“I do admire that open mind of yours, my dear. More people could stand to have one. Now, go and reunite with your husband for that second honeymoon. I’m sure you’ll both be thrilled. You’ll be able to satisfy him, but do you really think he will ever satisfy you?”
He kicked his legs up onto the table and crossed them at the ankles, his heavy boots thudding against each other. “Of course, there’s an alternative. You could stay with me. Arcanium more than satisfies, little girl. You haven’t yet begun to tap the surface.”
No, he wasn’t leering, but she didn’t like the way he looked at her now. Proprietary. His smirk was a touch too wide, and the glow in his eyes took on new meaning, because he had done something. She was almost certain of it now. And that just brought up the question of what else he could do.
Thinking about Oddity Row gave her a chill.
She shook her head, backing slowly toward the tent flap, this time the way she would walk away from a predator—not taking her eyes off of it in case it decided to strike.
“Very well.” He nodded in farewell. “Thank you, my dear.”
“Thank you.” Neve believed in being polite to powerful people, powerful things, but she fumbled behind her for the tie to the tent entrance.
“You’re most welcome.”
She stumbled out into the circus proper, startled by the bright afternoon light, sunbeams diffused through thin cloud cover that told her it would likely snow later. The forecasts had said it might sometime that evening or during the night. She could smell it in the sharpness of the air, under the enticements of the food court and the scent of canvas, large herbivores and leather.
Out in the light, what had just happened already seemed distant, more benign, like the lancing of a boil. But it had happened.
She was…cured?
Neve closed her eyes and thought of her husband. Thought of the way he’d kissed her after the Ferris wheel, the way he’d whispered in her ear, caressed and fondled her breasts in the middle of the circus where anyone could have walked around the tent and caught them.
Her nipples tightened under her bra. She had to resist the urge to touch them, stroke all around them, pinch them until they were dark pink. Joseph had liked to do that, but it was a little uncomfortable, so she hadn’t understood when he’d asked her to do the same to him. She pulled on the straps of her bra to create a small measure of friction, but that just made it worse, like scratching a mosquito bite. Lord help her, was this what it was like for everyone else all the time? How did anyone manage to get anything done?
But it confirmed that what had happened in the tent was real. She wanted Joseph’s hands on her breasts, wanted him to kiss her for more than closeness or health benefits, wanted him to lead her to the car and push her into the back seat, wanted their heated bodies to fog up the glass. The thought of him kissing her inner thigh, of his cock entering into her, filled her not with discomfort or dread but with such a strong pang of need, she once again initially thought she was hungry, except the hunger was lower.
She adjusted her bra straps again then fought to hide her smile. Joseph was going to get the shock of his life.
Neve couldn’t find him waiting for her outside the food count.
He might have wanted to work off some steam by throwing more things, so she checked the midway, but he wasn’t there either. She peeked into Oddity Row again.
She hoped he hadn’t gone into the haunted funhouse without her. If it was as scary-sexy as he’d said, maybe that could be their foreplay before she surprised him—maybe in the funhouse itself, if this hunger grew any more intense.
When she was hungry, she ate. When she was thirsty, she drank. She wasn’t used to having to deny herself basic human needs. Satisfying sexual urges wasn’t a basic human need. It wasn’t even technically a drive, despite the common language for it. Neither she nor anyone else was going to die if they didn’t get sex, and the human race would continue if she didn’t procreate. It was a species imperative, not an individual one. She knew that, but it was amazing how strong something she didn’t need could be.
She walked the whole length of the midway this time, straining to find him among the crowd.
On the way back to the food court, she caught movement behind one of the midway booths out of the corner of her eye—a flash of red, a long gray peacoat. The peacoat, at least, she recognized, as well as the loose plaid scarf she glimpsed as she crossed beyond the line of the midway. She could see behind every booth from there.
The woman was nearly hidden within his open coat, but it was impossible to deny what they were doing. They muffled their moans with furious kisses. He pumped his hips up into her, holding her by her thighs and pressing her against the back of the booth, which must have been constructed better than it looked, because if it had been slipshod, it would have been rocking and creaking like a swinging gate. But it held the woman, withstanding Joseph’s forceful thrusts.
There was nothing loving about their coupling. He was fucking her, pure and simple, wasn’t doing anything that spoke of consideration or tenderness, and she didn’t appear to care.
She adjusted her legs around his waist, and Neve caught flashes of bright red glitter. The woman wasn’t wearing the red falls anymore. They lay in a heap on the ground next to them. Her real hair was a bird’s nest of near-black and streaks of red, but Neve hadn’t recognized her until the corset was exposed. Maya of the high wire. Sky High Maya. Did she know she was fucking a married man? Did she know the same woman she’d flirted with and kissed was that man’s wife? Did that matter to her, or was she a slave to her own pleasure as much as Joseph?
It would have been so much easier to hate Maya, but there was no ring on Maya’s finger. She was guilty of poor judgment, of aiding and abetting. Joseph knew about the ring on his own finger. He’d opined about the failure of their marriage, but that had been worlds away from serving Neve papers. They were still married, still bound to each other and no other, nor had they agreed to widen the circle of what constituted fidelity in their marriage the way Neve had been considering.
