Afterburn (53 page)

"Yes." He stretched out his arm and took her hand—palm and fingers and wedding ring. "This is all good. We're going to spend a lot of nice time here," he said.

"Oh,
Charlie
." Ellie beamed, blinking wetly in happiness, cheeks flushed, her eyes clear and large and in love with him all over again, father of her children, her old fly-boy.

HE KNOCKED SOFTLY
at the door of Suite 840, his hair moist, fingernails trimmed, underwear fresh.

The door opened and there was Melissa, in a rather lovely black dress, looking up at him, looking
young
, and she took his hand and pulled him inside. "I've been
waiting
," she complained, smiling devilishly. "Just so you know."

"Hey, I came halfway around the world to see you."

She put her cheek against his chest, and seemed to sigh or catch her breath. He felt the warmth of her along his body, her hand in the small of his back, her head touching his chin. She patted the side of his jacket. "You have a phone in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"

"You okay?" he asked, realizing she'd had a drink.

"I'm
fine
. I was just waiting, that's all."

She seemed preoccupied. Her eyes looked a little bloodshot, her face tired. But it was a twenty-seven-year-old face—how tired could it be? "Anything you want to talk about?" he asked gently.

She shook her head. "Not now."

"Okay." He held her the way he used to hold Julia when she was a girl and upset about something, his hand behind her neck.

"I've been lonely. Missed my mother a lot."

The comment made him feel old, but he realized that she hadn't meant it that way. "Do you want to call your parents?"

"No, I—" She stopped. "I will later."

"If you want to, just call from here," he said.

She hugged him. "No, no, it's fine."

He ran a finger down her spine. "Do you ever go out there?"

"Out where?"

"Seattle."

"Oh," she said distractedly, "no."

He rubbed her neck at the hairline and felt her melt against him. "You talk to your father much?"

"No, not really," she said into his chest, nibbling at his tie.

"Is he very busy?"

She considered the question. "No."

"Not busy?"

She looked up again, her face vulnerable, wanting to forget something. "Charlie?"

"Mmm?"

"You know."

He did. She turned off the lights and pulled down the blanket. He adjusted the air conditioner, and when he turned, she was naked. Her breasts looked larger when she was naked. Some women were like that. He started to unknot his tie.

"No," she insisted. "I'm doing
all
of it."

Again she undressed him, her hands moving familiarly, and she knelt on the floor and pulled his underwear off last, and as soon as he had stepped out of them, she looked up at him from her kneeling position and took him into her mouth, eyes staying on his. I may be a fool, he thought, but I am a pleasured fool.

She pulled back, keeping her hand moving affectionately. "You're more . . ." she said.

"Yeah."

"Eager?"

Chinese medicine. "My back's been feeling pretty good."

She followed him into bed and he held her, sensing she wanted this. "Okay," she whispered after a time.

"Uptown or downtown?" he asked. "If you know what I mean."

"I do," she sighed, but held him by the ears when he started to move downward.

"No?"

"Just insert the tab in the slot like the directions specify."

"You got it."

"No, I think you do, Charlie."

