Periphery (26 page)

I only remember that night in snatches now. I remember lavender lips and the way she closed her eyes when she kissed me. I kept mine open to watch the way her mouth moved, then closed them as her hand sought deep into my jeans. I remember her left hand seeking between my legs and I imagine that I even felt the calluses on her fingers as she dragged them over my slick clit. I remember being on my back on the expanse of her bed, her body pressing mine down as her tongue hunted in the forest of my bush and I stared at the cleft of her ass, her cunt, pistoning above my face until I reached out with my own tongue. I remember what seemed like hours with my legs over the edge of the bed, and her quick fingers playing over my clit again and again, and sinking her hand into me, first the cone of her fingers, and eventually her entire hand, balled inside. There was probably more, but it has been obliterated by time and drugs and overlayers of bad memories.

It wasn’t until after we woke up that afternoon that she began to ask me about myself. Or maybe I should say tell me about myself. I played guitar, right? And I sang. And I wrote about what was black and dripping in the human soul. How do you know? I must have asked, my jaw flapping as she ran her fingers through my straight black hair and remarked how even my lips were moondust pale. And she started calling me Luna right then. She hinted that she was very good at reading people through sex, though of course now I know it could have been The Spark.

Then she told me she wanted to hear me play. She forced the Walker into my hands and made me play. I was too nervous to sing, but I let my fingers go by themselves, through riffs I’d fought with Derel over before we’d both begun to act like we didn’t care about the band or each other. And at the end of the song, the one that would later become “Tears” when I wrote words for it, she did have tears in her eyes and she told me she knew just how it was with me.

There is nothing like making love with your lover’s tears wetting your face. She kissed me then, and laid the guitar aside, and pushed me back on the bed, and it is not like we were wearing clothes anyway. She dragged her cunt along my thigh, hot and slick like her tearstained face, until she came, and then I flipped her over and fucked her with my fingers and ate her at the same time, until I don’t know how many times she came, piling orgasm on top of orgasm, until she turned the tables and did the same back to me.

That was probably the last time I had been in charge at any time in our relationship. Because when her fingers were still inside me, after my third or fourth orgasm, as she sank her other hand into my hair, she asked me if I was interested in leaving Luna, and joining her as rhythm guitarist.

That’s the real story of how I got whisked away. Because of course I said yes. Had she already passed the Spark to me? I think she had. I think it happened when she fucked me right after I had played. What would have happened if I had said no? Would the Spark have died, and me with it? I just didn’t know. There was too much we didn’t know. I know that through the fire and heat of music and sex and losing ourselves in both she passed it to me, but even ten years later, I knew very little more than that.

Calla and Basil had not had such an initiation from her. They were still waiting.

I should have realized when Saffron died that I might be in over my head. But I was so caught up in her, and in music, in finally devoting my life to someone and something that I enjoyed, that I felt I was born to do, that I didn’t worry about how the Spark worked. It was just the lifeblood that fed us, that kept each of us going, writing, composing, playing. Some nights, when we’d played to a fever pitch, it boiled over, and there were always wildlings around to party with, to soak up that energy and go home tired and exhilarated both in the morning. Groupies don’t know it, but it’s the Spark they are attracted to, addicted to. Maybe they figure it’s just the drugs, or the excitement, they feel it during the sex we have, that thrill singing in their veins. But unless they have music in their souls, it can’t hurt them. It passes through them just like the drugs. It’s only people like me that it takes hold of and doesn’t let go. And Saffron. And Nura and Rose, who were both gone now for years, replaced by a string of studio musicians of Glory’s choosing, until now, Calla and Basil.

I had started to shiver, there in the doorway, as if the coldness of her flesh were making me chilly. There was also the fact that I was wearing just an old show T-shirt and underwear. I felt cold and empty, and the shaking became worse.

Calla was there, then, dressed in show clothes. Anticipating a press conference, I guess. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Oh, Luna…” she started. “Be strong.”

But I wasn’t shaking with sobs. Glory had told me once that The Spark runs its course like a fever. It could be years and years, but the hotter it burns the more likely it is to burn you up. At some point it burns out and leaves you high and dry and unable to function.

