“Aeric! I’m coming! Suck, suck, suck it!”
When she came a spurt, a dart of warm liquid, shot across my chin, ran down my chest, and I almost dropped a load in the air. My cock was twitching and my pulse was pounding.
“Did you like that Mr. Copeland? I’m a squirter.”
“That’s a first for me. I think I loved it.”
I rose to enter Naomi and when I did I lifted her feet from the tile. She enveloped my body with her torso and legs and held tight onto me while I fucked her. I went slow at first, didn’t ram it in, and then she said “please, don’t take it easy! I won’t break! Aeric, fuck me!” And so I did. Violently hard. Bouncing Naomi with all of my muscle, my cock slaughtering her guts with its force. In and out, then over her ass. Taking it from her pussy and teasing her with it until she commanded our next position.
“Get behind me. Out there on the floor.”
I carried her from the shower and she fell on all fours and stuck her ass in the air to tease me. I then roughly licked her anus. Tongue in, then tongue withdrawn. I teased her wet clit and she said “one time. As deep as I can take it. Go in and slide it back slowly. I want to see if I can stand the pain. Aeric, fuck me in my ass.”
I did as I was told, her ass tight at first and then it opened to generously take me, her sphincter slightly releasing its grip on the length of my dripping tool. I went into the balls as Naomi rubbed her clit and screamed “okay, I’m coming! Leave it there! Leave it right there! Don’t move it!” She jerked and shuddered, winced and cursed and then said “slid it out slowly. Spit on that dick and fuck me.”
I came free of her ass, spat on my shaft then slicked it up and down. I had to count my strokes, slow at first and then I sped to the close of my orgasm. She said “say it out loud and give me the number when you’ll fill me up with your semen.” I replied “shit, Naomi…one, two, three and four and five…six, seven, eight and nine.” I then progressed abusively and rapidly hard until I got to thirty then forty, where I suddenly decreased my speed. She wanted the number so I gave her the number. “Naomi, it will be fifty…forty-one then two and three and four…” and I yelled her name and came. There must’ve been a pint that released from my body and she took every single shot. We both thanked the other for what they’d given, Naomi gazing glassily over her shoulder to grin and challenge my count.
“You owe me six more strokes.”
I slid it back in and gave them to her and then we collapsed on our sides in repose.
“Naomi. I love you and I’m sorry.”
She brought my hands together over her womb and said “Aeric, feel this, this is us. This is what I want to remember.”
I left her house at daylight on foot. The walk back to the The Comfort was pleasant. My vehicle had been towed away. I never heard a peep about that.
Naomi
He left as the sun was leveling the horizon and the east was showing its color. I didn’t have to tell him that was goodbye. I would eventually but not this morning. He thought it was forgiveness and in a way it was. But it was the end. One last memory for me to keep close. Loving Aeric would destroy me. I couldn’t allow that. Not even for him. He would always hurt me. I’d be a shell of the woman I was in the end. Aeric couldn’t be saved. He was beyond that.
I didn’t work today, but I did have class tonight, so I slept until ten and then sat in the tub thinking about how I had handled this. Mason then called and said “go see your mother. The scan was bad and she’s not in good spirits.” When I arrived she wasn’t chatting or interested in her day as she intermittently dozed and awakened. They’re trying another medication. In her last two scans there was advancement. The plaque building and forming like ice on shingles and the doctor in Dallas was pissed. When I called him on his cell he was drunk.
“Naomi, hey, this is me. Forgive the racket. I’m drunk in an alley.”
“At noon on a weekday doctor?”
“Yep, I have a drinking problem.”
“I imagine the pressure on you is horrendous.”
“Fucking fighting a disease that doesn’t give a fuck how hard you fucking fight it? One that the devil seems to have conjured? A goddamned malady that begins with missed thoughts and then leaves my patients in their own brain prisons with me watching from the fucking perimeters, seeing them die by the second? You’re goddamn right the fucking pressure is horrendous. I take this shit personal you know. I could be fucking hot nurses or whoring in Bangkok, but the last time I vacationed fucking Reagan was president and that’s a long fucking time ago. I just said the word fuck eight times. No nine, that was nine.”
