Sex in the Title (25 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I called you about two hours later, and guess who picked up?”

“The mailman.”

“That’s right, Kojak” Melody replied, complimenting Heeb’s legendary detective skills. But – in the context of their quarrel – her remark sounded to Heeb like an insult that cynically exploited his earlier confessions to her about his insecurities.

“Let me guess: he has lots of hair.”

“He sure does. But you know I don’t care about hair.”

“And you know that I do! So you already went on a date with him?”

“We really hit it off over the phone. I mean it was a pretty hysterical situation, me calling a cell phone in a mailbox just as he opened it to collect the mail.”

“Yeah, it’s not too hard to come up with a few jokes about that one. But I’m sure you thought he was very witty.”

“Maybe it was just fate.”

“It was an accident for God’s sake.”

“And what’s fate, if not a series of accidents that work out in just the right way?”

“I can’t believe you went postal on me just like that.”

“He’s got a great schedule too. Lots of time for me.”

“So you slept with him too?”

“No, Sammy. Don’t be silly.”

“So he couldn’t solve your riddle?”

“God, you’re quick. I will miss that about you.”

“Miss? You mean this is it?”

“Unless you’re willing to come over to my place.”

“So you’re going to take the mail guy over me because of the cat issue?” Heeb believed so strongly that he was in the right that, if this was in fact the end, he knew he’d be able to walk away with a clear conscience and relatively unscathed.

“He doesn’t have any cat issues.”

“But he has other issues.”

“I’m ready for some new issues.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Well I’m lying here in bed waiting for you, if you’d like to be doing something else with me.”

Heeb suddenly lost all of the fighting spirit fueled by his conviction that he was right in this dispute. With that invitation, he was ready to forgive her mailman date and just succumb to the twelve cats. As aggravating and stressful as Melody’s moodiness and irrationality had been, Heeb was more than ready for some make-up sex.

Chapter 18
Heeb Hits the Jackpot

During the thirty-minute commute to Melody’s studio in Queens, Sammy tried in vain not to think about the dozen cats that would be there to meow around his feet, shed their hair all over his clothes, and step nimbly out of his way just in the nick of time. He convinced himself that this trip would at least give him a new argument in future quarrels about the cat issue. He would be able to say, in his own defense, that he had legitimately “tried it once”: he had, in fact, tried to go to her place and the experience was so unpleasant that she should now understand if he doesn’t want to repeat it.

As Heeb walked down the hallway of Melody’s apartment building and got closer to the door of her studio, he could hear Bach’s Tocatta and Fugue in D minor blasting from within. The dark and ominous organ sounds made the experience all the more strangely cinematic – as if Heeb were the gallant knight of some gothic horror movie who, after an arduous and dangerous journey, had courageously arrived at the stygian chamber of reckoning.

The door opened and Melody’s lank figure appeared in a black leotard and dark tights. Atop her purple-streaked, brunet hair, pulled back into a chignon, sat black felt cat ears. In addition to her usual dark makeup, the tip of her nose was painted black and her cheeks were penciled with charcoal cat whiskers.

She simpered, and tilted her head towards the inside of her apartment, signaling him to enter.

Heeb stepped inside. The walls of Melody’s studio were painted a tenebrous green, and the windows were covered by thick, black velvet curtains that ensured a total absence of light but for the scattered, plum colored candles burning in various corners and hanging from a small candelabrum. Crammed into the four-hundred-square-foot apartment were a kitchenette, a queen-sized bed, a tiny bathroom, a miniature table for eating and a large desk with a small stereo system, desktop computer, scanner, and printer for Melody’s freelance design work.

As soon as the door shut behind him, Heeb felt crowded by the dozen felines roaming about the cramped space. A chorus of meows went off as soon as he walked in, though they were largely drowned out by the booming, intense, and ominous Bach music.

Heeb did his best to absorb this dusky and cramped cat cave, but he found the Tocatta and Fugue in D minor to be too much for the moment. “Do you mind if we put on something a bit softer or more serene? Maybe his Cello Suite Number One in G major?”

“How about the English Suite Number Two?” she replied.

“Even better.”

