The James Sisters

Fifth Chapter: Getting Ready

I haven't been sleeping well. Lately.



Somebody was clomping up the front porch steps. I jumped.
Needlessly; it wasn't her. Not yet. Of course not. Much too
early.

The letter slot creaked. There was a slithering thump, followed
by a clatter.

It was, of course, the mail.

Clatter?

There, among the usual clutter of envelopes (cable bill, two
credit card bills, a brand new internet bill, and a manila
envelope from Dolores), was an odd little black package with no
return address on its white mailing label. I picked it up,
gingerly. It rattled, like the sort of cassette tape it was
pretty much the exact shape and size to contain.

I frowned. I dithered. I shrugged. Dumping the bills on the
sideboard to be dealt with later, I took Dolores's envelope and
the odd little black package into the study. I set the package on
the desk I haven't yet gotten around to thinking of as "mine" and
frowned at it some more as I dug about for my letter opener, with
which I slit open Dolores's envelope, but I paused before peering
inside. I reached out and poked the odd little package with a
forefinger, then flipped it over. Nothing on the back but three
or four layers of old, sticky cellophane tape.

So I pulled out the stuff Dolores had sent: a not-yet-
but-almost-nagging letter about when I was going to be getting my
next project off the ground (I skimmed it; lots of turns of
phrase like "feeding off the momentum" and "strike while the
fire's hot" and the word "synergy" appeared three separate times.
Bad Dolores); a royalty check (not as big as you're thinking,
honest, but welcome nonetheless); an assortment of press
clippings - "The Key to the Kingdom" had just been released in a
trade paperback edition, which apparently justified a new round
of reviews. Favorable; favorable; utterly if charmingly missed
the point; and apparently Lewis has found work at Newsday
savaging books written by old college chums. "Puerile insight"
indeed. Thanks, Lewis. How's that novel of yours coming along?

I dropped the whole mess on the floor. I wasn't in the mood.

A cassette tape.

Who the hell would send a cassette tape unbidden? I'm not famous
enough to have psychotic fans. Really.

Ah, well. One way to find out.

It was, indeed, a cassette tape, wrapped in a grubby piece of
paper with typescript on both sides: double-spaced, a pretty
standard ten-point machine, the same one that had typed my
address on the package's label, from the looks of it. The words
"it is possible for him to get pregnant" caught my eye. Frowning
some more, I read the paper - both sides - on my way over to the
stereo to slip the cassette into the tape deck.

Whoever had wrapped it around the tape had ripped it from a
larger selection, top and bottom, so I had what amounted to two
discontinuous chunks of text, one from (I presume) somewhere near
the beginning, and one from somewhere near the end. The first
words I could make out were: "their fingers." Then the rip
demolished a whole clause or so until the next line took it up,
reasonably legibly (the "e" had been filled in by ancient crud,
the "c" sometimes looked like it was going to take flight up and
away from the rest of the letters):

    others rectum, she yanks the man penis and the
    man rubs the womans clitoris. This position is
    not written down in any publication that mentions
    sex. The sexual relationship has to be perfect.
    One disfunction and it will not work. The
    physical experience the man has is a flood of
    liquid, the consistancy of water, out the mans
    rectum as the couple climax.
   
    For about a year after the man has this physical
    experience he can get pregnant. The man for this
    year has a very itchy rectum and has to scratch
    it. During this period of time the man who had
    this physical experience would let another man
    put his erect penis up his rectum and ejackulate.
    After the usual period of time a normal baby
    either male or female would be born out of the
    mans rectum. After the baby was born the man
    would have to cork his rectum. Men can nurse

And then something about "waddle," and the first chunk came to an
end. All of it sic, of course; sic, sic, sic. Goes without
saying.

Side two:

    hilarious experience for a woman. What happens
    when a man is successful in having a woman do him 
    this favor (and it is a favor, the only favor a
    woman can do a man), she watches him very closely
    for the year or so in which it is possible for
    him to get pregnant. It is obvious that this is
    how a man got a life before women were created. I
    would suggest to you that the first woman on
    earth came out of a homosexual's rectum.
   
    The fact that men can have babies has
    implications for women. Everything inside our
    bodies is reflected in our brains. This makes men
    more complicated than women.
   
    The reason that this is getting written down is
    that since I was thirty eight

And that was it.

Meanwhile, the tape had been playing. Harry Connick, Jr.'s rather
flat voice singing "Don't get around much anymore."

And I had a sudden, sneaking suspicion I knew what was going on.

I reached out and stabbed the fast forward button, listening to
the high-pitched cricketing whine of Harry Connick, Jr. and his
band not getting around much anymore at a good clip. When the
song punched to its climax, I let off the fast forward just in
time to catch the segue.

