Tuesday Erotica Club

by Lisa Beth Kovetz

  “What’s so funny?” Trevor asked her. He lay beside her in his bed, reading a biography of a dead sports legend, answering her frequent vocabulary questions and marveling at the pleasure she took in reading.

  “It’s written funny,” she’d told him. “But it actually makes sense once you know the code.”

  Limbo seemed stupid and unfair, Lux had declared, but she got a big kick out of the descriptions of wicked people in hell, suffering punishments appropriate to their sins: liars stuffed in shit up to their noses, lovers pounded by incessant winds because they subjected reason to desire. She thought it was good in a comic-book way. And yet, here in the living room of her new apartment, staring at her ex-boyfriend’s flicking tongue, Lux discovered the pit of hell beckoning her down.

  Carlos, she thought, Caaah-ah-ah-ah-arlos. Carlos and that sweet peach kiss could be all over my body and wipe out that total-failure thing that just happened with Trevor. All that could disappear in the intoxication of Carlos and his snake tongue. I could be arching my back and braying like a mule for twenty minutes or more, all the kinks in my muscles and my mind will wash away with the flow of spit and come down my thigh. Trevor doesn’t own me, she bargained with herself. I just want to live in his house until I can buy a second apartment. I need at least twelve months of rent on this address before I got the down payment for another. And President Clinton said it wasn’t sexual intercourse if you just use your mouth.

  “No,” Lux told Carlos, “you’re gross.”

  “What?”

  “Put that thing back in your mouth before you curdle the paint.”

  “Paint don’t curdle.”

  “It would if you stuck that long, nasty thing in it. Now I got a tenant moving in here tomorrow and we ain’t done none of the trim. So let’s get going.”

  “Bossy bitch,” Carlos said and then showed her the snake tongue again.

  “You gonna put someone’s eye out with that thing and then where’ll you be?”

  “Old Cock musta forgot where the cootchie lives and put his tongue in your eye. You poor, poor pussy.”

  Lux laughed.

  “Yeah, just paint. I gotta hand over the keys at nine tomorrow, and I don’t want the place smelling of paint.”

  “What do you care if it smells of paint?”

  “Cuz. I. Want. To do a good job so they’ll hire me again. It was good money, and it wasn’t so hard.”

  “Cuz I did all the work.”

  He had done most of the work. He knew how to lay down tape so the off-white paint on the walls made good clean lines when it met the brighter white of the ceiling and trim. He’d found the guy to redo the hardwood floors on the weekend for cheap. For fifteen dollars per hour plus lunch Carlos had been her mule for six weeks.

  “You did a good job, Carlos. If I get another one, we’ll do it again.”

  “Ok. Yeah. You think you’ll get another one?”

  “I hope so.”

  “You pay under the table again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ok, but you gotta do it and not tell Jonella cuz she and the city is all over my money with that child support bullshit.”

  “Your teeth are falling out,” Lux said, and she meant it metaphorically.

  “Uh huh,” Carlos said as he tuned out and reset the filter that would alert him when she said something that had to do with him. Carlos dipped a clean brush in the bright white can of paint. She was one whacked-out girl. All the time he’d spent with her he could fill a book with the weird shit she said, if he had, you know, actually listened.

  Lux watched him work. Tenants were moving in on Monday. Within a year she’d have her cash reserves back up to $30,000 at least. Her attorney told her she could buy another property right now using the equity of this apartment as down payment, but it seemed too crazy to her. She didn’t really understand what he meant. And, because the attorney charged by the hour, Lux had intended to ask Trevor to explain the details about home equity this morning. And she would have if he hadn’t been so obnoxious and possessive.

  He’d called her cell phone four times in the half hour it took her to cross the park that stood between his apartment and hers. First to apologize, then to beg, then to cry. The fourth time she didn’t take the call.

