The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7 Page 5

  My whole life went like that. I was small and men seemed overpowering, even scary. My ex-boyfriend, Nick, was six feet tall like my father and knew what I was thinking all the time.

  “Know what you’re thinking? You’d like to suck my cock.”

  I’d actually been thinking how I wanted to go to the zoo, but I sucked his cock because he was the boss, and I loathed him for it but had no idea how to tell him, “Go suck your own cock,” because I was afraid of him – to make him mad, to ask him too many questions, like why. Why shouldn’t we go to the zoo today? Why can’t I just leave you? Why can’t I tell you to leave?

  “Hey,” he’d say while I was on my knees, “open your throat. Tongue. Little harder. Watch your teeth! More tongue. Faster. Swallow it, swallow.”

  Four months ago, after Nick left, I went to a party. A young guy, nearly a boy, opened the door. I wore a yellow dress, and my hair was in a ponytail. No makeup. Open-toed shoes. The boy wore jeans and a tee shirt. He had hair in his eyes, terrible posture. As I passed him, I felt his finger press against my side, just a second, as if by accident, and it was unexpected, his touch, his trembling bravery, and so I turned to look at him.

  Without a word, the boy ducked down a hallway. Like he was scared. I felt a pull or a chill, like when a ghost passes through your body, and I actually shut my eyes. Then I went further into the room and to the bar and ordered an apple martini. I stood to the side of the room. Never good at parties. Nick had said so. Anti-social, social phobic. A child. Late bloomer.

  What’s wrong with you?

  I used to cry when he fucked me.

  Jesus Christ, what’s the matter?

  I never had any idea. Sadness. Anger. Unable to articulate my problem or act upon it, I loathed Nick for his arrogance and meanness.

  I set down my empty glass at the party, apple martini all gone, and went looking for a bathroom.

  The boy was in there – as if he’d been waiting for me all along. I was startled and then embarrassed. His pants were a puddle around his ankles, and he stood in front of the toilet, cock in hand.

  I said something like, “Oh!” and then dropped my eyes, stumbled backwards and hit the door with my shoulder. “Ouch!”

  “I was just taking a piss!” the boy said. I heard him flush the toilet.

  “Sorry.” I rubbed my shoulder – then peeked. I couldn’t help it.

  The boy had bright blue eyes. He’d shoved his cock back in his pants, but he had an erection. Obvious as daylight. I wanted to smile.

  The boy gazed at me, blinking, and I stared at him, not blinking at all. What a wonder. I felt something . . . like a fire inside my stomach, a rushing torrent through my limbs, like I could spring on him any minute, and so I took another step into the bathroom, him not moving at all and still blinking, and then I heard a noise – someone in the hallway behind me, clearing her throat.

  I backed out of the room and pulled the door shut. “Occupied,” I said pushing past the other woman, whoever she was, not meeting her eyes, and then I was out of the house and in the cool night.

  There was a community college three blocks from my apartment. Every morning, I went for walks. Some of the freshman, the boys, moved in packs and blocked my way on the sidewalk, nudging each other while ogling my ass as I passed them. I kept going. Hurrying along, sweating and nervous, uncomfortable.

  The other boys, the ones who walked alone, looked at me under their eyelashes. They walked with slouched shoulders, shuffling their feet.

  I looked at those boys head-on, smiling in a way I could feel my front tooth hooking the edge of my lip.

  I was putting a bed together. The bed frame was heavy, and I panted as I manoeuvred pieces around then drilled in the screws. I was determined to do this by myself, fuck you Nick who’d owned the bed and taken it with him, fuck you. I moved the box spring onto the bed frame, but then I couldn’t get the mattress on top of the box spring. Goddammit.

  The mattress was heavy but pliable and kept threatening to fold in on me any minute and then smother me underneath it. Damn it, sonofabitch. My body felt slick with sweat. I was shaking. Finally, I succumbed to sobs. After a while, I picked up the phone to call the management office. I tried to keep the embarrassment out of my voice. I tried to stop sniffling.

