Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (28 page)

They nodded. “Get in line,” the other girl said, gesturing to the sidewalk behind her.

“You his mom?” asked the first.

“No!” I said.
Idiots.
“Is he up there?” I asked.

They nodded together, again.

Jesus
, I thought. But wait, I was falling for Terrance’s lie. So what if he did throw in some facts, like three students with a crush on him, perhaps always at every office hour and hanging on as long as possible. I’d been that way, I recalled, with a PolySci teacher my freshman year. I used to rock myself to sleep with a fantasy of him taking me away for a weekend, a little B & B in New England, where we’d find ourselves snowed in and he’d make love to me nonstop, except for meals and sleep. I nearly wince at the memory of it, now. Nearly.

I put the key to Terrance’s building in the lock and heard the girls get up.

“You have a key?” one asked.

Not too bright, these girls. They didn’t move forward, but I knew it: they wanted in. I don’t know why I said what I said next. It was stupid, done on a whim. “FBI,” I said. Maybe it was because we were so separated in age that I felt that natural inclination to test how gullible they were. Maybe I just didn’t appreciate their
Terrance’s mother
crack. Their faces froze long enough for me to get inside and latch the door behind me. I didn’t need an entourage. Through the glass door I saw them mouth F B I to each other, then eye me warily. I could feel the coldness of their stares as I found the stairwell up.

I found the door easily. A pushpin held a postcard of the Andromeda galaxy to the door. The image had the words YOU ARE HERE with an arrow pointing to an imaginary earth. Beside it was another postcard with a phrase in French. It had an exclamation point, is all I can remember. It was Terrance’s roommate’s, I gathered. My inclination was to knock, but I was afraid of the complications if I just received another “he’s busy” in a female voice. And if Terrance’s stories were real, and the third student was inside, well so what? It wouldn’t be embarrassing for me. I’d seen much worse.

I turned the key, entered, and heard it all right. A low husky grunting of female pleasure, but when I rounded the corner into the apartment, I froze: there atop a man whose face I couldn’t see was a corpulent middle-aged woman licking her nipples and pivoting back and forth on her hips. She had gray locks in her hair. This was not, it would appear, the third college student. Not a chance. His roommate? Oh god, his parents, perhaps visiting and taking the opportunity of a vacant apartment to fulfill some needs? Whether I needed to be flushed with embarrassment or not hinged on knowing. And the answer dangled there: ropes.

A sad plummet went through me as I realized that Terrance’s e-mails had all been genuine. Sad, not because I felt he’d cheated on me, but because I could have prevented all this had I not been so selfish. That should be
me
waiting down there on the steps. That should be
me
atop him now. True, there was something amiss with my logic, but in the moment I felt something like shame for having let this happen.

So what does a person say in a moment like this? I said, “Is that Terrance under there?” The man’s entire torso strained and I knew it was him without the woman having to say anything, though what she did say when she abruptly turned to look at me was “
Sacrament!
”

She halted her throes, only then letting me hear the heavy breathing that had been masked by her grunts. “I
said
he was tied up! Get out! Out!”

“Eloise?” said Terrance. “Eloise!”

“Ah,
merde
,” the woman said and dismounted with a slurp and came past me in a hurry and I prepared to be tackled. She flew past me with such gravity that I leaned in for the punch, but instead I found myself in empty space. She scooted past me, entered a bedroom, and slammed the door. I could hear the sound of dresser drawers being opened and slammed shut. Pepper spray? Knife? Pistol? Instead, the door stayed closed, emitting the high whine of a vibrator, solid at first, then oscillating with every moment of pressure. I walked over and looked down at Terrance, his erection hardened as we both heard the roommate climax in the other room. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I would have guessed little pig grunts. Instead she came in high yelps. Never judge a person by their size.

“So,” I said, casually, looking down at Terrance. “Read any good books lately.”

He laughed, his face wet, and his body wetter—from his stomach to his thighs.

“Quebec did a number on you,” I said. “What’s her name?”

“Marie.”

I nodded. “There’s two girls downstairs. Waiting. Yours?”

He nodded.

