Camptown Ladies (38 page)

She wasn’t asking to be with me, not fighting what she knew we couldn’t have, only asking if I loved what she had built for me. It would have been downright diabolical, if she had not been so tragically and completely sincere.

And there was nothing for me to do but to reach for her then, pulling her up off her knees, feeling her hesitate and make a tiny whimper (a sound that was so unlike any sound that should come from this woman) as my face came close to hers. Then, knowing I was so completely lost, my mouth had nowhere to go but to sink into her lips, and the blinding warmth and softness of her stripped away what remained, if anything, of my sanity, and all I could think of was having her again.

Somewhere in our long and frenzied kiss, I told her, “I love it here, I love you,” and I tried to warn her with a whisper, “We just . . .” but she covered my mouth with hers and swallowed my words, and I didn’t try to warn her again. Then, when my breathing was so heavy and she knew I couldn’t speak, she pulled away to whisper into my ear, “I’m leaving tomorrow. I can’t be near you anymore.”

My stomach was falling into a pit a mile below earth, and I wanted to hang on to her. I wanted to stop her. I kissed her, hard, and this time she pulled away.

“I told your sister,” she said, “and I should have told Vince, but I couldn’t. I can’t love him. Not with you here. Maybe if I leave, someday I’ll be able to love someone—” She stopped, maybe seeing how the words crushed me. Love someone else?

She seemed to register the pain I was feeling and she kissed
me back, harder than before. I took her face in my hands and in desperation, mixed with a senseless passion, I kept hold of her and considered telling her not to leave. But what would I say?
Please stay so we can continue to torture each other? Or worse, Stay so my brother will be led on to greater pain when he finally found out about us? It would be crazy to think we could hide this—especially now, with this house.

But Erica stopped my thoughts with the heat of her mouth as it trailed from my lips to my ear, then to my neck, and I realized where I wanted her to go next. I realized, too, there must be no proper place for me other than hell, and if I was going to hell, then I might as well be totally fucked. I loved this woman. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care what happened after this. I pulled her onto the bed with me.

I found myself in two places at once. I was back with her the first time in the woods, and with her now, the perfect scent of her coming back to me in full detail (how had I forgotten so much?), remembering the feel of her skin and the sounds she made. I was remembering what it had been like to have her then, and the sublime feeling of what it felt to have her now. It was too much. It was just right. It was not enough. It would never be.

I was so lost in kissing her and the feel of her body once again under mine, that I wasn’t aware she had slid her hand down the back of my pants until she was digging her nails into my backside, deftly sliding one hand around my hip to land between my legs. She snaked her fingers under my underwear then, and when she reached me, I let out what sounded like a cry for help.
Nobody is going to help you now, Marie.
Erica gasped as well when she realized how ridiculously hungry I was for her, and she managed to pull me up higher so she could get her hand inside, and I heard my zipper buzz and bust wide open from the strain (or I hoped it was that.) Oh. My. God.

I imagined a switch being flipped on Willy Wonka’s candy machine, causing an automated motion of movement of only two speeds: zero or one hundred. I was immediately at one hundred, lacking no buildup at all, the electric current of her touch sending me into a rage of pushing against her, until she had completely filled
me. I cried out, and she cried with me, telling me to come for her, that she would not stop taking me like that until I came again, and she kept her word.

Finally, I had to arch my back to pull her hand from inside me (her experience too new at this lesbo sex thing to know that my last two cries were delirious pleas for her to stop before she might kill me with pleasure). It was maddening, but this made me more starved for her, and I roughly tore her clothes from her body as she looked up at me, breathing marathon style, as I exposed first one breast, than the other. Her chest rose toward and away from me with breathing. It was everything I could do to keep my concentration so I could completely undress her, and when I had, I had no patience left to undress myself. So, this was how I took her, with me fully clothed (only my zipper sprung) totally getting off on the erotic contrast of the complete nakedness of her, against the fully dressed-ness of me.

I wrapped my lips around her nipple, all the while watching her face, seeing the color rush to the light skin of her face, and noticed the harder I kissed her there, the wider she parted her mouth. By the time I had settled into a rhythm between tracing her nipple with my tongue like it was a circular racetrack, digging in extra hard between every third lap, her lips had opened wide to form that silent and perfect “O” shape And I was getting off on the sexual Erica, the Erica that could look surprised and out of control like that, the woman I hardly knew, and might never fully know. Although her lips formed the perfect “O,” instead she said, “I love you,” as her head tossed from left to right, and I dragged my lips across her chest like a starved animal with an inexplicable sweet tooth that could not chose between two of the most tantalizing cupcakes served on the most beautiful buffet laid out before me.

