Dark Passions

by Jeff Gelb

  The band eased into “Margaritaville.” It didn’t sound much better than the rap, but at least Malcolm knew most of the words. It was a damn shame the band didn’t.

  “Maybe it isn’t physical. Maybe all you need is a little changeup. Have you thought about another woman?”

  Malcolm shook his head. “If I was to get myself another woman, I’d have to get myself another man to keep her satisfied.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Seymour, I’m tiptoeing up to the fifty-year mark. I don’t need or want another woman. I’m just trying to keep the woman I want happy.”

  “Well, okay, maybe not another woman. But maybe you just need a little change of pace.”

  Malcolm stared at his beer, wondering if it was possible to read your future in the foam. He peered as hard as he could, but all he could see was a cluster of tasty bubbles clinging to the side and bottom of the glass.

  Seymour kept talking. “You need to loosen up. Invite another woman over for a threesome. Go to a key party. Try new positions.”

  “Change your tune,” Malcolm said. “You’re starting to sound like a damned fortune cookie.”

  “Well, damn it, Malcolm, you can’t just ignore it and hope it’ll all go away. You’ve got to try something.”

  “Try something?”

  Malcolm snorted.

  “Seymour, I’ve tried everything. Last June I surprised her with a romantic bedside banquet of oysters. Flew the fuckers right in from Florida.”

  “Oysters are good,” Seymour allowed. “High in zinc, long on libido. Sounds like just the thing to poke the ashes of a dying fuck-fire.”

  Malcolm snorted even louder.

  “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” He poured another beer. “How the fuck was I supposed to know she was allergic to shellfish? Hell, I can’t even spell anaphylactic.”

  Seymour sat there, stone-cold silent, but Malcolm could see he was fighting hard not to let the laughter slip out. Truth to tell, Malcolm didn’t blame him. It was funny.

  Except he wasn’t laughing.

  “Then you know what she said? Right after the slurred speech and vomiting let up? ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘stop trying to build a relationship with a ball-peen hammer.’”

  “Damn,” Seymour swore. “That’s cold.”

  “So then I tried green M&Ms. Everybody knows they make you horny, right? I bought a whole carton of jumbo bags and damned near turned myself color-blind sorting the green ones out of the assortment. Then I blended all of the green ones, must have been nearly a thousand. I blended them up into a giant chocolate smoothy. Chocolate is sexy, isn’t it?”

  “Can’t go wrong with chocolate,” Seymour agreed. “Did you know the Mayans invented it?”

  Malcolm couldn’t resist.

  “Google?”

  Seymour shrugged.

  “Survivor: Guatemala,” he confessed. “So what happened? Did the M&Ms work?”

  “What happened? It turned out that when she isn’t being allergic to shellfish, she’s busy developing an allergy to green food dye. Her hives swelled up like orgasmic puffballs, and she spent the whole night in the emergency ward, damn near choking to death.”

  “Maybe you need to try some different positions,” Seymour suggested. “There’s lots of varied techniques can add a whole lot of jungle to your loving.”

  “Kama Sutra, you mean? I tried that last spring. Found a how-to video at a yard sale. Talked the guy down from five bucks to two.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I’ll tell you what happened. Halfway through positions one through six, with Maria’s right leg hooked somewhere around my left ear, and her right elbow jammed deeply into an erogenous area of my inner kneecap, I discovered my fucking lumbago. I still limp when it rains.”

  Seymour just shook his head, but Malcolm was on a roll.

  “Last month I hooked up a set of speakers in the bedroom and tried piping in ‘Bolero,’ like in that Bo Derek movie? All it done for Maria was bring on one of her migraine attacks.”

  “Shit, sounds like you’ve tried everything.”

  “You ain’t just whistling William Tell’s overture. Last week I tried voodoo. I sacrificed an entire bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken to Damballah, the god of bad ideas. Then I stripped myself naked and danced a quick oneman tango of desire about Maria while chanting out the only chant I know.”

  “What chant was that?” Seymour asked.

  “Ooo eee, ooo ah ah—ting tang, walla walla bing bang.”

