Hot Properties (6 page)

Silence.

He breathed slowly, feeling the flutter of emotion as he inhaled. He knew, or part of him knew (the tiny, huddled creature inside who was frightened by people: terrified of their judgments), that to push her would mean an argument. But nevertheless, he repeated his plea. “Honey?”

“What?” This simple question was said in a tone so harsh that a man less committed to truth would have shrunk from answering.

Fred pressed on. “Are you angry at me?”

“I’m tired.”

He waited for more. Then: “You know, suggesting you change your hair isn’t an insult.”

“Of course it is!” Marion was suddenly animate. The covers were thrown off, she sat bolt upright, and spoke loudly, addressing the room as if it were full of listening jurors. “You’re always hinting that I should lose weight, change my hair, get a winter tan—what kind of idiot do you think I am? I know what—”

“Come on, come on, come on,” Fred had been saying, and went on saying while she continued.

“—that means. You’re ugly! You’re ugly! You’re ugly!”

“Oh God!” Fred covered his face. All the pain of his marriage, the simultaneous hurt of knowing her accusation was true, and that his desire for a more beautiful woman was wrong, and yet that somehow he was a good man, and that he did love her; all this, the confusing dissonant symphony of his relationship with Marion, played while she yelled at him; and yet one clear, cold voice in the auditorium whispered: I guess this means we aren’t going to fuck.

Smooth and inflamed, moist and comforted, intensely sensitive and yet inhumanly independent—David’s organ occupied Patty’s mouth. Her tongue, after an especially deep pass around his penis, played lightly round the ridge of his circumcision and wrenched moans from his stomach, enraging the thick vein that coursed like a swollen river from its purple base. And then she opened wide to swallow …

“Oh God …”

She had wondered what to do when this happened. She had never stayed this long for fear that the man might climax and—now it happened: her mouth filling with the stuff, the hot brew of nature’s quick mix.

Disgusted, she swallowed, almost choking because it felt so thick that she imagined her throat might be stopped up forever, cemented by semen.

She removed her mouth, despite a protesting groan from David, and gulped to get it down. Her fears had been foolish, because all of it was easily ingested. She looked at David and felt delighted with her results. He lay there, his gray wool pants and jockey shorts twisted at the knees, his red penis dwindling in the open air, glistening wet. His head was thrown back as if he had been caught in that position by an audience.

But her pleasure was short-lived when she took a second look at his shriveling member. She had assaulted him because she wanted to make love, to touch and sweat and make contact, and to forget everything that had failed and was failing in her life. She was horny. She had felt in her thighs and in her dry thirsting mouth that she wanted love: she had seduced David so that he would satisfy her, but the drooping flag of manhood before her eyes wasn’t encouraging.

His eyes opened. Only a little at first. They looked sleepy, drunk, and happy. Their happiness infuriated her. She had to make clear that the fun wasn’t over yet. She stood up and, looking him in the eyes, she pulled her pink cotton top up and over her head, pulling her arms through quickly. Her nipples were thick and pink-red. Her white breasts were mapped by veins, and they stuck out in the air as if held by invisible strings.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice hoarse and yet small and innocent like a child’s.

She unzipped her pleated beige pants, hooked her underpants with her fingers, and pulled off both layers in one motion, steadying herself with first one hand and then the other against the couch. She looked smaller naked: sleek and white like a boy, despite her large breasts, narrow stomach, and widening hips that poured her like champagne into the graceful stem of her legs. She got on top of him and he ran his hands up and down her, happily. She was like a stone washed and polished by the sea; his fingers ran over her back, her buttocks, her legs, as though making an assessment. Beneath her, she felt his penis harden again, and that heartened her. She liked him a little more and kissed him, forcing his mouth open with her tongue and exploring inside like a probe.

He began to turn her over, gently flipping her, so that she was under him, lying lengthwise on the couch. He kissed her neck and traveled down her collar to her breasts. That was predictable and irritated her: men enjoyed her breasts far more than she enjoyed their enjoyment.

