He drove slowly toward the house. He wasn’t anxious to get there. He could have gone somewhere exciting for his vacation. Instead, he would be housesitting for two long and dreary weeks, while John and Laura were in Europe.
He had resented John’s moving out to the suburbs. He had resented John’s absorption with his family. He hadn’t really liked Laura when John had brought her around, when they were back in college, and he didn’t like her now.
He pulled up to the house, a big white old wooden affair with trim all around. It looked like a huge wedding cake.
Ah well. What was to be done? John had been his friend since high school. And Laura, though she rubbed him wrong, had fed him often enough. They felt it was their duty to have the poor bachelor out as often as possible. And he had come: brought dumb presents for the kid, complimented Laura’s cooking from time to time. John was still his friend, and when they got a few minutes alone, he still enjoyed talking with him. At least John didn’t get on his back about the joys of family life.
He assumed they meant for him to sleep in the guest room. He’d slept there often enough, when he’d drunk too much and stayed too late to head back. It was a nice room, a little small and a little cute. He’d never had a very good look at it; flowered sheets, a framed drawing of a solitary black cat, long and slender. What was he going to do with himself for two weeks? Maybe he could get a playmate to come out and join him. Why be all alone and miserable? He deserved to have some fun, too.
He hadn’t brought much. Just a couple of changes of underwear. He put his bag down on the bed. Then he took the bag off and lay down for a minute. He was just lying there and relaxing, when he felt it. The feeling.
The feeling started right in his groin. It was warm and lazy. It wasn’t a sexual feeling. Or one should say it wasn’t just a sexual feeling. It was something else. It was a weird gleefulness. He felt it flow up to his mouth. He felt it make him smile. A strange giddy smile.
He felt an exhilarating freedom. Freedom from what? He lived in the big city in a bachelor apartment. He was free do to whatever he wanted and he usually stayed out all hours. What was free about being alone in a family house, in a family town, having nothing to do, alone, in a narrow little bed with purple flowers on it? Exotically beautiful flowers. He saw them grow large with tongues stemming out of them. He saw the flowers, then he thought of Laura.
Which in itself was strange. Because he never thought of Laura — anymore. When John had first brought her around for his approval, he had thought of Laura. He had thought of her strange glow. The roses that seemed to bloom under the glass in her cheeks. She was just a girl. Just a pretty girl. Just a pretty Jewish girl. He’d known many since, but not quite like Laura who had a mysterious Biblical aura. He could see her, an oval urn on her dark head, bending over the well. Their relationship had knit itself almost instantly into a cold hostility. She had her possessive mitts all over John. It was impossible to get John out of the house. You either accepted the whole package, which included Laura with apron, and John playing with Jennifer, pushing her on her little swing, or you didn’t. At least Laura could cook and she was nice enough to the pieces of ass he brought around, which were always greater pieces than Laura, who had a few silver threads in her hair after the baby was born. Silver threads that spun around her like a silken web.
He felt the sheet with his open hand. Light. Cottony light. He had sheets. He had a woman come in to change them. He paid money for the best sheets. But these sheets. Light. Clean. Beautifully clean. He saw Laura bending to put them in the washing machine. Wearing a white cotton peasant blouse with little pink flowers. As she bent her brown nipples rose up over the line of the blouse and down again, like little brown ships on the sea. He knew they were brown. He just knew. Her breasts were no bigger than peaches. John was not hung up on anatomy. Supposedly he and Laura hit if off because they both majored in English and liked the same books. That’s the kind of thing that got John excited, books. Those golden brown Hebrew nipples probably meant nothing to John. All these years he probably never saw them. Just reached over and took a feel without even looking.
But not him. He was a connoisseur of the female breast. He’d noticed that Laura was small breasted when John first brought her around. That’s why he was never jealous, why he never wanted her. But now on her sheets, he saw her bending before the open washing machine. Bending willingly, lightly dancing. Open and light before the washing machine.
The room was sterile. The bookshelves held nothing that interested him. He only read books in his field, computer science. He had no use for this literary stuff of John’s.
He went down the soft carpeted stairs to the living room. It was all white and silver. The silver chrome chairs, the white walls and white rug, the clean angles and lines, all looked like the interior of John’s head. On the wall a wild tapestry, green and purple, a red navajo sun.