  When Aimee said Trevor loved her and wanted her for his own it had seemed like nonsense. But then Brooke confirmed it. Lux thought Trevor liked her and wanted to have sex with her but that was all. He didn’t want to keep her forever no more than she wanted to be his wife. She had planned to live at his apartment, having fun, sex, dinner, and conversation until he got tired of her and asked her to leave. Brooke had warned her that it was all a trap. And his behavior today proved it. Lux felt she had to act and act fast if she was going to save her life. She believed she had to get out before it was too late.

  “Oh sweet, sweet pussy that my Lux has,” Carlos was singing loudly and tunelessly in the other room. “And I’m gonna wrap my mouth around it as soon as I finish up this trim painting. Which should be in less than ten minutes.”

  Why not, thought Lux. I don’t belong to no one but me. She waited until he was almost done with his work. Then she took her shoes off.

  “I’m gonna try out the shower. Make sure it works,” she called to Carlos knowing he would jump at the thought.

  She poked her head into the room where Carlos was painting to see whether he’d heard her. He was just pulling the tape and wrapping up the canvas.

  “I left a check for you on the kitchen table, Carlos. Made out to cash like you asked. I’m just gonna try out the shower now. See you later.”

  She closed the door, slipped out of her pants and left them in a small pile in front of the door. Then her socks made a second pile. Underwear sat on its own. Then came a shirt, a jacket and finally, she hung her bra on the doorknob of the bathroom before she ducked into the shower and turned it on.

  Carlos shoved the check in his pocket and then stepped over Lux’s shoes, her socks, pants, and underwear. He was thinking about what he was going to do to her in the shower, how he was gonna grab both her small hands into one of his and hold them up over her head, let the water run down all over her body while he sucked on her nipple and fingered her pussy. How he was gonna tease her and lick her and make her wait until she was begging him to stick himself deep into her.

  He was stepping over her shirt and her jacket when he saw her cell phone sticking out of the pocket. He picked it up and thought about calling Jonella. He’d get Jonella over here so he could tickle Lux’s clit with his tongue while Jonella slapped her breasts to make them bounce in that way that made him crazy. Maybe he’d even do Jonella first while Lux waited and watched. Maybe he’d do them both together, just for old times’ sake. While he was considering the permutations and trying to remember where Jonella said she’d be today, Lux’s little cell phone rang.

  “Who dat?” Carlos answered the phone on the first ring.

  “Ah, well this is Trevor. Is Lux available?”

  “No, Old Cock,” Carlos crowed into the tiny phone. “She busy.”

  19. The Punch

  IT WAS THE BLOOD that did him in. Just a tiny spot of blood that spurted from Trevor’s nose on to the wrong person’s blouse. If it weren’t for the blood, everything might have been ok.

  In all his life, Trevor had only been punched once, by his son, accidentally during a game of flag football. Teddy’s fist had wrapped around his opponent’s flag and then would have shot up into the air in triumph, except that it connected with his dad’s chin on the way. Trevor’s head snapped back and he wore a substantial bruise as well as a neck brace for several weeks.

  When Lux punched Trevor, standing in the lobby of Warwick & Warwick, LLP, her right fist connected with the side of his head, right at the temple. The broken vessels would leak blood into the whites of his eye and turn the area directly underneath the eye first to black, then purple, then green, until it faded away altogether.

  Lux was strong, but she w
as not particularly fast, and she gave him plenty of warning, albeit in a language he could not understand.

  “If you don’t back off, Trevor, so help me I’m gonna smack you.”

  In the language Trevor spoke, the word “smack,” like its synonyms “punch,” “beat,” and “hit” translated to an empty threat, whereas Lux knew it to be fair warning of the consequences of a foolish action repeated.

  After several delightful damp hours with Carlos she had struggled back into her clothes and found seventeen messages from Trevor on her cell phone. He also called her mother, as well as Jonella. It was not so much the number of calls but the fact that she had never given him either of the other telephone numbers that made the noose feel so tight around her neck. He didn’t even know Jonella’s last name, and yet he had tracked her down. Lux knew the relationship was on a bad path and she couldn’t keep running to her brother Joseph to save her every time things got sticky. So she jumped off the train before it crashed. Monday after work, she packed her bags and moved back into her mother’s house.