“But not anymore, right?” I warned.

He laughed and closed his eyes.

I surveyed the apartment. So this is where he’d been all this time. No mystery to it. No lies or deceptions. Just Terrance, a man I used to know and who hadn’t let me go, here in a shabby little apartment with lots of potted snapdragons gobbling at the window.

“C’mere,” Terrance said. “Please?” He looked at me then his erection.

I looked down at him incredulously. He was thinking what I thought he was thinking. The testosterone was clouding his mind; he had forgotten what kind of woman I was. I rummaged through their kitchen and brought back a knife and swiftly cut the nylon cords around his wrists and each foot. “Take a shower and meet me outside,” I said, and then I walked toward the door, knocking once on Marie’s. “Nice to meet you,” I called out.

“Fuck off,” she said, loudly.

The two girls rose as I exited the building. “What did he do?” they asked. “Is he in trouble?”

“Maybe,” I said, passing them and surveying the street. I supposed it looked like I was looking for my car, a nondescript Lincoln with tinted windows. The girls followed my stares. Really, I was looking for a place I could spend some time until Terrance could join me. But there were few shops here and no cafés I could see. So I sat down on the stoop and padded the steps indicating the girls should sit, too.

“Tell me what he’s done to you,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Their gum, it seemed, was gone. Swallowed, no doubt.

“Have you had intimate relations with the professor?” I asked.

They looked at each other. “Define
intimate
,” the taller of the two said.

“Have you had sex?”

“Oh. No,” the other said, happily.

“Has he been intimate with you in other ways?” This was cruel of me, I knew, but when do you get such an opportunity for fun?

“Define oth…”

“Cunnilingus,” I said.

“Oh.” They nodded.

“Not on Tuesdays,” I said, as though this day of the week held some special significance.

They nodded again.

“That’s not good,” I said. And then I went too far. It wasn’t my business. But I wanted to know. “Have you performed fellatio on Mr. [redacted]?

“Oh no,” they said, the tall one adding, “well we haven’t, but our friend has?” Her reply was framed infuriatingly as a question.

“There’s three?” I said mock-surprised. “Any more?”

“I don’t think so,” said the tall one. “Except for the one upstairs.”

“His tongue wouldn’t be able to handle it,” said the other and the two laughed but it was laughter that was hoping, praying, to draw me into it. A laughter to defuse. “Why is he in trouble anyway? We’re adults now.”

“No one’s in trouble,” I said. And then I found myself putting into plan my desires, easily, almost unconsciously. “Not unless any of you have
any
intimate relations with him again. He’d be fired,” I said. “He’d be kicked out of school. He’d never get his PH.D. and would spend the rest of his life hating you and the closest he’d get to the stars would be a janitorial job waxing the floors of the planetarium. And you two,” I said. “You’d have to repeat the course, and there’d likely be a mark on your school records. Employers sometimes look at those. To weed out potential hires that could give them sexual harassment issues.”

They almost cried at my words, you could see it. Not at Terrance’s phony predicament, or even my blustering threats, but their very real one: their star-filled Tuesday boxes would now return to just shooting stars, empty space, and they’d have to go back to their own species and the awkwardness of college sex. I could imagine how disappointed they’d be in their next lovers, and how inferior those lovers would feel. Yes, I was jealousy, cruelty, protectorate incarnate. But those were my terms. Those girls had a good twenty years of youthful dalliance ahead of them. Me, not so much. And when it came to Terrance, well, I had some terms of my own to work out with him.

I shooed the girls off the landing and back to wherever college girls go between classes. I can no longer imagine.

I took their place, but then an afternoon rain sent me across the street to take cover under an awning of a shop. Terrance came out just as the rain subsided and stood there looking up and down the street, his shirt darkening with the rain’s trailing mist. He looked incredibly disappointed to not find me waiting and I let myself savor that moment before finally stepping out from against the glass of the shoe-repair shop.

“Terrance!”