An orchestra tuned up, rather nicely after the horn break at the
end of the first song, then was suddenly cut short by some
found-sound recording of a man saying something I couldn't catch,
followed just as suddenly by an organ playing Medelssohn's
saccharine wedding march. And then into a slow funky bass and
drum line, with a synthesizer vamping along the top in a way that
I almost recognized. In fact, the whole fucking thing was
damnably familiar.

Wait a minute.

Oh, fuck.

"If I was your girlfriend Would you remember To tell me all of
the things you forgot When I was your man..."

I slapped the stop button.

"Nicky," I said. Actually, I might have bellowed.



I played the tape in the car on the way to Flicker.

Joe Jackson was next, with "The Other Me," followed by The Divine
Comedy, striking a cautionary note with "Something for the
Weekend." Then whatshername, doing that song called "Everybody
Loves Me But You," which had that video years ago with her
cavorting with a giant Madagascar cockroach or whatever the hell
those huge hissing bugs are called. I have no idea why I remember
that.

As you can see, subtlety and Nicky have never really known each
other all that well.

But say what you want, every now and then he can surprise you.
The next piece was a beautiful thing, equal parts violin and
accordion and two women singing these aching, wordless harmonies
that floated out into the cloudy summer's day. I actually stayed
in the car when I parked, engine running, until the song soared
down to a perfect finish and I came back to myself and realized
this is just what Nicky wanted me to be doing. I popped the tape
out as the next song began (delicately rough guitar) and flipped
it into the back seat and got out and went into the video store,
thoughts of what movies to rent floating through my brain.

Hey. I said I'd treat her to dinner and a movie. I never said
anything about taking her out for the dinner and the movie.

I'm not an idiot, you know.

Okay, but at least I'm not daft.



What to rent, though. I mean, there I was, suddenly confronted by
shelf after shelf of glossy, empty video boxes, and just as
suddenly confronted by the truth: I had no earthly idea.

What do we know about Jessie James? She's almost sixteen years
old. (Maybe.) She lied about fucking her sister. (We think.) She
enjoys masturbating by the poolside of a complete stranger and
staging live sex shows with her stepmother. She has enough taste
to wear Mucha on a T-shirt and quote Robyn Hitchock, and she's
never read "Lolita," though she's been in a school play. She
devours you with her kisses, her lips, her teeth, her tongue. Her
body. Her eyes, when she comes. Her skin, in the morning
half-light of my bedroom, with the shades pulled. Her hand. Her
cunt.

And what sort of movie does she want to see?

"Amateur"? No. Hal Hartley is a dodgy choice for a first date.
(First date? We've already fucked twice, you know.) (And anyway,
whatshisname took me to see "Simple Men" when it came out, and
that was sort of a first date.) (Yeah, and remember how well that
turned out?)

"Rushmore"? Christ, let's not think about how choosing that movie
in this context could be construed.

I poked my head into the Psychotronics section. Serial killers
and cannibal whores, and the soft-core flicks: "Chained Heat,"
"Girls After Midnight," "Alexandra's Sisters," "Emmanuelle"...
No, no and no. And no. And I fumbled through the anime, though I
don't know nearly enough, despite having written about the stuff.
(What do you make of something called "All-Purpose Cultural
Cat-Girl Nuku Nuku," anyway?) "Wings of Honneamise" I've heard
good things about, but no. Like the rule about not eating fried
chicken on a first date, you should never pick something too
weird or too personal; ease into it. Avoid greasy, messy things.

So Bollywood musicals are right out, too.

But something mainstream? What? A Bruckheimer action flick
directed by the latest TV commercial wunderkind? A Nora Ephron or
Rob Reiner boomer weepie? Hey, that Ron Howard's at the top of
his game, or so I hear. How about "Shakespeare in Love"?

It's probably saying something that I stood for a long moment by
the Gay and Lesbian shelves, weighing the box for "Sister My
Sister" in my hands, a small if unpleasant smile on my face.

I put it back.

In the end, I grabbed four - effectively putting the real
decision off till later: "The Last Seduction," because who
wouldn't love Linda Fiorentino; "The Hudsucker Proxy," in case
she doesn't know from the Coen Brothers; "Chinese Ghost Story"
(the first one) because, properly done, eating fried chicken on a
first date can be fun; and - what the hell - "Amateur." Maybe
she'll love Hal Hartley after all. Or Martin Donovan, at the very
least.

Christ. What if she really, really, really liked "Titanic"?

The girl behind the counter was tall and she had an astonishingly
chaotic tumble of blond curls piled rather haphazardly on top of
her head and she wore an old black T- shirt featuring a bimbo on
a motorcycle and the words "Milwaukee Vibrator" and she smiled
that way when she processed my form. You know - or maybe you
don't. The grin crooks a little over to the side, the eyes dip
down to check the name again, then look up, deferentially, I
don't want to bother you unduly, but, "Are you that Carter
MacLeod?"

I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a charge out of it. It
happens infrequently enough it's still a special thing, in the
quotidian light of a video store.

