The Mammoth Book of International Erotica Read online

  There is another possibility, a simpler one. Maybe they’re just wary of him and of what he might want. That makes a certain sense, except that wariness isn’t something he’s seen in either of them before. When you’ve been in every nook and cranny of another person’s body, and that person has shown no hint of reluctance or displeasure, you don’t expect them to respond to you with suspicion, not even after ten years. Or at least Ferris doesn’t.

  He’s a bit simple-minded about certain things, our Ferris. He thinks, for instance, that intimacies are permanent even though he will tell you that nothing lasts forever. Some tangled circuit in his brain insists, against logic and common sense, that anyone who has cared for him once always will. He understands that the world and human beings aren’t perfect, but he retains a perfect ego anyway. Is this familiar to anyone out there? Is there another name for this? Stupidity?

  Ferris follows Vince into the tiny kitchen. Vince, Ferris notes, brushes past Ava without touching her. Ferris stops in front of her and presents her with the bouquet. He most definitely does want to touch her, to look at her, to see for himself. For a moment he just looks at her, and she stares back without taking the flowers out of his hand, a slight smile on her lips that doesn’t touch her eyes. He brushes back a stray lock of her hair and leans in to kiss her cheek.

  “Well,” she says, taking a step backward but not quite flinching, “do come in and sit down. Would you like some tea or coffee?”

  The three of them negotiate a pot of herbal tea, and while Ava finds a vase for the bouquet, Ferris looks around. Despite the hominess of the cottage, it is Spartan. There are no paintings or prints on the walls, and no personal mementos to be seen. Vince and Ava, Bobby, the foster daughter, and everyone else – parents and friends alike – have been disappeared.

  Ferris ambles over to the couch, sits down, and surveys the cottage. The orderliness of it is startling. The Vince he knows isn’t like this, not in any way. He’s always been a bouncer – a project here, an idea there – the projects never quite complete, the ideas never entirely coherent. Ava lived amidst his chaos without any evident discomfort, or, now that he considers it, deep interest. She wasn’t a compulsive housekeeper or much of a cook. She seemed to be in her own private universe, even as a parent – not that he saw much parenting or much of Bobby – the boy was always visiting “elsewhere” when Ferris visited. Ferris suspected that Ava was competent but slightly indifferent as mothers go. But if she didn’t exert much control in the household, in the bedroom she was definitely in charge – and the bedroom had very elastic proportions.

  There was the time she greeted him on arrival with a blowjob: no formalities permitted, not a word of explanation. Ferris stood in the doorway with his back to the road, his arms braced against the doorjambs and watched her slip his cock in and out of her throat with an exquisitely firm touch grasping and sucking on the in-stroke, and vibrating her tongue across his glans on the out.

  Anyone driving by would have recognized exactly what she was up to, but it didn’t take very long, and the road remained empty. When she was finished, she stood up, kissed him, and slipped his own come into his mouth. Then, grinning, she told him it was an experiment – she wanted to see how fast she could make him come.

  Watching Vince and Ava dither in the kitchen, Ferris has another moment of doubt. Why did he come here? With some fatuous hope that nothing changes? Aside from a salting of grey hair, Ava seems to be the same woman – physically. But she is wary, chastened, closed, and now it comes to him, unerotic. Why?

  Ferris is suddenly assailed by a flood of erotic memories. The way it started, for instance: Vince invites him for dinner. Ferris is between relationships, so he comes alone, dressed in bluejeans and shirt and tie, bringing a bottle of wine and flowers – they were chrysanthemums, so it would have been autumn. Ferris always keeps his seasons straight that way.

  He’s expecting a family dinner, to yap with the kid, and leave early. When he arrives there are only the two of them. Bobby is staying with an aunt.

  At the dinner table the conversation rolls around to sex. Vince is doing the talking. Ferris isn’t saying much, and Ava is impersonating the Mona Lisa, watching them both with an amused expression on her beautiful face. The flashpoint is sexual jealousy which Ferris uncomfortably admits to feeling. Who doesn’t?