He did that little head-up jerk that young men use.
I see you. Hey. What’s up.
You know what I mean. Anyone coming by (and there was no one), would never have imagined that a half hour ago he’d been tied up and at the mercy of his roommate. His hands came out of his pockets and he went for the embrace which I took coldly. Perhaps a little on purpose, but he ignored me. He sniffed my neck for far too long. I pushed him back. We were not going to be animals. Not today anyway.

“What did it?” he said.

“You got under my skin,” I said.

He smiled and pointed up the street. “Vietnamese food?”

I shook my head. “Give me your phone,” I said.

He unlocked it and handed it over, saying, “Thai? Italian? Or we could split a sub.”

It took me just a few moments. “Here,” I said, handing it back.

“That’s like twenty minutes away. That’s not food.”

“No,” I said. “Food can wait.”

“Does this mean…?”

“Start walking,” I said and gave him a little push, though I did let his hand fall into mine.

“Glad I don’t need a test to hold your hand,” he said. “What, exactly, do you think I’ve been up to?”

“It’s not you. It’s college girls and lonely librarians.”

We followed his phone to the nearest clinic where, after two hours, we emerged with a cotton ball taped to the crook of his arm and a hope that he was clean as a whistle. He thought I was a hypocrite for not doing the same, so I, too, was pricked. A simple bandaid covered my puncture. Blood runs thicker in me, I suppose. Neither of us had been tested before or during our last
affair
so it felt a little cart-before-the-horse to be doing so now, but much had changed. Being in the city made it seem like Terrance should be tested, and myself too, I suppose, though I hadn’t slept with anyone but a book or two.

Unsexy actions, unsexy prose, I know. But there you have it. I walked Terrance back to his apartment then I was whisked off via BART to Petunia’s building, my other arm hurting just a tad from the flu shot I’d also consented to. In one arm, out the other.

My son and Eli were both in school now that autumn was here; the entire floor was spookily quiet. No pinball racket. No shouting, no music blasting over the floor’s audio system. Now and then I could hear the quick flush of water from upstairs, but otherwise hardly anything. The faux-natural noises were the hum of power strips, the ticking of lights, the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Most cities, I imagine, hold spaces like these. Empty honeycombs.

During the days that followed, Terrance continued to write.

Exquisite Eloise,

I have been spending my nights at Berkeley to avoid Marie. She vows to tie me up again. You awakened to this kind of pleasure slowly, passionately, remember? But Marie—I think I’ve created a monster. I’ve called the clinic every day. They’re saying the letters were sent out today. Tomorrow!”

Terrance

Negative was positive news. Negative, negative, negative. The only bad news being Terrance’s cholesterol numbers, which he e-mailed me, tests I hadn’t even known were part of the blood work. I didn’t call him when I received the letter, though. If I had been deliberately careful on the physical side of things by having us both tested, I wasn’t going to be careless on other fronts. I wrote him instead and kept my phone number secret.

T,

Thursday. 1 p.m. Castro. Corner of [redacted] and [redacted].

E

I’d chosen the place and time carefully; 1pm gave us only a couple of hours until my son came home, which meant too little time for anything physical to happen. I was going to reenter this relationship slowly, with all the same safeguards I’d been instructed to take at work with my clients. (I’d just been hired at this point.) Don’t share personal numbers or mailing addresses. Even though my son and I would be moving the next day into our own apartment, I didn’t want to even give away the location of Petunia’s building just in case I found myself staying there again. On the San Francisco city map I’d kept in my pocket since arriving, I drew a route that would confuse even the most attentive follower. Ever read Paul Auster’s
City Of Glass
? There’s a character in the book who spells out messages by making letterforms from his path down city streets. A walk around the block spells an O, for example. Or for a real-life example, some runners deliberately run routes that create shapes on the maps of their GPS running apps. A read about a guy in Tokyo who drew the outline of Godzilla. Another in New York proposed marriage to a fellow jogger with the words
U MARRY ME?
, jagged but unmistakeable, on their shared map. If I remember, it came to something like fifteen miles. What was I going to say in our route from our meeting place to Petunia’s building? What pictogram was I going to leave on the streets? A secret? A warning? No, a scribble. An un-retraceable route that even my heart couldn’t follow, let alone my head.