The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (54 page)

A girl so thin, her biceps were scarcely bigger than her wrists, lay on the mattress. Her face was turned towards the audience. Her eyes were huge and frighteningly vacant. The tattoos on her
stomach and legs had become misshapen squiggles of color as her flesh withered and shrank beneath the designs. The shroud-color of sickness clung to her.

Behind the blue swirl of incense, Myriam moved over the girl. Her heavy, pendulous breasts lolled against the other’s flat chest, huge, coffee-colored nipples brushing smooth pink ones.
She lifted the girl’s head, tongue-kissed her, then lapped her way down the skeletal torso to the straw-colored thatch between her thighs.

The girl didn’t move or give indication that she knew what was happening. Nicholas strained to see if she even breathed. Her eyes were unblinking. He wondered if she might have died.

Myriam angled herself between the girl’s legs. A thick, purple-crowned phallus lolled between her thighs. Never had Nicholas seen a dildo so life-like; nor could he determine where it had
been strapped on. For a disorienting moment, he suffered the illusion that the cock was actually Myriam’s, that she had somehow metamorphosed into a male.

As she slid inside the girl, some of the watchers sank into each other’s arms and began to couple with great urgency. Matings of the same and opposite sex in positions both conventional
and exotically perverse while, as always, there were men who touched no one but themselves, waiting to anoint the fornicators with their gush of semen.

A woman with long black hair threaded with grey slid her legs through Nicholas’s. She dipped down and took his cock into her mouth, but not even that distracted him from what was taking
place on stage. The girl that Myriam fucked had come to life now. Writhing, bucking, whimpering, her back arching so the outline of her ribs showed clearly beneath the blue-white skin.

Tears streamed down the girl’s thin face. Myriam stopped thrusting. The girl calmed. While those in the audience continued their mating, the two on stage lay quietly together, neither of
them moving, suspended in that moment of sublime transcendence that, to Nicholas, had seemed to last for hours, that moment which had removed one illness to replace it with another, a kind of
hopeless longing akin to homesickness.

He put his hands down on the head of the woman sucking him. His fingers threaded through her hair. He held her still and shut his eyes, forcing himself to remain motionless as he willed the
experience he’d had with Myriam to return. It was in vain – nothing was recaptured, only a greater and more enervating sense of futility and loss.

Gently he slid himself free of the woman’s warm, willing mouth. Gazed down into her face searching for some remnant of the experience with Myriam – because he felt nothing, did that
mean she felt nothing, too?

“Have you been with Myriam?” he asked.

She nodded – but only after a pause, warily, like a child reluctant to confess a minor theft. “I wasn’t sick, though. There was just a lump, a tiny one, that went away on its
own.”

“When you were having sex with her, what did you feel?”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember it,” and dipped her head again.

“Wait,” said Nicholas, lifting her chin. “Do you think about how it felt to be with her? Do you dream of being with her again?”

“I
told
you, I don’t remember what it was like,” the woman hissed. Fear capered in her eyes. She pulled away, and Nicholas let her go.

On stage, Myriam lifted the girl up, so that they sat facing each other, the girl astride Myriam’s cock. Again, they became motionless, staring into each other’s eyes.

It’s some kind of hypnotism
, thought Nicholas, but even as the idea occurred to him, he rejected it. He hadn’t been hypnotized when he was making love with Myriam, nor in the
grip of some sex-induced trance. What he’d experienced, for that matter, hadn’t even been entirely sexual, although perhaps he simply hadn’t recognized it as such, wasn’t as
well versed with the parameters of eroticism as he’d have liked to think. Maybe not everyone who coupled with Myriam felt it. Maybe they were too frightened to admit that they did or, like
Sonny, their minds could simply not expand to accommodate the magnitude of the experience.

Around him, the orgy grew more lusty, the cries and grunts and moans converging in a strange, atonal symphony. He felt absent from his own skin, detached from the eager pulsings that stirred his
cock to stiffness. He stood up, retrieved his clothing from the pile beside the door, went outside to the men’s room in the corridor and got dressed. As he was coming out, a slender woman
with a lustrous tangle of frosted blonde hair was hurrying along the corridor. She wore a suede skirt, high heels, a black leather vest over a white turtleneck.