  “I don’t,” Vince claims. “I’ve never felt a twinge of it.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Ferris says.

  Vince grins. “That’s just your threatened sexuality talking,” he answers. “Ava can fuck with whoever she wants. So long as she experiences pleasure, I do too.”

  “I suppose you sit on your hands and watch.”

  “Sometimes.” Vince answers as if it were a completely mundane matter of fact. “But usually not for long.”

  Ferris eyes Ava, imagining her moaning and bucking in a stranger’s embrace while Vince calmly watches. It’s an arousing image, but one that makes his spine contract. It’s Ferris’s exgirlfriend making it with her new man, and Ferris is being forced to watch – or is it Vince watching him and his ex?

  Across the table, Ava unbuttons her blouse. She’s not wearing a brassiere. She begins to fondle her nipples. They’re inverted, and as Ferris stares, they grow erect beneath her fingers. Vince is watching her too, saying something Ferris doesn’t follow. He sounds like a television game show host. With an effort, Ferris focuses on what he’s saying.

  “Well,” Ferris hears Vince saying, “why don’t you show Ferris what I’m talking about?”

  Ava murmurs an “Uhhmm” that is neither concurrence nor question, and stands up, sloughing off her blouse as she does so. She walks around the table, slips to her knees in front of Ferris, and begins to unzip his fly, nuzzling his crotch as she does it. Woodenly, Ferris helps her, undoing his belt and freeing his erect penis from his jeans. She inhales it expertly. Within seconds he’s on the verge of coming, and she senses it. She pulls back, holding the head between two fingers, and looks up at him.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” she says.

  She leads him to the couch, where she slips off her skirt and sinks back against the material. She’s not wearing panties. Ferris crouches between her thighs and lifts her legs over his shoulders. He tried to give her head, but she isn’t very interested. She grabs his hair and looks into his eyes, the same amused look on her face.

  “I want you inside me,” she said. It’s an order.

  It’s like a pornographic movie to Ferris, and he has to remind himself that this is really happening. He looks over at Vince, who is still sitting at the dinner table with an I-told-you-so smirk on his face. Ferris tries to slow down, to think of other things as he strips off his clothes, but it’s impossible. His sense of irony has deserted him, and for the first time he can remember, there is no part of him standing aside, watching and analyzing. Vince is the watcher, here.

  For a while, anyway. Ferris glimpses Vince removing his clothes, and as he kneels in front of Ava again, Vince moves past him to sit on the arm of the couch, his erection bobbing against her face. She slurps it hungrily as Ferris penetrates her.

  Ferris comes in a few strokes, and in a state that is about equal parts tumescence and culture shock he watches his first live blowjob. At a distance of less than two feet, it goes on too long and it looks awkward. Eventually Vince pulls away, and as if Ferris isn’t there, he pulls Ava off the couch onto the rug and mounts her.

  Ferris does not quite know what to do, so he covers his confusion with a feigned empiricism. He lies on the rug beside them, watching Ava’s face as they fuck. It’s easier to watch her than him, somehow, or it. She remains composed and conscious, taking his hand and pulling it in to fondle her nipples as Vince pumps away, lost in his own groaning, grunting ecstasy. He takes what seems like forever to have an orgasm, and through most of it Ava’s eyes are locked on Ferris, beads of sweat rolling off her forehead and neck, her hand rhythmically gripping his wrist as Vince’s thrusts pound into her.
When Vince finally does come it sounds and looks like he’s dying. Ferris is half convinced that he and Vince are from a different species. But he doesn’t get to think that one through. Ava reaches over, grabs his hair and pulls him to her. He kisses her lips, licks the sweat from her face. Behind him he feels Vince running his tongue along his spine. He closes his eyes.

  Ava comes out of the kitchen with a teapot and three mugs on a tray. Vince follows with small cream and sugar jugs in matching ceramics, and some spoons. She slides the tray onto the coffee table, and Ferris realizes that she’s left the vase back in the kitchen.

  “That’s milk there,” she says, motioning at the cream jug. “I trust that will be fine.”

