She still doesn't know.
***
Chantelle sits cross-legged on my futon, leaning back against the blue cushions. She hugs my stuffed lion close. Its golden fur glows in the dim light of my single working lamp, blending into her honey-brown skin. Her skin is a legacy of her despised mother, the fashion model. She isn't quite as gorgeous as her mother had been, and she isn't looking her best at the moment, with tears running down her face and dressed in rumpled clothing she's slept in for two days straight, but she's still quite beautiful. Not that I'm objective.
I'm trying to listen to her telling me again just how much she had loved Jeff, but even the gallon of chocolate ice cream we're inhaling is starting to lose its interest as I listen to this story for the hundredth time, in yet another variation. It isn't just Jeff. She's done this before. Fallen in love, had great sex, realized she had picked a jerk, dumped him or been dumped. Over and over, always with the wrong guy. It was only a month or so ago that I'd started to wonder if maybe she were really a lesbian.
We'd discussed it before, since I'd come out to her years ago, but she'd always denied the possibility and quickly changed the topic. She'd started avoiding my touch then too, giving brief hugs on greeting and parting and sitting much farther away than she had before. And right now I'm regretting having a full-size futon, large enough that she can easily sit out of reach. I'd have to lean way over before I could run my fingers over those impossibly long brown legs, curving down her calf to cup her foot in my small hands, gently rubbing her toes. She starts sniffling again, and I hand her another tissue.
My heart is beating much too fast, and I can't stop looking at her, hoping she won't notice my wanting, possessive gaze. Time is running achingingly slow as I avoid looking at my watch. Not because she'd think I wanted her to go, oh no. If it were up to me, I would have her stay safe in my bed, warm in my embrace forever.
*****
The doorbell rings. She looks up at me helplessly.
"Don't worry, Chantelle. I'll get rid of whoever it is quickly. Just hang on a sec, okay?"
She nods in silence broken only by a sniffle quickly smothered in tissues. I walk over to the buzzer.
"Who is it?"
"Giordano's delivery."
"We didn't order any pizza."
"Hey, I've got your pizza right here."
His voice is muffled through the intercom, and I shrug my shoulders as I open the door.
"I'd better go down and explain to him." I tell her as I head downstairs.
"Okay" she quavers, and for a moment I don't want to walk through that door, trapped in the spell of her lush contralto. She is so much a child, huddled there in her huge green flannel shirt, incongruously blond hair falling free across her face. But then I shake free of the spell. I walk down the half flight of stairs to where the man in the crisp white shirt stands holding a pizza, already having come through our broken security doors. As I near him, he holds out the pizza box towards me. I reach out...and he drops the box and is suddenly somehow shoving me up against the crumbling plaster wall of the stairwell, and I am almost falling onto him. I tense to struggle, but suddenly feel the prick of a knife through my thin black t-shirt, uncomfortably cold against my rib.
"Christ!" explodes almost unbidden from my throat, my voice rising dangerously. "What the hell do you think..."
"Shut up, bitch." he says, deceptively calm, in a voice pitched to carry. I can tell he is nervous. The knife trembles against me as he urges me up the stairs, and I am suddenly terrified of what is happening here in this now unfriendly building. We enter my apartment, and he swings the door closed behind us with his foot, not bothering to lock the door.
Chantelle has risen from the futon and stands framed in a halo of flickering light. That lamp has never been reliable, and now in this uncertain moment it seems to sound its death-knell, flicking in and out as we walk slowly into the room.
"Not a sound, bitch." he warns, cutting off the scream that is only now rising in her throat. "If the neighbors hear anything unpleasant, that's it for your girlfriend."
Chantelle sinks down onto my rumpled blue blankets, a muted moan caught in her butterfly mouth and frightened eyes locked on the glint of bright steel against black silk. I feel a sharp pain where the knife point lies poised against me, but it is impossible to tell if I am actually bleeding against the black.
"Strip." he orders her, an unnerving thread of excitement clear in the tremor of his low voice.