“We know that you’re doing your best.”
“My best isn’t good enough. The scan was bad. Shit. Dammit. Shit! We’re not quitting. We’re not fucking quitting!”
“We both appreciate what you’re doing. You take so much time with my mother. Time I know you really don’t have.”
There was silence on the other end of the line and I said “hey, are you there?”
“I am. I get choked up. Your mom may not see next month. Then again, she may drift for ten years. I don’t know a goddamned thing.”
“Then we trust your ‘not knowing’ and are comforted.”
“That’s the most sensible thing I’ve ever heard. Thank you for the confidence Naomi.”
“Thank you for being imperfect.”
“I’ll see you next week. I’m moving down there. Got myself another job. Three quarters of the money, like I could give a fuck, but I like Waco…”
“What? Moving here?”
“This new administration are elitist motherfuckers and don’t seem to like my approach. They smelled a little bourbon and reviewed me. I didn’t fight it. It’s my fifth and final. I deal with the terminal you know. My patients don’t really recover. Like I said, I hate this disease.”
“Well, bring your crazy genius down to Waco. My mother and I will retain you. Demand that you remain her doctor.”
“I will. Still have my research. See you next week Naomi.”
“Look forward to it.”
“I’ll try something else. We’ll stall it. I hope we can stall it.”
“We’re a team. The three of us are.”
“And as a team so goes our fortune.”
Mama was asleep when I left. I was at loose ends for the rest of my day so I decided to drive towards the circle. Since Aeric donated that three thousand dollars Esmina has completely remodeled. The place isn’t what it was, but is what it has to be, to keep her doors open in Waco. She put her own money in with Aeric’s and finally turned it around. Even the stoves in the back are new. The stainless steel vents shiny and reflective and I’m guessing that Aeric has returned or anonymously cash was delivered. Either way the clientele changed overnight and now students are eating there. When I parked I pulled against a real cement bumper and I grimaced, a touch, with the development.
“This ain’t the old Esmina’s.”
Lunch was over and the regulars, my tequila drinking friends, were sitting around their table. I spoke to them in Spanish and let them ogle my boobs, because that’s the only boobs they’d be seeing. There was a new guy amongst them that I’d never seen. He got offensive and asked if he could “squeeze me.” That didn’t go over well. Before I knew it there was a knife at his throat. Three gringos from the college were eating their lunch and when it happened they gelled mid bite, cutting their eyes to the action in the back as Esmina ordered him out. The man who’d put the blade to his throat had known my mother since she was a child. Every time I came in he told me in Spanish to thank God I looked like her, and not my daddy from the expensive “big school.” I hadn’t known that the world knew about their affair, but as he lifted the other up to his feet, with the blade firmly resting on his gullet, he said “Naomi, please forgive him. He doesn’t know who you are and apparently cannot remember his manners.”
I replied “hey, it’s okay. I’m not that important in the whole scheme of things. And defi
nitely not worth a cut throat.”
From behind Esmina said “you are to us and this bastard is barred from the premises.”
Now remember, this was all in Spanish, a language the customers didn’t speak. I can’t imagine how those three young students must’ve felt as the crusty old Mexican led the other by his throat to the door without removing the blade. He spoke as they glided across the floor, and if one or the other tripped, a throat would be cut to bleeding: “Naomi, this fella came into Esmina’s looking for work from up north. I was going to hire him to put on some gutters and now he’s gone and offended you.”
“Really, jefe, it’s okay.”
He replied “he’ll be leaving shortly.”
The man was walked outside and the others followed while Esmina bought the student’s lunch. They were paler than normal and one guy was shaking as she patted his back to calm him. In her broken English she said “crazy young fella. Drifters, you hafta watch ‘em. No good. Come to make trouble.”
