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Episode Six Through the wall he hears Carly moving around in the next room. Old springs squeal as the bed accepts her weight. Joel knocks on the wall, and after a moment, Carly taps faintly back. The morning must have worn her out. Joel feels a surge of dislike for their absent hostess. When Donna Maria confronted him with the full force of her self-righteous anger, Joel had wanted to grab Carly and get the hell out of there. Instead, he had rolled over, showing Donna Maria his belly. She had been more than happy to leave him in that position as she roared off in her pickup truck. So why is his cock so hard that he's stumbling? Joel loosens the first two buttons on his jeans, releasing some of the pressure on his groin. He didn't expect to react to her like a lust-crazed teenager: his tongue a wad of cotton, hands stiffening into sweaty mitts. The girl in the black-and-white photo was a blurred, unfinished version of what Donna Maria is now. Resentment has stripped of her softness, but left a coil of searing heat in its place. Joel had expected a muddled, self-pitying victim. Instead, he found a black-haired goddess bearing down on him. As he watched Donna Maria striding across the parking lot, Joel lost the ability to breathe. His mind exploded with visions of what she must look like naked. Her breasts would lie lower on her chest, her thighs and belly would be fuller, yet her body would be sheathed with a hard-earned layer of muscle. He sees her working out in a makeshift gym, puffing and sweating, her cheeks and throat radiant with rage. And he imagines that when she fucks, she draws on the same focused energy, applying her body and her will. She would choose her lovers carefully, though her selections would seem random on the surface. She would choose men she could ride, and she would ride them until they went limp underneath her, begging her to stop. Somehow, Rick helped to make Donna Maria what she is. As much as Joel hates the idea of inheriting his father's sins, he can't push his guilt aside. Donna Maria left him here alone with it, like a prisoner waiting around for his captor to come back and deliver a sentence. The motel room is a cell of its own kind, a box suited only for sleep, anonymous sex, or self-confrontation. Joel switches on the television. Nothing but static. No stationery in the desk drawers, no bible, not even a phone book. With the drapes closed, the room is steeped in shadow. He thinks about lying down, releasing some of his sexual tension, but he feels like he's being watched. He considers going out for some fresh air, but he doesn't want to leave Carly sleeping here alone. As Joel unpacks, he wonders how long Donna Maria plans to have him stay. Strange how he's thinking of himself as the woman's captive, when it's only his conscience that's keeping him in this room. He lifts a hardbound copy of his book, My Father's Eyes, out of his overnight bag. Rick's face looks up from the book's cover, his gaze settling on a point far beyond Joel's perspective. His hair is matted and singed; starbursts of blood spatter his forehead and cheeks. A dark thread trickles from a gouge above his left eyelid. Three more millimeters, and he would have lost an eye. The photo was taken in Belfast during the 1980 hunger strike. Rick and another journalist, a photographer from London, were taking shelter in the shell of a vacant building, trying to get shots of a protest in the street. One of the rioters lobbed a Molotov cocktail; the bottle missed its mark and flew through the window of the building where Rick was hiding. Rick ducked as the crude bomb exploded against the wall beside him. When Rick looked up, the other journalist snapped his picture out of sheer disbelief that his colleague was still standing. A brave man. A martyr for his work, some said. But was that courage in Rick's eyes, or just a cool dissociation? Joel didn't entertain such doubts in his book, but he's spent hours studying this photo. The strange, almost supernatural light in his father's eyes never fails to chill Joel's blood. At the moment the photo was taken, Rick was certainly alive-a hardcore risk junkie, he was probably more alive at times like this than any other-but those eyes belong to a ghost. Even with his face smeared with blood, Rick seems detached from his own frail substance. Weren't you scared, Dad? was the refrain of Joel's childhood. No, was the perpetual reply, though Rick phrased it in other ways. I didn't have time to be scared. I didn't know how much danger I was in until I saw the negatives. I was out of my body when it happened. Out of my body. There are many other questions that Joel never got to ask his father. How can a man make love to a woman, if he's so distant from his material being? When he kisses her skin, smells her, caresses her, are his senses fully engaged, or is he hovering somewhere, observing? How does a man experience pleasure, if he can't feel fear?
