by Allison Landa
(07/16/03)

"Remember," he says. "We can't."

I grind my teeth as we walk down Valencia. I'm so tired of being warned. "Calvin. I know."

"Just making sure."

I pause by a storefront with triple neon X's and sigh loudly to get his attention. We've agreed to disagree, but nothing will convince me he didn't kick-start this thing out of his own need. Ours is a friendship that first turned into more, then nearly ended, and is now in transition.

Calvin's taken. Kind of.

"Nell." He comes up behind me and rubs my shoulder, tentatively, so he can pull away if necessary. "We talked about this."

It's night and dark hides the tears. I turn to him. "Let's go in this place and look around."

"Forget it."

"Come on. I'll help you pick out something for Stacy."

He drops his hand. Looks away.

"She wouldn't want anything in there."

Neither do I. I don't give a damn about sex shops. I just want the half-surprised, half-longing look that springs into his eyes every time I do something shocking. I can't have him permanently, but when we're together I want him two hundred percent.

He's determined, so I leave him outside, go in, and buy a hot-pink vibrator called Tulip. The salesgirl -- spiked, pierced, pretty -- tells me it's a good brand as she swipes my Visa card. "For you?" she asks, smirking.

Toys don't work, just my finger and my imagination and my memories of what Calvin says we can't do ever again. I summon up all the nerve I can fake. This is part of my plan. "Maybe for you," I tell her, scrawling my phone number on a crumpled piece of paper. She hands me her own.

This wouldn't have happened a year ago.

A year ago I looked like Calvin's girlfriend: double-chinned, insecure. The mirror told me what I needed to do and I dropped fifty pounds. The weight loss was urgent and I sweated it out in the gym most nights. Now people smile in coffee shops, approach while I'm walking down the street. Now I can get phone numbers from hot pierced numbers in porn shops. The gender is less important than the result.

I step outside into cool air, swagger to the doorway where Calvin waits.

"Hold this for me?" I tuck the plastic bag into the deep pocket of his knee-length coat and fan his face with the phone number. He pulls it down, holding my wrist a few seconds too long, and reads the writing by greasy lamplight. "So you'll give Kate a call?"

"Was that her name?"

He laughs and hugs me one-armed, cautious, not asking about what I've stashed in his pocket. I want to take his arm, but that's off-limits too.

A month of silence since our last encounter. Then we talked. "No more kissing," he said. "No more drinking together, either. I keep screwing up. We have to work on just being friends, Nell."

Tonight's our night to try. We agreed in a short phone conversation while Stacy was sleeping.

She doesn't know we're still in contact. According to him, she doesn't know anything about us.

I think he's wrong. And I could give a damn about her or what she knows. She doesn't know how good she has it, despite the chunky thighs and the gut she was sucking in the one time I met her. I have a slimmer body, sparkling eyes and clothes that reveal without shame.

But I don't have a Calvin. Stacy may strain the seams of her size 22's and refuse to join him on the dance floor, but he still held her hand the entire night I had dinner with them.

That was before anything began with us, before I ever had any desire for his long bony body. That night I watched him protect her. I watched him make sure she was having a good time. I never saw her doughy face crack one smile.

Tonight it's just us in his two-seater, him driving, so I get to drink. As long as he stays sober, he says, nothing will happen. He'll go home and Stacy will caress him, tug at his clothes. They'll roll into each other passionately, exploring, rediscovering. If he stays sober, his need for me will be abated.

I make him buy the first Guinness. We toast to friendship.

I didn't like him when we first met at work. I wrote him off as a smarmy know-it-all. His laughter echoed across the office, grating my eardrums. Jukebox of cliches, I told my friends. Gladhandler. Networker.

Somehow we got talking one afternoon, then the next. He invited me to lunch and I found myself laughing over a soggy burrito. I began to see that light in his eyes. It awakened me to his warmth, and I began to look for it. Soon I began to understand that I was the one who put it there.

He said I was lively, vivacious. He smiled strangely when I described my few former lovers. He told me, red-faced and looking away, that he and Stacy rarely made love. I'd suspected that ever since the only time I saw them together. It was in the way he handled her, more father than lover. It was in the way the corners of his mouth occasionally tugged downward when we joked about sex.

One day at lunch he turned and kissed me. That was it. One moment of his tongue in my mouth changed everything. I'd already begun to have feelings for this strange, lanky, taken boy, but that instant of intimate contact upped the ante.

He pulled away as quickly as he'd moved forward. We went back to work.

He felt so guilty. But it happened again.

"Lunch," he'd said before we left, looking flushed as he walked up to my desk. Climbing into his car, I could feel the electricity. He threw the top down with one hand and we were across the Bay Bridge in less than ten minutes, defeating the traffic with a few deft throws of the clutch and taps of the gas.

Lunch was watching the water lap against boats in the Emeryville Marina, listening to each other breathe. Up until that point we'd only kissed those few times, but I knew exactly how his breath tasted. A puff of sweetness, intoxicating.

Like all the best kisses, I'm not sure who initiated that one. He pulled me close, worked my teeth. Everything about him got me so wet. Calvin. Geeky, reedy, uneasy in the world around him. When he touched me in his drop-top, sun encouraging us, boats bobbing near but so far, it was like I had a personal audience with God.

His cock was hard. He teased my nipple through my shirt, slid a finger under my skirt and across my clit. Close, close, so close. Then he stopped. Turned away without warning. Put the top up before heading back over the bridge.