What was the point of holding back now, I thought, as I said, “And I love you,” and I indelicately showed her this by grabbing both her hands and pinning them to the bed as if she had been resisting. Something about being fully dressed made me want to hold her down like that, and I saw a flash in her eyes that told me this made her more desperate for me. So I kissed down from her breasts, across the length of her body, and I never let go of her
wrists, bringing them with me, as she softly cried out in frantic anticipation. She needn’t have worried, since I had no intention or willpower to tease her slowly once arriving at the center of her.

My plan was to latch on to her
there
, and feed on her until her mouth formed that “O” again, but this time I would make sure the “O” would not be silent. I coached myself to take her, hard at first, but just for a second, like announcing your presence by slamming a fucking door.
I am here.
But then, since I owned the equipment myself (and isn’t that just the huge advantage of being a lesbo?), I backed off and sucked on her so softly, almost not sucking at all, but just keeping my lips around her to make her insanely want it, need it, but Erica’s hands somehow broke free from my grip and now were on the back of my head, pushing me harder against her; I should have known it was ridiculous to think I could direct this entire job. The contractor was ready. I took her the way she needed me to.

“Don’t stop,” she commanded. Not if I ever wanted to work here again, I thought. Once again, the thought entered my mind that I wanted to die right here.

First a stillness came over her, then came the tidal wave of her coming as she let go of my head to slam the mattress with both hands in a loud, open slaps against the plastic, as if she was now announcing
her
presence.
I am fucking, here!

It would have been easier if I had died right then, at the moment of pure heaven, or pure hell, whichever was the case. Besides, I had no other logical plans for my life after what we were doing. But then I imagined my mother’s horrified reaction, not of my death but of the newspaper photo of my face planted in the crotch of the gorgeous Camptown Ladies’ contractor, and the headline: “Lesbian Dies While Eating In Log Cabin.”

Gradually, I felt Erica’s body coming back down to earth, but she wasn’t relaxing. I could feel an uneasy stiffness settle within her body. I crawled up so I could hold on to the middle of her, the side of my face pressed tightly to her stomach, still able to breathe in the delicious
scent of her, and then I felt her belly tighten, and I knew without looking up that she was crying. What have I done to this woman? I was thinking this as I tightened my hold on her. Besides my sister, this is the strongest woman I had ever known and I had reduced her to tears more times in the last few months than I could count. She’s supposed to be mine, I thought. Mine. I needed to stop this. I needed to fix this.

“I’m going with you,” I said, but this just made her stomach tense harder. I tightened my arms around her, but I didn’t look up at her so she couldn’t see the fear in my eyes. “I mean it. I’m going with you. We’ll disappear together.”

The trees had been right in their leafy Magic 8 Ball prediction. Erica and I had both found happiness again. But the damned trees hadn’t been specific about how long this happiness would last. When I woke up, she was gone, and I was left disoriented from the fresh memory of her. I wanted to go back to my dreams—to before that time, where the betrayal of my brother didn’t exist at all, and all my memories were buried by the blinding pleasure of being with her.

I found a note she’d left for me on the bed, written on the back of a torn envelope. It was not Erica’s style to overstate what we already covered, so she wrote only two sentences:

I love you, but not more than you should love your family and I only wish you will consider living here, since I loved building this home for you. Erica

I sat on the edge of the bed, wanting more than anything to be able to tell her at least one of her wishes had come true: from the moment I saw the cabin in the woods, I knew it would be my home.

Thirty-One

Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner

Lisa found me at the log cabin the following day. It was late afternoon and I was starving, but I had been unwilling to leave for fear the memories would fade, though they showed no signs. Lisa didn’t question why I was at the cabin. She just informed me, like I was being served papers from a criminal court, that Vince had left a message at the condo to ask if we could get the whole family together tonight for dinner.

“He says he has something important to talk to us about,” Lisa said.

I winced. “If he doesn’t think we know they’re seeing each other again, why would he call us together to tell us Erica left?”

She studied me, and I saw that she was no longer angry. It was far worse. I saw pity in her eyes. She spoke so gently that I braced myself for what was next, but it turned out bracing myself was not enough. Lisa said, “It’s not that. He said he and Erica would be at our place by 7:00.” I had to sit down, and since there were no chairs, I sat on the floor.

Lisa sat down next to me and did just the right thing. She said nothing.