Nicholas considered making some minor witticism about etiquette at an orgy (don’t worry, late-comers are well thought of), but then thought better of it. As she breezed past, she
half-turned toward him. He glimpsed her face.

“Wait!”

She kept going.

“Elise!”

He could see she tried to pretend the name meant nothing, but there was a slight cringe when he said it, as though he’d lobbed a small stone.

“Wait, I know it’s you!”

He grabbed her arm, spun her around. “Why are you running from me? What are you afraid of?”

“Let me go!”

“You
knew
what you were doing to me,” he said. “When I thought back on it, the last thing you said was that you were giving me something, too. You
knew
you were
sick. You did it to me on purpose.”

She pulled away, anger in the twisting of her crimson-lined lips, fear in the overbright sheen of her eyes. “Let go of me!”

“Not until you tell me why you wanted to infect me. You didn’t even know me. Why?”

She turned away, shoulders slumping in defeat. “I know you won’t believe this, but I never in my life purposely set out to hurt somebody like I did you. I’ve thought about you
so much, wondering what happened to you and to your wife. I am truly sorry.”

“I don’t give a damn about your being sorry. Answer the fucking question.
Why?
”

Sooty tears spread from the corners of her heavily mascara’d eyes and tracked down her cheeks. “I needed money. For doctors’ bills, all kinds of things. I needed money, and I
had to get it any way I could.”

“You mean, somebody paid you to have sex with me, knowing you were infected?”

She nodded.

“Who?”

But the question was already answered in his mind even before she said it for him: “Sonny.”

“Jesus God, that vicious bastard.”

“He’s obsessed with getting revenge on you. Almost as much as he does –” she nodded toward the door behind which Myriam performed “– her.”

“But that doesn’t make sense.”

“He says you rolled on him years back. Set it up so you walked after only a couple years, and he got sentenced to twelve.”

“That’s not how it went.”

“Maybe not, but he thinks it did. That makes it true.”

“So he wanted me dead. Then why did he tell me about Myriam? She saved my life.”

“Myriam cured Sonny, too, but she couldn’t cure him of all the hate he carries around inside him. She also fucked with his mind. Maybe he thought she’d fuck you up, too, and
that would be worse than whatever else he could do to you.” She looked toward the door and fidgeted with the buttons of her vest. “I need to get in there.”

“Go on.”

“I’m sorry, Nicholas. Can you forgive me?”

He started to answer with something along the lines of,
no way, you fucking little bitch
. Instead he said, “Are you cured, now?”

She shrugged. “So far, so good. It would appear so.”

“Good. I’m glad for you.”

“About Sonny – I shouldn’t have told you he hired me. You aren’t going to do anything, are you?”

“Only what I wish I’d done a long time ago – blow the fucking scumbag’s brains out his asshole.”

“I know it was you who sent me this. I want to know why.”

Sonny Valdez took the photo Beth handed him and stared at it as though seeing it for the first time. “I thought you’d be interested in a side of your husband’s past I’m
betting he never told you about.”

“He worked for you?”

“Worked for me. Serviced me, whatever.”

“So you were his pimp?”

“An ugly word, pimp. I don’t like it. I’d rather think of myself as a mentor. Nicky-boy was just a kid then, strung out on drugs. He did what he had to do to survive. I showed
him the ropes, helped him along the way. Made a man out of him, you might say. Occasionally made a woman out of him, too.”

“And later on, he joined you in the drug business, is that it? Which was how you got sent to jail.”

“I got sent to
prison
,” said Sonny, “ ’cause Nicky-boy ratted me out. He rolled on me to shorten his own sentence.”

“Why did you send me that photo?”

Sonny shrugged. “Why not? I wanted to.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean why would anyone do something so evil?”

“Ah, you mean you’re asking me a metaphysical question, then?” He must have caught the change in her expression, because he said angrily, “What’sa matter, you think
an ex-con don’t use words like metaphysical? Well, maybe ex-cons like your husband don’t, but I do, lady. I read Nietzsche and Plato and Kant. I get my Tarot cards read too and my
astrological chart. So you want to know why I’d do such an evil thing? Because I can. Because I like to stir the pot and see what comes crawling out.”