  All that week, Trevor did everything he knew to get her to come back. Flowers. Emails. Theater tickets. She had been warning him to “back the fuck off ” for several days but even in their simplicity, Trevor misunderstood her words and her actions.

  Even at the last minute he did not see it coming. If he could have slowed it down and watched it after the fact, Trevor would have clearly understood that when he cornered her in the lobby at work and Lux said, “If you don’t back off, I’m going to smack you,” she was already balling her hands into fists. She gave him ample time to move away from her. Instead he moved in closer, begging, “Bunny, can’t we just discuss this?” At that point, Lux set her legs in a wide stance. She brought both hands up into fists in front of her face.

  Jonella would have known what was coming next. Carlos, Joseph, and any kid on the playground who had ever been hit would have recognized that Lux, with her fists curled and at eye level, was preparing to punch. She waited, giving him yet another chance to back away, but Trevor was a foreigner, a tourist stumbling into an insurrection. He moved forward, reaching out to touch her and then—wham.

  The left stayed at her face to block the blow she reflexively assumed he would return to her. The right pulled back at the elbow and flashed across to connect with the side of his head. Smack.

  The blood and the damage to his nose was not entirely Lux’s fault. Trevor rebounded off the wall behind him and then fell forward, hitting his face on a table full of magazines. After he hit the floor, Lux stepped over him and walked slowly past the stunned receptionist, through the maze that was the law firm and over to her own desk. The muscles in her stomach were so tight she could not breath properly. Her soon-to-be-former boss would later describe her to friends as “panting like a dog,” which she was. Lux grabbed her purse, her lunch, and her notebook and then walked back past the receptionist.

  When she got back to the lobby, Mr. Warwick himself, as well as Margot and some of the other senior attorneys, had already gathered around Trevor and were pressing well-ironed handkerchiefs to his bleeding nose. Trevor stared at Lux as she passed him. He noted that she was carrying her purse and a paper bag. She walked out of the office and headed for the elevators.

  “There she goes! There she goes!” the receptionist shouted as Lux punched the elevator button down arrow.

  “Leave it, Mrs. Deecher, leave it,” Trevor shouted. The receptionist was named Beecher, but Trevor had broken his nose.

  “I’m calling the police,” Mrs. Beecher announced.

  “Doe! Doe! Don’t!” shouted Trevor and all the others agreed.

  “No police!” Margot said too loudly.

  “It’s best that we deal with this ourselves,” Mr. Warwick said. He turned to Trevor.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “I don’t doe, sir. I fell and hit the coffee table.”

  Mrs. Beecher listened closely. If Trevor was planning to lie, she would have to hear the story now if she was to corroborate it later.

  “It wad just an accident,” Trevor said with weight and finality. The matter was closed. Margot sighed, relieved that the whole incident was about to become just a moment of clumsiness that could be forgotten when the bones healed and the bruise faded.

  “It wasn’t,” said Crescentia Peabody, scratching at the little red circle of Trevor’s blood that had ruined her ivory silk blouse. It was the one with the ruffled collar, the one she liked. That woman, Margot, the attorney who had presented the contract for the Christmas clitoris instead of the Christmas catalogue, was fussing over the man with the bloody nose. What had happened between the thin, badly dressed red-haired girl and this middle-aged man was none of her business, except for the spot on her blouse. That little red circle made her more than a spectator of their lives and so she reported what she had seen.

  “The girl with the red hair, they were fighting and she kept telling him to back off, to leave her alone but he kept touching her and asking her to just please to come into his office so they could discuss it quietly between them. She started to cry but he wouldn’t leave her alone and when he grabbed her by the arm she hit him. Rather hard, too.”

  Crescentia was quite correct in her assessment of the events. Mrs. Beecher had witnessed the same slim slice of Lux and Trevor’s life together and would have described it in a similar fashion, albeit a bit more generously tilted towards Trevor because he had always been pleasant to her.