  “Natalie? Hi! I’m trying to move this mattress and need help. Yeah, heavy. Listen, any maintenance guys around today?” My armpits had begun crying sweat to a space between my breasts.

  “Elijah’s here.”

  “OK. Great. Could you send Elijah, then?”

  “No problem. Ten minutes?”

  I hung up the phone and took a bottle of water from the fridge. I drank it, all of it, and then held the bottle to my forehead, between my breasts, and then to my nipples. They stung and stood straight. I made a tuna sandwich and ate it in five bites before roaring with a loud belch. I really didn’t want a man here at all bossing me around, showing off. I heard a knock on the door and left the kitchen to stand on tiptoe to look through the peephole.

  “Are you Elijah?” I sounded pissed off.

  “Yeah.” Pleasant voice, not too deep.

  I opened the door. Elijah wasn’t tall. He had a smear of something on his cheek. He swallowed, looking at me. “Need help moving a mattress?” Elijah reached up to scratch his face, smearing the smear on his cheek.

  “Yeah, that’s me.” I looked at him, pleased. “Aren’t you a little young to do maintenance work?” I liked the idea I was teasing him. It felt good.

  “I’m old enough,” he said, on the defensive. “I’m eighteen.”

  I leaned in the doorway, gripping the edge with one hand. “OK, sorry.”

  Elijah straightened his tool belt, which hung halfway down his hips. “I’m working to get a place. Maybe like this one.” He gazed at the room behind me.

  I stepped from the doorway. “This way, then.”

  Elijah followed. I liked that he followed. I could hear the clank of his tool belt as we entered the bedroom. I stepped over the tools and the directions. Elijah stood in the doorway surveying the scene and then cleared his throat and went to the mattress and crouched beside it.

  “You got this frame together yourself?” he asked.

  “Isn’t that something?” I tensed, waiting for him to insult my efforts.

  “Yeah,” he said, like he was really impressed.

  Nothing happened for a minute. He surveyed my progress; I surveyed him; and then Elijah took hold of one side of the mattress and I took hold of the other. Together, we managed it perfectly.

  I smiled at him across the bed. “Thanks for the help, Elijah.”

  “No problem. It’s a nice bed. I’ve got a lumpy old thing at my foster family’s. It’s a piece of shit.”

  “You live with a foster family?”

  Elijah looked at his fingernails. He had paint under them. “Yeah, just for now. They were getting money for me, you know until my eighteenth birthday, but now I’m eighteen so not any more. I decided to work here, so maybe I’d get a place like this.” He looked around the room. “It’s nice. Really is.”

  “Where does your foster family live?” I tried to sound polite, polite conversation.

  “Up the street, in a subdivision. Hey, do you think I could get some water?” Elijah met my eyes.

  “Water?” Not wine or beer? We could get roasted and belch, spout of offensive words, wrestle on the floor, and then look at each other’s privates.

  “Yeah, if it’s not a pain in your ass.”

  “No, of course not.”

  In the kitchen, I took bottled water from the fridge. “Want ice with it?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  I put ice in a glass and then poured water into the glass. The bottle emptied with a chugging sound. The ice cubes somersaulted. Elijah sat at my kitchen table.

  “So what happened to your real parents?” I brought him the water. My hand brushed his as he took it.

  “They’re dead.”

  “O
h. Sorry.” I looked away a minute then watched him. Elijah’s throat moved as he drank. I watched the rowing motion of bones inside his neck, feeling mesmerized. Aching.

  Poor baby. Those big brown eyes. The stained jeans. Those rotten foster parents.

  Elijah covered his mouth to burp.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “What?” He watched me a second, his hand between his mouth and the table, a smile edging close to his lips. “What do you mean?”

  “I can burp my ABC’s. Listen to this.”

  Elijah listened, his smile now becoming a grin.

  “Girls don’t usually do that,” he said. “Especially, you know, older girls.” He looked around the kitchen. “How long you lived here?”

  “Three years.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “I used to live here with my boyfriend. Now it’s mine.”

  “Oh. Wow. Where’s he?”

  I decided to lie. “He’s dead.” It would bond us forever. We’d both lost loved ones now.

