Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (10 page)

A puzzle, this Olivia. I left slowly, then was taking the steps two at a time to the apartment. Sure enough, there was a red light flashing on the answering machine. The first message was from Terrance. And then there it was. Near silence. A faint rhythm. The night before, I’d left the upstairs bedroom after the third phone call, crawled out slowly on my hands and knees from the closet just because I couldn’t stand the thought of Drake knowing I was there and because I absolutely
had
to use the bathroom. Now, just when I thought the recording was over, when I was about to hit the delete button, came Olivia’s voice. “Now you may,” and I heard Drake give off the unmistakably indecorous groan that accompanies a man’s ejaculation—thank god I hadn’t stayed there for that. It was a spectacularly long groan, after which I could hear Olivia saying “You’re welcome,” to Drake’s “Thank you. Thank you.”

My first thought: I’d never made a man come like that. Never. Then again, I’d never done what I now know is called pegging, either. Or had a lover so hyped up on discomfort and stress that even an unnatural act (for a straight man) could set him off so completely.

“Are you stress free now?” Olivia’s voice said now on my answering machine.

Drake sighed this strange long contended sigh and I heard the wet slop of kissing and two things went through my mind then: 1) That this debasement, this turning of a company’s COO into a mailroom underling, coo-coo for pain, provided some kind of adrenaline kick, some concentration of stresses that, oddly, got the poor guy off. I mean, if you could hear that sigh. I wish I could have kept it on my answering machine, but it’s not the kind of thing you want your son hearing after an inadvertent press of a button. The explanations for why such a recording would be on Mommy’s answering machine would be worse than the content. Okay, okay, I’ll come clean: I ended up recording it on my voice recorder, in there with all the little snatches of conversation with Mr. Irldale out in L.A.

My second thought was this: why did Drake have my phone number on his cell phone?

And—why not—a third thought: my grasp of male sexuality was, I realized at that moment, remarkably incomplete.

After that stolen week of time, my son was once more back from his father’s place and back in my life. School projects consumed the late afternoons and evening while both my days and late nights were spent working on Mr. Irldale’s book. I went to bed with a head full of contentment, but it was Mr. Irldale’s well-lived life that provided that sense of ease, not my own.

During this time I learned that Olivia’s youngest daughter was having some issues with her pregnancy. Olivia had been gone for a few days, visiting. I saw Drake only in passing, climbing from his Cadillac or back into it, or glimpses if he happened to be in the glass-walled sunroom. Gabriel came and cleaned the pool. Terrance came into my life only in text messages while he drove around checking out graduate schools he wanted to try and get into, both here and out of state. Life, in other words, resumed its sans-sexual normalcy. I told myself that I was relieved. I didn’t covet Terrance’s tongue much, or stare overlong at Gabriel, or dream of bedposts of the perfect diameter. Even the vibrator went untouched—I even gave up the batteries so my son could power one of the many gadgets in his room. I was good.

And so,
so
bored of being good. I was relieved when Olivia came home from visiting her daughter. She came up the next day for what she always called
tea
even though coffee was our drink. She lay down on my sofa as usual. A light snow had fallen.
The first snow in five years,
Olivia said, though she was wrong: there was that freak foot of snow three years earlier. I remembered because there’d been all that ice right after, weighing down the trees and the telephone wires as though gravity had doubled its peculiar power. I remember being without heat and electricity for a week. It’d seemed like the rest of the world had forgotten us, when, really, the rest of the world had never paid much attention to us in the first place. Olivia must have been away, on vacation, on her back staring up at blue skies.

I dutifully looked at the photos of Olivia’s daughter on Olivia’s phone, a blurry photo of an already hard to read sonogram, and a steady stream of pretty long-haired girlfriends of her daughter. It was gene pools like these that advertising agencies tapped for their all-American pastiches. Is there anything more meaningful than photographs, and anything more vapid when the faces are strangers?

The image on the sonogram was going to be Olivia’s first grandchild and I let her talk on and on. The prospect lit her up like the brightest light and she was suddenly wholesome in my eyes. Almost grandmotherly.

