sofa looking at the burning logs. But it did not soothe me. I was still weepy. I couldn’t stop thinking about HIM. Esme jumped up on the couch and curled into my lap.

  The sex. My God, the sex. He and I were pushing the envelope together. He’d taken me further than I’d gone with anyone. I suspected it was the same for HIM.

  I wanted HIM inside me that very moment, to be with HIM night and day, 24/7. I could not live without HIM.

  I could not stop crying. Sam came to my door in the late afternoon, holding an empty pie pan. I opened the screen door and took it from him. He looked at my swollen eyes and face. He asked me if I wanted to talk about it. I shook my head.

  ‘Do you want me to come in?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you know where to find me. The pie was delicious as always.’

  I watched him retreat and closed the door. I was feeling so desperate. I found my phone and quickly wrote to HIM.

  ME: Where r u? Last night (and this morning) was so amazing.

  I waited for HIM to write me back. The wait was excruciating.

  When a text message arrived, it had been sent from one of my students who wanted to know when an essay was due. I felt like throwing the phone across the room but quickly texted her back.

  Hours later, my phone vibrated again. My heart soared only to crash when I saw that the text was from a telemarketer. Every minute without a text from HIM was empty. My patience was non-existent.

  Someone with a foreign accent called me on my cell next. He’d dialled the wrong number. Instead of being polite I screamed at him. What was wrong with me?

  Then finally, finally …

  HIM: U were spectacular.

  ME: I want u inside me all the time.

  HIM: I’m abt to catch plane 2 Paris.

  ME: WHAT?

  HIM: Yes. On biz.

  ME: U didn’t say anything.

  HIM: I didn’t?

  ME: No. Nothing. Why didn’t u say anything?

  HIM: I was busy fucking u.

  ME: K. But.

  HIM: Stop being garrulous. I won’t put up with it.

  ME: Meaning?

  HIM: I like you a lot but I won’t put up with a needy woman.

  ME: You just sprung this Paris trip on me. Not fair.

  HIM: Plenty of time to catch up when I get back.

  ME: Yes. How long gone?

  HIM: 10 days.

  ME: 2 long.

  HIM: Wish u could be in my hotel rm in Paris.

  ME: Me 2.

  HIM: U r an incredible lover.

  ME: So r u.

  HIM: Miss you already.

  I hated that he was so far away. I despised that my life seemed so narrow while his was wide open. He was in Paris while I remained in a suburb of a vast forsaken city. It would take me at least six months to save enough money to buy a coach seat on a plane to Europe. I’d have to consider staying at youth hostels even though I would now probably be older than most of the other people staying there. I’d grown up in the neighbourhood where I was born. I’d moved into my landlord’s duplex in part because it was less than a mile away from my mother’s place.

  He told me he travelled business class. He said he stayed at four-star hotels and often employed a driver for his international trips. He acted in a self-important manner. I resented HIM for it yet I also admired his social and professional status. I knew I didn’t have a fake bone in my body. What you saw was what you got. That might not be so with HIM. I believe image was important to HIM. Yet I wanted HIM to acknowledge me in his life as an equal, not this common woman he liked to fuck. When he said he was going to Paris I felt left out. Why couldn’t I accompany HIM? There was the matter of my leaving my job during that time. But if we were together, really together, then he would make room for me during these business trips. He’d never invited me to his apartment. I wondered whether I would ever meet his children.

  And he never gave me much warning (if any) about these trips. He’d disappeared to Seattle and now to France. He could still be in our city with his wife or another woman. What I did know was that he was not with me right then. He was very far away, wherever he was. Scott Peterson, the famous wife-killer, had called his mistress and told her he was in Paris when in fact he was at a barbecue in Stockton. I always thought it so ironic. Stockton was the polar opposite of Paris. It would be like comparing hot dogs to lobster. And Scott Peterson had gone so far as to mention the fireworks over the Paris sky. Was my lover another Scott Peterson?

  I hated that I was in so deep with HIM. There was no trust between us. Yet I lusted after HIM despite my suspicions that he was not being honest with me. What was I to do, tell HIM to send me a photo of himself in front of the Eiffel Tower?

  Thinking about HIM in Paris made me think about the novels I had read over the years. Always, always, unrequited love was the central theme. Was I now my own tragic heroine in the novel I called my life?

  9

  A glorious weekend with HIM …

  For time is the longest distance between two places.

  Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

  This is what I understood: I’d been alone too long. I’d put all my bets on HIM. HIM. But I hardly even knew HIM. I
was starring in my own movie. In the end he would leave me. I’d taken the melodramatic road.