  “Walla walla bing bang?”

  Malcolm shrugged. “It was the best I could come up with.”

  “Did it work?”

  Malcolm laughed. “Oh, it worked all right. Worked so well Maria had a panic attack thinking I’d gone and developed a shivering case of jumped-up St. Vitus jitterbug fever.”

  Malcolm tipped back the glass of beer and drained it.

  Seymour worked up enough nerve to talk. “Well, hell, Malcolm. It sounds as if you’ve got the right idea.”

  “What, that I need to scare my wife to death? Poison her with shellfish and green M&Ms?”

  “Hell, no. The trying-new-things part. That’s just what you need to be doing. Only problem is you haven’t found the right thing to try.”

  Seymour pushed on. Once he’d latched his problemsolving muscles onto a situation, it was harder than juggling fresh scrambled eggs to get him to let go.

  “It’s like baseball, you know?” Seymour said, grinning like a skinny, buck-toothed Socrates.

  Oh hell. A sports metaphor. Malcolm should have known better. Seymour always turned everything into sports. Ever since he’d joined the high-school football team. You’d think he’d have grown out of it by now.

  People never change.

  “All of the best batters know how to changeup. Otherwise, you get predictable. Even Babe Ruth knew how to bunt. What d’ya think?”

  Malcolm did his best to look like he was considering Seymour’s explanation.

  “What do I think?” he asked, tilting the beer to get the last few drops of barley from the bottom of the glass. “I think it’s your round. Ante up, big boy.”

  Seymour flagged down a waiter.

  “Look,” Malcolm said. “I don’t want another woman. I want Maria. I just want things to jazz up a little. I’m not talking sex toys. I don’t need any blow-up dolls or hisand-her vibrators. I just want a tune-up, y’hear what I’m saying?”

  Seymour nodded, thinking about what Malcolm had said. The waiter showed up with another pitcher. Christ. Maria was going to kill him.

  “Well, maybe it is physical. I think I know just what you need,” Seymour said. “I think I know how to fix things up. What you need is a little dose of Spanish Fly.”

  Malcolm laughed. “There ain’t no such thing.”

  “Is too. I know where to get some. Get you laid faster than shit.”

  “I don’t want to break it to you, Seymour, but most of the shit I’ve ever known doesn’t move that fast or get laid at all. It mostly just lays there and grows maggots until somebody flushes it away.”

  “Look,” Seymour said. “I’m trying to tell you this stuff is freaking legendary. I’m talking the real deal. I can get it for you.”

  “Sure,” Malcolm said. “I’ve seen that stuff in the sex shops. Spanish Fly. Quicker Pecker Upper. Fire In The Hole. You know what all of that stuff is? Just a little sugar, a little food coloring, and a big old price tag. The only kind of hole you’ll get is the ones that grow in your teeth.”

  Seymour shook his head hard. “I’m not talking about anything store-bought. I’ve got a guy who can get you the real thing. He brings it in from South America or something like that.”

  “Something like that?”

  “I don’t know. He makes it special, you know? Out of certain ingredients.”

  “You gonna hook me up with a pusher, Seymour? Man, you’ve been watching too many Miami Vice reruns.”

  “What do you have to lose, Malc
olm?”

  Malcolm thought about it. Seymour was right.

  “You’ve got to try something,” Seymour said. “If you don’t use it, you surely will lose her.”

  Seymour was dead right. Malcolm was scared he was going to lose Maria. There was no way he wanted that to happen. She was the best thing that ever happened to his fucked-up life.

  “What do you say, Malcolm? It’s the bottom of the ninth.”

  Why the hell not? Maybe it was just what he’d needed. He just needed to change his swing.

  He just needed a good pop fly.

  Yeah, that was it.

  He just needed to pop Maria a little Spanish Fly.

  They climbed into Seymour’s primered-over ’83 Thunderbird right after they’d finished off their second pitcher of beer, just as the house band hip-hopped over from rap and began disemboweling an old MC Hammer tune. They couldn’t touch it.

  “You see,” Seymour said, swinging the big car around an overturned garbage can and a snoozing wino, “Spanish Fly isn’t really made out of houseflies.”

