Best of Best Women's Erotica (28 page)

I shouldn't have worried. He didn't go to her house. He went to a restaurant. For lunch. Not a terribly suspicious way to spend one's lunch hour. And oh, how fortunate for me…to be able to “surprise” him here. “Honey, what a nice surprise!” I'd exclaim brightly. I could feel the leash tighten. I hid my face behind a menu and sauntered toward his table. But the chair
across from him wasn't empty. Jennifer's hair fell around her shoulders in tight, red curls. They framed her face like a halo. I sat where I could watch them. I ordered something. I ate it without tasting it. I watched “Mark” and “his girl.” Jennifer fed him cheesecake with her fork. I noticed she saved him the last bite. Neither of them saw me. Neither of them looked in my direction even once. They left separately. On a whim, I decided to follow
her.

We ended up at the mall. I followed her from the parking lot, through the stores, unseen. I felt like that character in a Woody Allen movie who turns invisible after drinking a strange Chinese tea. Could anyone see me? Had I eaten something at lunch that might make me invisible? Was I really this stealthy or was I dreaming? I'd felt a little dreamy ever since I'd rung Jennifer's doorbell that day, or maybe even before that, when I first saw her name in Stephen's address book. I had that disconnected, floaty feeling. It wasn't dreaming. It was waking up from the dream, a lie that had been my life. So this was being awake? This half-angry, half-horny, half-grieving, curious, bewildered, excited, half-mad, more-than-a-hundred-percent feeling?

Three teenagers, walking astride, scowled at me. In my reverie I hadn't noticed that I was supposed to have stepped aside for them. At least that's what I interpreted from their scowls. It could also have meant “I hate the world, not just you.” I stepped aside. An elderly mall-walker who had stopped to tie her shoe shook her head regretfully. Whether she felt sorry for me or the teens, who knows? But it was confirmed: I was not invisible. I walked a little faster. I caught up with Jennifer. I put my hand on her shoulder.

“It's you!” she said.

The delight in her voice startled me. It also warmed me. She
was glad to see me. I was surprised how much I liked that. I felt a twinge of guilt for deceiving her. I hooked my arm in hers and we walked through the shops together like old friends. She must be lonely, I thought, to have taken to me so quickly. Is that why she let herself fall in love with Stephen, believe every word he said? Is that why I had? Loneliness and passion—a dangerous elixir.

I pointed to Victoria's Secret. “Come help me pick out a bra.”

Giggling, she followed me into the store. Jennifer was out of her element there. She looked as dumbstruck and embarrassed as if she'd been caught going through her mother's underwear drawer. What gives? I thought mistresses were born with the Kama Sutra in one hand and a suitcase of elegant lingerie in the other. Clearly someone had forgotten to tell Jennifer this.

I pulled her into the dressing room. “Help me with this strap.”

She buckled the red velvet bra. We both admired my reflection in the mirror.

“What do you think?”

“You're beautiful,” she said innocently.

I jiggled in it for effect, watching my velvet-clad breasts bounce in the mirror.

“But is it sexy?”

She bit her lip. “Oh, yes.”

I smiled. She was so easy.
Like shooting fish in a barrel, Stephen. Where's the sport in that?
Emotions played over her face in shades of pink. I brushed a strand of red hair out of her eyes, tenderly. She swallowed hard.

“If you think it looks good, I'll buy it,” I said.

“Shall I wrap it for you?” the teenage sales clerk asked,
sounding as if she assumed I was buying it for someone younger, infinitely hipper, than myself.

“No, I'll wear it.” I tore off the tag, handing it and my credit card to the clerk. I whispered in Jennifer's ear, “I love the way it feels. The way I feel knowing I have something so sexy on under my clothes.” Jennifer squirmed. I moved away from her as abruptly as I had moved near her. I scrutinized the racks.

“What do you think of this?” I held up a daring bit of lace.

“Oh, well…” Jennifer stuttered. “It's very, um. There's not much to it, is there?”

“Do you think what's-his-name would like this?”

“Who?”

“Your friend,” I smiled patiently.

“Mark?” she choked, a cough that ended in giggling. “What man
wouldn't
like it?”

“What man indeed?” I asked.

The sales clerk snickered. She had clearly gotten the wrong idea about us.