"The only one I know of," I said.

"I mean, 'Keys to the Kingdom'? I loved that book. I really liked
what you had to say about the active participation of fans. The
whole slash fiction thing, and all that."

To which I cocked an eyebrow; it's not usually the bit of the
book people leap to, immediately, to comment on; not, anyway, a
little before noon in a video store, no matter how cool and funky
a selection it might have. But I was polite. "Thanks," I said.

Which is when this dark, glossy head appeared, floating up from
beneath the counter which came up to the blonde's sternum, and it
slowly eclipsing the faded bimbo on the faded motorcycle. Someone
was standing up from where they'd been kneeling or stooping below
the counter. Another girl, younger than the first, with long
straight black hair and a tattoo on the palm of her right hand,
something arcane, occult, which I know because, as she stood,
slowly, turning but not exactly looking at me, she raised that
hand and wiped her mouth with the back of it. As she reached her
full height (a head shorter than the blonde), she said, with a
crooked grin, "Yeah. Gotta love that Buffy/Faith slash."

It was like a moment from a dream, some portent dropped suddenly
into my lap. Here. Mull on this for a while. So I might have been
an instant too slow to say, glibly, "Indeed."

Blonde looked down at brunette, who looked right back up. And
they both shared one of those little, silent laughs, that rocks
the head back and forth a wave or two, leaking out your nose,
more of a sniff than anything else.

I scooped up my movies and my receipt, nodded, smiled, and left.



No, I don't really consider the whole package from Nicky thing to
be that odd. Trust me, if you knew him, you'd see what I mean.
Strange, yes. Eccentric. But forced. He tries to hard, God love
him. Genuine strangeness is as natural as the air you breathe; so
close to you that you don't sense it until you wake up one
morning and you ask, how the hell did I get into this? or you
stand there, thinking, did what I think just happened really
happen? And you can't make heads or tails of it, or of yourself.
And that's when you really start to come unhinged.

The next song on the tape? Big Star. Alex Chilton singing
plaintively:

"I'm in love with a girl
 Finest girl in the world
 I didn't know
 This could happen to me..."

See what I mean? Nicky. Subtlety. Not on speaking terms.

Strange?



She was waiting on my front steps when I got back.

Not Jessie.

Leah. Her sister.

I sat in the car a moment, the tape murmuring ominously in the
background ("Who's getting scared now, tell me, who's getting
scared?"). She stood there, in baggy khakis and a white T-shirt,
little round sunglasses hiding her eyes, her blond hair pulled
back simply with a leather barrette. Her arms folded, her face
expressionless. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't see her
eyes.

"So you gonna chase me now, boy," sang the Fiona Apple clone
Nicky'd taped for me, "yeah, you gonna corner me now, boy, you
think you gonna threaten me now, boy - well somehow I don't think
so." His stupid, pathetic, passive- aggressive tape. Sweet,
really. A message from another world. I popped it out, shut off
the car, took a deep breath, and got out.

The first thing Leah James ever said to me?

"I want to know what the hell your intentions are towards my
sister."

Me? Standing there in my ratty jeans and Nike sandals, an armload
of pretentious videotapes and my hair blowing in my eyes? I was
doing my best not to laugh.

"You'd get further asking Jessie what hers are towards me."

"So you're just along for the ride, then. Huh?" Her voice dripped
contempt, but her shoulders shook, and she hadn't unfolded her
arms, and she lifted her head too consciously at the end of that
sentence, remembering too suddenly to be assertive, to look me in
the eye.

"Something like that," I said. I fished around my keyring,
finding my front door key by touch, and pushed past her.

"What, are you ashamed?" She was following me, her steps short
and choppy, her arms still folded, herself full of false bravado.
"You don't want anyone to know you're fucking my sister?" Her
voice a little too loud.

"No," I said, opening the door. "And if you thought about it for
a minute, you wouldn't either." And in I went.

She must have followed right on my heels; she clattered into the
TV room as I was dumping the videos on top of the VCR. "Look," I
said, before she could say anything. "We've gotten off on the
wrong foot. Maybe we should start all over again. Okay? My name's
- "

I was turning around to face her, and there she was, standing in
the doorway, her hand up, her sunglasses half off. Her face
suddenly pale, her eyes, blue, blue green like the ocean off
Jamaica. Not looking at me.

" - Carter MacLeod," I finished, more from momentum than anything
else.

"You're," she said, not looking at me. Over my shoulder. "You're
the King of Beetles."

She was staring at one of the silly anime posters I have hanging
over the stereo system. Young girl curled up in a fetal position,
asleep in a weird comic-opera uniform, her pink hair spread out
in an obsessively rendered circle, the whole of it surrounded by
gaudy, over-the-top roses; the sort of plastic bright-and-shiny
pop culture Art Nouveau that only the Japanese can pull off.

"Leah?" I said.

She looked at me. "You're in my dreams," she said.