  Elijah was quiet. The empty glass sweated in his hand.

  “All done with high school?” I broke the silence to stir him.

  “Yeah.” He frowned.

  “What’s wrong? Didn’t like it?”

  “It was all right.”

  “Were you one of those guys the girls loved?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe it. You’re so cute.”

  Elijah stared at the glass in his hand, smearing water with his thumb. He smiled on one side of his mouth. “Thanks. So I guess you were popular.”

  I sat at the table beside him. “This guy in school, he was like a senior when I was a freshman, told me he wished I’d just shut the hell up because I was driving him crazy with all my questions in math class. Said my boobs were floppy too, and my hair was stringy, and I should just stick a bag over my head so he wouldn’t have to look at my ugly face.”

  Elijah shook his head. “What a retard. You’re like Helen of Troy, Helen of Troy times twenty.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at him any more. My eyes watered. I was dizzy with wanting to press him against the table and suck him off, stop, suck him off again. Torture. “You know, I had a sandwich a little while ago, but I’m suddenly hungry. Want to get a pizza?”

  “Ahh, I’m supposed to leave here and snake somebody’s toilet.”

  “I’ll call Natalie. I’ll tell her I need your help with something else – garbage disposal, the closet doors, and the damn faucet’s leaking again.”

  Elijah’s face broke into a smile.

  Boy in jeans and a tool-belt too big for his hips. Evening sun, freshly cut grass, and ripe apples. My little Dreamsicle Angel. Elijah.

  Two days later, I heard a knock on the door. “Who is it?” I was hoping – hoping I knew who it was – and looked through the peephole.

  The room brightened behind me. “Hi, Elijah.”

  “I have something for you,” he said to the door.

  I opened up. Elijah held out flowers, white daisies that smelled like the field outside the community college. “Like them?”

  “Love them.” I took the bouquet. “Thanks, Elijah.”

  “You busy?” he asked.

  “No.” I waited, making him squirm. “Want to come in?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Close the door behind you, thanks.”

  I went to the kitchen to find a vase and then peered around the corner. Elijah was studying my books. He leaned down then stood on tiptoe to read each title before moving his finger over the spines, letting his finger ride the spines like a track, hitting bumps, swiping dust away, touching every book. I watched him for the longest time then finally found a vase.

  “You like books?” I called out.

  “I don’t know. I don’t read all the time.”

  I ran water into the vase before placing the flowers in it and then brought them out to the living room. “I could read to you.”

  Elijah took a book from the shelf. “This one?” Lord of the Flies.

  “Good one. Nature vs. nurture debate.”

  Elijah’s smile was crooked. “Yeah, but . . . any sex?”

  I stared at him. “You want a book about sex?”

  “Yeah.” He blushed.

  “OK, Fanny Hill.”

  “That sounds, you know, stupid.”

  “Lots of sex in it.”

  “You’ll read it to me?” His crooked smile went straight.

  “Yeah.”

  “Now?”

  “No. Later. How’s the job going?”

  “OK.”

  “Getting money saved up?”

  “Yeah.”

  He was lying. I put the vase on the coffee table. “They’re pretty.”

  “When you going to read me that book?”

  I went to a window and shoved it open. “Gees, I’m hot.”

  “Sure are,” Elijah said behind me.

  It was so cheesy I had to smile. He came up behind me and brushed his hand down my hip. “Boo,” he said in my ear.

  “You don’t scare me.” I put my hands in his hair. “But maybe I scare you?” Soft hair and a warm scalp.

  Elijah swallowed, staring at my lips.

  “Well, do it, then.”

  His kiss was warm and sloppy and sweet. I felt dizzy. And stopped.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Out of breath.

  “Lena?”

  “What?”

  He reached for a button on my blouse and played with it. “Could we, you know, go to the bedroom? Your bed?”

  Elijah had a smooth chest and dime-sized nipples. His arms were slender and pale. He had little bunches of hair in the pits. He didn’t have hair on his chest, except little rings around his nipples. His cock pointed to Jesus. His balls sprouted sparse hair. I put his hand where I wanted it.