“We'll take it. Charge it to my card.” I threw it on the counter.

“Oh, no!” Jennifer groaned. “I could never wear something like that. I'd be too shy. I couldn't…it's just not…it's just not me!” She blushed just looking at it on the hanger.

“Exactly why it would be such a lovely surprise.”
Just not the surprise you're expecting,
I thought.

Jennifer continued to protest halfheartedly as the salesgirl rang it up.

“Thank you.” Jennifer kissed me on the cheek, shyly, as she took the unwanted package.

The sales clerk snickered her signature snicker. Lesbians were the height of comedy in her small world. As I was signing the
receipt, I leaned close to the clerk and purred, “Try it. You might like it.”

“What?” Jennifer hadn't quite heard me, but thought I was speaking to her.

“Nothing,” I said. I slipped my arm around her waist in a friendly gesture.

 

Since we were “neighbors” and my car was in the shop, I caught a ride “home” with her. Actually my car was parked in the row behind hers. It surprised me how easily lies fell off my lips now. How quickly they came to me, how confidently I spouted them.
I see the appeal, Stephen.
It's not just sex. It's the ability to be anyone, anyone at all. To make up a life on the spur of the moment and then to wear it like an expensive suit. Chic, well fitted, and in whatever color you want. What no longer surprised me was Jennifer's unconditional belief in everything I said. She was well trained. She was the perfect accomplice to my lies: so willing to believe anything. Who could resist lying to her?

In the car we talked about music and food and our childhoods. I wondered how much of what I told her was true. The truth sounded tinny to me: small and unbelievable. I retold stories I had told a million times before, but now I heard them with a new ear. Is that the truth, I wondered? Is the way I remember it true? Lying had made the truth enigmatic, a sort of unachievable ideal. What is true? I even doubted my likes and dislikes. Was artichoke chicken with corkscrew pasta really my favorite dish? Or had I simply believed it the first time I told myself it was? Believed it, stopped asking questions, and from then on reported it as the truth.

Every story Jennifer told me about Mark was the truth—the
truth as she knew it. She asked me if I had found my dog. I admitted to keeping him on a chain now but that he still managed to wriggle out of his collar and run free. That was the truth, wasn't it?

At her house, I didn't need a lie to get inside. She welcomed me in. She made me feel at home.

“I'd like a drink.”

“Herbal tea or Coke?” Jennifer asked. “Or I think I have some orange juice.”

“Something stronger.”

She brought out a bottle of wine. I took it into the bedroom. I sat in a chair and she sat on the bed. We drank and talked and laughed. All around us, pictures of Stephen/Mark smiled.

Halfway through the bottle I suggested she model her lingerie. There was much blushing and a little protesting. Not as much protesting as I'd expected.

Just enough “Oh, I couldn't” to oil the machine of my “It'll be fun.” I was sure that was true.

She unzipped her jeans. Wriggled out of her silk blouse, her red curls bouncing riotously over her bare shoulders. I watched her. I was fascinated—and hungry. Had Stephen watched her like this, shucking off the day's clothing and burdens to reveal this blinding skin? Had he sat in this very chair and seen what I was seeing? The chair's hard back kept me alert, aware of a slight discomfort. Jennifer watched me. It wasn't Stephen she was seeing in the chair; it was me. She undressed slowly. She pulled her shirt over her head like a burlesque stripper removing a glove. Slowly. Her back was lightly muscled, yet classic as a Greek statue. This Aphrodite looked over her shoulder and smiled at me.

I picked up Jennifer's camera from her dresser and checked
for film. I snapped her picture. Whirr. Click. She quickly turned toward me, surprised and embarrassed. She laughed and hurried to put her clothes back on. I kept taking pictures. Whirr. Click. She was as beautiful re-dressing. Hopping, half in and half out of her pants, she raised her hand in impatient surrender. It was the same gesture I'd seen in Stephen's picture.

“Stop,” she laughed.

I didn't.

Pants on, but unzipped. Blouse in hand. “Stop, really.”

I really didn't. Whirr. Click. I snapped another picture of her crossing the room. I got another, a close-up of her jostling breasts, before she reached the chair.

“Give it to me.” She held out her hand for the camera.

“Are you shy?” I snapped another picture. Her red-brown nipple. Her frowning lips.