  “Find that woman,” Warwick instructed. Then he pointed at Trevor, “You. In my office.”

  Margot desperately wanted to follow Trevor into Warwick’s office. He was such an honorable idiot. He would probably tell Warwick everything, including the things Warwick didn’t need to know. Mano à mano, he would provide the old man enough gunpowder to fire Trevor for his indiscretion. Oh, they would laugh about it for sure, and Warwick might slap him on the back for landing a live one, but sooner or later he would also kick him in the ass for being an idiot and eventually fire him for fucking a secretary.

  “Find that girl,” Warwick ordered Margot as she tried to enter the office.

  “But I think I can be of greater assistance here in your office.”

  “I still know how to write a contract, Ms. Hillsboro. What I need from you is damage control. I don’t know how to talk to women. Trevor is obviously a total idiot. I need you to do that talking thing you women do, that sisterhood thing that you do. Go, not as an attorney, go as a woman, track her down, chat her up, and get her to sign the release that Trevor and I are about to write up. I want you to go down to human resources and pull her file. Now move.”

  Margot looked past Mr. Warwick and saw Trevor sink down into the burgundy leather couch and rest his head in his hand. She prayed he would value self-preservation over the need to confess.

  “And don’t come back until you have a signed agreement, Hillsboro.”

  On the trip out to Queens, Margot began to feel a little queasy about her assignment. Warwick wrote out a release indemnifying Warwick & Warwick, LLP, from any liability in whatever case Lux might have against Trevor. In her briefcase, Margot had two cashier’s checks for $5,000 and $10,000 respectively. If Lux wanted more than $15,000 she would have to make a phone call. Warwick was standing by, waiting for the call.

  Lux was sitting on the front porch of her mother’s house when Margot arrived.

  “Why don’t we go inside?” Margot said.

  “Mmmm, no, I don’t think so.”

  “I’ve never conducted business on the stoop, and I’m not prepared to start now.”

  “There’s a coffee shop down the road if you don’t mind the walk,” Lux offered.

  “No, we have some personal things to discuss. I think a coffee shop would be too public.”

  Lux stepped protectively in front of the door to her mother’s house. Inside, her mother and her brother were stoned on the couch. The kitchen was dirty. The linoleum was yellow, except for the blotchy white b
its where the ammonia of the cat’s piss had burned a clean spot.

  “You can’t come in my house.”

  Ah shit, she’s gonna sue, Margot thought. She’s gonna sue big. This is clearly hostile. How am I gonna get her to sign this?

  “What can I do to get you to invite me into your house?”

  Lux’s eyes lit up. She licked her lips. She took a deep breath and made her request.

  “Ok, explain to me why you can borrow money against the equity in your house.”

  “Huh?” Margot asked.

  “Are you deaf?”

  “No, I’m just, eh, well, ok, you’re allowed to borrow against the equity in your house because it’s your money and you can do anything you want to do with it.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you buy something else with it?”

  “Of course. It’s yours.”

  Lux stood quietly and thought about this until Margot interrupted her.

  “Shall we go inside now?”

  Lux pushed open the front door and allowed Margot to enter her mother’s home. The smell of cat pee was overwhelming.

  Through the doorway of the kitchen Margot could see an older woman and a younger man laughing at an afternoon TV show. The kitchen was painted orange with pink trim and there was a collection of glow-in-the-dark Madonnas crowding the cracked Formica of the kitchen table. It was, in Margot’s estimation, a social landscape by Federico Fellini.

  “So? What do you want?” Lux asked as she sat down opposite Margot and fiddled with one of the many greenish Madonnas. Margot hesitated, momentarily transfixed by the velvet clown paintings she suddenly noticed behind Lux’s head. Lux turned to look where Margot was staring.

  “Yeah, my father got one of the best collections of acrylic-on-velvet clown paintings in the nation. You mighta heard about it if, you know, you read the right magazines.”

  Margot’s eyes began to water from the animal smells inside Lux’s mother’s kitchen.

  “Could you open a window?”