She shakes her head mutely in protest, wrapping her arms tight around her golden body. She must not know how that motion pulls the fabric of the shirt taut against her full breasts, and pulls the fabric sliding up her legs, baring even more tawny thigh. I catch my breath in shameful pleasure at the sight, and am brought back to reality only by the lifting of the knifepoint from my ribs.
Just as I start to shift out of his grasp he slides a tightly-muscled arm across my throat, pulling me back against him. He has lifted the knife only to bring it to my throat, and I freeze. He slowly, so slowly, slides the frighteningly sharp knife down the front of my silk top, slicing it cleaning in half, and leaving the fabric to flap aimlessly in the wind of the creaking fan. I wear no bra at three a.m. Small pale breasts have fallen free, pink nipples hard with fear, and the cold breeze, and excitement. I am wearing only black silk shorts now, and I cannot help but think how beautiful he and I must look, black silk against his white shirt and pants, brown curls so oddly similar. He looks like my brother, I suddenly think, and then must struggle down dangerous laughter. My nerves are being stretched far too taut. I fear I will break.
He lifts the blade up to a breast and I am truly frozen now as he holds the knifepoint a fraction of an inch away from tender skin. He looks back at Chantelle.
"Strip." If before his voice was nervous with excitement, it is now implacable. It would take someone far braver than my poor fawn Chantelle to resist, and she slowly begins to unbutton the oversized shirt. He is not content with the flannel slowly slipping from her shoulders, though.
"Stand and strip." he says, and she obeys almost silently, muffling the whimpers deep in the back of her throat. Endless moments later she has unbuttoned the last button and the shirt falls unheeded to the floor. My gaze slips back and forth between her radiance (never before has she seemed so beautiful) and the possessive wanting in his eyes. "Come here." he says, and at that I stiffen even more, wanting to slap that look from his face, that purr from his voice.
Her hands flutter up and down her body as she walks toward us, futilely attempting to preserve some shred of modesty, of dignity. It is useless. She is too fragile a flower to stand up against this kind of torment, and the tears welling in her eyes have provoked a growing rage within me. She stops inches away from me, shivering in the direct wind from the ceiling fan.
His knife hand suddenly drops away from my breast, although his left arm is still locked around my throat. He is fumbling with the zipper on his pants, finally dropping them to lie puddled on the floor around his feet. His legs are startlingly pale, almost blending into the white cloth. He wears no underwear either, and his erection pokes out from his shirttails, rising hungrily.
"On your knees, bitch." he says to her, the hunger clear in the hoarseness of his voice. "Suck me off."
And suddenly I can't take anymore. This has gone as far as I can stand. I jerk sideways, pulling free momentarily of his arm. His knife hand comes up quickly though, and his other hand swings in a wide grab from Chantelle....only to be blocked as I step calmly in front of it.
"No." I say, the words sticking in my throat as I strive to make my voice as soft and seductive as possible. "Please" as I slide to my knees in front of him, "let me." My eyes are locked on his, and I fervently hope that he can see in them that he has pushed me far enough, farther than is safe for any of us. I am all too aware of Chantelle's gasping breaths behind me, the only sound she has let herself make, and of her skin scant inches away from mine. I wait for his reponse, unable to read past the desire in deep brown eyes.
He stares in silence for long seconds, knife poised in his right hand. He looks me over slowly, insolently, and I will myself not to stiffen against his intrusive gaze. Finally he nods, silently. I lean forward and run my tongue down his stiff erection. I trace small, lazy circles around the shaft. I tease the head with flicking tongue until the growing fever in the eyes I have not dared glance away from warns me that teasing will not be permitted for long. And I suddenly realize that I find this man beautiful after all, and if he hadn't had a knife to my throat I might have wanted this as much as he did. It is then that I first begin to tremble.
It is quickly over, and I swallow carefully, not wanting to rouse his dangerous unpredictability. I wait, kneeling in front of him, holding his eyes with mine once more, willing him not to look away, to glance at Chantelle. He seems to read my desire. His next words are addressed solely to me, "Strip and lie down." He seems to disregard Chantelle, though his body is still tight, still alert. I do not think I can get the knife away. I rise obediently, and quickly step out of the black silk shorts, not wanting them to be torn as well. Some part of my mind must still believe that we will survive this.
