The Opposite of Love (10 page)

"What? Who?" she stammered.

"Whoever is out there," he answered. "Look."

Without releasing her, he reached for the switch and flipped it; the opaque glass became transparent and there were easily ten men standing on the other side staring at her. As she watched, their faces fell and they stopped looking at her.

"It's one-way glass," he said. "Now you can see them but they can't see you."

"Holy hell," she said.

James put on a condom and pulled her toward him, pushing her forward so she was bent over with her hands on the door for support. He lifted the skirt of her dress, pushing into her with a single stroke, aided by her wetness. She stared straight ahead at all these men just waiting for another look; none of them had left the outer room, and they seemed to be having trouble finding something to look at besides each other.

James held her by the hips and she pushed back against him as he stroked, feeling that her orgasm wasn't far off, but wanting to let it build just the same. She recognized one of the men from the pool table, the one with the goatee. He was in a towel now, sitting in a chair, stroking himself absently, his eyes closed. Had he been stroking himself when he could see her? Was he actually masturbating to her? She wasn't even naked; she still had her bra on and her dress was bunched around her waist.

James slowed his stroke and asked, "Which do you like better, this way, or so they can see you?"

"I don't know," she said. "I think I like it this way better." She liked being hidden from everyone, but part of her wanted
him
to see her, the guy with the meaty cock in his hand.

"How about this?" James asked, flipping the switch yet again. The light changed, but not her view. "Now they can see in and you can see out."

But she'd already figured that out by the way the eyes of the man in the chair locked onto hers when James flipped the switch. He could see her all right. He gripped his dick with renewed enthusiasm and Melanie watched, taking James' cock while this man stared at her, expertly moving his hand up and down and over the shaft, forehand and back, teasing the head, his legs tensing, his towel falling all the way open.

Melanie was loving everything about this; the kinkiness, the exhibitionism, the voyeurism, the flat-out hedonism. She was about to come just thinking about how crazy this was. She made eye contact with the man again and said to James, "I'm going to come." As expected, the man read her lips. But what happened next she couldn’t have imagined. The man got up from his chair and took a step toward the glass so that his cock was only inches from Melanie's face. Still bent over and bracing herself against the glass, she looked up at him, smiled, and parted her lips, letting her tongue slide out, giving him his target. On cue, the man let out a grunt and shot all over the window, leaving four streaks of his juices as Melanie bucked against James and came in excruciating spasms of pleasure.

"Whoa, that's not cool," said James, and he flipped the switch again so that no one could see in.
Quite the opposite
, Melanie thought,
hot as hell.

Melanie was pretty sure that from his vantage point behind her, James couldn't see that she'd been locked in a sex stare with the man with the goatee, so he probably didn't know Melanie had invited this advance, which was for the best. James turned her around and laid her on the small bed, taking her missionary style for the few minutes it took him to come, grunting and thrusting one, two, three times.

They were naked, standing on either side of the breakfast bar, each with a spoon, passing a pint of Ben and Jerry’s between them. She was drifting between thoughts, thinking about her presentation at the conference coming up on Monday, then about calling her mother to see how her date had gone.

Her mother’s latest beau imported, exported, bought and sold exotic cars. Melanie imagined that his clients must be some of the most intolerable people on the planet. She’d probably even sold houses to a few of them.

She was glad to have made the move to consulting when she did. Her life was much less hectic, and she immensely enjoyed her work and her colleagues—especially in smaller doses. Plus, this dating business took more time than she’d imagined.

She’d grown comfortable with James over the past few months. Comfortable with him stopping by for a quickie in the middle of his shift, with his thirty-minute showers, with his spare clothes taking up several of her dresser drawers, and even with his naked floppy danglies trotting around her house. She’d given him a key so he could let himself in when she was running late. They’d never spent the night at his house, in fact, she’d never even been there. She just knew it was somewhere in the Summerlin area.

At first he’d complained about the distance from his place to hers and insisted upon being recompensed for his inconvenience—with sexual favors, of course. Melanie feigned reluctance but was happy to oblige; as it turns out, she quite enjoyed giving in the bedroom, and the ability to make a man come with her body, her mouth, her hands, filled her with a sense of power. The strokes she received in return—physical, emotional, and verbal—made her feel like purring.

The way a man behaved after he’d been well served was mystifying to her. James, in particular, became a happy child, curling up to her, smothering her with limbs wrapped around her waist, her neck, like an affectionate boa constrictor. She could have asked him for anything in these moments, but it would have been poor sportsmanship. Oxytocin was his kryptonite. And anyway, she had everything she wanted. She couldn’t say if she was heading toward the L-word, but she was happy.

“You with me?” James asked.

“Oh sorry, babe. Did you say something?”

“I didn’t say anything, just looked like you were somewhere else.”

“Just thinking about work stuff,” Melanie said.

James looked a little frustrated, so Melanie started mentally scanning the evening looking for a reason. She handed him the ice cream.

“So, five days, huh?” James asked.

“Yep. Five glorious days in beautiful downtown Austin, Texas. She rolled her eyes. Truth be told, it was one of her favorite cities, but James had gotten cranky the last time she’d left town, so it did no good to indicate that she might actually enjoy herself without him. He jabbed the spoon into the ice cream, making craters where Melanie had smoothed it out.

“Will any of your old boyfriends be at this one?”

