Soul Siren (22 page)

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He looked pensive for a moment. Then: “I told her the truth. I told her she ambushed me, took me by surprise, not that I’m complaining.” He chuckled a little, and the pensive expression returned. “I know I said I thought it best to leave Erica alone, but…I don’t know. I think I’m not as over her as I thought. Jill’s nice. She’s great, really. But good sex doesn’t mean a guy gets mush in his head right away and falls in love.”

As they lay side by side in afterglow, she had kissed him, two fingers delicately stroking his penis, trying to awaken it again as she said baby, it’s okay. She wasn’t looking for anything serious. It would have been nice if they could see each other for a while, but if he didn’t want that, well, life was too short for vanity. She didn’t feel scorned at all. She hadn’t had her toes curled in so long, and she had really needed him. Luther said he felt strangely flattered.

“Stores must be closed by now,” he had said to her. “What are we going to do about your kitchen?”

“It’s all right. My contractor’s coming tomorrow.” And as he sat up, she added, “I can’t afford a set of golden handcuffs.”

I
couldn’t say a damn thing,” laughed Luther, ordering another round for us.

“She’s kind of like Erica in a way—needs sex, but not men,” he laughed. He sighed in exasperation. “What am I doing, Mish? Do I carry around a magnet that picks up girls like this? No, that’s not fair, I chased Erica. You think I’m a fool for still holding out for her?”

I told him I didn’t know. It was the safe answer, the diplomatic answer. I wasn’t really thinking about it at all. He couldn’t have known how I had disconnected from our conversation. My mind was frozen on the image of them together, the idea of Jill Chandler in an intimate embrace, all this sexual prowess for which she dropped beguiling hints and he had now confirmed.

“I think sooner or later, we’re going to have to have it out,” Luther was saying. “Erica and me. I thought she and I were cool, but I can feel it building again between us.
Drum
just skyrocketed, and now the label’s pushing her hard to get me in on the album after the follow-up—”

Jill. But Jill’s straight, I thought. Isn’t she? That first day I met her, I could have sworn she was flirting with me, not that I’m the best judge of the lesbian mating dance. After all, I hadn’t slept with anyone since—

“Which means we’re back together in the booth, and we got all this unfinished business…”

Why not Jill? God knows I needed to get laid. For the first time in quite a while, I was thinking of someone else without the perverse notion that I was somehow cheating on Erica. If Jill wasn’t interested, it could prove excruciatingly awkward for the short term, but according to Luther, she seemed able to glibly detach emotional investment from sex. Just like our boss.

In my own strange way, I had learned to do the same. Loving Erica, but finding physical release with guys like Odell all the way back to pimply fools in high school. Karen had been her only worthy rival.

If Jill could find me attractive, it would certainly keep her mind off snooping in places she shouldn’t. Morgan was calling me again. I would have to do something about that man.

Jill handled security. I had a lot of access given my position with Erica, a lot of power, but it wouldn’t hurt to have someone like Jill firmly on my side.

What had she said to Luther?
We’re like two zebras, dirty like this.
Those beautiful bodies speckled with paint. Crazy chick letting the ceiling fall in, putting him to the test as she went down on him. I wondered what she looked like naked. I wondered if she’d feel inhibited being with a girl—

“I said are you okay for a ride to the
Vanity Fair
thing tomorrow?”

“Sorry? Oh, yeah, honey, I’ll be fine. I got to run a couple of errands for Jill first and then I’ll catch up to you guys.”

“For Jill? What do you got to do for Jill?”

“Nothing,” I said, drawing a blank. “What are you talking about? I got to shop for Erica’s present for BSB’s president—he’s got his birthday coming up. And marketing is bugging me to go through those ‘video autographs’ for the charity kids. You know what my days are like, Luther.”

“I think you must be tired, Mish. We should call it a night.”

Well, well, I thought. Look at me. First the woman’s stirring me up with her intrusive questions and now I’m actually contemplating the idea of being with her. Here I am excited by the idea of getting Jill Chandler into bed.

