He has imagined a more traditional encounter: some goofy and awkward talk, slap-dash touching, then a couple of deep kisses, a hand into her blouse or a detour under her skirt, Maryam’s feigned reticence — the lady doth protest too much — tearing off her clothes, exhorting her to relax, to enjoy the explorations. . he would be the aggressor, but in time she would surrender to his entreaties.
Instead, Maryam watches him, amused as he struggles to take off his clothes. When he is nearly naked, she sits up on the bed on one elbow and looks at him mockingly. “Are you going to make love to me wearing your black socks?” And then she laughs.
Guillermo glances down at himself, black socks up to the ridges of his knees and his penis ascending through his baggy white jockeys toward his belly button. He feels ridiculous. If he could watch himself from a distance, he too would laugh, but he finds it impossible to see humor in his own absurd maneuverings. He is even ashamed of his penis flagpoling through his shorts.
“Off with them, off with them,” she commands, swinging a forefinger in the air as if signaling decapitation.
Guillermo sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his socks. His head continues spinning because of the Scotch, and he wonders if Maryam’s friskiness is also the result of drinking.
He turns to her and starts kissing her deeply, as deeply as he can go. He is grateful that he can still taste the mango flavor of Maryam’s lips. She does not resist, begins exploring his mouth with her tongue. They are both enjoying the rise in passion. He pulls his underwear down to his ankles and perches over her. Sitting on her thighs he begins rubbing her nipples softly. She arches her back and purrs with pleasure. He flattens his body against hers and tries to place his penis into her, two or three times, but each time she closes her legs.
“Is anything wrong?” he asks, feeling totally lost, adolescent, and out of his element. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t put on a rubber. He is nagged by the memory of catching herpes from Chichi and so he typically protects himself when screwing women for the first time. Once his trysts evolve he insists that his girls be checked for AIDS almost monthly and take the morning-after pill as soon as they are done making love. He does not let them go until they have taken a pill, or otherwise proved to him that they will not become pregnant. He doesn’t need any illegitimate children.
She points down to her sex and says, “Eat me first. I want you to imagine that you are eating the sweetest baklava you’ve ever tasted.”
He obeys, slides down to the foot of the bed, and places his mouth squarely above her pubis. She once more arches her back, this time in anticipation, so that her vulva rises up to meet his mouth. While he begins to lick her, she starts running her hands feverishly through her hair and pulling down on her earlobes. She is moving her hips from side to side and raising her legs, forming a small Arc de Triomphe.
Without warning, she grabs his head and pushes it deeper into her crotch, so that he feels the cartilage of his nose flattening against the top of her pubis, her clitoris. He can barely breathe.
She doesn’t let him stop licking, even though his tongue has lost feeling. She continues to press his mouth into her. She squeals a few times, she must be coming — that’s how he interprets her trembling — and when he feels that his tongue is about to fall off, she pulls him up, reaches down for his penis, and shoves it inside her.
* * *
Guillermo and Maryam make love all afternoon. In truth, she appears to be using him for her own needs as if he were a practical handmade tool, maybe a canvas dildo. He is more than grateful to oblige, but continues to feel a loss of control. She wants him to rub against her clitoris, to drive into her, to fill her up completely, to come into her from behind. Whenever he feels he’s about to come, she relaxes and induces him to push through layer after layer of curtains to reach the spot where she can finally let loose. And when she does, she trembles in his arms the way a willow shuffles in the crosswinds of a storm, with all its vines fluttering.
But even then, after the storm has passed, she will not let him stop.
“I need this,” she keeps repeating, and she won’t let him rest. He’s unsure if it is the drink or her passion that makes him stay hard.
She is directing him, telling him what to do and where to go; it’s as if she has been crossing a desert for years, and finally finds an oasis that might run out of water if she stops drinking from it. Whenever his strength seems to flag, she urges him forward, or goes back down on him and slurps his penis in her mouth, trying to get him ready for the next penetration.
At one point he climbs off her, exhausted, and wraps himself up in the sheets. She lays next to him, faceup and covered in sweat. He can smell her body odor, which is strong now, no longer mango, a bit fetid like a rotting guava. He likes the smell.
It is four thirty in the afternoon. Through the green curtains of the Stofella he can see a strip of sky and a range of thick clouds, like a rumpled gray sash, signaling the coming of more rain and darkness. Where has the afternoon gone?
“Maryam?” he asks, tightening the sheet around him like a papoose, afraid that she might want to begin again.
“Yes, Guillermo?”
“Shouldn’t we be going?”
“Where to, my love?” The words my love echo in his head. They say too much about their commitment and it makes him extremely nervous.
“Home. Your house. Your father’s.” He can’t bring himself to say her husband’s name.
“They can all wait. You don’t know how much I needed this. It’s been years. I’ve felt things I didn’t know existed. You have such a manly body.” Maryam grabs his hips and gives them a tug. “Thank you,” she says, staring at him without blinking her eyes.
He offers a fake smile and closes his eyes. Making love to Maryam is something special, not anything like what he expected. But still, he has a difficult time enjoying the moment. He is worried about what’s going on in the office while he has been philandering. This is the way his mind always works. And then he starts speculating if Maryam uses birth control, or if she has any communicable disease like herpes or chlamydia.
She seems to be in no rush to leave, covering herself with one of the big pillows.
“What about your husband? Surely he must be worried,” he says stupidly.
Maryam lets out a sprawling laugh. “Samir? Well, he is like an old, smelly goat. The kind that climbs up a dry mountain — all skin and bones, no muscles — looking for bits of grass to eat.” She rolls over and grabs Guillermo’s behind. Her eyes are almost on fire. “I like this,” she says, squeezing his cheeks. “Fleshy and hard.” A second of silence flits by and then she laughs heartily for a second time.
“What’s so funny?”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
Guillermo braces. “Yes?” he asks, shifting in the bed. He is sure she’s going to tell him that she’s in love with him. Then he will have to tell her he’s not interested in breaking up his marriage — or hers, for that matter; that time has to pass before he can get together with her again.
“From the start, Samir refused to eat me. He thought it was unmanly.” She is moving her hand around under the sheets and he is certain that she’s touching herself.
“Many men feel that way. Especially in the Middle East, I would imagine,” he says, just to say something. He isn’t prepared to discuss these issues with a woman he barely knows. And he doesn’t want the image of Maryam’s husband going down on her to be central in his mind.
“I would imagine, Guillermo, that you don’t know what you are talking about,” she says smiling, almost laughing at him. “I assume you know nothing about the Middle East. Have you ever been there? I mean to Lebanon?”