  “So what’s it made out of? Zippers?”

  Seymour wasn’t bothered by Malcolm’s sarcasm. He was in full oration mode, showing off his holistic healing skills. Seymour was proud of his job, and a good friend besides, so Malcolm did his best not to let on that he knew full well that Seymour learned most of his skills and technique from reading the labels at Sister Marriedwell’s Holistic Health Food Emporium and a stack of Mother Jones magazines that he’d picked up in a paper drive.

  “The actual drug is made up of dried and crushed carcasses of green blister beetles.”

  “So let me get this straight. You’re advising me to feed my wife bugs?”

  “Couldn’t do any worse than the green M&Ms.”

  Seymour had a point, but Malcolm couldn’t help wondering just what a blister beetle might look like. He kept getting this vision of funky, slime green beetles crawling out of the blisters and bunions of Juan Valdez’s dirty sandaled feet.

  Ten minutes later Malcolm and Seymour were standing in a sleazy bodega in the sleaziest corner of the worst side of town.

  A fat Puerto Rican clerk with a long, greasy moustache stood behind a counter stuffed full of unnameable cuts of meat. Long ribbons of yellow flypaper dangled down like streamers on a prom night from hell. There were flies of all shapes and sizes hung and stuck on every inch of the paper, like a treasure trove of fat, buzzing crystal.

  Seymour spoke to the clerk in a language that sounded a little like Spanish. Malcolm had never known that Seymour knew Spanish. Come to think of it, he didn’t know that much about Seymour at all. He was just some guy he’d known since high school. He threw a good football, he’d been divorced twice, and the two of them called each other best friend.

  That was all he knew about the guy. For all he knew, Seymour could have been a double agent from Alpha Centauri sent to infiltrate the simmering ranks of lowerclass trailer trash.

  The clerk pointed.

  Malcolm reached for a package resting between a bin of habanero peppers and a basketful of bootleg porno DVDs.

  “This is Spanish Fly? The real stuff?” he asked.

  “I make it myself. The real thing. Very special,” said the clerk in a voice that sounded like it was bubbling up from the bottom of a quarry.

  Malcolm paid him.

  Then Seymour drove Malcolm on home to Maria.

  In the morning, Malcolm crawled out of bed. His head felt like it was stuffed with cobwebs, crepe paper, and creamed Crisco.

  “Oh shit,” he whispered.

  He’d gone to sleep in his jeans. He hadn’t even bothered changing into his pajamas.

  In the kitchen, Maria banged a couple of pots together in fire-alarm fashion. She was enjoying herself, but it wasn’t doing much for Malcolm’s skull. It sounded horrible, way worse than last night’s rap music.

  He stumbled out into the kitchen and glared at her backside, watching it jiggle as she made like Buddy Rich with a ladle and a pasta pot. She was having fun. Fucking bitch. He’d like to give her a banging.

  Then he grinned. It was funny. He wasn’t really angry. He was just displacing his feelings of frustration with anger. Like turning one emotion into another. He’d learned all about that shit from Dr. Phil.

  No, he wasn’t angry, but he still wanted to bang her.

  He thought about it for just about ten seconds. Just go for it, grab her and throw her down on the kitchen table, and let her have it.

  To hell with that. She’d either turn him down or go dutifully through with it to be nice. One was as bad as the other. Besides, they only had three more months of payments to go on the table.

  His smile turned rueful.

  Time was she would have welcomed it.

  Right now she was mad, and he just couldn’t blame her. He knew he’d be in trouble. He knew he shouldn’t be out that late, drinking on a work night.

  Fuck it. He and Seymour had been getting shit-faced together since high school. Why the hell should he change now?

  Yeah, Maria would understand that. Shit. He didn’t have a leg to stand on.

  What the hell. He might as well go to work. A change was as good as a rest, wasn’t it?

  She’d cool off by the time he got home.

  He took one last look at her before closing the front door behind him, as if he wanted to fix her image in his memory.

  “Good-bye, honey.”

  That damn Spanish Fly had better work.

