Heat Page 6

  The simulation sex went on for a while, and just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to take any more, he pulled away.

  I waited.

  He was against me again, the head of his penis poking at the round cheeks of my ass, poking, prodding, until…

  “What the—!”

  The head was in—it was in…Oh God, he’d entered that part of me that had been off-limits to every man I’d ever had sex with. But he was in, and…

  And…

  And…

  Actually, it didn’t feel half bad.

  “Are you okay?”

  Neville’s breathing was labored; his hands gripped my hips for dear life. “You’re tense.”

  Of course I was tense. I had never had a dick in my ass before.

  “I’m fine, baby, I’m fine,” I whispered, and turned my head a little, planting a slight kiss on his chin, letting him know it was okay—I was okay with it.

  I pushed my hands against the wall, moved my feet farther apart, and pushed my behind into him.

  “Oh, shit, baby, oh, shit.” Neville groaned and inched in a bit farther.

  My anus constricted.

  “Damn,” he muttered again. “Every part of you is as sweet as sugarcane.”

  I told myself to relax, just relax.

  He pushed again.

  “Oh God, oh God.” Neville was shouting now, pushing in deeper. His grip so tight on my skin, it was painful.

  He was hurting me, but the pain was mixed with pleasure. I wanted to tell him to stop—to go deeper—to pull out—to go deeper.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, bent into him a bit more.

  I was moaning, groaning, clawing at the wood as Neville started to stroke. It was a slow, steady in-and-out that caused Neville to howl.

  “Are—are you in?” I asked breathlessly. “Are you all the way in?”

  “Y-yes.” Neville could hardly respond. His breath came in ragged sheets. Me, I couldn’t believe I’d taken something that size up into my—

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Neville began to squeal. Two more strokes and Neville’s entire body went stiff for a second and then began to vibrate, as if he’d stuck his finger into an electric outlet.

  When it was over, he collapsed onto my back, breathing heavily.

  We were quiet, just the sound of the water beating down onto our naked bodies.

  “I have to meet a client later,” Neville said after settling himself in the chaise longue beside mine. We were spending the day on the beach.

  I smiled. “Oh, really?”

  Neville squinted at the sun-kissed ocean before pulling his shades down over his eyes. “About seven o’clock, at the Megan.”

  “Dinner and dessert?” I teased, reaching for my plastic cup brimming with piña colada.

  “Yeah.” He laughed.

  “Can I go too?”

  I didn’t know why, but I really wanted to see him in action.

  “Ah, c’mon, Crystal, you don’t want to see that.”

  “Yeah, I really think I do. I think it will put everything in perspective for me.”

  Neville’s right eyebrow arched. “Perspective?”

  “I mean, I know what you do. I’d just like to see it firsthand.”

  “You’ll look at me differently.”

  “No, I think I’ll see you more clearly.”

  Neville sighed, reached for the sunblock, squeezed the white liquid into his palm, and said, “Lay back, you’re starting to burn.”

  I wore a Norma Kamali dress. It was at least ten years old, but it was a classic. The sea moss–colored linen looked breathtaking against my skin. I took a cab down ahead of Neville. I needed to get there early, to get a good spot.

  I requested a seat at the front of the restaurant, which would give me the best view of the harbor, Neville, and his date.

  Neville had a standard table at the Megan. It was the restaurant where he brought all of his first-timers.

  The first time was the only time he would pay. After dinner and dessert (Neville à la Neville), the woman would be baited and pulled aboard and he’d never have to dig into his pocket again.

  “Would you like to see the wine list?” the waiter asked me.

  “Yes, please.”

  Neville told me that this woman, a Ms. Sonja Everett, was fifty-two years old. She was the mother of one daughter and the grandmother of three. Her husband had died three years earlier, leaving her a fortune. He’d met her on the beach a few weeks ago and she’d hired him to take her grandsons Jet Skiing and then hired him again to take the whole family for a day trip around the island on her dead husband’s catamaran.

