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Serial Fiction from Anne Tourney |
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| Episode One What could she take from this man, in exchange for what she lost? She could take his eyes, because they look like his father’s. She could cradle his eyes in her hand, and search them for the image of a girl named Donna Maria. She could take his lips, which are more generous than his father’s. His father’s mouth was thin and hard-set, like a zipper holding back his soul. She could take his cock and give herself pleasure with it, the kind of pleasure that she hasn’t known since his father left her memory split in two. Even in grainy newspaper print, the writer’s picture sends up a warm buzz between Donna Maria’s thighs. His thick, wavy hair is threaded with early gray, and pulled off his unlined forehead into a ponytail. A goatee frames his mouth, offering those lips like fruit on dark velvet. Abuelita would have said that his face was too gentle, but Donna Maria likes her men soft around the edges. Her grandmother loved men with callused hands, steel-brush mustaches, and hard pot bellies that stuck out above ornate leather belts. She married two vaqueros who looked like Pancho Villa before resigning herself to a peaceful widowhood. Donna Maria prefers her men shy, even a bit feminine. Men with too much hardness in them scare the hell out of her. His name is Joel Conti. Thirty years old, and he’s just published a book, a retrospective of his father’s work. The father was the brave one–photojournalist, political activist, a warrior with a lens. The son dreams of traveling, according to his profile in the San Francisco Chronicle, but has only left the States twice. He still has nightmares about his father’s disappearance. Donna Maria laughs. She could tell this boy a few things about nightmares. Now that she’s gotten over the brute shock of seeing his face in her morning paper, she’s decided to write him a letter. She knows how to make him come to her. A girl doesn’t grow up among fly-by-night lovers and runaway spouses without learning a few tricks of seduction. You don’t know me, but your father did. He knew that my skin tastes like tamarind candy, the kind that’s flavored with lime juice. He knew that I have my grandmother’s breasts; they ripened early, and they’re already drooping. He even knew the exact color of the inside of my pussy. No one has known me that way ever since. No lover, anyway. I can’t tell you much, Joel, but I do know one thing–there are times when it’s hard to tell a lover from a torturer. Donna Maria swallows another belt of tequila-laced coffee, then sets the mug down and rolls over on her stomach. The bedspread scratches her belly. That polyester burn makes her feel like a teenager again, dreaming face-down on her bed, one hand buried between her legs while she listened to the pleas and groans of the lovers in the room next door. Now the rooms on either side of her are empty, and the motel’s new owner is drinking Jose Cuervo at nine o’clock on a weekday morning. The maid would be coming around soon, if Donna Maria could afford a maid. Black-and-white photos lie scattered on the bed all around her. He took those pictures. She can’t stop staring at one of them: a nineteen-year-old Donna Maria lies sprawled against the headboard, her legs wide open. Startled eyes stare out from a shaggy wreath of black hair. Small nipples, bruised by his fingers, top her swollen breasts. Her belly rises in mid-gasp. In the valley between her thighs, his stubbled cheeks left a rash. Her cunt is a silver swirl, the wet lips gaping. She had just come into his mouth. Before the last currents ebbed away, he pulled back to grab his camera. Staring into that girl’s open mouth, Donna Maria can still hear her cries. What a shock it had been to come like that, in electric ripples that didn’t seem to end! Her eyes are wide and unfocused, as in the aftermath of pain. Donna Maria props the photograph against the pillow. The young woman in the picture didn’t know anything about pain. She’d known the stress of growing up without much money, and the shame of living in a place that people treated like a temporary shelter. She’d felt the wild ache of menstrual cramps, and the sharp discomfort of being fucked for the first time. But she’d never been wracked. She’d never known agony so searing that it made the thought of death seem sweet. Pretty, pretty girl. What happened to that proud little ass of yours, mi ‘ja? Every night when I try to sleep, I imagine that your father is back there with me. I dream that he stayed around to learn those lessons, too. I don’t fall asleep very often, but when I do, I dream about your father. He never appears in these dreams. I think he’s hurt, maybe dead, but part of me still thinks that he’ll show up at any second to straighten out the bullshit. |
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| The photographer never bothered to take off his scarred gold wedding
band, even when he was making love to her. At nineteen, Donna
Maria saw his arrogance as a twisted form of courage. Sometimes,
