Best of Best Women's Erotica (3 page)

“Tell him what?” Monica is caught short.

“That I'm pregnant with his child,” Chandra whispers.

“No!” says Monica. “Now you're really trapped.”

“Don't
say
that!” shouts Chandra.

Monica shushes her because someone might hear and call the police since she's still supposed to be on vacation in Miami.

“I'm happy,” Chandra says with a shiver as she cradles Monica's pillow in her arms. “I'm so happy, but you're the only one I can tell. I was going to tell my aunt, but she can't keep her mouth shut. I mean, I love her, she's like my best friend, but I couldn't let her tell my parents. They might want me to have an abortion, so I have to wait until it's born. I can't kill his child. If I can't have him, I want his baby!”

“Don't be stupid,” says Monica. “What are you going to do with it?”

Chandra sits up, shaking her silky curls. “I always told him I wanted a child, I wanted us to be together as a family, but he said he already had a family and wasn't interested in starting another one.”

Monica puts an arm around Chandra's slender shoulders. “I guess both our guys already had what we wanted—real lives, with homes and kids. We were just love drive-bys for them. They shot us through the heart, and sped off. The big creep and
the little creep, that's what they are.”

“What's left for us, then?” Chandra pounds the pillow with balled fists, raising a cloud of dust. Because of the hours she spent decorating the closet, Monica hasn't kept up with the housework.

 

Life in Monica's closet isn't as cramped as you'd think. It's very spacious, with a window that frames a view of the city lights—but Chandra only opens the curtains at night, so she doesn't know what it looks like during the day. There's an overhead light, which is too bright, so Monica has had a wall lamp installed, with a soft pink bulb. The bathroom is next to the closet. Chandra is free to roam the apartment on weekdays when Monica is out working. Chandra isn't sure what she does, but Monica says she's self-supporting, which she encourages Chandra to become when this is over. Monica's involved with fashion, designing and selling purses or something—but Chandra doesn't pay much attention because she's focused now on what grows inside her.

On nights when Monica sleeps alone, Chandra doesn't have to hide, so she wanders around the apartment thinking of her man. He hasn't lived with his wife for years because his work keeps him in Washington, where she was until she lost her internship and couldn't find another job, and what did such a powerful member of congress do about that? She doesn't want to go there. It was different with Monica and Bill—he lived with his wife and he always worked behind the scenes to find jobs for Monica, even if they were jobs she didn't want. Chandra looks behind her own scene and finds nothing but dangling, empty strings. She's been cut free. The play is over. Time to move on. She moves around the apartment, running her hands over
her still-flat belly. She wonders what's inside—a real baby, or something as horribly smooth as a snake, ready to devour her from within.

 

“I don't see how you do it,” says Monica over a breakfast of low-fat yogurt with strawberry jam on cornflakes. “I could eat nothing and never be as skinny as you. I'd kill for your body.”

Chandra thinks she'd kill for Monica's breasts—that cleavage, that sensual mouth chewing the cornflakes. Every move she makes is sexy. She's glad
her
man never met Monica. She runs a hand through her curls, feeling their spring and bounce. Her hair, at least, is better than Monica's, which looks frizzy and bushy in the morning before she washes it, taming it with half a bottle of cream rinse until it's slick and smooth.

“What are you?” asks Monica. “Three months? Is there really room for a baby in there?”

Chandra helps herself to a bowl of cornflakes.

“You should see a doctor,” says Monica.

“I did,” Chandra replies, “and everything's okay.”

“You need regular visits,” Monica tells her. “My dad's a physician, so I know these things.”

“So's my father,” says Chandra, a catch in her voice. “I know how to take care of myself.”

“Is he an ob-gyn?”

“No, an oncologist.”

“No kidding—mine too. Doctors of death. What do they know about birth? To them, everything's cancer.”

“That's not true!” exclaims Chandra. “My dad cures people. Cancer doesn't have to be fatal.”