Our breathing didn't slow until we reached the Financial District and he maneuvered his car into the underground garage. We didn't talk about it in the elevator as it moved through fourteen flights. He didn't approach my desk for the rest of the day. He left at 4:30 p.m. without saying goodbye.

The next day he gave his notice. I hadn't even known he'd applied to work at Stacy's company, but he'd landed a well-paying gig there. It took call after call to get him to respond. He'd run away, and he came back only on the condition that we be platonic.

I make him buy a second Guinness before leaving the bar. But he won't even take a sip, so I stop offering.

"Let's go to the Lex," I suggest, staggering a bit as we leave. He looks me over, amusement warring with confusion in his eyes.

"Since when are you so...lesbian?"

"Figured I'd give the other side a try."

He shakes his head, a slight smile coloring his lips.

"What?"

"Just you, being you."

He's attracted to me as a size 12 but would've loved me as I was a year ago, just as he loves Stacy.

I'm the supplement.

We walk into the Lex and his eyes glow. Women everywhere, dancing close, hands all over each other. I love seeing the horny-little-boy side of him. He lives his life as an adult twice his age, driving to work in the morning and then back home to the cushions-matching-curtains condo at night. He's twenty-six, two years younger than me, too young for his life.

This time I buy my own drink: An extra-large, extra-strong Long Island Iced Tea. This will push me over. This will goad me into going through with my plan.

I won't touch him. Oh, I will not touch him.

A girl's eyeing me. She's pretty cute too -- thick, curly red hair, strong, athletic-looking body. The kind I like, the kind I think about while playing with myself. When I think about girls.

She's with a group of laughing, nudging friends. I watch her over Calvin's shoulder while he and I talk nonsense. We can barely hear each other. He can see my eyes shift.

Good.

After a while one of her friends gives her a push and she heads our way. I move forward and nudge Calvin aside. I feel his confusion.

Perfect.

"Hi." She's on something besides alcohol. I can tell. Her eyes are rolling and wild, her speech slurred. Her nipples are hard beneath her shirt. She extends her hand with a formality that makes me laugh. "I...just wanted to say hi. I'm Lori."

I want to slide the vibrator from Calvin's pocket and use it on her right there. I hold her hand a few seconds too long. "I'm Nell. And this," I take a sip of my drink and glance up into his green eyes, "is Calvin."

She addresses him, but doesn't shift her eyes from me. "Is she your girlfriend?"

"No." I answer for him. "His girlfriend's at home. He's just here watching me get into trouble."

I've always done things to rattle him, but this flirtation brings out a side I've never shown. Calvin's a conservative at heart and he's also horny as hell. Since I won't get the benefits of any of that, I might as well show him what he's missing.

Now that Lori knows I'm unattached -- or at least not attached to him -- Calvin's out of the loop. He stands next to me, uneasily sipping his fourth Dr. Pepper of the night, while Lori and I get acquainted.

She's from Walnut Creek, the suburbs. She's looking for a job to take her out of the sticks, through the Caldecott Tunnel, over the Bay Bridge and into the city.

"But rent is so expensive." She tries to pout as she speaks. It comes out as a comical sludge of words. Cute.

"I have an extra room," I say.

She runs her finger over my hand. "Maybe there's extra room in your bed."

Jackpot.

Calvin excuses himself to use the bathroom. I run my finger over her palm.

By the time he returns, I've pressed her up against the bar. She tastes of Amaretto and honey. Her hair smells like lavender.

"Excuse us," I say to Calvin. Lori laughs, embarrassed, and I'm dimly aware of her friends in the corner. We're their entertainment, but they won't get to see the finale. I kiss her again. Toto, you're not at the Emeryville Marina any more. I feel rather than see Calvin's eyes, wide, boring into my back.

"My friend," I tell her, "likes to watch."

She nods, smiles. Then it's her turn to use the bathroom.

He's nonplussed. "What are you up to?"

"Having fun. Try it sometime."

"You're just showing off."

"Jealous?"

No answer.

"Look." I lean forward and get his eyes. Hold them with my own. "I'm getting laid tonight, and it's not going to be from you."

We're in a darkened alley beside the bar. It's raining. Hipsters chat on cell phones, their smoke and laughter streaming around the corner.

I'm more flagrant than I've ever been in public. I've got her sweater up to her neck. She's moaning. Her nipples are firm and real between my teeth. People pass by but the doorway's darkened. Calvin is blocking us from view. I think about the hard-on he must have, remembering the marina and his little car. The memory soaks me far more than this redheaded stranger girl's well-intentioned moves.

No, I won't touch him tonight.

I turn to him. "Make sure you're blocking us. You're the only audience."

He doesn't say anything, just spreads his coat to defeat the dim light. I remember the first time I ever really looked in his eyes and saw what lay there. I feel a shot of the sharp joy I always feel in his presence, a broken arrow hitting the wrong spots.

Lori's a writhing body beneath me. My mouth is full of her. I've fantasized about eating pussy, but this is the first time I've actually done it. She's wet on my tongue and fingers. She tastes of the earth, the red land I've seen while driving across the country, the clay under my feet when I run the track. Fecund, fertile.

She's so drunk. I doubt she'll remember anything. I might just finish her off and leave her here, leave both of them, take the subway home -- or maybe just wander the city all night, burning, feverish, sick.

Thank God my vibrator came with batteries. I slide it from Calvin's coat pocket. "Enjoying yourself?"

He could be smiling, could be crying. Dark hides the tears.

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