  The way she says it lets Ferris know she’s not interested in the answer.

  “Milk’s fine,” he says.

  Vince eases his big body into the chair across from the couch, and Ava pulls one of the wooden chairs from the table and sits down opposite him, beside Vince.

  “What do you think?” Vince asks, leaning over to pour the tea.

  Ferris isn’t sure what he’s referring to, then realizes that he’s being asked his opinion about the cottage.

  “It looks pretty good,” he says. “But very different, no? The old place was . . .”

  “Bigger,” Ava intervenes. “There’s just the two of us, you know. And we live very quietly.”

  “I’ll show you the workshop later,” Vince adds. “You’ll like it.”

  “You did all this yourself?”

  “We did it,” Ava says, emphasizing the “we”.

  Ferris can’t quite stifle a smile. The Vince he knew would have cut off both thumbs before a quarter of this got completed. “You mean, you did it.”

  “I took a carpentry course, actually,” Ava answers, a dry smile crossing her face momentarily.

  Vince hands Ferris a mug of tea, with milk and sugar already in it. Not the kind of detail he’d have expected Vince to remember, but he does. And Ferris doesn’t point it out. Instead, he recognizes that this is the most formal the three of them have ever been with one another, and the tension is exquisite. On the tail of that thought rides another: We want this to be over, all three of us. In our different ways.

  Ferris doesn’t know where to begin. Nothing new in that, Ferris muses. Well, there were always interminable awkwardnesses to this. How can you have casual conversation with a married couple immediately after you’ve had sex with them? You can’t talk about the weather, because there isn’t any. The world disappears, replaced by one’s own overdrawn senses. You place your fingers in front of your nostrils and there is her scent, yours, and a third. There is a drop of come on your leg. Whose is it?

  Then there were the other, trickier questions that Ferris couldn’t quite ask: What is this for? Why Ferris and not someone else? Where is this supposed to lead?

  If Vince had answers to those questions, he didn’t offer them. He travelled in Ava’s erotic wake, revelling in the foam of her mysterious agenda like a dolphin in the backwash of a ship. For Ava, there didn’t seem to be any questions. She was inside, and of, the events, and one event simply led to the next.

  Not Ferris. The minute the event was done, he wanted to know where, and why, and what. And the only answers he got were what came next.

  There were explanations to be had, of course. The first was predictable, and it brooked no further inquiry: Why not? That was the battle cry of their generation, but in this case Ferris couldn’t quite separate the question and its answer from Why me and not others?

  That got explained indirectly. There were others. A woman, whose name he was given along with explicit descriptions of what had gone on. She was Ava’s choice, Ferris gathered, although no one said so. Ferris wanted to know whose choice he’d been, but he didn’t ask.

  The other explanations made his head spin. They’d wanted him for years. They loved him, in fact. Both of them, yes. Love, and friendship. Why not?

  This revelation muddied things further. In theory he too loved his friends, Vince included. Maybe particularly. But neither love nor friendship would have occasioned him to invite Vince to sleep with his women, alone or with Ferris watching or participating. What did Vince get out of this? Was it just for the erotic kick he got?

  “All those things are part of sex, Cuckoo,” Vince explained one night when Ferris pushed the subject. “Ava wanted you. I did too.”

  “We didn’t pick you out of a police line-up,” Ava added. “Don’t make this too complicated or it’ll screw you up.”

  “It is complicated,” Ferris said.

  “Well,” Ava said, “you know what they say.”

  “What do they say?”

  “They say that when a married woman wants to sleep with another man it means there’s something wrong with her marriage.”

  “What do they say about men doing the same thing?”

  She laughed. “They say it just means he has testicles.”

  “Yeah, well, who the hell are they, anyway?” Ferris said, getting irritable.

  “They’re the part of you that wants to believe what they say.”

  That didn’t quite answer the question Ferris couldn’t bring himself to ask either of them: Why does Ava love me?

  The question, after ten years, is still there. In fact, it has grown. Now he wants to know how Ava loved him, not just why. And his perfect ego, stupid as always, wants to know if she still does.