“I want to know where my husband is.”

“What makes you think I know?”

“Because I know he came here to see you. Something happened – I don’t know what – but he’s disappeared.”

“If he ain’t come home, my guess is that he met someone,” said Sonny. “Name of Myriam.”

“Is she one of your whores?”

“Not mine, but yeah, you could say she’s a whore. She does live sex shows. People pay big bucks to watch her fuck.”

Beth swallowed. A debate raging inside her head:
Do I want to know any more? Do I go on?

She said, “Where does this take place?”

Sonny shrugged. “She has different venues, but I can’t say where she is. If I knew for certain, I’d be on my way there now.”

Beth flinched and bit her lip. “She’s that spectacular in bed, you mean? That all men fall under her spell, not just my husband? He can’t stay away from her and neither can
you?”

“Yeah, but not in the way you think,” Sonny said. “I find out where Myriam is, I ain’t going there to have sex with her. Having sex with that witch is the last fucking
thing on my mind.” His eyes shifted to Beth. “Having sex with Myriam, at any rate. But you now, you’re different. More my type. Dark and slender and kinda
classy-looking.”

“Forget it,” Beth said, “Short and fat and flatulent doesn’t do it for me. Besides, Nicholas would kill you. If you’ve ever seen him angry, then you know I’m
not exaggerating.”

“Maybe so, but he ain’t here now, is he?” He moved closer, slowly occupying the space between Beth and the door. “See, this is how I see it, Beth. Nicky-boy, he fucked me
over. I figure, by rights, anything belongs to Nicky-boy ought to belong to me.”

Myriam stared at him with weary eyes. “Show’s over, hon. It’s time to go home.”

Elise and the rest of the audience had all departed. Myriam and Nicholas stood alone on the small, shabby stage. “What’s wrong? Didn’t you get what you wanted?”

“Yes. The tests all came back negative. My blood’s clean. As far as I know, I’m healthy.”

“Then what are you here for? I’ve done all I can do for you. Go home or, if you have no home, then find one.”

“I can’t,” said Nicholas. “When I was with you, something happened. I have to know what it was and how I can find that again. Otherwise, there’s no point in your
having cured me, because I won’t give up searching. I’ll pay you anything you ask. I’ll get myself reinfected if I have to, if that’s what it takes to be with you
again.”

He realized what he must sound like: either pathetically desperate or dangerously obsessed.

Myriam brushed at a lock of her platinum hair, shook her head. “Forget about what happened. Go back to your family, if you have one. Make up for the time that you’ve
wasted.”

“But that’s just it.
Everything
in my life feels like a waste, now. It’s all a sham, a lie, a smokescreen covering something else that I glimpsed and then lost sight of.
When I was inside you, somehow – God only knows how – I
felt
you pull the disease out of me. But more than that – it felt like everything that I was or that I am – my
history, individuality, my thought patterns and personality, everything I’ve always thought makes me
me
– that all fell away and there was still something else left. And what was
left, that felt like the
real
Nicholas, the true Nicholas underneath all the fabrication. It felt like there was something underlying everything else, something besides me, or what I used to
think of as me, and I touched that for a second. All I’m asking is that you help me find that again.”

“You can’t,” Myriam said softly, and this time there was real sadness in her eyes. “You must be still and let It find you.”

Sonny Valdez leaned against the door, arms folded. Bloody scratches ran diagonally along his cheek. He stared at Beth, whose lip was bloody and starting to swell.

“You really thought that if you took the bait and came here, I’d let you have your say and then just waltz out the door?”

“This is a mistake, Sonny. Let me leave.”

“Oh, I’ll let you leave, all right. Just not yet. And maybe not in quite the same condition as you come in.”

In her mind, Beth had prepared herself for this moment a hundred times, just as she’d also tried to think out what she’d do if she awoke to find the house on fire or found herself
caught in undertow or on a plane whose engines suddenly stalled. The trouble was, you couldn’t really predict the specifics of such events – least of all whether it was better to try
reasoning with a man like Sonny or fighting back or playing dead and letting whatever happened happen.