"Not on purpose," I said.

She turned around, walked away, back into the dim hall. Stumbling
a little. Alarmed, I followed her. "Leah?" I said again. She was
leaning against the railing of the stairs up to the second floor,
her head hanging down, as if she were about to vomit. "Do you
need some help? To lie down, or something?"

"Where did you get that? Where does it come from?"

"I wrote a book," I said. "On subcultures. Fandom. Sci- fi,
anime. That sort of thing." She straightened up, swallowed. Her
face was so much more serious than Jessie's. Quieter, if you can
say that a face is quiet. I got the sense she didn't smile as
often as her sister, or as brightly. "It's a Japanese cartoon.
'Utena,' I think it's called."

"The world revolution," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "Something like that. You've seen it?"

"No," she said. She turned to look at me, her eyes dark, her face
so serious. "Do you love my sister?"

The question hit me like a bucket of ice water. My guts froze
solid at the idea that I was having this conversation here, in my
house. About this thing that I've done, that I've allowed to
happen, that I can't speak about. (And she's going to be here in
a few hours, you know, and even at the thought my bastard cock
stirred a little, my lizard brain flashed images through my head.
Jessie. What she told me. About Leah. Her sister.) I shook my
head. Focus. "I barely know her," I said. I swallowed. Questions
swarmed my brain. Love?

("Do you think you can trust me?" Jessie'd asked. "Because I
think I'm falling in love with you," she'd said.

(Then again...)

"You listen to me," she started to say.

"Wait," I said. "Please. I - I can't begin to explain it. I start
to say something and it sounds like I'm making excuses which is
the last thing I want to do. I know what I- -what we're doing
isn't right. But - " I took a deep breath. Questions. "I don't
think it's wrong, either." Don't I?

"If you so much as even think of hurting her," she said.

"Jessie," I said, "can more than take care of herself." Can't
she?

"Yeah," said Leah. "Well."

A long moment hung there between us.

And then, because I had to, because I couldn't not, I spoke. "Can
I," I said, and I started again, because I had to know, "can I
ask you an obscenely personal question?"

That got a smile, a small one. She shrugged. "Go ahead," she
said, her voice wary.

So I asked her.



I haven't been sleeping well, lately. I think I already said
something to that effect.

I dozed off, after Leah left. Half awake, half dreaming,
groceries gotten, vids selected, nothing to do but wait, and I'm
sitting on the couch, three or four books I can't read scattered
about, and my mind is full of too many thoughts to stop and think
about any one of them, and I haven't been sleeping well, so of
course I dozed off.

For some reason, I was back at Flicker, looking for different
videos. Because Jessie would laugh at the ones I'd picked out.
(Scared of her? I'm terrified! Do you know - do you remember -
how casually cruel teenagers can be?) And the blond girl is
behind the counter, with her chaotic hair and her "Milwaukee
Vibrator" T-shirt, only for some reason I know what's going on
behind the counter. The younger girl, the black-haired girl with
the mysterious tattoo on the palm of her hand, she's kneeling
there, and the blond girl is wearing these tight cut-off jeans
that I never saw because the counter comes up to her sternum,
remember, but the cut- off jeans are unbuttoned and unzipped and
tugged down just far enough, down just above her knees, her
thighs spread but not far enough, she's leaning forward, hips
canted forwards as far as she can, her hands pressed,
white-knuckled, against the edge of the counter, and the
black-haired girl, squatting there, her mouth glued to the blond
girl's cunt, her tongue licking out, one hand, her left hand,
clenched on the blond girl's bare ass, levering her further
forward, and the blond girl grunts and tries to keep what's
happening off her face, but I know, and she knows I know, and
somehow it's my fault I know, and the black-haired girl's other
hand, her right hand, has worked its way between the blond girl's
thighs which are spread as far as she can spread them, given her
shorts, there, around her knees, and the palm of the black-haired
girl's right hand is turned towards her face, not that she can
see it, because that way her middle finger can slip inside,
there, between the lips of the blond girl's cunt, creamy velvet
smooth and warm, and a drop of something viscous, clear, like
honey, like clean motor oil in a television commercial, falls to
obscure the symbol tattooed on her palm, the symbol I still can't
make out. The black- haired girl hums tunelessly. Milwaukee
Vibrator.

"Can I help you?" asks the blond girl. And I know, and I know she
knows I know, and still she doesn't let on what's happening to
her. Christ, I can practically feel it. The black-haired girl's
finger is slipping inside me, her mouth is licking at me and I
can feel the prehistoric pressure building in my thighs,
straining against the rough denim, Christ, I'm standing there
looking for movies and her girlfriend's eating her out and I'm
the one about to come.

"I, uh, what sort of movie, would you recommend?"