"Hey! Where you been?" bellows a man in a stained apron. In his arms he holds a bucket of dirty dishes. The last of the breakfast crowd has cleared out, giving way to a crew of morning drinkers. Eddie is bussing his own tables, which means that April has abandoned him again. "What's the matter? Don't I get a kiss?" "Well, if that's all you want." Donna Maria hugs her former boss and kisses his sweaty cheek. Her lips come away with the tastes of salt, lard, and flour-a flavor so old and familiar that it makes her throat tighten. "It's not all I want," Eddie says, with a lewd wink, "but I'll take what I can get. You come crawling back for your job?" "Not exactly." "What are you doing for work?" "Running my grandmother's motel. She died not too long ago." "That's rough. I know how you felt about the old lady." "She left me the motel before she died. She thought I'd straighten out my life if she gave me her property to take care of." Her grandmother had wanted to give Donna Maria more than that. The body longs for the place where it was nurtured, abuelita believed, even when the mind has gone astray. If someone guided Donna Maria back to her origins, she would find herself again. Donna Maria never told her grandmother all the details of what happened to her in South America, nothing that her grandmother couldn't have learned from the evening news. A young American woman, traveling with a well-known journalist, was abducted by drug traffickers. She was held by her captors for eighteen days-later she would learn that her ordeal wasn't long, compared to what others endured-before they released her. It was the journalist they wanted in the first place. An American girl whose family had no money or influence wasn't much of a bargaining chip in the cartel's political game. This was the story that her grandmother heard, but that story didn't belong to Donna Maria Santos. It belonged to a beautiful nineteen-year-old who existed briefly in a meteor shower of public attention, not to the girl who grew up changing soiled sheets. Once the interviews were over, and the offers stopped coming, Donna Maria was left alone with the real story. In the middle of the night, the truths she had never told flocked around her bed. "So you're a big landowner now?" "Sorry, what did you say?" "The motel," Eddie repeats. "You're the boss lady." "I'm the boss of a dump. I've been working 24/7, but I still can't get the place in shape." "No wonder you look beat. You hungry?" Donna Maria sinks down into a chair at one of the tables. "I ate earlier. I need a beer." "Too early for booze. Let me fix you a real breakfast. You're getting skinny." "So?" "So you need to take care of yourself." Eddie plops his bucket down on the table and takes the seat next to her. "I can't." "Then find someone to do it for you." "Nobody wants a job like that. Speaking of jobs, is April still working here?" "Not anymore. This is the third Saturday in a row she's stood me up. I'm going to fire her sorry ass as soon as she drags it in." "Sure, you are. Is she seeing anyone these days?" Eduardo grins. "She's seeing everyone. Just like always." "What about you?" Eddie whistles. "You must be on the hunt today." Hunting, yes, but for what? Some kind of temporary salvation. Save me, Donna wants to say to Eddie. Save me with your easy smile, and your sturdy arms and deep belly. Eduardo would fuck her, if she needed it. She knows what he'd be like in bed: his lust rock-solid, eyes soft and bottomless in pleasure. His lips would turn dusky red under his mustache, and when he came, he would mumble his gratitude into her breasts. But he might cry out in Spanish. Sometimes she thinks that's the worst thing her captors did to her-scarring the language that her grandmother spoke. Spanish had always been Donna Maria's shelter. It was a magic skin that she wrapped around herself when she felt weak or afraid. After South America, that skin was torn. She can still wear the enchanted cape, but an icy wind attacks her through the holes. "What do you need, baby?" Eduardo is gripping her upper arm, massaging the flesh. His eyes are shadowed with concern. "A shot of tequila." "Something that won't get you drunk." Suddenly Eddie looks up, over Donna Maria's head, and scowls. At the same time, cool fingers come to rest on Donna Maria's shoulders, and laughter drifts down like a pale green leaf. April is here. "You're fired," Eddie announces. "I had about a hundred hungover chollos in here this morning, and no waitress. What do I need you for?" What does anyone need April for? Grace. Sex. The presence of a spirit that's genuinely free. Anywhere she goes, April brings her traveling carnival of erotic gifts. Why did Donna Maria stay away so long, avoiding April's touch as if her hands held some deadly threat? "Why haven't you been around?" April asks, reading Donna Maria's mind. "I've missed you." Eddie gets up and lifts the bucket of greasy dishes. "See what you can do with this crazy bitch," he says to April. 'She came in all messed up, wanting to get drunk. Won't eat, won't talk. She needs another chick." "If you only knew," Donna laughs. She turns around in her chair, looking up into the chubby star of April's face. Rumpled sheets have left her round cheeks laced with lines. Even when she looks like hell-eyes ringed with shadows, lips bruised from last night's kisses, red hair sticking up like a crazed rooster's feathers-April is incandescent. Donna stands up and sinks into her friend's arms. April's body is deep and warm, and for a moment Donna Maria lets herself go. She closes her eyes and breathes the perfume of April's morning bath: baby shampoo and bath oil, Ivory soap and shaving cream, and under all of it the sea-smell of April's plentiful flesh. "Let's go to your apartment," Donna begs. "Honey, I just got here," April murmurs, but her fingers are already roving through Donna Maria's hair, her