  Both Ava and Vince are gazing at him impatiently.

  “Well,” Ferris says, pausing to sip the tea. “I guess we should get on with it.”

  “I’m not sure what we’re supposed to get on with,” Ava answers, irony distributed about equally through the sentence. It coats each word with ice.

  “I guess,” Ferris says, hesitantly, “I want to know what’s become of you. And I still don’t quite understand us.”

  Another hesitation. Ava arches her eyebrows, Vince looks out the window. Ferris knows he sounds like a fifteen-year-old explaining why he’s come home late with the family car.

  “What happened, like.”

  Ava rolls her tongue around across her top lip. Ferris recognizes the gesture, but it means something quite new.

  “You disappeared,” she says. “That’s what happened. Not a word, no goodbye, no nothing. Why do you want to know what happened? You were there. And you weren’t. Were we supposed to come looking for you?”

  Ferris shivers again, involuntarily. Was it really that open? A free choice, openly offered despite the nature of their arrangement and its strange discretions? Maybe.

  He senses that it was, and then again it wasn’t. It explains how easily he walked away from it, and it explains why they didn’t come looking for him. But it doesn’t explain either what they did together. And it leaves out the intervening years, and it says nothing about the obvious truth that a menage-a-trois isn’t exactly a configuration built for stability, emotional or any other kind. It was asymmetrical, unbalanced. With them – or maybe it was only with Ferris – the imbalances shifted constantly, creating new ground that was always somehow weirder. He’d get his head around one part of it, and the norm would move beyond, out there.

  Vince doesn’t say anything. He looks over at Ava and smiles, wearily. She smiles back, wryly, as if she’s explaining something obvious to an obtuse child. “Maybe it’s time you told us what was happening, Ferris.”

  Ferris puzzles over the solidarity he senses between Vince and Ava. It doesn’t have anything to do with sex. Its basis is an almost monastic separateness, a formality that precludes sexuality rather than preludes it.

  If he’s reading it right, it’s a dramatic change for Ava. The one certainty about her was her readiness for sex, anytime, any place, the weirder the better. She simply liked to have cocks around her or inside her, preferably more than one. Well, “simply” isn’t the right word. She seemed to take her greatest pleasures from controlling him and Vince – from making them lose control, to be exact, and in being abl
e to dictate where, when, and how they got off. She liked to see them come – liked to see the imminent orgasms, the helpless heedlessness of them, in their eyes. Sometimes Ferris thought he detected a kind of contempt for their immense, brainless neediness.

  He’s pretty sure she didn’t have orgasms herself. And God knows he tried to make her have them. For nearly a year he became obsessed by it, going down on her literally for hours, licking and stroking every fold of flesh he could get his tongue on, keeping himself glued to her clitoris while Vince fucked her, whatever he could think of to get her over.

  It never quite happened. She’d reach a plateau of pleasure, cruise it for a brief time, and then subside back to her zone of control. Vince seemed oblivious to all this, and Ferris didn’t ever ask either of them about it. It was, after all, her show, and if not, then their show.

  After an arduous session one night, Vince went off for a shower, leaving him to cuddle Ava. She suddenly sat up on the bed with her back to him.

  “I’m in love with you, Ferris,” she said, very slowly and carefully, as if she were pronouncing some sort of curse. He felt his heart constrict. Vince had already established that she loved him, but this was different. The situation was already crazy, and this zoomed it a lot crazier. Here was a woman, someone else’s wife, a woman he’d been intimate with in almost every way except the conventional ones, and now she seemed to be saying she wanted to have an affair with him, and maybe a lot more than that.

  “You know how I feel about you,” Ferris answered after a tense silence. It was a careful answer, as careful as he could make it. Ferris wasn’t sure what he felt for her, and he didn’t want to use the word “love”. Love is something people settle into, a comfortable, conventional intimacy. This wasn’t comfortable, and it sure as hell wasn’t conventional. He’d tried to convince himself that it was just sex, something they did without needing to talk about it. He knew that this wasn’t quite accurate, but it made it easier to cope with.