“Life doesn't have to be fatal,” Monica answers, “but it usually is. Listen, my boyfriend knows this guy who's an ob-gyn,
an older guy, very discreet. He used to do abortions back when they were totally illegal. I mean, even if you don't want an abortion, you can trust this guy not to say a word, whatever you decide to do.”

“No, no one must know about this,” says Chandra.

“So, what about the doctor you already saw? He knows, doesn't he?”

Chandra looks down at her cornflakes.

“Ha! You never even saw one, did you? Look, I'll ask Mike for this guy's number. I won't say you're here, I won't tell him anything—except that it's not for me, of course.”

 

Mike is just one of Monica's boyfriends, the one she calls the current one. She's trying to diversify, as well as train herself away from older, married men. She recommends her program to Chandra, but Chandra, peeking out of a crack in the closet door into Monica's open bedroom door, is not impressed.

Mike, an obsessive tennis player with a preference for night games in the heat of summer, usually arrives at Monica's apartment around eleven, dripping with sweat, his thick blond hair held off his forehead by a blue bandana. When Monica opens the front door, she shrieks and giggles for reasons Chandra can't see, then wrestles him down the hall and into the shower, where things become strangely quiet, except for the sound of running water. Once Chandra went into the bathroom and saw through the glass shower door that Monica was on her knees while Mike stood, his raised arms gripping the shower head.

Mike doesn't notice much—not the extra glass on Monica's sink, not the extra bottles of shampoo and cream rinse on the bathroom windowsill or the second razor on the side of the tub,
a green one next to Monica's pink. Chandra wonders if they ever shave each other in there. She misses the shaving ritual she once thought was so weird, and thinks about it whenever she shaves her legs. She had Monica buy her a green razor because Gary's was black, and she wants to be similar, yet different. She's letting her pubic hair grow back, and is surprised at how smooth it is after the wax job.

With her closet door open a crack, she has a clear view of Monica's bed, but mostly what she sees is Monica's ass as she bends over the supine Mike, who just lies there groaning. That seems to be all they do. No wonder Monica is so dismissive of him in the morning, as she thoughtfully spoons cornflakes past her swollen lips.

“I think guys aren't worth the trouble,” she says. “I'd rather just earn my own money, and take care of myself for sex.”

Taking care of herself in any sense is a strange concept for Chandra, who wants above all to be wanted. What good are your own fingers if they don't love you? What good is the vibrator you buy, like buying time with a prostitute? What good, for that matter, is peddling purses for a living? Chandra is ambitious, not so much for money as for pride. She wants to be more than someone's wife. Her internship in D. C. was supposed to be the beginning of her career as a lawyer, then a judge, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court, with her man supporting her goals along with his own.

 

Monica has plans, too. One hot Saturday afternoon in August, while they lie on Monica's bed to catch a breeze from her open window, she says, “I have a design concept—a vibrating purse. Listen, it's obvious: you hold your purse on your lap, right? In restaurants, on buses and planes. You have everything you need
inside this bag—but also, you have satisfaction whenever you want.”

“What kind of satisfaction is that?” Chandra giggles uneasily. “A purse instead of a man?”

“Listen,” says Monica. “A vibrator may break down, but it'll never break your heart. It won't make comments about your body, or refuse to leave its wife for you, or make you have an abortion, or even make you
need
an abortion. It'll never get you in the news, and you won't have to fix it breakfast. Let me introduce you to one of my favorites.”

She reaches under her bed and pulls out a long rod with a soft rubber ball stuck to one end.

“What do you do with that thing?” Chandra squeals.

Monica laughs. “No, it doesn't go inside. God, you're so
penile.
” She places the end with the soft ball between Chandra's thighs and presses the switch on the shaft.

Chandra sucks in her breath. “Oh,” she says. “Oh! Turn it off.”

But Monica follows her as she tries to twist away. “Oh, please,” says Chandra, pushing the vibrator away with her hands while her hips and belly still thrust against it. “I can't take it!” She's breathing like she was the day she ran up to Monica's door. “I don't think I want to do this now,” she says, glaring at Monica.