O
nly a couple of weeks before my dinner with Luther, I was in Seattle on the tour when I had the impulse to phone Karen in Toronto. It had been a long time since we talked, only emails that said nothing important except that we missed each other. Neither one of us ever referred to our last argument in the Library Hotel.

I heard laughter first as the line was picked up, then: “Hello?” A female voice but not hers. More tinkling laughter in the background, Karen’s unmistakable voice, and the anonymous girl ordering her playfully, “Go! Go to your corner!” Karen saying
Hey, that is my phone, oh, Jesus, it better not be work
—

Just before the receiver was passed, I hung up. The girl who answered, she sounded so young.

M
y seduction of Jill began with modest thoughtful gifts. Stuff from the Body Shop because “Hey, I was picking up stuff for Erica, and I thought you’d like this.” An Eric Benét CD she might enjoy. I progressed to having my workouts at the gym coincide with hers, though I could never bring myself to join her on those punishing jogs. Jill certainly couldn’t guard Erica 24-7, and her deal allowed her certain days off. While she was there for most concerts and public appearances, Brown Skin Beats and the concert promoters were obliged to fill in any gaps. As Erica’s PA, I learned Jill’s official routine as well as my boss’s, so I was there and ready with a suggested evening out when she was available. We went out to dinner. Frequently. We hit the movies together, and there was a night when she fell asleep during a boring European picture, and her head rested against my shoulder. I stroked her short hair, and her eyes opened slowly. She didn’t complain. She muttered an apology and went back to watching the screen. I thought:
Contact.

One night after dinner, I invited her to walk back to the apartment with me for a nightcap, knowing we’d have it all to ourselves. Erica was doing a shoot for a video in the West Village, and I knew at this hour she’d be holding a cup of hot chocolate near a line of trailers with blazing white lights and police crowd-control sawhorses. They probably wouldn’t wrap until five in the morning. Knowing Erica, who was a good sport and very patient when it came to filming the videos, she’d probably go out for breakfast with the dancers and crew. I had the run of the place.

I went to the stereo and put on the old
Acoustic
album by Everything but the Girl, Jill watching me as I said, “Yes!” Loving the cover version that Tracy Thorn sang of a Tom Waits classic.
Will I see you tonight on a downtown train…

Then I fetched bottles of gin and tonic water, deliberately bringing all the fixings to the white carpet. Sit down on the floor next to me, I implied, shortening the distance between us. Jill plopped herself down, and I stretched out, carefully arranging the cascade of fabric of my sarong. She smiled at me and did a couple of leg stretches, saying the walk had done her good. She told me how much she’d always liked “Erica’s and your place.”

“It’s Erica’s, she owns it,” I corrected her.

“Sure, but I can see little touches of yours in the decoration. It’s your home as much as hers, right? Hey, what are you trying to do, get me drunk?”

Two-thirds gin, one-third tonic. I laughed and said, “Yeah. Maybe I’ll get the truth out of you.”

“Oh? What do you want to know?”

“Look, I don’t want to give you the impression Luther has a big mouth,” I said. “But he’s my friend, and we’re fairly tight.”

“Yeah?” she asked blankly, not knowing where I was going with this.

“Did you, uh…” I was on the verge of giggles. “Did you really force him to hold up your ceiling while you pulled his trousers down?”

She rolled on her back, laughing. “Ohhhhh,
that!
Damn right, I did! When I want something, I make sure it can’t get away!”

We both laughed for a long moment, and I topped up our drinks. Jill said Luther was fantastic in bed, but he had made it all too clear they wouldn’t have any future together.

I was consoling. “Well, Luther, he’s the brooding type. Only happy when he’s miserable.”

She shook her head dismissively. “I don’t know what it was with him. We did it, and then he couldn’t get out of my house fast enough. Maybe he just didn’t like the package when he unwrapped it.”