There were two little steps that divided the living room from the playroom. An easel with colors of the rainbow in little wells. Stuffed animals. A room full of Snoopy and Charlie Brown. A room full of toys, though Jennifer must have taken all her favorite toys with her to her grandmother’s house. Jennifer was in Maine. With John’s folks. While John and Laura were alone. In Switzerland, in Vienna, in Paris. Alone lifting their glasses. Again the feeling moving up his chest. He was with them at the table. With them as the ruby wine kissed Laura’s lips. With them as he never was when he was really with them. In their bodies. In John’s tall lanky body, his tousled grayish-brown hair falling in his eyes. His watch gripping his wrist. In her. In her graceful body. Her black black hair. Her sloping Semitic nose, her sensual nose. Her eyes opening wide. Her dark dark eyes opening wide. The brown wine in her brown eyes. She was smiling. Smiling at him from Paris. Smiling and in the crack of her mouth, silver, silver and moist.
He looked through the records. All that rock. He didn’t go in for rock. He’d liked jazz in college. He and John played “Take Five” in every bar they went. Now he didn’t listen to music much. Had a slight interest in Country Western. Most of the girls he took out wanted to go to the places where they could ride the wild bull and listen to the fiddles strum at them like excited frogs croaking in the night. He usually obliged them as it got them hopped up good for skipping into bed. John of course had his Beethoven and his Bach. But all this rock. Must be Laura. Laura’s other side. Laura’s new side. When did she play this stuff? Surely John wouldn’t want to hear it. He looked through the records. Led Zeppelin. The Rolling Stones. The Who. Jefferson Airplane. The Airplane sounded familiar. He put the record on.
“Alice. Alice ten feet tall. Go tell Alice.” He could see Jennifer in his playroom. Jennifer with her father’s pert little pose. He’d never paid much attention to Jennifer. He didn’t know how to talk to kids. Now he saw her sprouting up, getting bigger and bigger than the teddy bear, her eyes getting starrier and starrier than the Raggedy Ann that stared at him like a bag lady on acid from the other room. Jennifer was getting bigger and bigger, her legs like tree trunks. Monstrous Jennifer.
The music was pounding. They had speakers in every corner of the living room and playroom. He went to the easel. He took the paint. He took the red paint. He started to paint Jennifer’s monstrous head. Monstrous eyes. Green mouth. He painted Jennifer’s muddy hands and muddy feet. He painted her muddy dress. But he’d never seen little Jennifer in a dress. She was always in jeans. With muddy freckles and muddy teeth. He started to throw muddy paint on the muddy paper. Some spilled onto the floor and onto the toys. But the room was already littered. The room was already messy with Jennifer’s mess.
The teddy bear was over in a corner, staring with a simple blank expression. He socked the bear in the stomach. He threw him up to the wall. He socked him down where he had no balls. Then he pressed his thick mustache against the bear. He kissed the bear on the lips. He kissed and kissed and kissed the bear.
The record was awful. He couldn’t listen to that stuff. It would make him crazy. Those psychedelic things always had. He always got something like a migraine at those light shows. And it always made him impotent. So he’d stopped that scene. Stayed away from those kinds of chicks. Didn’t like hippie chicks anyway. Not clean. The kind he liked were always clean. Fastidiously clean. Eternally douched and perfumed, that’s the way he liked them.
Laura had a sour sweet smell under the arms. She was clean, but she had that sour sweet smell. He remembered the first time he noticed it. She had been running in and out of the house bringing drinks, bringing the salad, bringing the quiche, bringing the pilaf to go with the shish kebab. She had run to see why Jennifer was crying. She had run to put on the Horn Concertos, so they blew out the receiver into the back yard. She had been skittering and running, all the while he and John sat relaxed with their wine out in the back yard. It was one of the few times he hadn’t brought a date out with him. And then she had come and bent down to give him the offprint John wanted to show him; she had run in the house to get it and run back. She had bent down, and he had smelled it. Light odorous body perfume. And he had seen it too. The brown nipple. Yes now he remembered. A rim of a nipple had appeared like a line of ribbon. He’d been half drunk and had only noticed peripherally. He wasn’t trained to watch the chests of girls who didn’t have big boobs. He’d been caught off guard. It was only now, staring at the tapestry with the red navajo sun burning a spot on the cloth, that he remembered. John was an asshole. What did he know? All he cared about was his punctuation theory of post-modernist poetry. He judged a poem by the number of periods and commas used. He built little pyramids from this punctuation data. That was what the paper was about. Most of it was too technical, academic jargon, but that was the gist of it. What did John know of passion.
What did John know of cunnilingus. He knew. He knew red cunnilingus and brown cunnilingus and yellow yellow cunnilingus. But he didn’t know Laura cunnilingus. He didn’t know Laura’s mushroom brown cunt. Growing, growing like Alice. Sweet sweet aromatic mushroom cunt of Laura.
The house was getting the best of him so he went out in the back yard and lay in the Mexican hammock under the tree. He’d never been in the hammock before. Never felt relaxed enough. Always sat in one of the green director’s chairs. Now he lay in the hammock and he watched the twilight fade, and saw the orange sun sink, and saw the little fireflies flit around him, and saw the dots of stars fill the sky, and lay and gently rocked his body and did nothing.