Everyone was in agreement when the others came in. What followed were toasts to the eviction of evil and to any and all things destructive. Good had won out here today. It was very dramatic and as the tequila was raised the students, though not of age, decided to join in. They wouldn’t be making their biology lab and as for me I wouldn’t be driving. One shot led to two, and I can’t remember three and if there was a fifth I didn’t need it. About as much as I needed the first. We toasted long dead warriors and great men from southern deserts and Esmina toasted a penis. I think she said penis, but this was shot number four, and she could’ve said zebra or accountant. It didn’t matter, I raised my glass. We were working on our sixth when someone woke the jukebox and Esmina said “Aeric bought that.” We’d toasted the jukebox and spread out to dance when the drifter stepped back in the door. The clip snapped in the handle and he pulled on the slide and then turned it to inspect the hammer. As if his weapon wasn’t his own. His first shot killed Esmina, the next volleys the students and then the rest were waved into a corner. The man, my precious friend, who had led him from the place with the knife, said this and it made me shiver.
“You’re a coward. Innocents. Innocents. You should’ve killed me then left.”
The drifter with the gun, his eyes steely and glazed, replied “motherfucker, you’re last.”
With consecutive shots he murdered the rest. Left with me was the jefe and him. All the others lay dead on the floor. The jefe, who’d watched my mother grow up, was courageous to the point of insanity, as he challenged the gun wielding drifter.
“If you think I’m going to allow her abusing after you’re done with me, then I’ll take us both to the grave.”
The jefe then charged him with the knife glinting forward and as he slashed there was a tussle for the gun. They went to the floor and I kicked at the weapon, to no avail because the men were entwined. After half a minute there was a sigh from the gunman and the weapon fired once and they were still. The gunman got to his feet. The jefe had been shot through the chest. He looked up at me, said “Naomi, you’re an angel.” The jefe then died where he lay.
This strange man before me checked his weapon and then spoke rather calmly. “Naomi, you’ll be an angel. Not yet, but you will, I promise.” I was ten feet away with bodies all around me staring at the face of death. It wasn’t ugly. It was dirty and bent. Something resting there in the center of his pupils that great books say the damned seem to carry.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re the last witness.”
I replied “witness to what?”
“What an odd thing to say at this moment. The most important time of your life.”
I have no idea why it came out, but when it did I was glad I said it. Said it exactly this way.
“Apparently you can’t respect that.”
Then there was a flash, movement in the room, before blackness like a vault swallowed me. I fell into a hole that had no bottom and I even saw the shell leave the gun. Is this death? Am I dead?
Aeric
There was an officer from Houston named Jay Tenet who was in Waco visiting his parents. He was all but burned out from his duty as a sniper for the Houston Police Department. In the last ten months he’d been in eight standoffs and they were all more than fifteen hours. Of the eight he’d scoped, Tenet had killed two and it was then that his legs began weakening. His mind wouldn’t work right and he could not sleep so he asked for a leave and got it. He was in Waco with his mother and father who lived three streets north of Esmina’s. On the day of the shooting he’d phoned in an order for a pound of tamales and another of tortillas and he was finally beginning to improve. These were accents, side items, for a family get together that Jay’s mother was having for her boy. She could see the tired pockets beneath her son’s eyes and hear fatigue and wear in his voice. Too much tension for thirty years old. His hair was already gray, though when he left for Esmina’s, he told his mother “I think I’ll walk.” To her that was a sign. He was starting to come around.
In the time that it takes Jay to stride to Esmina’s, speaking to his neighbors as he passes, everyone would die except Naomi. As Jay Tenet was asking Mr. Gutierrez how his tomatoes were coming along, they were shot, and he could not hear it. Too much ambient noise. The pops didn’t stand out. He then proceeded to Esmina’s from the rear. When Jay Tenet rounded the corner of her house he heard Naomi say through a window: “apparently you can’t respect that.” He felt what you feel when you’ve already killed and that killing has worn you to a nub. Jay Tenet reacted instinctively. He yanked his small pistol from around his calf then slid the Velcro back. He knew that the noise against his jeans would alert the shooter Jay was closing. He could smell the pistol smoke, as distinctive to him as the scent of blood to any predator circling for food. When he came through the door he was low and commanding without uttering the faintest syllable. He put two in the back of the gunman’s head when he raised the pistol and fired. Naomi was sprayed with the blood and the gore, though the gunman managed a shot. Because of Jay Tenet the shot to her forehead went stray and hit her shoulder. When she fell her head struck the corner of a table while Tenet was checking the gunman. He held pressure on her wound, saving her life, and with his left called 911.