“We’ve been over this. It’s not like there are dozens of them. And I’m not with them for a reason.”

On occasions when he’d questioned her, she had declined to give James the intimate details of her past relationships, only the ‘where,’ ‘when,’ ‘how long’ and the obvious—that it hadn’t worked out. There was no talk of sexual prowess, penis size, or depth of feelings involved in the relationship. Everyone had a past, and while hers was tame to be sure, it was pointless to relive it.

“Will Joel be there?”

“I honestly have no idea who will be there.”

He frowned, but let it go.

James sat down on one of the stools and Melanie put her elbows on the breakfast bar and leaned in so that they were eye to eye.

“I love what you did to me tonight,” she said, and gave him a wicked smile.

He smiled in return.

“You know what I love about you?” he asked.

“Everything?”

He laughed. “Well, almost everything. But in particular, I love the way you don’t have any hang-ups about your body. Like now,” he waved his spoon through the air, “just walking around naked without a care in the world.”

She shrugged. “You’ve already seen me naked a thousand times and from every angle. What would I have to care about?”

“Well, you know how women are about their imperfections,” he said.

Melanie thought about this for a minute. “But there’s nothing wrong with my body.”

“I never said there was.”

“Then what would I have hang-ups about?”

James shrugged. He continued jabbing at the ice cream.

Melanie was confused by the conversation. It didn’t seem to be making a point. He handed her back the ice cream with its cratered surface and she began to smooth it out again, skimming the spoon along the top and licking the ice cream off.

James put his spoon in the sink and came around behind her where she was leaning over the breakfast bar. He put his arms around her waist and leaned over to press his chest against her back and rest his cheek on her shoulder. She sighed happily, turned to rub her cheek against the top of his head, and then went back to methodically licking the ice cream off of her spoon.

James slid his hand over Melanie’s stomach, stopping for a slight squeeze. And as he pulled away, he pushed at her breast with the back of his hand so that it swung back and forth beneath her bent-over frame. She looked down to see it swaying and was stunned by the amount of pendulous momentum it was maintaining all on its own. She stood up straight, and like a scolded puppy, it stopped moving and sat still.

She was sure he was just being playful; it was the same as if he’d swatted her on the behind or tickled her feet. But she couldn’t help but think that maybe there was some connection between this and the conversation they’d just had.

She turned then to see him lounging on the sofa with one of her magazines. It should have been easy enough to ask him for clarification, but in her entire vocabulary there was not a single combination of words that didn’t make her sound like a cliché.

James, do you think I’m fat?
was the first to be dismissed.

Do you like my body?
flew right past the first.

Is there something wrong with me? Do you find me attractive? Do you like my breasts?
Not happening.

The only question she came back to was the one that got to the point of what she wanted to know. ‘What are you trying to say?’ But because it had been used and abused in so many nauseatingly typical situations by insecure women, she couldn’t bring herself to ask it. She wouldn’t fall into the same pattern of overcomplicating things that were otherwise simple. Men said what they meant. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t find a bush to beat around in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. If he’d meant to say something, he would have said it. End of story.

She stared into the shallow craters in the smooth desert of ice cream. Then she put the lid back on and put it away.

The plane touched down in eighty-degree heat with a thousand percent humidity. A deep breath went down like steam. The driver was waiting at the luggage carousel; she let him take her checked bag while she rolled her carryon to the town car waiting outside. She wanted to get to the hotel quickly and go over the changes she’d made to the syllabus for the next day’s seminar. After that she was free to go down to the lobby bar and schmooze the colleagues.

The Marriott was right next to the Congress Avenue Bridge, and at dusk every night the bats would leave the underside of the bridge and take flight; she would have a spectacular view either from her room or the TGI Friday’s in the lobby. The sight of about a million bats pouring out into the fading light always made Melanie feel both awed and a little creeped out.

At the TGI Friday’s, people were already grabbing tables on the patio so they could watch the show. Melanie found an empty seat outside and ordered a chardonnay. The temperature had cooled and brought the humidity down with it, but even with the sun already below the horizon she felt the need to put a few ice cubes in her wine to keep it cold.

She watched as the first of the bats trickled out from under the bridge, circling in the night air and then flying away. The stream grew steadily until it became a river of gray-black figures, almost impossible to distinguish one from another.

“Still icing the wine, I see.”

Melanie looked up to find a familiar face smiling at her from the patio door. “Nothing worse than a warm chardonnay,” she said.

“I remember.”

Standing, she took a step toward him and waited. He closed the distance and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her to him and hugging her tightly. “It’s good to see you,” he said.

She pulled back a little and looked him in the eyes. “You too, Joel.”

“Why is it that we both live in Vegas and I have to leave Nevada to see you?” Joel asked.

The waitress delivered his beer and stayed a moment to watch the bats. “I never get used to it,” she said. Melanie and Joel turned their attention to the large, dark cloud of activity, heading downriver and up into the sky. None of the bats veered off and there seemed to be no danger of them coming toward the patio, even though it was only fifty yards from the bridge.

“They seem to know exactly where they’re going, don’t they?” Melanie asked.

“I suppose they do,” she said. “Blind as they are even.”

“Well, actually…” Joel started. Melanie shook her head at him and he trailed off. She could see that he was about to give a lecture on the keen navigational abilities of these flying rodents, and while his extensive knowledge of all things trivia entertained her to no end, she had other things she’d prefer to talk about.