The Book of Eleanor

by Nat Burns

  Wanting her skin, I broke the kiss and slowly unbuttoned the Oxford shirt she wore above her shorts. I dropped the collar back, exposing her broad, sleek shoulders. She wore a sports bra under the shirt. I slipped my hands underneath so I could caress her breasts and her hardening nipples. I also touched the tight expanse of her belly.

  “You feel so good,” I whispered, pressing my lips against her ear.

  “You make me feel so good,” she countered, her words falling against my ear like diamonds sliding slowly onto black velvet. She pulled my hands from her skin and drew me into the apartment. She locked the door.

  Our clothing fell from us. By the time we reached the bedroom, there were no further barriers to our lovemaking. Angie pressed into me, moving my legs apart, claiming me fully. I lifted my body, pressing into her as much as possible. Our kisses made us one. I wasn’t sure if there was any separation anymore.

  I turned her onto her back and moved her hands above her head, holding them flat as I kissed along her neck and breasts. I kissed her lips. She lifted her head up eagerly to meet me.

  Our tongues played games as our kisses deepened into soul- searing possessions.

  I pulled back and straddled her, pressing my hot wetness against her lower belly. Freeing her arms, I cupped my own breasts as I moved against her, slowly pleasuring myself, gasping with erotic joy. She watched me, her hands on my hips, her eyes dark and grim with passion, until she could take no more. She slid her hand between us and entered me hard and deep.

  I gasped at this new possession, even as a shudder of release swept over my body. I rode her arm, wrapping my arms around my own shoulders and securing myself when I felt dizziness overtake me.

  Then I was on my back. Her mouth was over me, devouring me in that wet center I offered her so readily. Her hands were on my breasts as her tongue brutalized my swollen, sensitive nub, bringing me to the edge of release, then moving to enter me and approach my pleasure from another angle. She did this again and again until I sobbed for release, my body quaking with frantic need.

  Apparently sensing this need, she stopped, paused her assault, and dropped her head to my thigh for a brief moment, as if experiencing the sensations fully along with me. When she resumed, her mouth was more gentle and brought me lovingly to that abyss of pleasure and tipped me over. I soared into space, my body rushing headlong until I landed in her arms, her lips pressed to my forehead while she held me close.

  Angie

  I rested next to Grey, my body blazing, experiencing vicariously her passionate release. Her sensual energy amazed me. I reveled in the fire energy between us.

  We dozed a long time, but when Grey stirred, she entwined our legs. Her thigh found my wetness. She knew I still craved release, craved her. She tipped me toward her and suckled my breasts as she smiled up into my eyes, hers full of sensual promise.

  Earthquakes shifted tectonic plates that had long lain dormant within me. Sound erupted from my lips as Grey alternately suckled and teased the tips of my breasts. One of her hands moved lower to stroke my outer lips, teasing the very end of my clit where it protruded with demanding need.

  Grey kissed along my flank, her head under my arm, her hand gently moving against my clit. Her fingers went inside, seeking wetness. When she touched me once more, those tectonic plates moved yet again and a volcano erupted. My breath expelled harshly and my body shook with major tremors. Her fingers pressed in deeply. She pulled upward against the back of my clit until I throbbed helplessly against her hand, my breath rasping against her neck.

  Moments later, I opened my eyes and rolled onto my back, and there she was. Eleanor. Standing next to the bed behind Grey, looking at me with milk-white eyes, her long black hair streaming on either side of her thin, pale face.

  Shocked beyond belief, I shouted hoarsely, the sound ripped from me involuntarily as I scrambled back toward the headboard, away from the vision.

  Grey sat up, alarmed. She saw where my wide eyes focused. Fear etched a furrow in her brow as she studied me. Her breathing became labored.

  “What is it?” she whimpered.

  I couldn’t speak due to my racing heart, but I worked to calm my body, a hand pressed to my thumping chest. Grey turned slowly around as Eleanor, like a projected film gone bad, stuttered into oblivion.

  “It was Eleanor,” I gasped finally.

  “No,” Grey moaned, shaking her head and gripping the coverlet against her nakedness. “No.”

  “That’s it! I’ve had enough,” I said, rising and collecting my clothing. “This will stop. One way or another.”

  Grey

  “I don’t have Mary’s computer, honey. I gave it to her sister because I already had a computer, and she gave it to her daughter to use for school,” I said.

  Angie paced the kitchen, both hands cradling the warmth of her ceramic mug of hot tea. “So I guess we have to somehow go back to square one. I admit, I’m at a loss where to begin.”

  “Can’t you, like, talk to her? Get some information that way?” I studied the Sassy Suzy strip one last time before sealing it into the mailer. I irritated myself by constantly looking over my shoulder, expecting Eleanor to appear again.

  “It doesn’t usually work like that for me. I just get flashes... If we had the information that Mary found, we could do something with that. Maybe…” She paused and stared out at the dark night beyond the kitchen door as if the answers floated there. She moved the curtain. A warm wind buffeted me and I suddenly remembered something.