  It was my mom who inspired my love for literature. She too loved the written word. When I was a little girl my mom read bedtime classics like Madeline or The Berenstain Bears. But by the time I was in the first grade it was Mark Twain she began to read, as I lay in my bed ready for slumber.

  Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were my favourite characters of all. How could they not be? These boys and their crazy adventures continue to make me smile. But it was the pure beauty of Twain’s colloquial words that my mother and I loved the most. We lost count of the times she read the two books to me. Soon I was able to anticipate the next scene in the book. I’d interrupt her to yell out, ‘No. No. It’s not fair that the King and the Duke have captured Jim. Huck has to rescue him.’ My mother would stop reading the book for a moment and smile. We both knew Huck would manage to free Jim. She’d close the book.

  ‘Tomorrow I will read you the chapter about how Huck and Tom Sawyer plan Jim’s escape,’ she’d say, hugging and kissing me goodnight.

  If the idea of reading your child a bedtime story was to lull them to sleep, my mother failed miserably. Instead I would lie awake thinking about the end of the story. Sometimes I’d imagine myself on the river with them. It was the thought of travelling down it on the raft that would finally induce sleep.

  My mother convinced me eventually that there were other books I would love as much as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. She began to read Louisa May Alcott’s classic books, and then she moved on to Jane Austen.

  One of our favourite family stories was when I was about ten years old and my mother had several women friends over for dinner. One of them spoke about someone she knew who was a spoiled and wealthy woman. I chirped in, ‘Oh, she sounds just like Daisy in The Great Gatsby.’ Of course my mother’s friends were amused.

  By the time I was in middle school I had begun reading the classics on my own. One summer I read Gone with the Wind in two weeks, all 1,024 pages of it. Inspired by the length, I decided War and Peace would be the next book I’d read. I conquered all 1,475 pages in another couple of weeks. But it wasn’t the length of the books that really inspired me: it was Scarlett O’Hara and Natasha Rostov’s determined characters that captured my imagination.

  It made sense then, when I went off to college, that I would become an English major. My master’s thesis was on femme fatales in literature. I wrote at length about Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina and Scarlett O’Hara. In each book the women were in love with the wrong man yet they loved passionately and with determination.

  How ironic then that I should become a femme fatale in my own right. Certainly my life was not as glamorous. I had a small life, really. I was so taken by HIM, but he was not Count Vronsky or Rhett Butler. But in my little world he was as dashing and handsome. I knew it was a doomed affair. I knew it instinctively. I even thought sometimes that if I were to continue with HIM I would end up like Anna Karenina. I didn’t see myself jumping in front of a train, but I was sure the ending would be tragic. I was trapped by my own desire. Trapped.

  I hated when he was so far away. I hated it. And so I just waited, just waited. I’d close my eyes and remember. Yes, I would remember.

  While he was gone I walked around in a daze. I couldn’t stop thinking about HIM. Whenever I had a chance I would close my eyes and conjure up a memory of our intimate times together, his pinning me up against the shower wall, his fucking me doggy-style while I held onto the couch. I’d touch myself down there. I’d remember how I lay next to HIM while he gently masturbated me to orgasm over and over. I lived in a sexual haze of my own making.

  I was brought out of my funk about halfway through his Paris trip when Sam came over for an evening visit. He and I took turns petting Esme, who was purring between us on the couch, while we sipped our beers.

  ‘It’s been two weeks since our little bundle of joy arrived,’ Sam said.

  ‘No one answered the flyer,’ I said.

  ‘I think she’s officially yours.’

  We clinked our beer bottles in agreement, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Do you think she’s had her shots?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Hmm. How old do you think she is?’

  ‘There’s a vet down the street,’ he said. ‘I’ll even foot the bill.’

  The following afternoon when I got back from work we went to the veterinary hospital. Once the three of us were in the exam room with the vet, she told us Esme was pregnant.

  ‘What?’ we both exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. She’s been pregnant for a couple of weeks. I can feel the little babies.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘That explains everything,’ Sam remarked. ‘She probably ran away from her previous owners when she was in heat.’

  ‘Exactly,’ the vet replied.

  ‘Wow,’ I said again.

  ‘Guess you’re gonna be a grandmother,’ Sam replied.

  We all laughed.

  ‘Well, I will take one of the kittens,’ Sam assured me.

  ‘I’m sure several of my students might consider adopting one of the kitties,’ I said.