She had waited until after I’d accepted her offer to spell all that out for me. When she told me, it felt almost like it wasn’t anything that I didn’t already know. Some hacks can go on forever because they never had it in the first place. But those who really had it… I didn’t have to hear her name out the others. The agonizing slow death of Elvis, who staggered on long after The Spark had abandoned him, trying to replace it with amphetamines and sycophants until both failed him. Janis Joplin, whose own insecurities about her talent strangled it and forced her into drugs also. Kurt Cobain. The murderous rampage of the octogenarian Paul McCartney outside Buckingham Palace.

My body was wracked with spasms. And suddenly it made sense to me. The Spark was going to go out for me, if I didn’t do something about it. The flame needed to be fed, stoked, with music and sex with other people who had it. Was that what killed Saffron, ultimately? Being cut off from her, and being unwilling to share it with others for his own survival? I wished I had known him better. Had he been losing it already, starting to burn out, when he left the Seekers? Had Glory and I been killing each other with the fighting and “creative differences?” The passion had turned to anger long ago, is that what made her burn up or gutter out?

“What happens now?” I asked Calla, who was squeezing me harder now, as I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

I hadn’t meant her to answer, but she did. “Luna, you’re sick. We have to get you to medical.”

“No!” What would they find? The Spark was a secret not even Huiper knew about. Who could I turn to? I had met very few others who I knew beyond any doubt had it. Bowie, still going in his thirteenth decade, re-invented once again. But I didn’t know how to reach him and couldn’t imagine the conversation we would have.

Looking at Glory there on the table, I considered the traditional ways out for a moment. But I couldn’t see myself drowning my “sorrows” in chemicals or crashing my flyer while “under the influence.” I took a deep breath and got the shivering under control for a few moments.

There was really only one choice. Pass The Spark on to Calla or Basil, or die. “Calla,” I said, trying to work up the nerve to say something.

But then Basil was there. “Huiper’s not reachable. We can try him again at four, though.” I looked up to see Calla take her hand, and I suddenly knew the two of them had slept together last night.

No, they were about to. They had each been waiting, hoping, to be the one that Glory took up with when she took up with someone again. Now she was gone, and they could see each other clearly for the first time. They looked into each other’s eyes, a kind of wordless connection strung between them.

They looked up at the first sound of the guitar. I had crawled over to where Glory lay, and slid the Walker from her hands to cradle it in my lap. I had no pick and just used my fingernails to strike a chord, the first of a descending series starting up on the neck and working my way down until it felt right. From there, I fell naturally into a minor key riff, alternating the strum with finger picking.

I could almost hear the parts that would go along with it, a cello, with a deep, rich bowed voice, and hand drums, a doumbek maybe. I kept playing. There were no words. I didn’t know what to tell them, what I wanted to say about her or me or my life. I just kept playing.

But eventually the song came to a close, as it cycled down and my energy flagged. When I finished, I saw they were both crying. I laid the guitar aside and went to them, and hugged them.

Exactly how that turned into me kissing Calla, I’m not sure. Her mouth was hot in mine, her cheeks wet and scarlet. Her breath came fast and hard. My hands traveled down her sides, over her hips. I felt her weight shift, as she reached out to Basil. Then she was kissing her, too, and in the back of my head I tried to pause. I had done many wild sexual things since leaving my quiet life on the moon. Some of them had been with Glory, some not. But I did not know what Basil had under her jeans and to some part of me that mattered.

The Spark did not much care for my squeamishness. The pang of fear I felt transmuted into thrill, and then my attention went back to Calla and I felt desire flare. I pulled her toward me, Basil trailing along like the caboose, onto the smooth, hospital-cornered bed. I began peeling off the clothes she had just put on. Basil took her other side, and very shortly Calla was naked there on the coverlet between us. Basil and I exchanged a look, then each of us took a nipple in our mouths and Calla gasped. In perfect harmony, we each slid a hand up the inside of her legs, teasing her. Then Basil’s fingers cupped over her mons, her labia, and then spread, opening her for me. I used the tip of my index finger to skim the cream from the edge of her vaginal opening, spreading it liberally around her clit. She moaned. I continued to move gently, my touch light, until she ground her hips upward toward my hand. But she could not move much, as Basil and I kept sucking her nipples, and I lifted my hand away from her.