  Neville knew she was interested in him; he’d caught her staring at him a number of times. Peeling his clothes off with her eyes. She’d given him a hundred-dollar tip after each hire.

  I wanted to know how he knew her worth; I couldn’t imagine someone offering up that type of information to a total stranger.

  “People talk. She’s been visiting the island for years. And I Googled her.”

  My eyes turned into saucers. I had no idea that being a gigolo had become so sophisticated.

  The waiter returned. “Have you decided, ma’am?”

  “Yes, the Pinot Grigio, please.”

  “Wonderful selection. Would you like to order an appetizer?”

  “Not right now.”

  “As you wish.”

  Neville said that he’d engaged her in conversation; they’d shared stories about some of the same countries they’d both visited. Sonja was impressed.

  “Is she good-looking?” I asked, really hoping that she was a dog.

  “She’s okay, I guess, for an old white woman. A nip and a tuck wouldn’t hurt, but the old gal is holding up pretty well. She’s got great tits.”

  Neville was a tit man, that’s for sure. But I also knew now that he was an ass man.

  I grimaced but forced a light smile. “I can’t imagine that they’re real…her tits. She’s over fifty.”

  “No, they’re not.” Neville laughed. “She hugged me and it felt like cement blocks pressed against my chest.”

  “So how did you approach her about, you know, the date?”

  “I told her that I thought she was an amazing, beautiful woman and I’d like to get to know her better and she suggested dinner, and I suggested Megan’s.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Easy as pie.”

  The waiter returned with my glass of wine. I sipped the sweet nectar and chuckled at the thought of what I was doing. Chevy would be shocked, but then she would be impressed. Geneva—well, who knew what she’d think about all this. We just didn’t seem to be on the same page anymore. And Noah with his crazy ass would have wanted to pose as my date so he could eavesdrop too.

  The maître d’ was walking a patron in my direction. She was a tall Nordic-looking woman with hair the color of an eggplant. The hours in the sun had left her skin ruby-colored and speckled with brown spots. Her face was lined, not heavily, but enough so that I could see the wrinkles beneath the candlelight.

  Our eyes locked and she offered me a brief smile. I returned the smile and saluted her with my wineglass.

  The maître d’ pulled the chair out for her. My stomach flipped—her back would be to me, and I wanted to see her face. I almost said something, but then Sonja said, “No, I’ll sit there instead,” indicating the chair that would allow her to face the ocean.

  After a while she turned to me and asked in her heavy Irish brogue, “Are you dining alone?”

  Her question startled me. I turned and looked into her deep blue eyes.

  “Yes, I am—and you?”

  She smiled. It was a naughty smile. “Do you mind?” she said as she pulled a cigarette from her box of Dunhills.

  “Not at all.”

  She lit it, inhaled deeply, and then blew a stream of smoke into the air before her. “I’m having dinner with my future husband.”

  I began to choke. On my saliva, on the air around me,
on her words!

  Sonja panicked, extinguished her cigarette, and then joined the waiter, who was patting me heavily on my back.

  “Are you okay?” the waiter asked, reaching for the glass of water on my table.

  I nodded my head. “Yes, yes, fine, thank you,” I said gratefully as I took the water from him and carefully sipped it. The waiter waited a moment, saw that I was fine, and then moved on.

  Sonja remained standing beside me.

  “Are you quite sure, darling?” Her hand was on my shoulder.

  “Thank you, yes.”

  She returned to her seat, picked up the box of Dunhills, and placed them back in her purse.

  He was late.

  It was seven-thirty and Neville still had not shown up. I was on my second glass of wine and had broken down and ordered an appetizer. Sonja was checking her Rolex for the umpteenth time when Neville finally strolled in with a bouquet of birds of paradise.

  He leaned in and kissed her affectionately on the cheek while simultaneously winking in my direction.