But he surprised her, kissing her nipples only once and then proceeding south, his lips touching her lightly, raising her skin so that the sense of body was widened—she could feel her legs and stomach yearn for touch. He arrived at her belly and curved his tongue around and into her navel. That made her gasp: her belly rolled in, tickled and wounded delightfully by this invasion.

His hands had gripped her thighs, she noticed, squeezing and massaging, his thumbs rubbing inside toward her vagina. Each pass opened her legs more—he seemed to be leaving the couch, or, at least, hovering over it—and his fingers began to brush her pubic hair. He would notice that she shaved and trimmed herself so that the bush made a neat V, easily accessed, to encourage just what she hoped he was about to do.

But he resumed his whispery kisses of her stomach and breasts and neck, whooshing over her body with unexpected variations so that she wriggled away at the same time that her hands pulled his head toward her. Just when she felt his teasing would make her insane, he stopped. Her body was instantly angry, sure that he meant to betray the promise of this prelude.

Her legs were pulled wide apart, confirming her fear, but then—ecstatically—she felt his teeth scrape the insides of her thighs. She closed her legs, surprised, but quickly opened them invitingly. He accepted with his tongue and mouth. His hands went under her, squeezing her buttocks and raising her hips so that she was offered to him like a feast.

His mouth kissed her there: she felt warmth rise and suffuse her belly as his tongue and lips pressed, kneaded, and tickled. Her hands clung to his hair as if steadying herself. She was in continual motion, a thoroughbred trembling at the gate.

She heard herself moan, but nothing now felt conscious or determined. She was in pieces, floating on a sea of movement and sensation, rolling with the waves as he penetrated with his tongue, making regular passes over her clitoris.

For a moment she worried that he would stop before the climax. Men had done this much and quit when she most wanted them to go on: her fingers tightened their grip on his hair and she forced a moan, pushing his head into her genitals as well, so the message would be clear. This spurred him. His hands raised her buttocks even more so that her head and neck were firmly against the couch, and her vagina open to the air and to his investigations. Now he licked and touched and mouthed all over. Her thighs, her lips, swallowing her juice and bits of her hair, eating her with devoted passion.

And now the earthquake began! She was spun off into the universe, heat searing her insides, the air thinning, and deep within, the core of desire glowed and hardened, pulsing with the need to escape the prison of her flesh.

From her came sounds of agony and joy. Her eyes opened and she saw the yellow sprinkler pipes bounce in the air as she heaved with the expulsion of passion.

“Oh! God, God, God, God, God.” she said to the sprinklers as she bucked against the merciless pressure of his tongue, darting in and over and away, with an irregular but relentless pace. She was free! She was free! She was free!

“Don’t get me excited,” Betty whispered into his ear.

“Mmmm.” Tony was swimming. He moved to a silent rhythm, taking his strokes into the hidden stream, the warm river within his wife.

“You promised,” she whispered.

Tony knew she was lying; she wanted an orgasm. He made sure he angled his behind up, under, and in, so that the pelvic bone would do its job. This was a familiar and effective choreography in their marriage: like any good dance routine, technique dominated, but the magic would come at last and transform the careful movements into inspired grace.

“Uhhh,” she let out, and he knew it would be soon. His hands lightly touched her sides as he ran them up, gripping her armpits with his thumbs, and squeezing as if she were a doll. This worked for him—his thrusts deepened. He was really in the ocean now, stroking mightily toward the shore of release, sweat bursting from him, his limbs stretching with every move, his back arching, his head bobbing and surfacing like a dolphin at play.

He pushed his hand down between his member and her hard knob to emphasize the point. For a moment this interrupted their dance—and then she lifted, from the hips, off the bed, and they united, sweating, groaning, their mouths open and yearning, as they took their long sweetly agonizing swim together, thudding on the sand as one, exhausted by their happy exercise.

“Oh, you’re crazy,” Fred complained. “That’s just bullshit.”

Marion reached past him and pulled the clock radio toward her. The force of the cord coming up made the night table teeter.

“Jesus!” Fred grabbed the table to steady it.

“It’s two-thirty. Fred. I have to be up at seven.”

“I don’t know how you can sleep—”

“I never have any trouble sleeping.”