  He clicked the television off at nine pm sharp.

  “What’d you do that for?” Maria asked. “Law and Order is coming on.”

  “It’s probably a repeat.”

  “I want to see it anyway.”

  “My back’s killing me, babe. We can watch it upstairs, can’t we?”

  He resisted the urge to drop any hints. He didn’t want her to see this coming. That’d kill the mood for sure. It definitely had to be spontaneous.

  She didn’t argue. It was more comfortable upstairs for watching television.

  He remembered when they’d moved the old television upstairs. For the first six years of their marriage, they had resisted the idea of watching television in bed. There were too many other things to do in bed.

  Then one day he’d bagged a big bonus and treated the household to a new television. Rather than bother with trying to sell the old one, or worse yet just dumping it on the curb, Maria suggested they move the old television upstairs. How quickly things change.

  “I’m going to the kitchen. Make some cocoa.”

  “That’d be nice,” Maria said. “But I thought your back was hurt. You sure you don’t want me to make it for you?”

  No, damn it, Malcolm thought. I want you to make it with me.

  “The moving around will do me good,” he told her.

  And that was that.

  He heated the pot of milk, stirring the cocoa in with heavy spoonfuls to mask the flavor of the Fly. He read the instructions.

  Then he poured two cups, one in Maria’s favorite mug. Then he added the Spanish Fly to Maria’s mug.

  How much? Shit, there were no instructions. What kind of a dosage did this involve?

  He shook in a handful. It looked pretty, kind of a cross between powdered Emerald City and fine dried parsley.

  “Somewhere over the rainbow,” he sang to himself.

  “Honey, hurry up. You’re going to miss the beginning,” Maria called down.

  “Coming, sweetheart.”

  He added some baby marshmallows. They melted and clustered together like wet fungus.

  Then he went upstairs, carrying the mugs.

  That ought to work, shouldn’t it? Chocolate was supposed to be an aphrodisiac, wasn’t it? And besides, hadn’t Seymour said the Mayans invented chocolate? To Malcolm’s way of thinking, that made for a perfect blend.

  He walked into the bedroom, nearly tripping over the throw rug and spilling the cocoa.

  “Hey, babe. I made it just
the way you like it.”

  She reached for the mug.

  “Thanks, honey. You’re the best.” She smiled up at him. “Don’t ever change.”

  For an instant he nearly changed his mind.

  And then she reached up and took it from him.

  Before he could say anything, she took a sip.

  It was done.

  “Hmm, this is good,” she said.

  “Drink it down while it’s warm.”

  He felt like shit, but he hoped it would be worth it.

  The stuff worked fast. By the time Arthur had finished his first tough talk to Jack McCoy, Maria had her panties off and three fingers buried up her steaming pussy. She was hotter than a week of foreplay.

  Malcolm leaned over her. He could feel the heat radiating off her skin. She was damned near burning up. Her flesh seemed to move, like it was molten lava. Christ, she was hot.

  He touched her lips with a sweetheart kiss. She clamped hold of him and dragged him down to the bed, sucking her mouth onto his with a pressure that was damned near pneumatic.

  Her tits were high and hard and hot, the nipples like ruby bullet branding irons scorching into his skin. He ran his hands over her. She arched herself against him, grinding her pelvis against his groin.

  His cock stiffened to attention beneath his pajama bottoms.

  He didn’t remember getting naked. It happened that quickly, as if she’d grown an extra set of arms in order to tear his pajamas off.

  And then he was inside her. He’d never felt her so warm, so wet, so damn tight.

  “Fuck me hard,” Maria begged.

  He didn’t need any coaxing. He rode her hard, humping it into her. With every thrust she rose up to meet him, grinding her clitoris hard against his pelvic bone.

  She came like she couldn’t stop.

  He pushed up, pulling himself free, struggling to catch a breath. He figured he’d catch his breath and then get his turn at coming.

  Maria had other plans. She grabbed him hard by the ears.

  “I hope you’ve got gills,” she said before pulling him face first down into her pussy.

  Malcolm licked for dear life.

  After a time, he thought he could hear the sea.