  The curtain was up. It was showtime!

  Geneva

  i looked at the clock. It was just past one when I ushered the young girl out of my apartment. I’d stuffed a five-dollar bill in her hand. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” I muttered as I showed her to the door.

  I’m sure she thought I’d lost my mind, calling her yesterday morning like a lunatic. She already had two heads scheduled but promised she would be here first thing Sunday morning.

  First thing Sunday morning turned out to be just past one in the afternoon.

  I’d already changed my mind twenty different times about my hair, and when she arrived I had decided on keeping my new do.

  “Sorry,” I said again as I gave her a little nudge on her shoulder, helping her over the threshold and out into the hallway.

  Just as I turned the lock on the door, the phone began to ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Chica,” my coworker Darlene purred from the other end of the line. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I got two tickets to a Broadway show—my man gotta work, and anyway, I don’t like Broadway.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I wanted to know if you’d like to go? Maybe you and your boyfriend, Dickie.”

  “Deeka. He’s out of town.”

  “Oh, no. What about one of your friends?”

  I started to say that I didn’t have any friends. But then I remembered that Chevy was on her way up. “What time does it start?”

  “Three o’clock.”

  I hadn’t been to a play since Deeka took me to see The Color Purple. “Okay, why not?” I said.

  “Oh, goodie, chula. I will leave the tickets at the box office.”

  “Okay, so what play is it?”

  “Um, let me see. Wait a minute.”

  There was some rustling of papers, and then she was back. “Okay, it’s called Drama, Who Don’t Got None?”

  I hadn’t heard about that play.

  “Which theater?”

  “The Lincoln.”

  Chevy

  the Lincoln? Geneva, that’s not Broadway!”

  “Well, yes it is—it’s located right on Broadway. See here?” she said, pushing the paper she’d scrawled the address on in my face.

  I sighed. I hadn’t been to the Lincoln Theater since I was a teenager. I felt that the Lincoln Theater was a ghetto outlet for everyone and anyone who thought they were a playwright.

  I sure as shit didn’t want to go.

  “Geneva, it’s already after two. You say it starts at three? We don’t have enough time to get there.”

  “Yes, we do,” Geneva said, reaching for her purse. “We’ll catch a cab.”

  We stepped out of the cab and onto the sidewalk. There were dozens of people milling about, mostly women ranging in age from eighteen to seventy-five and dressed in everything from “hoochie couture” to “Preach, Reverend, preach” Sunday go-to-meeting attire.

  I rolled my eyes. This was going to take all the patience I could muster. Geneva and I walked over to a booth that had a piece of loose-leaf paper taped on its glass enclosure. Scrawled across the lined white sheet in black marker was TIKIT BOOF.

  I winced.

  The young girl behind the glass seemed to be of Asian and black descent. A female Tiger Woods. Her hair was dyed yellow, pink, and jet black and hung in choppy layers around her face. When she smiled, the blood red lipstick she wore on her lips was also tracked across her teeth.

  Her left eyebrow, right nostril, and chin were pierced with silver loops, and when she said, “Thanks” after Geneva presented her benefits card as ID, I saw that her tongue was pierced as well.

  As we started toward the door I was almost knocked over by a large, shiny black man dressed in a canary yellow zoot suit. I was temporarily blinded by its glaring brightness but recovered quickly enough to see that that man’s wing tips and cowboy-like hat were the same color.

  “Country mother—” I started.

  “Hush your mouth,” Geneva warned.

  We stepped into the lobby and were greeted first by the smell of franks and then the scent of Smirnoff vodka. What a combination, I thought as my stomach turned over.

  Directly in front of us and standing behind a little cart of liquor and plastic cups was a man I was sure I’d gone to high school with, so I quickly turned my head, lest he spread the rumor that Chevanese Cambridge had become a lifelong subscriber to Ghetto.com.

  Geneva made a beeline toward the frankfurter station.