fingernails strumming at the nape of Donna's neck. "One of these days, Eddie's going to fire me for real." "He'll never fire you. He'll let you go for half an hour. It only takes five minutes to get to your place, then twenty minutes in bed-" "Twenty minutes? Are you insane? Last time I got into bed with you, you didn't let me out for twenty-four hours." "Please?" April sighs. The sigh deepens into a moan as Donna Maria presses her hips against April's and subtly begins to grind. "Okay," April whispers. "Give me a second to give Ed the good news." Donna watches April walk toward the kitchen, stumbling in her platform shoes. Donna smiles. More times than she can count, she has watched April walk weak-kneed across a bar, on her way to call her roommate to let her know that she wouldn't be coming home. Not coming home, but always coming. Coming in those loose, shuddering spasms that Donna Maria envies so much-coming like a tide, massive and inevitable. In the musky den of April's bedroom, the women tear at each other's clothes. April's sundress, bra and panties slip off easily, but Donna has to struggle with her own jeans and boots. Already naked, April stretches herself out on the chaos of her unmade bed. Light filters through the blinds, painting her flesh with ribbons of shadow. Her eyes are the strong, clear green of a pagan spring; her cheeks and mouth are flushed with blood. Her belly jiggles like a flan as she squirms in the sheets. Then she parts her thighs to show off her crowning feature: the copper fur that covers her pubic mound. The curls in the deepest folds are already glistening. April raises her arms and grabs the posts on her old-fashioned bed frame. Multicolored silk scarves hang from either post-souvenirs of another lover. "You can tie me up, if you want," she says. Donna Maria can't speak. A vision of April tied to the bed overwhelms her. April bound, completely submissive, her body vulnerable to her lover's will. Donna's head pounds. A leaden taste fills her mouth. "Well?" April arches her back. "Do you want to?" "I can't do that. Not yet." "Well, the offer's open. Among other things." April spreads her thighs wider. Relieved, Donna leans down and kisses the Celtic tattoo just above April's pussy, then buries her face in the loamy mound of fur and flesh. With every cell, Donna's body gives in to the memory of April's taste, that rich animal tang. She tugs at the folds of April's vulva with her teeth. That's what April likes-a gentle mauling, with flashes of pain. When Donna pulls her cuntlips open and nips at her clit, she comes in short, sharp spasms. "How do you do that?" Donna asks, lifting her face. April laughs. "I always pop off like a rocket the first time. I'm worse than a fifteen-year-old boy." Donna shakes her head. "I don't get it." "You will. Give yourself time." "It's been over ten years already." April sits up. "You can't push yourself. That only makes it harder. Here, lie down. Don't think about anything; try to trust me. Trust is the only thing you can't do." Donna Maria cringes, but she obeys, settling into the warm indentation that April left in the mattress. She closes her eyes as April's lips rove across her throat, then make their way down to her breasts. The sharp, wet tip of April's tongue dances across each nipple. Donna Maria moans. "I love your nipples," April croons. "You have the longest, darkest, nipples that I've ever seen." Her fingernails strum at the wrinkled aureolae. "And they sit on top of such lovely tits." She squeezes Donna Maria's breasts as she suckles. At first, Donna slides effortlessly into pleasure, and for a few seconds she is floating so close to the edge that she can almost feel herself toppling over. Then April's fingers brush the scar under her right breast, and Donna goes dead. "Is something wrong?" Donna Maria opens her eyes to find April staring down at her. "Nothing's wrong. Except the usual." April strokes Donna Maria's stomach. "I touched the wrong place, didn't I? It's been a long time. I forgot." "It's not your fault. We don't have much time left, anyway." "Fuck that. I'll take the whole day off. Eddie will have to deal with it." "No, really. I can't do this." Donna Maria starts to climb out of bed, but April grabs her elbow and pulls her back. April's grip is surprisingly strong. "Just lie here with me." Donna gives in without protest. Though April is shorter, Donna Maria curls easily into the bowl of her body. Gently, rhythmically, April strokes the whorls of hair at Donna Maria's temples. Donna Maria almost goes to sleep, but she can't release herself that way, either. While April holds her, she plays with the other woman's cunt, until April begins to pant. April's eyes flicker shut. A slow smile illuminates her face. In pleasure, April is as trusting as a well loved child. There's no greater risk than absolute trust, Rick used to say. He said a lot of things that left Donna Maria incapable of arguing, struck dumb by her own lack of experience. She has experience now. April was only half right when she said that Donna Maria couldn't trust. When necessary, Donna can plunge into a state of trust as all-consuming as a frigid black sea. Ten years ago, she proved that she can trust when she doesn't have a choice. Donna Maria pushes April back onto the bed, shapes her fingers
into a funnel, and slides them into April's body as deep as they
will go. As Donna twists her hand back and forth, she takes one
of April's nipples between her lips and tugs. April arches her
back and lets loose a long, wild wail. Lying next to April with
her fingers buried inside the other woman's juicy flesh, feeling
her cuntwalls shudder and clench, is the closest Donna Maria gets
to freedom. |
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| to be continued • previous 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.
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