“That's okay,” Monica answers. “But you can borrow this any time you want. I keep it under my bed. You can try the other ones I have there, too.”

 

Bob the fireman is another one of Monica's boyfriends, but he's married so he's not part of the program. Chandra watches through the cracked closet door while Bob carries Monica into
the bedroom. Sometimes he even wears his red fireman's hat, while Monica cries, “Ooooh—save me!” Bob carries her like she weighs nothing at all. Chandra is impressed by the muscles rippling under his thin white cotton T-shirt. He always closes the bedroom door, but Chandra can hear the buzz of the vibrator, and Monica's low-pitched growls of pleasure.

“Politicians suck,” Monica says the next morning, her eyes half closed. “Actually, they don't suck, which is more often the problem. Except for…” Her eyes seem focused on something beyond the apartment walls. “They're basically all afraid of losing—their wives, their families, their jobs, the next election. I only date real people now. Single, if possible.” She sighs, as she always does after a night with Bob. “Of course, the best are already married.”

Chandra nods. “I was tired of little boys by the time I was fifteen. That's when I started smoking. I'd light up a cigarette, and all the little boys would go away. Then I started meeting men.”

“Yeah, I used to smoke, but I never inhaled. It was just for show. Do you think our mothers did any better than us, marrying doctors like they were supposed to? Mine ended up divorcing him.”

“My dad's a saint,” Chandra answers, her eyes filling with tears.

“But marriage to a saint—what's that like? Saints can drive you crazy. My mother accused my father of verbal assault, which wasn't exactly true, but still—saints have their ways.”

“I wish I could go home,” Chandra whispers.

“But Daddy's a saint, so you can't. A saint would never understand what happened to you. At least our guys weren't angels. Politics teaches you to be a realist. All your illusions about
helping anyone get stripped away pretty fast, until nothing's possible but your own pleasure.” Monica chews her cornflakes.

“No, our moms did well for themselves, marrying respected professional men like oncologists,” says Chandra. “Where'd we go wrong, getting mixed up in politics? What are we, the world's only Jewish
shiksas?
Marrying the
President?
A
congressman?
What kind of ambition is that? And you, with the tennis players, and firemen. Is that any better?”

“It's a start,” answers Monica.

 

At night they often lie on Chandra's futon in the closet, talking. Chandra feels more comfortable here than she does on Monica's bed with the vibrator lurking underneath, but suddenly one evening Monica drops something furry and pulsating just below her rising belly.

“Oh!” says Chandra in surprise as she struggles to sit up, but Monica pushes her shoulders down.

“Relax,” she croons. “I want to try this out.”

Chandra puts her hands down and strokes a fur even slicker than her own.

“It's fake mink,” Monica explains. “No cute little animals were snuffed to make this baby.”

Chandra opens the flap of the fur purse, feels inside, finds the pouch for the batteries, finds the switch, and turns it off and on again, up and down. When she starts to feel a glow in her cunt she gets nervous and turns it off.

Monica strokes the purse, then slowly slips her fingers under Chandra's shirt and up the slope of her belly, which rises like a mountain growing out of her. Monica is amazed to think that a child floats in there. She runs her fingers up the fine line of fuzz rising from Chandra's pubic hair to her belly button, following
the curve of the dark line that has formed in the skin beneath. Chandra is letting that hair grow back, though she still shaves her legs and underarms.

“Your creep doesn't know what he's missing,” Monica murmurs. “You are beautiful.” Monica's fingers edge up over Chandra's belly button, which is starting to stick out now like a cork in a wine bottle; tenderly she fingers it, then slides down the smooth slope of her side and back to her pubic mound.

“I'm not into this,” says Chandra.

“Neither am I,” says Monica, working her fingers into Chandra's moist cunt, then sliding them across her clit. More than anything else, she feels curious.