While Melody searched for the right CD, Heeb continued to survey her place. He noticed that her cats came in three colors – black, grey, or tiger striped – and that they perched themselves anywhere they pleased. Three were lounging on Melody’s bed, one of which – a large black cat – lay directly on her pillow. Two sat atop the desk with her computer equipment. Two were playing with a ball of purple yarn on the wood floor. One lay in the path to the bathroom, another obstructed the approach to the refrigerator, and another roamed about the front door area. Two others were running about somewhat wildly in the longest open space in the apartment. Each of Heeb’s movements – whether it was a step of the foot, a swing of the arm, or an attempt to sit down – felt as though it barely missed a tail, a vibrissa, or a paw.

Cat hairs coated the floor and bedspread and clung to every piece of furniture. But the thick air in Melody’s apartment had no offensive odors, and smelled like a subtle blend of burning candles, incense, and dried fruit. This was because, to accommodate her olfactory sensitivities, Melody had hired a contractor to build a “mini cat-room” out of specially scented pinewood, so that she could place all of the litter boxes and cat food into one well-sealed and custom-ventilated corner of her apartment.

Melody found the English Suite Number Two CD and began removing it from the shelf. But she stopped at the jarring caterwaul emitted by the tabby mouser that had been roaming about by the front door. Melody saw that Heeb had inadvertently stepped on the end of its tail as he continued trying to adjust to the small and surreal space.

“Hey! You just stepped on Vagina. Apologize to her!”

“Did you really name your pussy that?” Sammy asked, in surprised amusement.

“Yep.”

“But isn’t that a bit generic?”

“Well, sometimes I call her Vaj for short. Now apologize.”

“Do you think she’ll understand me? How’s her vocabulary?”

“When talking to cats, it’s all about the intonation and sincerity. So you have to mean it. Come on, Sammy.”

Heeb crouched down to make amends with the irritated feline, using the most sincere voice he could summon under the circumstances. “Look, I'm really sorry about that. This is my first time meeting a Vagina with a tail, and I stepped out of line a bit. Literally. It was really an honest mistake. But I probably should have worn a condom on my shoe, just in case.”

Melody laughed. She crouched down and, in a voice one would use with a baby, she called her cat over for some palliative petting. “Come here, Vaj! Sammy’s really sorry. And very funny. Now come here and I’ll make it all better!” The tabby ran over to Melody, who scooped her up and started petting her. “That’s a good girl.”

Melody eventually released the cat onto the edge of the bed, so that she could finish inserting the CD. The tabby approached one of the bed pillows, where the large black cat was still perched, watching Heeb walk over to Melody. As Vaj arrived at the edge of the pillow, the black cat moved off of it – not out of fear or deference to Vaj, but only because he was curious about Heeb. The fourteen-pound Bombay moved to the edge of the bed, and stared up at Heeb, as if to assess him. Sammy looked into the feline’s yellow eyes, and then at his sleek black fur and sinuous body. The miniature panther eventually jumped down to the ground and circled around Melody’s leg, like a furry ball of oil hovering over the floor.

After Melody finished inserting the new Bach CD, she knelt down to pick up the Bombay. She turned towards Heeb and, in a maternal and protective voice, said, “Jackpot’s my favorite baby. Aren’t you, Jackpot? Do you know why his name is Jackpot?”

“Hmm…A black cat named Jackpot…Oh, I got it! You wanted to correct the superstition that black cats bring bad luck, right?”

“You’re a genius, Sammy,” she said. “No one gets that on the first try. Isn’t Sammy a little genius, Jackpot? Don’t you just love that about him?” she said to her cat as she rubbed her face affectionately into his soft fur. Melody held the cat closely against her breast, and walked towards Heeb. Once she was within a few feet of him, she pursed up her lips coyly and seductively asked, “Do you want some pussy?”

“As long as you’re not talking about Vaj,” Heeb replied, pointing to the tabby that had taken Jackpot’s spot on the bed pillow.

Melody chuckled, and then crouched down to let Jackpot drop gracefully to the floor. Emboldened by the affection that had just been showered upon him from the mistress of the house, Jackpot jumped back onto the bed to reclaim his throne from Vaj.

Melody stood back up and put her arms around Heeb and began kissing him.

She caressed him intensely and pressed herself up against him closely, as if a torrent of sexual favors might exonerate her from the mailman incident.