The black-haired girl takes her mouth away and my knees nearly
buckle in relief. The blond girl blinks, slowly, licks her lips.
The black-haired girl's finger is still inside her, inside me,
still, unmoving, deadly as a coiled snake, waiting to strike. The
black-haired girl begins to press sticky, wet kisses against the
blond girl's thighs and belly, and I feel the lingering traces of
them, cool and wet on my skin, the brief warm pressure of her
tongue as she licks, under my shirt. "Well," says the blond girl,
"that depends. What are your intentions?"

I turn away. It doesn't help. Everyone can see, but no one seems
to notice what's going on. They're all too polite. "Intentions?"
I say.

"What do you want?" she asks.

The black-haired girl takes a deep breath there under the counter
and I can feel it stirring the hairs at the root of my cock
inside my pants, just above the cleft of the blond girl's cunt,
and then she dives in. A second finger slips inside, her tongue
managing to find the blond girl's clit despite the bad angle, her
left hand spreading the blond girl's cunt, her fingers pressing
there and there against my pelvis, pushing, opening her, opening
me, as her jaw works and her fingers work. "Something like that?"
says the blond girl. I double over, gasping. Coming. Everyone can
see. Everyone knows. Great jagged bursts, squeezing my muscles,
blasts of white light, and I tumble to the floor, curled up on my
side, and my stiff cock aches as if something too large stretched
it wide on its way out.

A woman's feet, a woman's legs stride into my view, there, on the
carpet. Stockingless, smooth, fastened into sandals with spindly
heels and thin black straps. Toes freshly painted. Green, in case
you were curious. Four flat white pebbles, milky, translucent,
litter the thick carpet near them; one foot lifts idly, toes one
of the pebbles, kicks it away to clatter against an unseen video
shelf. "Are you quite through?" says a voice I know to be
Virginia's.

"I don't know," says the blond girl.

I get up, unmussed. Unrumpled. Unstained. Behind me, I know, the
black-haired girl is rising slowly to her feet, her head
obscuring the faded bimbo on the faded motorcycle. Milwaukee
Vibrator. I turn. She smiles. She raises her right hand, wipes
the back of her mouth with it. The symbol, tattooed on her palm:
a stylized rose, simple, geometric petals folded artfully into a
rosette. She opens her mouth.

The doorbell rings.

Did I see what I thought I saw? Did what I thought just happened
happen?

The doorbell?

That's when I jerked awake, a hard-on yanked to one side by my
ratty jeans, still in the old white T-shirt with the cigarette
burns and the Nike sandals. Not what I want to be wearing when
Jessie shows up at, oh, Christ, it's seven o'clock now, isn't it?

I leaped to my feet, tried to arrange pants and stiff cock in
some mutually beneficial arrangement, gave up when the doorbell
bonged again and scuttled, bent over, to the front door. Which I
opened.

Jessie smiled.

Tight black capri pants - more like tights, really, a second skin
of matte black riding low on her hips down to just past her
knees. A black halter with spaghetti straps. Simple black shoes,
like a jazz dancer's, with low, flat heels. She stood there, arms
crossed in front of her, a black tin case like an old-fashioned
lunch box emblazoned with her favorite cartoon penguin in her
hands. Hair brushed back, simply, behind her shoulders, her face
clean, her lips, touched with a hint of dark, dark red, crooked
in a smile.

"I'm sorry," I said, I babbled, "I don't know how, I must have
dozed off, had a hell of a dream - I'm not ready yet, I'm really
sorry, if you just come in - "

"I don't know," she said. Looking down. "You look ready to me."

Oh. My erection. My French sex-farce of a stiffy. But she was
stepping in as I backed away, setting her tin case down,
grinning, her hands reaching for the hem of my shirt, lifting it.
I batted them away. "Jessie," I said. Backing up. She grabbed my
shirt again, snaked under for the hem of my jeans. "Jessie," I
said again.

"Let me at it," she said.

I backed into the stairs, my heels hitting the bottom step. Pop!
went the button of my jeans. "Dammit, Jessie," I said.

"Fuck the dinner. Fuck the movie. Let's just cut to the chase."
Zip! went the zipper as her hands yanked open my fly, my cock
surging forward, exultant, almost free, her hand grabbing the
waistband of my tented shorts. I took a step back and missed and
hit the edge of the riser and went down, hard, falling out of her
grasp even as my cock popped free into the air and my butt hit
the steps, hard, air whooshing out of me as one hand smacked hard
into the banister and her eyes went wide, hands going up almost
comically, oh, oh, "Carter?"

"Ow," I said.

Laughing, delighted, she half-toppled onto me, catching her
weight with one hand on the step by my shoulder, her tongue
licking my lips, kissing me, as her other hand found my cock, a
warm little thing skittering along it, her fingers light,
sliding, tickling, down to the base and back up again, and
another kiss as I opened my mouth to her and licked her in turn,
why not, when in Rome, what else was all this about anyway,
right? Not the way you planned it, but hey. Of course, the front
door was open. And her fingers danced at the tip, slicking
themselves in the drops of Cowper's fluid that'd oozed up there,
called up by that damn dream or vision or portent or whatever the
hell, puddled now in the lip of my straining foreskin, imagine
that, some seventeenth century biologist dicking around and here
we are, three hundred years later, this girl's fingertips wet and
shining with his namesake. Immortality. "Mmm," she said, "you're
already wet for me. Like a girl."