Perhaps for the first time in a long time he did nothing. No programming. No drinking. No sexing. Nothing. Just lay there and let the little stars tickle his ninnies and fondle his soft gentle prick. Fondle and play with his little prick. Like lovely little Jennifer tucking her teddy in bed. Little Jennifer’s little soft fingers tucking his little soft prick in bed. And it rose and it growled. And it ate little Jennifer all up.
He went in then. He hadn’t had anything to eat. He looked in the refrigerator. There were seven different cheeses: Camembert, Port Salut, Feta, Brie de Meaux, Danish Fontina, Jarlsberg Swiss, Rondele. There were grapes, there was a French baguette, there wasn’t much else. Evidently they expected him to stock the icebox himself. He hadn’t. And now he knew he wasn’t going to. Because now he knew, knew from the feeling his body was telling him, that he wasn’t going to leave the house. No, he was going to stay in the house.
He took some Chivas Regal from John’s well-stocked bar. They had just preceded the drug generation. Except for hash at parties, he wasn’t into that. Nice square green scotch glass. Refrigerator made its own ice. Touch of a button. He sat down the drink, looked through the records again. Tchaikovsky’s Symphony Numher 6 in “B” minor Opus 74 “Pathetique,” Vaclav Talich Conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. That wasn’t John’s. He hated Tchaikovsky. Who said they had so much in common? He saw her name childishly written on the side, Laura Greenstein, and her little address too, 134 Meadowlane, Los Angeles, California. Just like the little Jewess to be from L.A. He saw the little Jewish princess packing her little romantic record to take off to college. Saw the little thing putting the record on with her virginal little hands quivering at the needle. He put it on. Felt the violin strings building and building to a climax. Building and building. Opening. She was opening and opening like a flower. A purple flower opening its mysterious black center. Swirling like a spiral.
He woke up with fuzzy breath. But he wasn’t hung over. The secret was not to eat much. Hangovers were a myth. He’d found he never threw up, if he just didn’t eat much. It was eating that gave you that sick feeling the next morning. He wandered into the kitchen. Cracked open a raw egg and popped it into his mouth. Had a nibble of cheese. He was a new man.
All day he puttered around the house. Played some records. Nibbled on cheese. Looked through photos in the album. He was even in some pictures, looking awkward like an ingrown toenail hanging next to John, Laura, and Jennifer. He waited for the sun to set. Then he waited no longer.
He went into their bedroom. Saw the big bed on the floor. John sleeping on the floor? No not John. How had she drawn him into her trap? She’d have had to use witchcraft to get John down on that floor. Get him down. A witch’s power. Then he saw her. Saw her laughing at him. From every wall she was laughing. Laughing with her mouth open down to the root. And what was she saying? She wasn’t saying anything, just laughing.
He opened the closet. He smelled her smell. He smelled it in her clothes. He saw the black blouse with the yellow design across the top. And the two little drawstrings, so easy to unstring and reveal her lovely brown titties. He’d seen her in that blouse. Seen the little ripples under the fabric. Seen her. Seen her and wanted her for twenty years. Wanted her now. From the top shelf. A lovely little green hat with a long purple feather. He stroked the feather. He saw her in the hat. Maid Marian of Sherwood Forest. Feather vibrating gently in the breeze. He’d never seen her cunt. Never seen her feathersoft black cunt.
Then he tore the place apart. Looking for something. Something about John. Something John had. Something John used. Instruments. Instruments of torture. Erotic implements. He found nothing. Nothing. He found a rock. A big hunk of quartz next to the bed. Jagged, carved in steps, a shiny apricot rock. He pressed the rock against his chest. He held the rock squeezing it. Squeezing the sharp edges in his hand. He looked at the ceiling. Saw her face on the ceiling. He waited. Waited for the woman of the house to come and possess him. Waited for the house to swallow him, eat him like a giant mushroom folding its mouth over him.
He awoke exhilarated. He dressed and went downstairs. Ate a raw egg. Looked around in the basement for a hammer and nails. Puttered around. Mended a hole in the fence he had noticed. Watered the tomato plants. Picked one and put his finger in the sun warm center.
Every day, for the two weeks, he found little chores for himself to do around the house, and every night he returned to the bed, Laura’s bed. He would lay naked in the bed and wait for Laura to enfold him.
It was late. He lay naked on the bed. He held the quartz against his belly. His penis was rising, rising. He felt for the first time he could see all of Laura’s body. At last he bore witness to her black feathery mystery. Then he heard the Volvo coming up the driveway. Slowly he got up, put on his pants, and went downstairs to greet the family.
© Copyright Yellow Silk and reprinted with permission.