  “Oh, my gosh, wait here a minute.” I opened the door to the Bookmark and reached for the switch to flood the large room with light. Rummaging around behind the left-hand coffee bar, I recovered a box of random electronic things I had brought from the house in Garland. Among the wires of routers and other items rested Mary’s BlackBerry. I lifted it and rummaged deeper for the charger cord.

  “What’s that?” Angie asked curiously when I closed the door behind me and took a seat at the dining table.

  “Plug this in, will you?” I requested, handing her the cord.

  She looked around until she found an outlet.

  I pressed the power button and the data tool came to life. “I stopped phone service on this, but her address book and other info should still be here.”

  Angie’s face lit with hope. “Oh, too cool!” she exclaimed, leaning to look over my shoulder.

  I scrolled through Mary’s address book, frustrated to find no Annalise listed. I switched screens and entered the application for various projects. Listed as bold as day, I found the title Annalise and Eleanor.

  “Oh, my God, you were right,” I said. “She was helping Eleanor.”

  Angie laughed with delight and kissed the top of my head. “Awesome! What does it say?”

  I opened the application to find a list of brief notes. I saw references to New York and San Francisco, someone named Katherine Lyrian, Annalise Carter’s name, and a phone number and an address in Berkeley.

  “Do you think that’s really her?” Angie asked.

  “I’m not sure. It could be. I wonder who Katherine Lyrian is.”

  “Well, I’m sure she got married and had kids. This was the 1950s after all. Maybe Katherine is her child.”

  “Yep, that could be. But what if she identified as lesbian?” I tapped a fingernail thoughtfully against my bottom lip.

  “I guess she could have still had kids.”

  “I dunno. We didn’t do it so much back then like we do now.”

  Angie agreed. “True. Well, should we call the number?”

  “And say what? I’m a little nervous about that.”

  “Good point,” Angie said, moving to place her empty cup in the sink. “Most people don’t react well to ‘Hello, I need to know what happened to Annalise Carter because the ghost of her dead lover is haunting me.’”

  I studied her, waiting for her to acknowledge her own humor. She didn’t, so I had to laugh at her seriousness. “Yep, I would imagine.” I glanced a
t the clock and saw it was close to midnight. “Look, it’s too late to call tonight anyway. Let’s go to bed and get a fresh perspective in the morning.”

  Angie lifted her arms and yawned loudly. “Yeah, I have to work the morning shift at Mama’s.”

  “So y’all are opening?”

  “Yep, until the storm gears up. We’ll have a few regulars who will still come out.” She turned to me and pulled me to my feet. “Did I tell you how much I enjoyed our time together before Eleanor so rudely interrupted us?”

  I felt my cheeks turning pink. “No, you didn’t. Did you enjoy it as much as I did?”

  “Hmm, I’ve forgotten,” she mused, grinning. “Let’s go over it again.”

  Angie

  “Was that Donny’s truck I saw dropping you off out there, Mama?” I asked.

  She tucked her pocketbook into its usual slot under the dish rack and grinned at me. “And what if it was?”

  I shrugged. “Just glad he’s staying on this side of the water ’til the storm’s over. That’s all.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” She glanced at the griddle where I stood. “What’s that you’re cooking?”

  “Pancakes. For Grey.”

  Mama pulled on her apron. “Lord, child, don’t you be cookin’ for that girl. She’ll run for the hills and won’t give you the time of day even, ever again.”

  “Mama,” I protested. “I can cook!”

  She shooed me aside and took over the griddle. “Where is she anyway?” she asked.

  “Walked over to the post office to mail in her comic strip.” I stirred the batter after Mama checked it and added more milk.

  “That’s right, I forgot we have a celebrity in our midst. Butter these, will you?”

  I slathered fresh butter on the first stack of pancakes and placed them in the warmer. “We always have celebrities coming through here, Mama. You know that.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t stay. They don’t live here.”

  “That software guy did. He built a mansion on the island,” I pointed out.

  “Um-hmm. So what’s the latest on the ghost over there?” She nodded toward the Bookmark as she flipped a layer of pockmarked pancakes.

  “We’re getting to the bottom of it. It’s someone attached to one of the books Grey’s late partner owned.”

  She watched me curiously. “What does the ghost want?”

  I explained the whole Eleanor and Annalise story, wrapping up just as Grey entered the kitchen. I pulled her close so I could talk in her ear. “We have pannacakes.”

  “Oh, good. I love pannacakes,” she responded.

  “Good answer.”

  Mama studied Grey and me. “I guess you’ll be glad to be shed of that ghost finally. Angie tells me y’all have been having a time with it.” She opened the refrigerator, took out a five-pound box of bacon, and started placing slices out on the meat griddle. A healthy sizzle filled the room.