"The front door," I said.

"What about it?"

"It's still open," I said.

"So?"

"I do," I said. Which stumbled us both, her with her head looking
down towards her hand busy skinning me back, freeing the red and
swollen glans, just like the whole assemblage was freed from its
skins of cotton and denim, me trying to push myself up and back
and away, until I figured out I'd thought she was going to say
"Who cares?" and not "So?" and my response had been primed and
out it popped, automatically, the rest of my brain focussed on
other things, like how to get away. Momentarily, you understand.
Not as a permanent solution. Ow. Her fingers pulled down too
harshly, stretching, straining. Something too large, fighting to
get free. Which I did, pulling myself up a step or two with the
banister, getting a foot under me, then another.

"Aww," she said. But leaning back to let me pass down the steps,
careful of my pants that wanted to slide down my legs. The door
wouldn't close, which was worth a moment of sheer angered panic
("Goddammit!") until she cried out "Badtz!" and I remembered her
damn cartoon penguin on that tin box that she set down on her way
in, her hands outstretched for me, it was between the door and
the jamb and I was closing the door on it, and she swooped in to
rescue it, clutching it to her breast. I closed the door.

"You hurt him," she said. I turned my back to the door, sank to
the floor, pants uncomfortably low, sitting on belt loops, but I
didn't care. She was holding out the tin box for my inspection,
see? I'd dented it a little, put a scratch across the penguin's
phlegmatically blank face.

"Come here," I said.

She took two steps towards me, her face still dark and petulant,
Badtz Maru in her hands. I reached up, took the tin box away, and
she let me, and I took her hands, still hot, the fingertips of
her right hand still sticky, and I pulled her closer. She stepped
so that her feet were on either side of me. "I'm sorry," I said.

"Prove it," she said. Mock-angry. Pretend-pout.

I got my feet under myself, half-squatting, back braced against
the door, as I tucked my thumbs into the waistband of her tights
and tugged, down and down, like her hands skinning me back, a
little roughly, perhaps, she hissed, but. Yanked down to
half-mast, above her knees, allowing her thighs to spread, a
little. There she was, bare, from the hem of her halter clinging
a couple of inches above her navel down the swoop of her golden
belly to there, the pale thicket of hair, neatly trimmed, a slim
and regular delta tamed from a tangled thatch, and below it - I
leaned forward, kissed her thigh there, her belly there, my right
hand sliding between her legs, ineluctably, turning so that my
palm faced me, not that I could see it, my eyes were closed, my
tongue was licking out, my first taste of her, tangy, electric,
like licking a penny, because this way my middle finger could
crook, slip, there, between her outer lips already wet, slide, up
and down, up and down, creamy, velvet, warm and smooth, and then,
as she hissed, in.

I think she came almost instantly, a little tremor shivering
through her, "Oh, she murmured, bracing herself against the door,
arms stiff above my head, I could hear her palms rasping against
the wood, "oh, gamahuche..." and I did, I kept at it, my finger
still inside her as she arched her hips forward, rocking a
little, and I licked as much as I could reach with my tongue,
lifting the loose folds of her labia with my lips, licking them
apart to find the hot, hard little kernel inside as she gasped
and grabbed the back of my head and groaned and I slid my finger
out, and then two fingers in, and out, and in, licking, licking,
spreading her as wide as I could with my left hand, licking.

What else could we do, really?

The halter-top ended up tossed near the sideboard. Shoes kicked
off there, and there, as I yanked my T-shirt over my head. I had
her tights off in two quick yanks, step, kick, and then she was
on me, not even bothering to pull off my pants, tumbling down
between my legs, a lapful of naked Jessie. "You know," I said, as
she kissed my stomach, spreading her left hand across my
denim-covered thigh, taking my hard, trembling cock in her right
hand, bending it to one side so she could kiss its base, "we
never really talk anymore."

"Shut up," she said, lifting her head, eyes flashing. "My turn."

And in I went. Her mouth was warm, and soft, her lips surrounding
the glans sweetly, her tongue rushing around it, then down, and
up again, her fingertips lightly stroking the base, then suddenly
switching to the desperate, muscular jerking of a
fifteen-year-old boy as she bobbed her lips - something few
fifteen-year-old boys have on those late summer evenings alone in
a sweaty bed - up and down around the tip, swirling, rushing, and
something enormous passed out of me. She caught most of it. Some
spattered onto my jeans, the floor. Her cheek. I reached out to
wipe it off, but she lunged at me, and we were kissing, toppling
to the floor, tasting each other, her acidic tang, musky, my
salty, basic blandness. Somehow my jeans and shorts ended up off
me, though not without some tangled kicks at the ankles. My hand
found my cock as we kissed, no time to slack off now, bucko, even
as her hand, wet with herself, found mine. Her lips grinned into
our kiss, and I matched it, licking them as our fingers tangled
about my cock, stroking to keep it awake. I pulled back just
enough to look her in the eye as I levered her onto her back, on
the throw rug, her head by the leg of the sideboard, her hair
spilling out over her discarded halter.