“I don’t mean that. I’m churning inside. You think I don’t find you attractive when all I want is to make love—”

“You don’t want to make love. You want to come inside me.” She slammed the clock radio back down and stepped over him, out of bed.

Fred stared at her as if he had been slapped. “What are you saying?”

Marion left the room.

He paused a moment to consider whether it might be safer and saner if he didn’t pursue what had already become an ugly marathon of miscommunication. But he was juggling in his mind a variety of tormenting thoughts: did she mean he was lousy in bed? Maybe she didn’t want to have sex as often as he? Maybe she didn’t love him anymore? What was it? For Fred, this was as maddening as not being told who committed the murder in a suspenseful thriller. He got up and followed Marion.

He found her sitting on one of the kitchen chairs placed beside a window that caught a partial view of the East River. The musty glow of New York’s streetlamps provided a silhouette of Marion. Her face looked tight, as if she were holding back tears. He noticed this, but it only spurred his desire to interrogate her. For Fred, great emotion in another person was like a bone to a trained retrieving dog; off he went, his hind legs powering him forward through thickets of dialogue to find his marrow of truth.

“Honey, let’s talk about it,” he said. His attempt to say this calmly made his voice whiny.

“Fred, I don’t feel well. I want to be left alone. Can’t you do that?” She turned to face him and he got a look at her staring eyes, big with welling tears.

He sighed. He told himself to turn around and go, but his feet felt flat and glued to the floor. The oddest thing was that he still had his erection, though it didn’t feel pleasurable at the moment. “I love you,” he said.

She snorted with disgust and helplessness.

“What’s wrong with that! I can’t relax if you’re not happy. I have to know what’s bothering you. It’s eating me up inside.”

“Fred, I worked all day to cook a huge meal for your friends—”

“They’re your friends too—”

“If you must know, they’re not friends to either of us. It was like doing business tonight. This evening wasn’t any more fun than a business lunch. I get plenty of them during the week. Goddamm it, I just don’t feel like making dinner to help your career and then spreading my legs to top it off.”

Fred’s mouth opened in the middle of Marion’s speech and remained so for several seconds afterward. She had begun to cry while she spoke, and now, biting her lips to try to stop, she was sobbing. He felt as if light had illuminated the dingy room where he stored his marriage. Everything she said sounded so right: she had given a name to what had made him uneasy about the party: both his motive for having it, and everyone else’s for coming, disgusted him.

“Honey,” he said, deeply moved. He went to her, knelt by her chair, and put his arm around her. She’s so smart about people, he thought. “You’re right. But you’re wrong about why I wanted to make love. It’s ’cause I felt so lonely and crummy about the way things went. Everybody was ugly and trying to get at each other. I can’t believe people are so competitive.”

She put her head on his shoulder and wept heartily. There was no one else with whom she could be this unhappy. And Marion believed that was the best one could hope for. Unless, of course, you had a face and body and temperament like Patty’s.

“I wanted to make love because what we have is so different,” Fred said. “We don’t need that kind of shit. I just wanted to hold onto something real.” She cuddled into his arms now, beginning to slide off the chair. Her weight felt cumbersome and he pulled her up, leading her toward the bedroom. “You should go to sleep,” he said so earnestly that one would imagine she had been keeping herself up.

He put her to bed tenderly, remaking the bed and tucking her in so that she was cozy. She kissed him—her wet face lubricating their lips—and urged him onto the bed. “Aren’t you going to sleep?”

“No. You know me.”

“Don’t stay up too late.” She kissed him again, gratefully, like a wife greeting a husband feared lost.

“Un-huh,” he said, pulling away. He took her hand and put it on his erection. “You keep getting me excited.”

“I’m sorry. I’m too tired. Tomorrow night?” She removed her hand.

“Sure. I’m sorry about tonight. I won’t do this again.”

“No,” Marion said, hugging him. “It’s not your fault. We have to do this stuff.”

Fred sighed and rolled off her. “It drives me crazy. Paying dues.”

Marion laughed. She nodded at his penis, arced to the heavens.

Fred smiled proudly. “You turn me on. I can’t help it.”