by Gwynne Garfinkle
(04/23/03)
"Come back, come back," I mutter in bed alone at night, my hand between my legs. I picture him on top of me, the movement of his hips speeding up as he nears orgasm. Then I shift to another memory: he straddles my face, slowly fucks my mouth. At such times I had him right where I wanted him -- I had his undivided attention.
I tell myself they'll break up soon. After all, the last time he dated someone else, it only lasted a couple of months. I absolutely avoid picturing them in bed together. I pretend they've never slept together.
The front door buzzer wakes me. The first time, I hear it faintly, through webs of sleep, the second time loud as a foghorn, but higher-pitched. My heart pounds with adrenaline and anxiety at being wakened in the middle of the night. I squint at the clock radio: 2:26 a.m. But there's anticipation too, because only one person ever shows up this late (except one time when somebody had the wrong apartment, and afterwards I went back to bed thoroughly disappointed, as well as pissed off at the jerk who'd pushed my buzzer). I stumble from the bed and head for the front door. I press the intercom button. "Yes?" I strive for an awake and neutral tone. And press the other button.
"Hey, babe, it's me." His audacity, to assume that he is the only "me" to show up on my doorstep (even if it is true), especially since he's been seeing someone else. And then I hear some chick's whine in the background: "Jimmy, come on - who lives here?"
As I press the third button that unlocks the front door, I get that sour feeling in my stomach - because it's her. That's the bitch I've seen Jimmy with the past couple of months. He and I hadn't been an actual couple, which tended not to bother me much except when I feared Jimmy was actually making use of his freedom.
I switch on the hall light and blink groggily. As I open the door and feel the cold night air on my skin, it occurs to me that my little chemise, purple, silky, and slit over one thigh, which I'd worn in the semi-pathetic hope that my lover would show up, might not be such an appropriate garment in which to greet Jimmy's "friend." Oh well.
Jimmy saunters into my apartment as if he'd never left. I smell whiskey on him. "Joan," he says, and smiles into my eyes. His eyes glint hectically through his wire-rims. He puts his arms around me in a hot, enveloping hug. Excitement surges through me, making me shaky. I've missed his body so much. I press my face into his leather jacket. Then I peer around him at the girl peering at me in the doorway, her mouth set in that annoying pout I suppose Jimmy finds sexy. Yes, it's her - that blonde I'd seen him with at Alison's party, and once or twice at nightclubs, and, most humiliating, at that independent film festival where they'd screened his latest short film. She stares at me with vacuous blue eyes. Her sleek hair, pulled back severely from her face, accentuates her cheekbones and small, sharp nose.
"Jimmy?" she says, a bit too loudly for my sleeping neighbors. "I thought we were going to a party." She looks like she must've been head cheerleader in high school.
Jimmy smoothes the silky material at my back, then his hands roam lower. I'm still watching the little blonde in the tight jeans and denim jacket, and I can't resist a smirk. Does she recognize me? Or had she been too wrapped up in Jimmy, in her blithe feeling of entitlement (the way she grabbed his hand at that screening! I'd wanted to smash her face), to notice a tall redhead looking daggers at her? I had not made a scene when I saw them together, I'd kept my distance, gone home and cried and raged alone. Okay, so maybe Jimmy wasn't the prize I'd once thought. But damn, I'd missed going to the movies with him, Bergman or Buñuel or Cassavetes, missed our coffee shop talks, gesticulating over lousy cups of coffee and Spanish omelets or coconut cake late into the night, then going home and fucking. And right now, with his delicious hands on my ass, and that girl's eyes on us, I feel sweetly smug. I feel like my ass had ceased to exist until he touched it again.
For a moment it's as if I float above my body, or maybe go off to one side, and observe the situation as Jimmy would have shot it: the dark apartment with one light on, the skinny blonde in the doorway, her hands on her hips, the tall man in the leather jacket caressing the almost-as-tall girl whose straight hair just brushes her naked shoulders. I reach up to touch his shaggy hair - he's blond too, but of course I never think of him as A Blonde, that diatribe is reserved for The Other Woman, who I wish I could will away, except for the pleasure I take in her eyes on us. In her eyes on Jimmy, who gives himself wholly to this moment of touch with me, and I come back into my body wholly too. My blood beats in my hands and chest, and my breath quickens as he leans in to kiss me.
"Jimmy!" the girl yells. I don't think she's sober either, but the booze doesn't seem to soften the blow.
"Shh!" I say, and feel like the world's biggest bitch. It feels great.
But suddenly Jimmy pulls away and turns to face the other girl. For one ghastly moment, I fear I'm about to get a taste of the same medicine. Will I now have to watch him touch that girl? Does Jimmy have a three-way in mind or something? There's no way in hell I'm getting it on with my rival, much less watching Jimmy do her. Nor do I envision any catfights that dissolve into hot lesbian sex.
Jimmy removes his jacket and flings it on the red velvet sofa. "Thanks for the ride," he tells the girl in the doorway, then returns to me, and our mouths meet, wet and hot. His stubble grazes my face, and I taste whiskey. He presses his pelvis into me, and I feel his hard cock through his jeans. I'm intolerably hot and wet, and the fact that the girl is watching makes it even more exciting. I can barely stifle my moans, and I don't want her to hear them - it would make me feel too vulnerable.
Then she breaks the mood: "Jimmy, you asshole! You fucking asshole! You sick bastard!"
Jimmy disengages his mouth from mine. "Shh!" he says over his shoulder. He unbuckles his jeans. I walk to the door and look down at the girl, into her furious eyes.
"Thanks for the ride," I tell her, shut the door in her face, and lock it.
Jimmy and I fall upon the sofa. His pants are already on the floor, and my chemise poses no encumbrance. He thrusts deep into me, and I could sob from the relief of it (while, alone in bed, I make myself come with my hand). "Welcome back," I murmur into his shoulder. The girl outside screams "Fuck you! Fuck you, Jimmy!" in counterpoint to Jimmy's thrusts (as I stick a finger inside my contracting wetness, as I begin to cry), until one of the neighbors yells, "Hey, shut the fuck up!" and I hear heels clattering away, and then it's just us, just us, justice.