  “Can I have two with everything?” Geneva began, holding up two fat fingers. “What you gonna get, Chevy?”

  As hungry as I was, I wasn’t about to eat one of those murder dogs. Pig snouts, rat guts, and some of everything were in those franks.

  “Nothing.”

  We were shown to our seats by a tall, lanky boy who couldn’t have been older than seventeen. He wore a black do-rag beneath a white Pirates baseball cap. I just shook my head. What was going on with the youth of today?

  Geneva managed to ease her wide hips down into the small seat. It took her another five minutes to arrange the platter of food she’d carried in with her. She had changed her mind at the last minute and ordered three hot dogs along with two bags of potato chips and a large plastic cup of Pepsi.

  “I’m PMSing,” she whispered guiltily when she saw the disgust on my face.

  “Whatever.”

  The MC came out, and to my astonishment it was the shiny black man in the bright yellow suit. He fed the crowd a few corny jokes in his country drawl, laughing out loud at his own wit while the stage lights clung to his gold teeth. I looked at my watch—it was after three.

  “Wasn’t this supposed to start at three?” I said, more to myself than to Geneva.

  “Guuuurrrl, you know black people can’t get nowhere on time.” Geneva laughed as she bit down into the first hot dog.

  Finally the house lights dimmed. Streams of people made their way to their seats. The stage curtain went up just as a woman larger than Geneva settled herself down beside me. I immediately became claustrophobic.

  The performers began delivering their lines, most of which I couldn’t understand because the speaker system was shit.

  It was obvious that the people in the first five rows didn’t have a problem hearing what was going on, because they were howling with laughter. The woman beside me must have had bionic hearing, because she was shrieking with glee. Not only that, but she was saying the lines right along with the actors, like she’d seen it ten times or more.

  “That’s some funny shit right there!” she leaned over and screeched in my ear.

  It was going to be a long afternoon.

  Fifteen minutes in and Geneva was on to hot dog number three. I watched from the corner of my eye as she devoured it in two bites. I pulled my eyes away and placed them back on the stage, but nothing of interest was going on there. Just five characters snappi
ng their fingers and twirling their heads on their necks as they spouted lines in perfect Ebonics.

  I closed my eyes. I would sleep through the torture. In no time I was dreaming, about what I wasn’t sure, but it was getting good when my nose was suddenly flooded with the scent of fried chicken. My eyes flew open and my head jerked left, toward the aroma. Big Mama next to me had brought in a bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken!

  She pulled leg after soggy leg from that bag, chomping furiously on it until her teeth hit gristle and she began to suck.

  Geneva’s radar went off and she leaned forward, snatching a peek at the woman. Leaning back, she whispered from the corner of her mouth, “Now she’s got the right idea.”

  Crystal

  i’ve got to say that I was turned on and stayed turned on until Neville strolled in at three o’clock in the morning smelling like Sonja.

  The dog and I was wired, so when Neville walked through the door we both popped right up.

  “How was it?” I asked, my voice filled with excitement.

  Neville gave me a sideways look. “You’re sick, you know that?” he teased.

  I ignored him. “Tell me everything.”

  “I will not.” He laughed as he stripped out of his clothes and headed to the bathroom. Raven followed; me, I remained in bed.

  When he reemerged, terry cloth towel wrapped around his waist, I was still waiting for the details. “C’mon, just the juicy parts.”

  “There are none.” Neville yawned as he pumped the Vaseline Intensive Care lotion into his hand and began to slather it onto his legs.

  “You did have sex with her, didn’t you?”

  He pumped again—now he worked the cream into his arms, across his chest. “Yes, but it was horrible.”

  “What?” I pulled my legs up to my chest.

  “She was as dry as the Sahara. We had to use a lubricant.”

  “You’re kidding.” The excitement in my voice dropped.

  I was thinking about my own twat. Would it be a wasteland by the time I hit fifty?