"Christ," she said, "why aren't we doing this every fucking day?"

I shrugged, stroking, feeling my flagging cock - thank God! -
rally itself for another go, blood in a tidal rush back to its
veins, filling it, heating it up again. "You know where to find
me," I said. I wanted her. Questions? Fuck 'em. I wanted her. In
the end, it's that simple. I hovered over her, weight on my hands
on either side of her head, my knees, rocking forward, feeling
the head of my cock nestle just so, in that sweet spot, her cunt
just kissing it with that incredible warmth, and I knew all I had
to do was fall on her, forward and down and I would be oh, yes,
inside.

"So you always, ah, do this, on a first date?" she asked.

I laughed. And fell. Oh, yes.



Of course, sooner or later you have to stop.

Naked, the both of us, in the kitchen. Later. Water coming up to
boil for the pasta and I'd given up on actually making a salad;
we were feeding each other slices of cucumber and tomato as I
chopped garlic and grated cheese. Momus on in the background, and
Jessie was already singing along with the chorus: "Professor
Shaftenberg, Professor Shaftenberg, he is sponsored by Lufthansa
to screw the pants off Japanese girls!" and lewdly licking the
end of the cucumber during the verses, a stupid joke which I let
her know in no uncertain terms was beneath her. And those
thoughts were starting to swarm around in my poor, beleaguered
brain again. The shreds of fact I'd managed to collect. How I was
going to try and use them to leverage my position in what was
going on here.

"You've gone all serious," she said, as I gingerly dumped
spaghetti into the boiling water. Cooking naked makes you leery
of splashing and gas jets. She pouted, sidled up behind me, her
arms snaking around me, the tangled curls of her pubic hair
tickling the back of my thighs, the bottom of my ass. She pressed
a kiss to my shoulder. "What are you thinking about?"

"You," I said.

"I make you all serious?" One bare foot stroking my calf, down to
brush lightly the top of my own. Arm lifted to allow me to reach
the pasta stirrer. The water was coming back up to a boil, and I
broke apart the clumped strands, already softening, stirring them
around.

"I worry about you."

"You should," she said. "I've got this big ol' creep taking
advantage of my young," her breasts pressed in against me,
"nubile," one hand shivering down my flank to my hip, "body every
which way and then some. It's horrible. It is." Kisses, along my
shoulder.

"I'm talking," I said, and I took a deep breath, leave this
unsaid, buried, just go along, go along, "about your family
situation." She stopped, stiffened against me. There. It's said.
Can't back out now. "It's unhealthy."

"We're not about to sell out and go on Jerry Springer, if that's
what you're worried about."

"Dammit, Jessie."

She let go of me, though she stayed close. "Is it Leah? Are you
worried about her?"

I watched the spaghetti roil. Did she know Leah had been to see
me today?

"Is it Virginia?" She backed away. "What, you want me all to
yourself? Carter doesn't want to share?"

I turned. Her face was unreadable. I reached out, dumped the
grated cheese into the bowl with the olive oil and eggs and
garlic and the vinegar and sherry and sundried tomatoes. "What's
going on between your mother and Andi - "

"Stepmother, dammit."

"Whatever. Your stepmother and Andi James."

She crossed her arms, leaning back against a counter. "Okay," she
said. "You found out about Andi. You found out about what she
does, and what Virginia does for her. Right? Snoop much?"

"How did you know my middle name?"

She blinked. Aha. "You told me."

"I never tell anyone. I hate my middle name."

"You know they sleep together, don't you. Virginia and Andi."

Thrust, and counterthrust. Parry. Dodge. Spin. When did this
become a duel? How? "And you, too, sometimes. Right?"

She snorted. "Snooping and spying? What, you've got binoculars or
something?"

"And a pretty good view of your house."

"Oh, I know about the view," she said.

"Your room, even."

"So you watch me fuck myself to sleep every night?" Her voice
went singsong ugly. "You like watching teenage girls with their
hands in their panties? There's websites for that sort of thing,
you know."

"Not," I said, "for you and your sister."

Our eyes locked together across the kitchen with an almost
audible click. "Oh," she said quietly. "You like that, don't
you."

"Oh," I said. "It does the trick."

And triumph flared in her eyes, her sudden, cruel grin. "You,"
she said, "Carter, you don't know the first thing about my quote
family situation un-fucking-quote. So shut up. Stay out. Leave it
alone." She looked away. "I don't need fucking rescuing, okay?"

