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Every time he fills in more of the mural, her ex-husband refuses money. Just a little sugar, he asks. Tuesday, apparently, gives the best blowjobs ever, but she insists on paying him instead. "I wouldn't even be his whore when he begged me to," she says.
I know all this because she can't seem to help confessing to me. Especially when I'm in-between clients, my arms full of 1040s and IRS folders, she hikes up her shirt in my cube and says, "Look . . . I got more done this weekend." And I have to admit, every time the lines fill in and blossom with color, I'm impressed. I'm not sure how she's able to apply moisturizing lotion back there, over each rounded hill. Tuesday is Chicana by way of New Orleans, whatever that means, and to hear her tell it, there's a lot I don't know re: what men really like.
"BP," she says, "this is a second-rate tax shop." And it's true, I don't know much more than TurboTax. But I speak Spanish and English, and I smile if you're not a total dick, so. I like walking through the lives of people, seeing them year after year. What you spend and how you spend it says a hell of a lot about who you are right now — as opposed to who you want to be. Fat Tuesday is sitting in the nice chair in my cube reserved for clients, scrolling through her phone. Truth is, Tuesday bucks the trend: who she is today is exactly who she wants to be a decade from now.
"Damn. My tat itches." She's rubbing her back irritably against the chair. I want her to go away so I can get my work done early today and get back to simultaneously worrying and replaying the lunchtime incident in my head.
Instead, the words just jump from my mouth. "Tuesday, you ever get nervous about disease? When your husband tattoos you?"
"Ex-husband. And hell yes. The man's a skank. I watch him unwrap the needles every time. He sterilizes everything when I'm around, but who knows when I'm not, right? He's a master craftsman, but he's still a dog." She sits up and looks at me closely for the first time today. "BP, you look different. You been running or some shit? You look good."
When I get to Anna's house, we do ordinary things. We make pasta, I wash the dishes. She teases me about the Dodgers, who can't seem to make a hit for the third game in a row. I point out that the paper said that bird flu was discovered in Korea today, so it's shaping up to be a good year for disease. Virus 10, Humans 0.
She laughs softly, shakes her head. "We're too cynical to have kids if we always cheer for the disease."
"And we're too poor," I say. I'm up to my arms in soap suds, working on a pot with penne welded into the bottom.
Faster than I expect, her clit swells, pulses and she explodes into my mouth. |
"I don't know about that. Anyway, we're back to the condoms tonight, so it's nothing we have to worry about for another month at least." She slides her hands in around mine in the hot water, then buries her head in my shoulder. The pasta won't come off no matter how hard I scrub.
"You're such a nice guy," she says.
It feels like love and condescension at the same time. The kind of thing you say to a guy who graduated from Cal State L.A. in accounting, a guy who tries real hard. "Nah, that's someone else," I say. "Nice guys don't fuck you in the parking lot."
She doesn't lift her head. "Uh huh."
Later that night, we're half-naked on the couch as the baseball game winds uselessly down to the eighth inning. Anna is a night-blooming flower; my lungs begin to expand with the stealthy smell of her, low and sweetly metallic. My mouth wanders to her hipbones, to her thick lips which are almost violet. When I tongue her, searching, she's already wet with a thick, sprung honey, and her hands grab my hair and pull me down. I keep drinking her in, even when she demands I grab a condom, her legs tense and shiver, she pulls at my hair, and faster than I expect, her clit swells, pulses and she explodes into my mouth, a flood of sound in the air.
I climb up and watch the color flow from her face as she grins.
"Hey," she breathes, looking up at the ceiling. Then, eyebrow arched: "That is some kind of self-control, choosing to not fuck me."
All that wetness so close to my cock, which hums hot against her thigh.
She closes her eyes and says smiling, "You're such a good wolf."
And then it happens fast. My elbows settle and my hips thrust forward and my head swells full and I watch her eyes open wide, shocked. I'm the dog taking meat from the table, I'm the child with chocolate around his mouth, I'm deliriously fucking guilty and I do not want to stop.
With a deep moan and a shout, she places her hands on my chest. "Jorge!"
And then I pull out, just before. Just before.
"What were you thinking?" she asks.
"I wasn't — " I reply. "I just . . . wasn't. It didn't feel real."
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