She slid her index finger up the length of his spine, until she could run her hand through the hair on the sides of his head.

But Heeb couldn’t readily refocus his attention from the feline circus in the background to the erotic overtures of the cat-woman grinding up and down on him.

“Heavy petting in front of pets,” he said, unable to keep the silly thought to himself.

Melody chuckled and whispered into Heeb’s ear, “I missed your humor.” She then proceeded to nibble on his ear as she undressed him.

But with eight of the twelve cats peering at him, it took about twenty minutes for Heeb to shake the idea that he was being closely watched. Even modeling nude for a room full of painters hadn’t prepared him for sexual intimacy in the presence of so many mammals.

Heeb, who was soon naked, had to make a concerted effort to concentrate on the action at hand. Rather than flow naturally with Melody’s physical movements, he was thinking about some National Geographic program he had seen a few years ago, in which the baritone narrator had declared that cats have the largest eyes of any mammal, in relation to body size.

Heeb finally returned to Melody enough to untie the knot of string in the center of her back that kept her leotard up. It unfurled gently off her torso and revealed her small breasts. She helped him to remove her leotard, so that she had nothing on except her black tights.

In a passionate frenzy, Melody moved them onto the bed, but Heeb abruptly stepped on the brakes, and got off the bed.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s no way I’m lying on all that cat hair!” he exclaimed, brushing off the part of his body that had touched the bedspread and examining himself for any cat hairs that might still be stuck to him.

“Sammy, it’s fine! Their hair is clean. I lie naked on that bedspread all the time.”

“Why did you have to tell me that? I didn’t need to know that about you.”

“Really, Sammy. It’s fine…Cats spend about thirty-four percent of their lives grooming themselves.”

“You mean using their tongues to put cat saliva on themselves.”

“And I bathe them once a week.”

“Can we just get under the covers?”

“OK.” Melody shooed the three cats off her bed and removed the bedspread. Heeb was relieved to see that the white sheets below were free of any cat hairs, but gave Melody a disapproving look as he flipped the pillows over so that the dirty, cat-used-side was no longer facing where they would rest their heads.

Melody blew out some candles and then joined Heeb under the covers.

She entangled her bare legs in his as their naked bodies approached each other. They hadn’t seen each other in almost four days and were meeting on the heels of a protracted fight that resulted in a near break-up. They grabbed each other in restless anticipation of make-up sex, knowing that the tension from their spat wouldn’t be fully relieved until its conclusion. The two unbridled libidos, brimming with the issues that had yet to be resolved, unleashed themselves under the covers.

Melody’s dozen cats reacted differently to the whirlwind of sheets and legs and arms spinning around atop the queen-sized bed: some began to run around wildly while others just sat and meowed, as if in homage to the mating rituals of a friendly species. Undoubtedly, Heeb would have found any perceptible cat reaction to be both unsettling and distracting, because it would have made him recognize that he was effectively performing in front of a mammalian audience. But Heeb was too absorbed in the moment to notice the cats.

The rhythm of the limbs and the sheets finally reached its crescendo and Heeb collapsed atop Melody’s sweaty body. Melody loved that coital moment more than any other: when a man’s orgasm rendered his entire body flaccid and heavy – as if she had squeezed all of the vitality out of him and replaced it with some powerful sedative.

As they blissfully caught their breaths, they could feel each other’s hearts pounding.

They shared a tranquil, reassuring smile, and all was forgiven.

The moment felt almost too heavy, and Heeb couldn’t resist lightening the mood with a silly joke.

“Do you think the cats would get upset if we did it doggie style?”

Melody’s face brightened in amusement.

“Not if I have you on a very tight leash,” she quipped.

By 1 a.m., they had released a second bed tornado that ended more climactically than even the first. At 1:15, they were gradually slipping into an ever-drowsier state of dreamy lassitude. And by 1:30, Melody had dozed off and Heeb was close behind but still having occasional thoughts about how the make-up sex could have been even better had she sucked on his toes. But he reminded himself how asking her to indulge his favorite fetish would have surely exposed him to a litany of counter-demands that he simply wasn’t willing to fulfill because they were too close to homosexuality, or too predicated on the use of psychotropic drugs.