Olivia snapped her fingers suddenly and got off the couch. “Almost forgot. Stand up,” she ordered.

“O…kay,” I said.

She reached into a pocket and pulled out a measuring tape and swung it around my waist.

“What’s this?” I asked.

She noted the measurement and tapped her phone. “You’re about my daughter’s size,” she said.

I self-consciously held in my little belly. Not quite a muffin top, but nothing to be proud of either. I used to say it was left over fat from my pregnancy, but my son was born too many years ago for that excuse to have any life left in it.

Olivia moved to my breasts and took another measurement.

“You’ll need to add a few inches to that,” I said.

“I remember,” Olivia said. “I was out to here,” she said.

I had the distinct feeling that Olivia’s daughter was about to receive more maternity clothes than she’d ever be able to use.

The measuring tape went around my hips, then my throat, then another measurement to my inseam, one hand staying there a little too long—not exactly groping or anything, but uncomfortable to me. She tapped the measurements into her phone and without looking up, she asked, “You planning another trip to Maria?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“She’s very thorough. Lots of these girls, they don’t pay enough attention to the whole picture. A couple hairs on smooth skin looks worse than a full bush.” She touched my arm and smiled. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. To each her own.”

I nodded.
Grandmother, ha.

She rested her phone on the table and reached for her half-finished coffee. I’d begun buying premium coffee just for her visits.

“So, I was at the cafe today and spoke to your Terrance.”

“He’s not
my
Terrance,” I said, followed by, “He’s back?”

She nodded, slurped loudly, then put the mug down. It was a little embarrassing to see her drinking from my mugs - she had the fancy china and I had crude mugs with chips in the rims. The tip of Olivia’s tongue came up to rest a moment on her upper lip.

“I’ve heard he’s got a big one,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“His schlong,” she said, and grabbed her own crotch. She had five or six months to become a grandmother. She had a tough regimen ahead of her, but maybe she could get there if she could stop doing things like this.

“How would you know?” I asked.

“Oh, girls talk.
Is
it large?”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Fine?”

“Sure. I mean, I suppose.”

Olivia frowned at me and I felt about sixteen.

“It’s just…” I began. “Well…I’ve told you.”

“Out with it,” Olivia said. “I’ve shown you ours, show me yours. Just know that’s not our regular fare. We’re vanilla too. Without our little play he needs a little pill to help him out, if you know what I mean. Now, share and share alike.”

“He’s great. Terrance is. I mean, he’s way too young for me…”

“Nonsense. If I weren’t married, I’d be on college freshmen.”

“Olivia!”

“Sophomore?”

“You’re going to be a grandmother,” I reminded her.

“Yes, but back to Terrance’s schlong.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” I said.

“Cock? Dick? Fuckstick?”

“That’s worse.”

“Johnson? Rod?”

“Not any better.”

“Schlong, then.”

“Whatever,” I said.

It was snowing outside. I wish I had something to do: shoveling snow or chopping firewood if I had a fireplace and an axe and was into that kind of thing. I wasn’t comfortable with this kind of talk. I never was, not even in high school or college. I found it…well,
icky
for lack of a better word.

“Comes too soon? Too rough? Too tender? Out with it.”

“That’s the problem.”

“All of the above?”

“The out with it part. We still haven’t actually…done it. In that way. Maybe when I see him again. It’s been weeks.”

Olivia picked up her phone. I was hoping she was becoming bored. She scrolled around and put the phone down again. “I have ten minutes till I have to leave for an appointment. Go on.”

I sighed. “He still insists on pleasuring
me
only. Orally.”

Olivia moved closer to my chair and put a hand on my knee. “He must be getting something out of it. Men don’t do that for nothing.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “He says he loves it.”

“So everything is good, then.”

“I need…I’d like more. The whole nine yards.”

“Please, girl. It can’t be that big.” She laughed at her joke. “And what happened to not wanting to be selfish?”

“I know,” I said.

“You want the schlong. Say it.”