"Rescuing?" I said. I fished up a strand of spaghetti. "Who said
anything about rescuing? I'm talking pragmatism." I nibbled at
it. Al dente, just. "Self-preservation. I need to know what's
going on. What's the score. Who's playing, what the pieces are.
What the game is. I'm not a nice guy, goes around rescuing people
all the time."

"You are nothing but a nice guy," said Jessie, scornfully.

"Virginia certainly seems to think so." I lifted the pot off the
stove, dumped it into the colander in the sink. Big clouds of
steam.

"Since when did you get to be such good friends with her?" she
asked.

I dumped the drained spaghetti into the bowl with the eggs and
the oil and everything else and started stirring it all together.
"You never did try to figure that out, did you?" I asked.

"What?" she said.

"The second time you were over here. Monday morning. I'm telling
you all this stuff about how Virginia wants me to meet your
sisters and you don't ask when or how we got to talking."

She frowned a pretty little frown. "I heard you. While I was
showering. You guys were out in the hall. Watching me."

I stopped stirring, looked her in the eyes again. "We weren't
there when you got out. Were we."

"You have got to be kidding me," she said.

"I wasn't in the kitchen," I said. I wouldn't let her look away.
"She wasn't out by the pool. Though you were. We were quite
inspired, watching you, you know. You're insatiable."

"And you're an asshole," she said.

"And Virginia is quite, ah, persuasive. But I'm sure you know
that."

"You fucked my stepmother."

"What's the matter, Jessie?" I said. "Don't want to share?"

She looked away, at that, her jaw working, her face unable to
make up its mind whether to screw itself up in rage, or a grin,
or tears. I was kind of the same way, though I kept it off my
face. I tend to keep that sort of thing in my shoulders, and in
my gut. Hide it away, no matter how big it gets. How the hell had
this happened? I just wanted answers, not a chess match. Not a
dick-slinging "I know more than you think I do" contest. Christ.
I stood there, and watched her, and tried not to think of Daffy
Duck's quarterstaff. Parry. Dodge. Spin. Or Virginia's face, for
that matter. Looking up at me. The silken mockery in her voice.
"I knew you had to have a little bit left for me."

What have I gotten myself into?

"Okay," she said, at last, blessedly breaking the silence, "all
right. You want to know what the game is?" She took a step
towards me, and another. "You want to know what the score is?" I
stood there, unmoving. Three feet away. A foot. Right there, her
toes brushing mine, her nose just below mine, if I took a deep
breath I'd brush against her nipples, which I did. Her hand
around my balls. Firm grip. "You want to take this to the next
level?"

"Next level?" I said. "Who's writing your dialogue?"

She squeezed. "Do you want to take this to the next level?" Hard
enough for a sharp spike of that nasty, nauseous pain. I grabbed
her wrist, hard, twisted a little just so, and she let go. About
the only trick I remembered from Aikido class. Not that it's
normally used to force pretty young girls to let go of your
balls.

"If taking it to the next level," I said, "involves pain,
bondage, domination, that sort of crap, I've got to tell you.
I've tried it. I find it terribly dull."

"Yes," she said, "or no. Which is it."

We stood there for a long time like that, naked. Her wrist in my
hand. Our skin brushing together along a dozen planes and
surfaces, arms, legs, hips, shoulders. Her breath in the hollow
of my throat. Mine stirring the fine hair near her ear.

"Of course," I said. "What else do you think this is all about?"
Gee, Carter. I don't know. What the fuck was all that about?

She smiled, and suddenly, shockingly, lifted herself up, her
mouth meeting mine, melting into a tender kiss, her hands on my
shoulders. "Get dressed," she said, in my ear. "Something nice.
Presentable."

"Presentable?" I said. "Where are we going?"

"Out," she said, skipping out of my arms, into the hall.

"Out?" I called after her. "What about dinner?"

She stuck her head back through the doorway. "Fuck dinner," she
said.

--n.

http://www.asstr.org/~nickurfe/
http://www.ruthiesclub.com/
nickurfe@yahoo.com

This story may be freely circulated by anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Crank letter quoted from "Men Can Have Babies" by David Linton,
as published in "Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human
Belief," ed. by Donna Kossy. Inspiration for the Garden and the
Beaver Bear from Delaware drawn from "Bulletins from the
Underground City" by Linton Robinson, as published in "The
Stranger." "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," by Harry Connick,
Jr.; "If I Was Your Girlfriend," by Prince; "Something for the
Weekend," by The Divine Comedy; "Everybody Loves Me But You," by
Juliana Hatfield; "Bella Neurox," by Miss Murgatroid and Petra
Haden; "I'm In Love With a Girl," by Big Star; "Getting Scared,"
by Imogen Heap; "Professor Shaftenberg," by Momus.