It was all flattery, but he'd take it. He set himself above her and she spit into her hands and helped him. She was rather wet, and he went in quickly. So young, he thought, looking into her face. I'm going to count strokes. I don't think she quite came the last time; I was too fast, both of us too nervous. Her eyes were closed and she was biting her upper lip. He took a breath, watching her go into herself. She was in a peaceful, private place. I'm going to concentrate, he thought. He made it to fifty and past it, then, at sixty-two, she convulsed beneath him, her stomach a mound of muscle that rippled and gathered up. He continued, holding her hands loosely above her head. He felt good. Ninety-six. Then she suddenly rose up again, convulsing and whimpering sweetly, the alcohol perfuming her sighs. Then again. One twenty-
one
. Such fast orgasms, he thought, sort of amazing. She caught her breath easily and glared up at him, eyes fierce now, sweetness gone, ready again, desire merely unfolding. One thirty-two, he counted. She wants more, I can feel it, I'm a fucking old man. Old man fucking. He stopped, breathed deeply, then resumed. His lungs burned a little. I'm so out of shape, he thought. But here we are. He kept on and she kept on, shaking and shuddering every half minute or so, her arms around his neck, five orgasms, six . . . seven, and he had to pause to keep himself back, holding his breath and squeezing his asshole, and as he slowed she sighed and caressed his cheeks and ears and eyes, and then he started again and she started again, too, right away. Ten more strokes, hard, and she came again, shivering violently. His neck was hot, back sweaty, but none of it hurt anymore, as if the adhesions and cross-stitched nerves had melted away. Twenty more fast strokes and she almost came, but he held off to save himself, and then eighteen more, with a bit of side-to-side grinding—Ellie used to love that before she started to get too dry in her late forties—and she came again, digging her nails into his shoulders, right into the knotty scar tissue, but he barely felt it. He was aware of her great sexual hunger opening up beneath him, taking him in, the tense expectancy of her breathing. She was
beginning
. He'd barely touched her so far. A few handfuls of rainwater scooped from a full barrel. They'd been at it maybe ten minutes—almost no time at all. She could go on and on, he knew, and he could not. She licked his neck from below, waiting for more. Never seen anything like
this
, Charlie thought, not with any of the girls before Ellie, not with Ellie when she was young.

"Please," she asked. "Let me get. Knees."

She presented herself. Slow, he told himself, go slow. It's your only chance. She had her face in her hands, as if kneeling in deep prayer, and his long fingers circled her waist. He slipped himself into her, his bony hips pressing the flesh of her ass. She groaned, almost angrily. Again he felt her stomach muscle gather into a rippling knot. Almost doing
nothing
. He slowed but did not stop, counting to thirty, and her hands flew forward to grasp the headboard. He stopped moving, just rested on his knees behind her. His head felt hot, thighs tiring already. He was not a young man anymore. He started again, best he could, chest a little tight. She was within herself, he could see, far within herself, no talk necessary. He was just something she was using right now, something that went in and out, and that was fine. Her back was covered with sweet-smelling sweat, and now she spread her hands out to either side across the mattress. He reached down and moved her legs closer together. He'd lost his count, would start again. She kicked her foot against the sheet in impatience. I can't go yet, he thought. Well, maybe in and out ever so little. An inch in each direction. One and two. All right. He silently counted to forty-one, glancing out the window toward the shadows across the street. She convulsed again, slapping her hands against the sheet.

"Don't stop," she commanded. He didn't stop and she moaned and kicked her legs against the sheet, growling, sweeping her hand across the bed until she found a pillow that she tossed away for no reason. "Oh, goddamn
it
," she said.

He kept going. Not too fast, just fast enough that she wanted it faster. A great wetness was emptying itself against his penis, like a stream receiving a fish, except the stream gripped and released him, gripped and released as she shuddered and cried out. This is definitely
her
, not me, Charlie smiled wickedly to himself in the darkness, I'm not this good, nowhere close, I'm an old man who happens to have a hard dick tonight. But that's all. He stopped and breathed, funny pains crawling across his chest. Have the heart attack now, he commanded heaven, it's as good a time as any. But he didn't. No, sir. He was kneeling behind her, kneeling in a very funny dark church. Devil take the hindmost. Ha-ha, Charlie, you demented fucking fuck. How can you be doing this? Because you must and you will. Her ass was shaking and he spread his hands back and forth across it, calming her. Maybe she needed to stop now.

He sat back on his haunches and she rolled over. She needs to rest, he thought. But she lifted up her legs, hooking them over his shoulders. He could tell she'd shaved her shins and calves very recently, smoothed soft with cream. Then one of her hands lightly slapped his thigh. He didn't move. She slapped his thigh harder. He eased forward and she pulled his penis—hard—and pressed him into her. Tough girl, he thought, a surprisingly tough girl who—And in that moment the disparate, nearly invisible strands of the discrepancy wove together: the absence of a phone number or business card, no eyeglasses or contact lenses in contrast to Towers's information about her driver's license, no talk about her work, her aggressiveness, her vague recognition of his question about Seattle.

A coldness passed into him. "You're not Melissa Williams, are you?" he said.

She opened her eyes. "What?"

"You're not Melissa Williams."

She blinked rapidly and laughed. Nervously, he thought. "What do you
mean
?"