when she was lying half-asleep against his naked body, she smelled
a bitter odor on his skin. The scent made her nervous, but she
didn’t understand why. Back then, she didn’t know that the nose
can detect cowardice long before the ears or eyes. When she first met the photographer, Donna Maria hadn’t developed any animal senses. She was still a girl, the child of an absentee mother and an unknown father. On Sunday mornings Donna Maria went to Mass with her grandmother at the mission, but in the ancient gloom of the chapel she dreamed of twisting in the darkness with a lover. Instead of cold dust and incense, she smelled the musk that men left in the motel sheets. Sitting in the pew beside her abuelita, Donna Maria squeezed her inner muscles and imagined a Sunday afternoon fuck with a stranger who had traveled all over the world. She never noticed the stares of the local boys. Donna Maria’s lover was going to come from far away. One day, he did come. He arrived in a dusty Volvo station wagon whose bumper was plastered with stickers from foreign countries. Over his shoulder he carried a battered leather bag. The moment she saw him, Donna Maria knew what was in that bag: a camera. She could hear the camera calling to her. She knew that its lens, which had recorded thousands of exotic images, would soon fix itself on her own body. He was a photojournalist, taking a break from his usual subjects to chase ghosts from his childhood. He was working on a pictorial about old American motels, those quaint roadside inns dotted with icons of post-war wanderlust: cowboys, wagon wheels, spaceships. In the midst of all that kitsch, he came across a 30-foot-high painting of a Mexican virgin, rising like a holy visitation on a state highway in Northern California. As he slammed on the brakes, the photographer was already framing a shot in his mind. Then the door of one of the motel rooms opened, and he forgot about the wooden virgin. A black-haired girl stepped out, pushing a cart piled with dirty laundry. She wore jeans, a new Metallica shirt, and a dusting of body glitter on her arms. Her eyes blinked slowly in the strong morning sun. Except for her t-shirt and dirty jeans, and some lankiness in her limbs, this was the girl on the sign. Donna Maria had been to a concert in San Jose the night before. She was sleepy, mildly hungover, and horny. She had just given herself a quick orgasm in the unmade motel bed before continuing with her morning chores. As soon as her eyes adjusted to the light, they settled on the photographer’s camera bag. At that point, the photographer wasn’t a man, much less a potential lover. He was just a flesh-and-bone frame holding the means to Donna Maria’s escape. |
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| “My father was the adventurer in the family. Before I was twenty-two,
I’d never even left the country,” says the young man in the newspaper
article. “It’s not that his experiences scared me; my work just
goes better when I’m at home. I sleep better, too.” In spite of his nightmares, Joel probably sleeps better than Donna Maria. His pale eyes are calm and clear. Unshadowed. Not like Donna Maria’s eyes, with their bruiselike smudges and lacing of microscopic lines. Once the tequila wears off, Donna Maria will probably regret what she’s doing, but for now her plan is unstoppable. I read the profile of you in the paper, she writes. I want to see you. I think you’ll want to see me, too. She signs the letter, folds the stationery, and slides it into a manila envelope, along with one of the old business cards that her grandmother used to leave in plastic trays at the registration desk. “The Motel Donna Maria,” reads the card. “Clean, quiet, affordable.” Donna Maria considers crossing out the homey slogan and writing this instead: “The Motel Donna Maria: Dirty, rundown, and about to cost you your last peace of mind.” Only her grandmother’s memory keeps her from defacing the card. Her abuelita used to dust the little card tray every morning. She kept a plate of pralines behind it, hoping that her guests would take a card as they reached for the candy. More often than not, the customers just grabbed the sweets. Donna takes the black-and-white photo of herself, the one that commemorates her first and last real orgasm, and slides it into the envelope with the letter and the card. If that photo doesn’t make Joel come, nothing will. |
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| continued chapters | |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
on an extended hiatus. The web has changed, we've changed, and
we're trying to figure out how we both fit together now, which isn't a process we want to rush. If you're looking for more current SL-related content, you can
have check out upcoming books from editor Heather Corinna and previous co-editor Hanne Blank, check out Heather's current sexuality sites, or explore sites through the femmerotic network. We hope to be back with you soon, as fresh, challenging and
unexpected as ever.
In the meantime, by all means, enjoy our years of past content,
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