“Are you fishing or what?” I said. “You know you’re beautiful. You kind of look like Sade to me.”

She burst into giggles. “Please!”

“No, really.”

“You’re as bad as Erica. She thought I looked like that black actress from
Clueless,
you know the one. What’s her name? Oh, help me out here. She pops up in TV shows now and then, Stacey something—”

“Stacey Dash—”

“Stacey Dash, yeah. It’s because of the shape of my face, I think. It’s so oval.”

“It is not,” I insisted. “You’re very pretty.” I took a chance and leaned in to her, kissing her cheek near her mouth, getting close but not so close I’d frighten her away. As I pulled back, I paused. Our mouths close enough together to taste each other’s breath, our eyes staring at each other.

“Let me, um, ask you something,” she said with a self-conscious laugh. “Our going out lately…Have I been going out on dates, and I don’t even know it?”

I leaned in and tenderly pulled her full bottom lip between my teeth, sucking it and then kissing her. After a second of indecision, her lips returned the sweet pressure.

“I got to tell you this is new to me,” she whispered when the kiss was over.

“You mean you’ve never been with a girl?” I asked.

She looked down at her hands demurely, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“You got to be kidding? You and your yoga? I figured if you did that, you must have done some experimenting in your time. And from the sounds of it, you rocked Luther’s world!”

“Yeah, but being with a girl,” she started again. “I wouldn’t…I mean I don’t know if…”

“Let me teach you…”

She watched me in fascination as I reached out and took her hand, bringing it first to my mouth to suck her middle finger. And then I guided it under my sarong. I pushed on her finger to nudge it between my pussy lips, directing her silently in my desired rhythm, and then with my other hand I was cupping her breast, my fingers stealing under her jumper. Her flesh was warm, her nipple already puckered and waiting for my touch. I needed to see her. She kept fingering me as I gently lifted the jumper over the swell of her breasts, taking in the sight of those lovely buds, Jill’s mouth still open in fascinated arousal.

“Kiss me…”

As she leaned down to join our mouths, I felt her finger slip into me all the way. She kissed me quickly at first, shyly, a smile of brilliant white teeth flashing as her eyelashes brushed my cheek. I was still kissing her and didn’t even notice the sarong suddenly parted like curtains on the rug, my pussy and legs exposed.

“Can I taste you?” she asked me. So shy. Like I was all those years ago with Karen.

I cried out with the contact of her mouth. Her hot breath on my clitoris eliciting a moan even before I felt the wash of her tongue. God, she had such instincts! The way her tongue probed between my lips, her fingers strumming my clit. I opened my legs wide for her, lying back and enjoying myself in a submissive way I hadn’t felt since…Yes, since Karen. She made me come but didn’t relent as I finished, returning her hand to my pussy and letting her mouth explore my bare stomach, kissing me between my breasts. I couldn’t strip for her quickly enough, and she still had her thin jumper pushed above her tits, the large areolae swollen, the nipples jutting out. It was more erotic in a way, seeing her like this, still clothed but the layer peeled back. Her chest was bigger than I expected, her breasts round and full and reminding me of Erica. That was it. That was what exhilarated me in those first wild embraces. The target of my seduction seemed to offer me the physical best of my lovers, the girlishness of Karen’s small body and the ripeness of Erica’s, with Erica’s sensual aggressiveness.

“Oh, God, you’re so beautiful,” I whispered, and I lifted both my hands to cup her tits, to knead them and fondle them.

She looked glassy-eyed for a moment, as if frozen in pleasure. And then she said softly, “Can I trust you?”

I didn’t understand. I would have nodded yes to anything she asked me in that moment. Yes to everything. Sensuality. Release. Joy like you’ve never had with a man, baby. For the first time in my life, I think I was making love with a sense of hope. I loved Erica, and I knew I would go on loving Erica, but I needed an outlet for my own physical cravings and frustration. I liked Jill. I thought on that night that I could develop real affection for her.