She’d thought this man loved her. Love might not have been enough to keep them together, but it should have been enough to keep him from stepping out of their marriage before its end.
Somehow, the fortune teller was right again. She fought the urge to laugh and cry at the same time.
Neve heard them as though she were right next to them, nothing but air and distance to obstruct the low gasps and groans of sex, of pleasure, of growing desperation. Neve knew that quality of Joseph’s groans from their dark bedroom. He’d tell her how good she felt to him, that he was close, that he was going to come…
He whispered in Maya’s ear the way he would whisper to his wife. Maya hooked her arm around his neck and rode him faster, one of her breasts exposed over her pulled-down corset. She kissed him with passion Neve couldn’t have hoped to fake.
Neve couldn’t look away, turned on and horrified at the same time, watching her husband feeling all the things she’d wanted him to feel with her—the things she could have felt with him later that afternoon or evening. She’d wanted him to clutch her thighs, press her breasts to his chest, tweak her nipple, kiss her as though he needed her to breathe, kiss down her neck, sink his cock deep into her while she rode him back.
But she watched helplessly as the man she loved completely—and she could swear what she’d felt for him had been a kind of love, intense and inexorable, unconfused by sexual desire—made himself filthy on and inside another woman. She couldn’t imagine easing his cock into her now, not after Maya’s wetness had mingled with his pre-cum. She couldn’t imagine kissing him again when she’d never be able to forget how he’d kissed Maya, exactly as he’d kissed Neve in the past. He seemed to gather the corset glitter in the creases and lines of his palm, as though if he were to touch Neve, he’d smear that red glitter all over her with the memory of the other woman he’d touched.
Neve thought she was going to throw up.
He clutched at Maya’s hair, dug his fingers into her thigh under her feather bustle. He didn’t have to concern himself with bringing Maya off first, because Maya panted open-mouthed into his kiss, shaking in his arms, her hips and abdomen rolling through her climax. Joseph wasn’t far behind. He slammed into her as his own pleasure pangs shot through him. He couldn’t quite muffle his grunts in her shoulder.
“That bastard,” Bell murmured behind her.
She spun around. No one was there.
When she turned back, Joseph had tucked himself back into his shorts and was zipping up his jeans. Maya adjusted her costume then picked up her falls, shaking out any stray twigs and leaves before pinning the falls back into her hair. Her smile was as dazzling as when she’d taken pictures with them on the Ferris wheel, oddly sincere and even guileless for a woman who’d just helped a husband cheat on his wife. She kissed his cheek again, this time not leaving a mark. Most of her lipstick had smeared over and around her lips, but in a way that still worked for the mad Queen of Hearts look she’d chosen, which probably explained why she said ‘thank you’—Neve could read her lips—and left just as she was, returning to the midway.
Half of the lipstick had ended up on Joseph’s mouth, though, and some on his neck. He spat on his fingers and rubbed away at it, probably wishing for a mirror.
When he started to use the tail of his shirt, he saw her.
Neve’s first instinct was to run, run back to Bell and ask him what she was supposed to do. But whether he was fake or real, depending on a fortune teller was a bad precedent to set.
She’d stood up against her brothers, her father, against fellow students, teachers, coworkers. She could stand up against her husband—the man she should have been standing up against the world with. She wasn’t going to run. That was the lizard hindbrain talking. She was a human woman at the beginning of the twenty-first century. She wasn’t going to run from her own cheating husband.
Every step she took was like a mermaid’s on land—walking on knives, except the knives went straight into her heart—her metaphorical heart. Funny how a metaphorical thing could hurt so much.
Recognition, shock, shame, anger and contrition passed over Joseph’s expression like watercolors.
“Neve, I—” He tucked in his shirttail, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, but he had no way of knowing that he hadn’t wiped off nearly enough of the lipstick. It was such a vibrant color, even a little would have been obvious to her. He kept adjusting his shirt, his scarf, his coat, trying to put himself back together, back to how he’d been before Maya, as though that would somehow take it back. “I—”
“Keep trying, Joseph. I’m just dying to hear you make it my fault. I’m waiting with bated breath for the lecture that you’re a man and men have different needs, even though I’ve offered to fulfill them at every turn—more than other wives who aren’t interested in sex, I’m damned sure. But not to your satisfaction, which is why you had to look to other women, right? How many others have there been? Wait, don’t answer that.” Neve held up a hand to stop him from protesting. “It doesn’t even matter. Whether it’s a hundred women or one, it doesn’t matter. You can’t deny the one, Joseph, because I saw it. I saw everything.”
“I was upset when I left, and I was still…” He gestured to his hips, much the way she had when she’d tried to indicate to Bell that she was deficient. “We crossed paths, and she—”
“Forced you behind the booth at knifepoint?” The laugh that bubbled up from her throat like blood was mirthless and sounded like crying, although her eyes stayed dry. “You don’t even know,” she said through laugh-sobs. “You don’t even know what happened. God, I would have given you everything you ever wanted! And right now, I can’t even look at you.”