Naomi slipped into a coma from the lick to her head and how I found out was bizarre and life altering. I’d never get over the way it felt. How my heart was torn from my chest.
Tommi sliced her hand while working at The Comfort and I drove her to the emergency room. We were there when Naomi came in. I’ve been sitting in her room for the past three days and we’re waiting for her to awaken. I wasn’t a praying man but I prayed. If there was something out there answering I needed it to wake her up. Life wasn’t worth it without Naomi. I needed her like I needed air.
The crazy doctor from Dallas and Jay Tenet haven’t left my side for a second. Naomi’s struggle is tearing us apart. And at the same time forging us together. Jay has told us about the “sleep of war” where you can doze without closing your eyes. The crazy doctor from Dallas served in Vietnam as a medic and he has concurred. He said he was on duty one time for a week “and so fucked for sleep I was crazy.” I will not go to sleep in front of them. I would be ashamed of myself. Naomi would think we were being silly, holding a vigil like a bunch of monks. She has no one here but us. Her mother isn’t doing well. The doctor from Dallas blames himself. Whenever he does Jay extends his gold flask and says “doc, just drown it for now. Let’s focus on Naomi, take a hurt at a time, and see if we can’t whip ‘em all.”
“Good advice,” replied the doctor. “I’m glad bourbon is also a day drink.”
I told the pair the truth about what I’d done. Everything since landing in Waco. What my presence has caused to happen. Jay Tenet is suspicious about my truck blowing up and gives me a number for a “task force.” He says these people are federal guys that deal in finance and “cartel shit.” I ask if I should call them and Jay says “yes, they’ve been investigating the Copel
and’s for a decade.” He said “Aeric, time to wake up. Your father wants you dead.” The doctor then chimed in and said “if it makes you feel better, my father left me in the desert. In eastern California on a family vacation after he and my mother planned it. Fucking cults. Aren’t they dandy? They were into some manufactured Jesus. He told them to lighten the load. The load that they lightened was me. My father watched that particular manufactured Jesus bang my mother numerous times. That would’ve been my cue. After that I think I would’ve scrammed.”
Jay Tenet smiled, glanced at the doctor and said “no, that’s not biblical. Well, let me think, no it’s not.”
“What the fuck did you do?” I asked.
“Found water and then I hitchhiked. Got in with a trucker name of Bismuth. He was a rollicking fucker I tell you. He had his whole fucking family crammed in his rig and I became one of their brood. To this day I talk to them weekly. Send them gifts back and forth on birthdays and Christmas and it was they who sent me to school. They made me believe in God. What they did for me was otherworldly.”
“Good on ya,” said Jay Tenet. “And good on the Bismuth family.”
We were in some lounge drinking and talking that Jay and myself couldn’t enter, not without our friend the physician. The nurse came in and said “I got good news. Naomi is awake and smiling. I told her what happened and who’s waiting.”
“Hot damn!” said the doctor. “That girl is a bull! She’s the reason we’re all three here! We were meant to be in this room!”
“What do you mean?” I asked. He seemed to be too much of a genius to be dreamy, spacey and airy. I’ve since learned that’s where genius begins. Wonderers wandering their heads.
The doctor mused for a second to gather his words: “well, besides the obvious Aeric. We’re here because we love. Jay Tenet is here because he’s snuffed out evil and that makes us all a little safer. I myself am here because I believe that disease, pain and suffering can ultimately be lessened. And that as humans our minds can defeat it. And you…”
The Book of F*ck Page 8