“C'mon. Give it to me.”

“What will you give me if I do?”

Jennifer licked her hesitant lips. “What do you want?”

“I want to take pictures of you.”

She took the camera from me and turned it over in her hand. “I'm not comfortable on that side of the camera. I like to see, not to be seen.”

“Jennifer, there's so much you don't see.”

“Huh?”

“Let me show you how other people see you. How I see you.”

I held my hand out for the camera. She looked dubious. I refilled our wineglasses.

“You take my picture,” I said, “and then I'll take yours. Fair?”

“Fair,” she agreed.

On the dresser where I'd found the camera there was a clock radio. I turned it on. I unbuttoned my shirt, seductively swaying to the music. Whirr. Click. Whirr. Click. I danced for her to the metronome of the camera, the strobe of the flash. I told myself brilliant, exciting lies. I was Cleopatra. My hips could bring a nation to its knees. I stepped out of my clothes. Dancing, whirling for her. I was Salome, only even John the Baptist couldn't resist me. The taste of me was sweeter than heaven. I was a stripper in a filthy nightclub. Jennifer was hordes of men hungry to stick dollar bills—hundred-dollar bills!—into my G-string. I used the chair as a pole, bumping and grinding. I swung my leg over the chair. I was a housewife seducing my husband's mistress. I laughed. No, that fantasy was too farfetched. I was every model seducing every photographer through the raw art of her body.

Walking toward her so that she had to back up to keep me in the frame, I steered Jennifer toward the bed. She backed up until she could back up no further. Whirr. Click. I leaned over her, pressing my navel to the camera lens; blinding the camera. She was mine now. I didn't know if this was how Stephen had her and by now I didn't care. I tugged her jeans off and tossed them on the floor beside her shirt. She was wearing Batman undies. I threw my own clothes on the growing pile. I gently parted the lips that Batman had recently guarded and kissed her cunt. I reveled in the smell of her, not the faraway hinted-at scent mixed with soap that I smelled on Stephen's half-washed face. This was the real smell of woman. An alive, musk-breaded smell. I wanted to swallow her whole.

I'd never touched any cunt but my own. I'd never seen one so close. It was fascinating, elaborate, more stunning than I'd
fantasized. The pictures I'd seen barely hinted at the color and intricacy of the flesh that lay open before me. In every way imaginable I was swimming in forbidden, unfamiliar waters. Tongue-first, I dived in. I began licking her gingerly, but encouraged by the noises she was making, I threw myself into her cave with all the enthusiasm of a more experienced spelunker. Though I tired quickly—unprepared for the vigorous exercise this sport required of my jaw—I didn't let up for a minute. I wanted to feel her, to taste her coming into my eager mouth. She didn't disappoint me. There was a sharp taste like metal amid the musk and she came, writhing wildly, so that I could barely keep my mouth on her. Then she turned me over and gave me (or had) a taste of my own medicine.

Curious and tireless as only virgins can be, I licked every inch of her and she nibbled most of me, including territory I never remember having had nibbled before. After hours and orgasms—neither of us bothered to count—I parted her cunt lips and kissed them more fondly than passionately.

“I wish you could see what I see.”

Jennifer handed me the camera. She held her lips open so that I could photograph the velvet inside. I tried to coax her clit into the picture but, overworked and camera shy, it hid stubbornly beneath its hood. Still she was beautiful, different in every frame. Click. I held the camera in my right hand and took a picture of my finger on her clit, deep inside her. My finger here. There. Two fingers. Click. Click. Jennifer softly moaned until I ran out of film. She reloaded the camera. I held it out to get pictures of us together. She did the same. We agreed they'd be terrible pictures, off-centered, oddly angled, random and beautiful…like our love.

She used the word
love.
It surprised me.
Oh, Stephen. She's
so easy. So innocent. So inexperienced that she thinks sex is love.
But maybe it is. How could a liar like me know the truth about love? I remembered what she'd said in the lingerie store: “I couldn't wear that. It's not me!” How would Jennifer know that what we'd done tonight was anything but the real “me”? It made sense that she would interpret my actions as love. She wasn't the sort of girl who jumped into bed with strange women. She wasn't the sort of girl who had affairs. That wasn't her.