“Neve, I—”
“I don’t want excuses. I don’t even want an apology. I don’t want you to say another word. We’re going home and you’re sleeping on the couch until I can look at your face without wanting to scratch it out.”
She strode toward the Arcanium entrance, seething herself sick. The crunch of winter grass behind her indicated that Joseph followed, wisely doing what he’d been told.
If only she could slam the Arcanium gates shut behind her. The clang would be briefly satisfying and final. Between Maya’s dazzling smile, the memory of Joseph sinking into the woman, and Bell’s warnings and inexplicable power that had helped her too late, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to come back here again.
Chapter Two
The snow came that night. Neve usually had to wake up before the sun rose, so she liked keeping the curtains open to catch the dawn. The night looked blue when it snowed. The layer of white reflected midnight into full-moon brightness, which angled into the bedroom, falling upon the half-empty bed. It felt so much larger without Joseph there.
It had taken her a while to get used to sharing a bed with another person, but after six months, she missed having someone there. She reached out but encountered nothing except more sheets and the duvet. She spread her legs like she was making snow angels, but there was nothing there. She didn’t take up much space while sleeping. Having room to stretch out was overrated.
Especially since she desperately wanted someone in that bed. She’d put his pillow and a quilt on the sofa, and he’d showed penitent initiative by using the guest bathroom instead of the master. She couldn’t call Joseph in now and reward him for his indiscretion. She still saw him with Maya every time she closed her eyes, which was not conducive to sleep, nor had it been beneficial to her appetite that evening. But while she usually preferred to sleep cocooned in the duvet and clothed in warm pajamas when it was so cold outside and in the bedroom, she kept having to fold the covers back to let her skin breathe.
Neve finally just took everything off but her panties. But being naked under the sheets, while cooler, made the sensitivity of her skin all the worse.
If she’d thought that the feelings in Arcanium were an anomaly caused by some kind of love potion aerosol that would temporarily induce sexual arousal in even the most impenetrable of asexual individuals, that doubt could now be set aside. Her instinct-driven desire hadn’t abated. Just as she couldn’t control imagining Joseph fucking the tightrope walker, she kept imagining herself in Maya’s place, sometimes with Joseph, sometimes with Bell. The thoughts eddied around and around and around in her head.
When she tried touching herself, smoothing her hands over her abdomen and plumping her breasts, Neve bit her lip. Touching herself tonight was like touching herself for the first time, or how she imagined normal people felt touching themselves for the first time. As it had been with Bell, the feelings were so much bigger than she could have anticipated. But unlike when she was with Bell, it didn’t quite turn off her mind. She overthought everything—every movement of her fingers, every intensified sensation. Although she’d slept naked in this bed before, she couldn’t convince herself to take her panties off and touch herself there, though everything ached in what could have been pain if she hadn’t wanted more of it.
She might as well get used to this, though—this ache, this dissatisfaction, this near distress. She was still married, and unlike Joseph, she believed in that vow. People dealt with sexual frustration every day, right? It was just distressing for her because it was new. And if this wasn’t going away, she’d surely get used to it just like everyone else.
Neve flopped over onto her stomach and forced her eyes closed, leaving her top half and one leg uncovered to cool her down.
She’d always thought herself so distant from this particular vice. She hadn’t believed she was judgmental about those who succumbed to it, and perhaps she wasn’t as bad as some. But now she knew that the reason she’d always been able to withstand this temptation was because she simply hadn’t been tempted. Chocolate cake and pizza, a warm bed on a cold morning when there were things to do, idleness in boredom… All of these things had been more tempting to her than sex.
&n
bsp; People believed in divine retribution, karma, the Rule of Three and other moral laws like them for a reason. People wanted to believe justice would prevail, one way or another. They wanted to believe that even if a murderer wasn’t convicted, something horrible would happen to them anyway. People liked balance, fairness, even if they didn’t want to contribute to it themselves.
But most religions didn’t have a system of retribution meant to occur in a person’s lifetime. Karma was applied to the next life. For those who only lived once, judgment came after the life lived, and if one believed the Gospels, it had nothing to do with sin. Levels of hell and purgatory had been developed because of man’s innate sense of justice, not God’s. Yet God had conquered cities for slights, and Jesus cursed the fig tree because it wouldn’t bear fruit out of season. People wanted to believe in the lightning.
Science had its own law of returns, albeit an oft-misunderstood one—that for every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. Of course, most physics principles were only true in a perfect vacuum, and as Bell had mentioned before, nature abhorred a vacuum.
Neve didn’t think the world was that simple. She didn’t believe in consistent or instant karma. She didn’t trust a justice system run by people. She believed humans placed the weight of sins on scales, not God. But she was a human animal like everyone else, and she couldn’t help but discern patterns—real and false—like the rest of them.
It was difficult for her to view gaining the experience of pleasure right before her husband cheated on her so that she couldn’t use it as a mere coincidence. Perhaps this carnal frustration was punishment for not being wife enough to her husband, that he would stray from her just to fulfill the need that she now denied him on principle. And she couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d been cursed with the very thing she hadn’t understood was so difficult for other people to control, just so she could finally understand—and then some.
Funhouse Page 5
