Francine laughed, got up. "Let's walk it off," she said.
"Terrific," I said, standing, my briefcase falling over to remind me.
I walked as if my feet were hydrofoils. Like a guardsman on parade, I swung her hand in my hand all the way forward, then all the way back.
"We must look nuts," I said.
"Nuts we look," she said.
"There it is," I pointed. Holiday Inn.
"This is crazy," she said.
I swung my briefcase. "Crazy is as crazy does," I said.
I signed as in as Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Haig, in honor of our respective fathers. Looking over my shoulder, Francine laughed. The man at the reception desk smiled.
"I'll show you the way," he said, taking my briefcase.
Oh the absurdity of the man carrying my lone briefcase ahead of us, switching on the room lights, showing us the bath, the closet (for what?), the TV set, everything except the bed. I thanked him two dollars' worth, ridiculous, and double-locked the door. My arms went around her, clasping her close enough to meld us cheekbone to hip, deliciously hurting. She pushed us asunder, and then woosh, no two people in the history of the universe ever flung their clothes off as fast as we did, and there I stood, my heart pounding, my rod pointing, and she touched it, just barely touched it around the head, then dropped to her knees, taking it into her mouth in a way it had never been taken by anyone before, as if it were hers.
"No, no," I said, motioning her over to the bed, but she shook her head, fiercely in charge of my organ, which I was now moving to the rhythm of her mouth. Of course dozens of times in the past with others I had felt the mechanics of it. Jane used to hold it apprehensively just below the head as if afraid I'd suddenly lunge too far, but now Francine was alternately licking and kissing and enveloping it in a way that electrified its entire surface, and I moaned — first time in my life I ever did that — moaned with the excruciating pleasure of it, as the throb started, and she somehow cupped her hand around my balls without breaking the rhythm, and her eyes glanced up at me for a second, and then like a great pulse of energy, I started to come and come and come, and finally slipped, exhausted to the floor beside her, our arms around each other, rocking.
I remember the fantastic look of accomplishment in her eyes. She knew how good she had been for me.
"What hath the mouth that the vagina hath not?" I whispered in the curlicues of her ear.
"A tongue," she answered, laughing, and I remember we kissed in a kiss that seemed to last for all time until we broke to breathe again.
"Turning you on turns me on," she said in my ear.
"I don't believe."
"Proof," she said, holding her breasts. Her nipples were obtruding and hard. I licked one with the tip of my tongue. She turned slightly so that I could lick at the other.
I remember her taking my head in her hands and moving me down to the triangle of her once-blond hair and below, where her lips seemed to part in slow motion to reveal a pinkness where I busied my tongue, and in an instant her hips were moving to a savage rhythm on the carpeted floor. Suddenly she stopped, pulled my head up to her. I didn't know I was erect again, but somehow she knew and took it with her fingers and placed it where my mouth had been, and then we rocked in that same impatient insistent demanding rhythm of hers until she was saying now now now and we were both senselessly kissing and coming and kissing and coming.
We must have dozed. When we awoke, I felt drained, rag doll limp, euphoric. I kissed the end of her nose. We untangled, stretched, somehow got to our feet. I felt as if I would stumble. We held each other for support.
We dressed. I know we dressed but I don't remember it. I only remember our looking around the motel room making sure we had everything including my briefcase, and then noticing that at the center of the scene of our lust stood the fully made, unrumpled bed we had not needed.
We laughed like kids, then closed the door behind us.
Thirty-nine
Francine
At the office I received the funniest sort of phone call from my father. He asked me if I was still seeing George. The way he pronounced "seeing" had a private connotation. With the case still pending, I told him, of course I'd been seeing George. He sounded as if he were pleading a case that had gone askew. Weird!
I certainly wasn't going to pick up on whatever he was hinting about. In fact, I felt in an unstoppable rush to see George every possible minute. The day after the Holiday Inn episode, George and I met for lunch halfway between his office and my office and would you guess where that halfway turned out to be? The same Holiday Inn, same desk clerk, same expressions, only this time when my clothes were off I skewed my hand around to my back and showed George the Band-Aid right above my butt.
"No carpet," I said.
"Hop onto the bed," George said, but one step ahead of him, I plunked myself into the overstuffed chair near the window. Straight ahead was the mirrored bathroom door, and I have to admit I looked pretty good in it. I moved my right arm snakelike as if in a dance, watching my reflection. Then my left.
"Narcissus," said George. "Will you have a room service lunch before or after?"
"Instead," I said, as he dropped to his knees in front of the chair. It was odd, watching in the mirror, then oddly exciting, then very nearly unbearable.
We didn't muss the bed this time either. We did order a couple of sandwiches afterwards because all that appetite gave me an appetite.
That evening we went to the movies. How do I know what was playing, it was a movie, we weren't watching the movie, we were too busy with each other. That night we slept at George's, the jigsaw pieces of our limbs learning to find the perfect fit with each other. The next morning, I had my driver's license at risk as I zoomed to work, getting there late, and was greeted by X saying, "Can you make lunch?" and me answering, "You mean cook?" and he saying, "In a restaurant, idiot," and me saying, "I took a very long lunch yesterday, I should eat in," and him saying, "I'm the boss, it's okay."
Over lunch I kept thinking of yesterday's nonlunch lunch with George, and I guess I wasn't paying too much attention because X finally said, "Are you in love?"
"Yes."
"Who's the lucky man?"
"A man."
"As distinguished from a boy?"
"Yes."
X professed mock jealousy — I hope to Christ it was mock jealousy — and then invited me to sub for him on a radio panel because he had a conflicting appointment.
"I know all about your conflicting appointment," I said. "You don't want to do it."
"Right."
"Why?"
"Fair enough," said X. "Butterball is the other guest. I'd be tempted to let him have it. If I do, it's serious."
"And if I go on in your place, it's not serious because I'm just a young woman of low station and it doesn't count."
"Oh it'll count all right. Just sending an underling like you will be received by His Highness as an insult. It's beautiful."
"Thanks a lot." I wasn't really angry. Butterball, or His Highness as we sometimes called him, was the crown princeling of a new West African country with a population smaller than Harlem's, but who saw his Harvard-educated self as the most glamorous of the spokesmen for the new bureaucracies that had dumped all their white colonial riffraff and were learning to master postage meters and typewriters.
"The subject," said X, "is the shrinking world."
"Lovely."
"You could have a good time at it. It'd be good experience."
"When?"
"Next Tuesday evening."
"Will you listen?"
"Wouldn't miss it."
"If I'm terrific do I get a raise?"