  “Wow, you’re slippery,” he said. “Is it always like this?”

  “Heck, no. You’re making me horny.”

  “Really?” He shoved his fingers further inside me.

  I opened my legs then laid back keeping my hand on his wrist, guiding him, hearing the sucking sounds, feeling the friction, the moisture on both of us, his arm trembling, and his cock against my leg. I put his fingers on my clit, told him to concentrate there, don’t stop, that’s nice, I like that, oh so sweet.

  “God, are you coming? I feel something. Shit. Want me to wipe it off your leg?”

  “No, baby. Eat it. Tell me what you taste like.”

  Elijah licked his come off my leg then crawled upward and wedged himself against me before he said in my ear, “I don’t know. Maybe like cornstarch.”

  Elijah burped, scratched his butt, and played with his balls. It was sweet, you know? He spit loogies in my sink. Outside once I said, “Oh, yeah? Watch this!” then launched a fat one at the sidewalk. Elijah rolled over it on his skateboard, wondering if it had stuck to his wheels. He glided beside me, suntanned on his shoulders, glowing around the eyes. Elijah. Five-foot-ten in tennis shoes. Square jaw and no whiskers. He loved scary movies and video games. He brought his PlayStation 2 over one night, and it never left. The grosser the games, the better he liked them. You could code “gratuitous dismemberment” in Blood Rayne and then she’d shoot men’s limbs off, their heads. I gripped the controller, going wild with my fingers, bam, bam, bam!

  Rayne’s tits would jiggle with each blast.

  “Look at them,” Elijah said.

  “Look at what?”

  I lifted my shirt. Elijah spat on his thumbs and rubbed my nipples. He sucked them like a thirsty baby. “What if something came out?” he said. “That would be great.”

  Something did come out. He sucked; I squeezed my thighs together, tightened the muscles, released them, and then came, bam-bam-bam.

  Elijah left potato chips crumbs in my bed, socks lying around, and dishes in the sink. “Clean up after yourself,” I said one afternoon when he was over, half joking. “I li
ve here.”

  He covered my mouth with a kiss. I came up for air. “I want to be on top of you,” he said. “I want to come in your mouth. Let’s get drunk. I want get drunk and fuck in your car.”

  For a second I thought about pushing him off, but then didn’t. I felt drunk on something that wasn’t alcohol and took beer out, then wine, and then my breasts. Elijah poured beer and wine on my nipples, cold and room temperature, making me shiver and sigh. He sucked it all off while I sat on the kitchen table swinging my legs. He stuck his finger inside me as frantic as if he were picking a booger. I was drunk-on-top-of-drunk and dragged him outside in broad daylight, unlocked the car, and then shoved him in. Cramped and hot. Elijah clamored on top me, shut his eyes, and then we went at it. I kept my eyes opened and looked straight into the eyes of my next-door neighbor as she approached her car next to mine.

  She looked away, looked again. Her eyes bulged.

  Elijah hollered, “I’m going to blow!”

  The woman wasn’t much older than me. She opened her purse and took out a cell phone. Elijah pumped inside me, spurting off, oblivious.

  I screamed out the window. “Mind your own business, bitch! Fuck you!”

  Elijah sat up, cock dripping, chest slathered in sweat.

  The woman flew into her car and gunned the engine. I panted and sneered and drooled on myself.

  And then Elijah wanted to move in with me.

  “But you can’t,” I said.

  I got off the floor where’d we’d been sitting, playing another one of his video games and picked up a plate he’d left on the coffee table, a half eaten sandwich left to go hard in the middle.

  “Why not? I’m here all the time.”

  “But that’s just, you know, staying over.”

  “So I’ll stay over permanently.”

  “But you want to get your own place, right?”

  “I love you,” he said. “I never said that to anyone. I swear it.”

  I started toward the kitchen to put his plate in the sink, but Elijah blocked my path.

  “I don’t want to lose anything any more,” he said.

  “You’re not losing me.” I stepped around him and made it to the kitchen sink. I turned on the faucet, rinsing his dish with hot water. “Why don’t you get a place in the same building? We’ll live close.”