She whimpered and Basil chuckled low in her throat in response. I played with her lightly until she bucked again and this time I let her impale herself on my fingers, my index and middle fingers curving into her, my thumb extended over Basil’s hand and then sliding between her fingers to where her clit swelled. One of her hands clutched at Basil’s jeans and I gave her a little nod. I had her cunt to myself then, and I took the opportunity to position myself there, my cheeks between her thighs. But as I licked her with long strokes, at first softly but then with urgent energy as her voice rose to a wail, I had one eye fixed on Basil. Under the jeans she had plain white briefs, with a noticeable bulge. My stomach tightened. Then she slipped those off, too, and I almost laughed with my tongue plastered in Calla’s cunt. Basil’s protuberance was a technocock of some sort, form fitted and wired to her nervous system, rising rapidly in response to the arousal signals her brain was sending. The skin was imbedded not only with millions of nanosensors, but with accompanying lightglow effects. Right now the base was a deep red but the tip was glowing white like an iron left in the fire.

Calla tugged at Basil’s brightly colored cock then and silenced herself as she pulled the slender machine into her mouth.

Baz gasped and steadied herself on the bed with one hand as Calla’s tongue worked. It felt to me like I was licking her, too, as if somehow, through Calla, Basil’s cock and my tongue were connecting. “Kee-rist…” she breathed, the only one of the three of us whose mouth was not busy, and yet she could barely speak. “Wow…it’s…”

Calla paused to grin up at her. “Is it as good as they say?”

Basil nodded, then must have read the questions in my eyes. “It’s new. She…paid for it.” And that was all she could say as Calla’s mouth went back to work. It made sense now, the way she kept expecting Glory to invite her to bed. I felt Calla’s clit spasm under my tongue and knew she was close to coming. I increased my pressure and she came while Basil thrust into her mouth, into the fleshy side of her cheek where I saw it bulge. Then I closed my eyes and concentrated on making her come once more, two fingers spiraling in and out of her while my mouth drew her clit in and I clicked my tongue on it. She rewarded me quickly, wailing again as Basil popped free.

I sat up and Calla looked at me, pleadingly, both of them did, and it was easy to see she wanted more of the technocock. Basil and she giggled a bit as we swapped positions, and I shifted around until Calla was sitting up, her back against my chest like two kids on a gravity toboggan. I reached around with my hands to brush her nipples and she arched just as Basil thrust in. Soon she had established a rhythm, and I let the waves of sensation come through her body and into my own cunt. I had tucked my head next to hers and she could turn her head to kiss me on the lips. I closed my eyes and kissed her and rode the wave of Basil’s backbeat for a while. Then she broke away and kissed her, too.

I was startled out of my reverie then by Baz’s lips on mine, her tongue searching urgently for something in my mouth. The Spark flared up to meet her hungrily. And then somehow she was climbing past Calla, and the two of them together climbed onto me. Calla lay along one side, kissing my neck and stroking me from breast to the top of my bush, while Basil crushed the erect technocock into the crook of my hip with her body.

“Luna,” she whispered, her throat tightened by desire. “Luna.” I quivered under her, the echo of the shivering fit I’d had before starting again. I knew if I paused too long… I knew I didn’t want to pause too long. Glory and I had played with dildos, the low-tech kind, from time to time—she liked sticking things into my cunt as a way to prove she was in charge—but never anything like this and not in a long time. I crooked one knee up and there was the tool, now glowing blue and green and casting an undersea look on Basil’s face, bumping up against the flesh between my legs. It had looked so slim before as she had pumped Calla’s mouth, but now I wondered if it would hurt when she put it in. I clutched at her sweaty back with one arm, the one that wasn’t trapped by Calla, craving it and fearing it all at the same time, which only stoked the Spark hotter. Calla’s free hand then, it had to be, reached between my legs and opened me wide, and Basil thrust upward through the slippery juices, then she adjusted her angle and sank into me.