I lie down on the futon, pushing aside blue blankets to create a clear space in the center, baring the dark green sheets. I stretch lazily, offering my body up for him to drink deep. A brown cat curled in the blankets. My eyes are focused on his face, on the raw desire battling with some indefinable thought. I doubt I could look away if I wanted to. Some tiny detached part of me wants desperately to photograph his face. Portrait of a rapist. I am shattering into a hundred different elements, held together only by the need to protect.
His free hand is suddenly on Chantelle's shoulder, twisting her cruelly around, off-balance. Then the hilt of the knife is shoved into the small of her back, and she falls onto me. I voice a wordless protest, but she falls silent, curving so as not to hit too hard. Even in this she is graceful. Then he begins to speak.
"Go on, bitch. Fuck her. I want to watch you two sluts fucking each other on your nice, clean sheets. Eat her, you dirty slut!" His voice rises higher and higher, and I wonder if perhaps the neighbors will hear. Doubtful - the walls are not that thin. Chantelle is shaking her head at the stream of invective, terror blossoming, a flower in her face. And suddenly I reach up and hold her face still in my hands, my eyes promising her that it will be all right. An outright lie; I have no idea what is happening now. She reaches a hand up to clasp one of mine, then buries her head in my shoulder. For this moment, this man is giving me a perversion of my deepest desires. It would be unfair to ask me to refrain.
I draw her down next to me on the green sheets, promising myself that I will be ever so gentle with her, that she will somehow find joy in this. Chantelle has gone very very still. Her eyes are now closed, and she looks frighteningly defenseless. I bend to drop butterfly kisses on her cheek, her neck, her shoulder. Carefully I avoid her lips, though I ache to kiss. Somehow I think that would be too much. For her, and for me. Her nipples are soft pools of darkness in the golden expanse of her torso. I lick my way down to them, nipping gently until they stand erect against my tongue. She has begun to move a little, confused by her body's reactions, bewildered by this night. But she doesn't utter a word of protest. My frail love has no way of understanding this night, her only hope to trust in me to keep her safe.
His breathing is loud in the room, and as I kiss lower and lower on her sweet body, the first moan comes from him. It is a sound of pure frustration, and I am surprised for a moment that he would restrain himself. Then I am lost in the scent of her rising up beneath me, the brush of my breasts along her long legs, the caress of her curling hair against my cheek. And the greatest joy is that she is responding to my touch, my tongue, my kiss. She is arching underneath me, tangling her long fingers in waves, running nails across the tender places of my neck. The lamp flickers wildly in the room; as she comes moaning in my mouth we arch together suddenly still. The eye in the center of a blue-green storm.
Chantelle relaxes beneath me, her still-heavy breaths sounding. I cannot hear him, I realize. I half-raise, and twist my body up into the wind from the fan. There is enough light to see clearly that he is not there. The knife lies, discarded, well within arm's reach. He has closed the door behind him. And suddenly I am battling the impulse to reach out and take the knife and hold it to her sweet flesh, gaining a night of unbearable pleasure as she fulfills my every desire.
And also gaining a lifetime of hate. I shake my head, dismissing the last shreds of foolish thought. This will have to be enough. Her trust, her faith. Her slick body molded to my own. The memory of her arching against me. And the chance that this night has changed her mind about what she wants...although it will take time to know for certain. I lay back down against her, realizing that she is somehow, impossibly, asleep. I am suddenly eager to join her.
***
The phone rings. I get up to answer, knowing who it will be.
"Forgive me." he says. "I didn't mean things to go so far. The knife was too much. You were both too beautiful. I got...carried away." He pauses, embarassed. "I'll buy you a new shirt."
"Forgiven." I say, and hang up.
How can I condemn him? I asked him to come, after all. I go back to the bed and gather her into my arms. She murmurs in her sleep and cuddles closer. I hold her tight in a protective embrace, so that nobody will ever hurt her.
*****
M.A. Mohanraj
October 20, 1993