  ‘I can feel four kittens,’ the vet told us.

  ‘How old is she anyway?’ I asked the vet.

  ‘She’s a young one. Probably less than a year herself.’

  ‘And already knocked up,’ Sam said, pointing his finger at Esme.

  ‘I’ll get her fixed after this first litter,’ I told the vet.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ she replied.

  I gathered Esme in my arms and thanked the vet. When we got home we marvelled at our little cat. We were the expectant grandparents.

  * * *

  I was OK then for a couple of days. I forgot about HIM being so far away. I scurried around the apartment. The vet had said Esme would give birth some time after Thanksgiving but before Christmas. It was very exciting.

  It wasn’t as if I wasn’t thinking about HIM. I did, all the time. But cat ownership had helped me feel more relaxed. I hadn’t tried to contact HIM while he was so far away. He hadn’t contacted me either. Until he got back and texted me. I was sitting on the couch drinking herbal tea when I heard my phone vibrate. My heart stopped. I picked up my cell. My heart beat so quickly I thought I might faint. It was HIM.

  HIM: Hey you. I’m back.

  ME: That’s nice. Looking forward 2 c’ing u.

  HIM: Off to my son’s soccer game.

  ME: When can I see you?

  HIM: Soon.

  ME: Soon isn’t good enuf. Want now.

  HIM: This weekend busy w/kids.

  ME: Hate to be a pain but u r never @ on weekends.

  HIM: OK. OK. Will try to figure out something. Gotta go now. Son in car.

  I threw the phone across the room. Then retrieved it and sat on my couch, absently petting Esme. But I didn’t write anything back to HIM. Why should I?

  I waited by my phone, willing HIM to text me.

  Where was he? All he had to do was text me. Tell me he wanted to fuck me. Tell me he loved my breasts, how gorgeous my body was. Tell me he wanted to watch my tits sway while he fucked me. It didn’t matter what he had to say. He could text me to say he was off to his son’s football game. Text me and say he’s about to catch a plane somewhere. Tell me he’s in a meeting. Tell me it’s secretary day and he was taking his secretary out to lunch. It didn’t matter what he wrote. But he had to write. Everything else was non-moments. Everything else made no sense to me. Everything else could be damned. I wanted HIM. I needed HIM. I could not live without HIM. Every moment without HIM was spent wondering: was he still married? Did he live with another woman? Was he on a date? Was I dating someone who was out of my league? Was I even dating HIM at all? My hold on HIM seemed so negligible.

  If only he would text me. Tell me how much he wanted me. Or else I was in hell. I was sure he was with someone else. He would never be with me. Not the way I wanted HIM to be.

  I th
ought about my relationship with my first love, Jake. It had been so different with him. Jake was a great guy. He had been a good friend. He became my lover and everything made sense to me. We had a perfect life. I loved him. He loved me. It was exactly as it was supposed to be. It wasn’t complicated. We understood each other inexplicably. We finished each other’s sentences.

  Why couldn’t my current lover be more like Jake? Why hadn’t I stayed with Jake?

  * * *

  Monday morning I went to work but I felt so doomed in the college bungalow. Wanting HIM made me not want what I had. I took out my Blackberry before classes started and sent HIM a text.

  ME: I know u have a lotta obligations but I only c u when u r available. Not fair 2 me. Not ur girlfriend. More ur mistress or call girl.

  I waited to hear back from HIM.

  I held on to my phone. I sat there. Waiting.

  Nothing. I waited for HIM to text me back all morning and through the afternoon. It was time to leave the college. How had I become so entrenched in this ‘relationship’ I couldn’t see my way out of it?

  I didn’t want to go home. My home, my sanctuary seemed unbearable without HIM. It would just make me lonelier. I headed to the Boulevard and found a Starbucks. I sat outside in the late afternoon drinking a café latte. A twentysomething rock-‘n’-roller-looking guy came over and asked if he could sit down. He was good-looking, mixed, with long black hair and a dark complexion I knew he was attracted to me. He certainly knew how to undress a woman. He was obviously younger than I was, but that didn’t matter. In fact I was complimented he found me attractive.

  We talked about nothing. He told me he worked at the music store down the street and was a bass player for several bands. He was sure he was going to be famous one day.

  He wanted to fuck me. That was obvious. I could see it in his eyes. I agreed to go back to his apartment that was just around the block from the Starbucks. I was acting kind of desperate. What if all of a sudden I got a text from HIM beckoning me? I’d probably tell this young dude to get lost.