"I mean you are not Melissa Williams. You're someone else."

She waited while she considered her answer, and while she waited she made sure that he kept moving in and out. So wet, so good. Best in years, best ever, maybe.

"Who do you want me to be?" she finally whispered.

He stared into her face—darkness in the darkness. He was jammed up inside some unknown, strangely orgasmic woman in her late twenties, some woman tough-minded enough that she could pretend to be someone else, pretend to
fuck
as someone else. She was not Melissa Williams, she was anybody
but
Melissa Williams. Not a good girl from Seattle but some kind of clever hustler who talked a fast game, sounded educated, and had found her way into the bar of the Pierre Hotel looking for a soft touch, a lonely, self-important jerk-weed like Charlie. This thought made him mad and it made him keep moving. He knew he should stop and pull out and probably stick his dick into a jar of rubbing alcohol or insecticide or something and ask her what the hell was going on, but he was not going to. No. Just the opposite. If he pulled out now, then she'd stolen something from him, and his anger would not allow that. He pushed harder and realized that she liked this, liked him pushing, struggling with him a little violently now; she liked the fact that he did not know who she was, found power in his powerlessness. Something had equalized suddenly, her mystery and youth reversing against his status and age. But if you fuck with me, then I will fuck with you, he told himself, and he pressed down on her, damn the back, damn Ellie, damn Teknetrix, damn Mr. Lo and Vista del Muerte and all of it, and stroked through her with a vicious, teeth-clenched effortlessness he'd not known for almost thirty years, his cock swollen into stone, the Chinese medicine releasing him to press the question over and over,
Who are you who are you
, mouthing it even, feeling her rise and shake again and again, her orgasms clustering one against another in a kind of angry hallucinatory chaos as she shook her fists in the air and growled almost bitterly, seeming to birth something awful, tearing time out of herself, curled and shaking, and when the moment came he pressed his hot forehead heavily down upon hers, and delivered himself fully into her—the bomb, the hatred, the roar; the joy, the sadness, the dream.

AFTER THE BATHROOM
she sat in the window well, naked in the shadows. "Are you mad?" came her voice.

"Yes."

"How did you know?"

"I had someone check a few things about Melissa Williams. Her father is a prominent, busy lawyer in Seattle. She wears glasses or contact lenses."

She shifted to the other side of the window. "Why did you bother?"

"Because I wanted to find out who the hell you were. Or were
not
, as the case may be."

"Why?" she asked coyly. "I'm probably just some girl who liked your tie."

She's scared, he thought. "How do you know Melissa Williams?"

She shook her head. "Oh, she's just a box of papers that I found in my closet when I moved into my room. Never met the girl."

She slid off the window well toward him. Something about the way she walked, slowly and naked and I know you're looking at me, reminded him of Ellie a generation ago—before Teknetrix, before his father's death, before Ben, before Vietnam. Ellie was no longer confident of her nakedness, kept it to herself now, and it was just as well, in fact. He didn't want to see her anymore.

"Just tell me, please." He watched her parade before him. Don't fall into this, he warned himself, you're not sentimental, you don't believe that this is anything other than a strange little episode. Time is not being cheated here.

She came to the bed and lay next to him. "You really want the truth?" she said softly. "It's not pretty, as they say."

"Tell me the truth or I'll just walk out, you know?"

"Oh,
don't
." She took his hand and pressed it close to her.

"Give me a reason."

"Well, I like you a lot."

"How about a better reason than that."

She said nothing. He waited a minute, sat up, and swung his feet to the floor. I can still go home and take a bath, he thought, catch the news.

"Wait," she said.

"I am."

She sighed. "I
hate
telling the truth. It never sets you free, it just makes everything harder."

"That's great," Charlie said coldly. "Now we're getting somewhere." He stood up. "I'm leaving. I've been an idiot and you've been a liar." He found his clothes. "Thank you for the sex, however,
miss
. That was probably the last best sex of my life, and I am in fact grateful, even under the circumstances. You're full of energy and intelligence, and I don't know why the hell you're doing what you're doing, not just to me but to
yourself
. I actually believe that you're better than this somehow, if only you can get yourself there. That's my cheap psychologizing for the night, lady. I wish you well."