I sighed. “I want the schlong. I want Terrance’s long schlong. I haven’t even seen the damn thing.”

Olivia laughed and I did too. It was ridiculous. The situation, this conversation. The Whole. Nine. Yards.

“So,” Olivia began, “the question is: can a woman be fulfilled with a younger man who has a taste for pussy but won’t do anything else? What’s the answer?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’d be so much easier if he had some kind of injury and regular sex wasn’t an option.”

“Well, I’m a little jealous. Drake’s not gifted in that oral department. He really doesn’t like doing it.”

“But on Wednesday…you made him…”

“Well, as a form of punishment, yes. But not on any other nights.”

“Even with you reciprocating?”

“Oh no. Wouldn’t mind, but I give as I get.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Terrance won’t even let me do that.” The snow had suddenly turned heavy and the room increased in brightness.

Olivia stood. “Okay. Time to go before the driveway gets snowed in. Thanks for tea.”

“Sure,” I said, and took the coffee mug she handed me.

“If I were you,” she said, heading out the door, “I’d be thinking of his schlong all the time.”

After she’d left the apartment I had the hardest time getting back into work. True enough, all I could think of was Terrance below the belt, and I stood there a full minute, coffee mugs in hand, half of my body leaning toward my work, the other to the bedroom and the dresser and the vibrator there. Thankfully the phone rang (my editor) and saved me from a half-hour derailment of my morning.

After the call I returned to editing the post-professional career phase of Mr. Irldale’s book. I heard Olivia drive off and looked out the window and saw the rectangle of dark gravel where her car had been. By the time I was halfway through the chapter it had stopped snowing. And by the time my son came home from school the snow was slush. By morning all was wet and gray once more.

If this book were fiction, I’d push through another scene here, in all likelihood a nap with a sexual dream in it, or maybe some phone sex, or that dildo in the drawer under the granny panties. But in reality not much happened for a few months. I lost a client who I’d done quite a bit of writing for, I sprained my foot on the stairs and was on crutches for a few weeks, my son gut punched one of his many bullies and got suspended for a week—which wasn’t fun. Turns out you still get homework even while suspended. Terrance came over every few days between his week-long disappearing acts to visit far-flung schools, but he still wouldn’t let me return his favors. Not even a hand job. Not even a dry rub. He responded to my questions with the same words. “Can we just drop it already.” I let him go down on me, just not with all the ties and restraints. Okay, not without the restrains
every
time. So my life basically consisted of cycles of enjoying Terrance and his tongue while he was here, and thinking of Terrance and his tongue while he was gone.

It was sometime around this time, February or March I believe, that my ex came over. Quick note to readers: when your ex asks to come over, tell him that anything he wants to say can be said over the phone. Or through a lawyer. He said he wanted to talk about our son. I’ve called my ex Samuel since he needs a name, though I really don’t feel he deserves the protection of a pseudonym. Sam didn’t look good. He’d taken to wearing caps—not baseball but trucker. The kind worn only by real truckers, posers, or the listless. He was wearing his hair long. You can guess which group he fell into.

“Hey Eloise,” he said, coming up the stairs.

“Sam,” I said.

“Nice place,” he muttered, a hollow thing to say because all he could see was the siding outside. No one says
nice place
about over-the-garage living quarters. He wanted something.

I shrugged and walked inside. He followed.

“There’s still some coffee in the pot,” I said.

“I’m good,” he said.

I watched him look around the room, his eyes probably fastening less on the things that we’d once both shared, and more on what had come after: the coat rack Terrance had made for me out of welded bicycle handlebars, the chandelier above the table in the kitchen (via Olivia), or the framed prints I’d hung on the walls of myself and my son staring at each other, first serious, then both making goofy faces.

“You look good,” Sam said, turning back to me. “You look hot, actually.”

I chose to ignore the
actually
and just grunted. I was wearing my usual winter wear: wool socks, jeans, long sleeve t-shirt. The epitome, I think, of un-hotness. Guess it depends on one’s point of reference though.

“You,” I said, trying to come up with some shade of a return compliment. “You…”