  “I will,” Grey said, watching with interest as Mama worked. “I want to open the coffee shop, but am afraid to with all this activity going on. This ghost even plays in the public restrooms, throwing paper towels and unrolling the toilet tissue.”

  Mama and I both laughed at the admission.

  “Well, we’d better go ahead and eat, sweetheart. We open in half an hour,” I said.

  As if hearing my thoughts, Gail entered through the back door and stopped dead still, surprised to see us all standing there.

  “Well, good morning!” she said. “How is everybody on this stormy Monday?” She stood an umbrella near Mama’s handbag and pulled her apron off the hook. “Have you opened up the front yet, Angie?”

  I grinned at her. “No, ma’am, I’ve just been making pancakes.”

  Mama grunted.

  I made a face at her.

  “I’ll bring breakfast,” Grey said. “You go open the front with Gail.”

  I touched her hand. “Thank you, babe.”

  Gail and I busied ourselves with switching on the overhead lights and paddle fans, and preparing the dining room for the day even as good food started piling up on the bar. I went over to the front door and slid open the deadbolts. Almost immediately, the door rattled on its hinges as a gust of wind battered it.

  “Gail,” I called. “What are the wind speeds supposed to get to today?”

  “About fifty miles per hour,” she said, coming up behind me to peer at the leaden sky.

  “How long do you think we should stay open?”

  “You know that’s up to Maylie, but I bet they close the bridge earlier than they said.” Gail switched on the red neon OPEN sign situated in the window next to the door.

  I walked over to the bar and took the plate Grey handed me. I helped myself to pancakes, bacon and warm syrup. Grey served her own plate and perched on the barstool next to me. Mama came through the kitchen door and I hailed her.

  “No sense opening up, Mama. Wind’s already thirty or better. I seriously doubt anyone’s coming out.”

  Mama looked out the front windows where palm trees could be seen whipping about in a mad Dervish dance. “You might be right, baby girl. I’m here ’til noon though. That’s when Donny’s picking me up. Might as well stay open.”

  “You can close up, Mama. I’ll run you home.”

  “In that wide open vehicle of yours? I don’t think so. We’d never get out of the square in one piece.” She smiled at me and stuffed her mouth with a forkful of pancake.

  “Can you call him? Get him to come a little early? You don’t want to be on the road when this wind gets up—”

  “Now Angie, he’s just picking up plywood in Brownsville. He’ll be on directly.”

  “Mama!” I said insistently. “I’m serious. You and Gail need to hightail it out of here.”

  “Who died and made you the boss?” Mama growled, but she plucked her cell phone from her pocket and headed into the kitchen.

  Grey

  Later that day at my place, Angie and I had a simple dinner of sandwiches and chips, and discussed our childhoods while we waited for the storm to pass. Angie told me about how her mother, pregnant and alone, had made her way into South Texas riding a Greyhound bus from a small bayou town in deep south Louisiana. Maylie had saved money for her ticket by working in something called a crawdad kitchen. It was there that she learned about her talent for cooking.

  After arriving in The Point, she waited tables and also worked as a cook in just about every restaurant around, living off one job and saving the money from the other. She lived frugally. To save money on child care, she took Angie to work with her when she could. Eventually, she fell into a good paying job at a place called Nonis which she bought and renamed The Fat Mother.

  “Seems like I was born and bred in a kitchen,” Angie joked.

  “So you never knew your father. Did she ever tell you anything about him?”

  She shook her head and took a swig of beer. “Not much. She says I have his hair and chin, and that he was her high school sweetheart.”

  “Why did they split up?”

  “She never said exactly, but from what I overheard when I was younger, I think she walked in on him with another woman. So she left and never looked back.”

  “I wonder if he even knew about you,” I mused.

  “No clue.” Angie shrugged. “Weird that Mama never married anyone. That kinda bugs me. I don’t want Mama to grow old alone.”

  I shook my head. “She won’t. We’ll always be around. As long as she feeds us, that is.” We had a good laugh over that one.

  The power went out that night about eight o’clock. I have to admit to the terror that paralyzed me when the lights snapped off with such brutal suddenness. I just knew Eleanor was there, hovering, ready to strangle one of us.

  Angie had expected this and came prepared. She quickly lit the dozen or so candles scattered about the apartment almost immediately, so I felt somewhat reassured. The flickering shadows offered their own menace, though. We huddled together on the sofa, trying to read
and talking desultorily. The howling wind was deafening. Oscar Marie cowered in my arms, her claws alternately extending and relaxing as she kneaded my arm, seeking comfort.

  “Should we go to sleep?” I offered finally when I’d had to read the same paragraph six times just to glean some meaning from it. I couldn’t concentrate. There was a funny feeling to the apartment, a sense of electricity. I could tell Angie felt it too. I’d never seen her so jumpy. Was it just the lightning outside? Or was there something more sinister manifesting?

  “As if,” she answered. She slapped her book closed and rubbed her eyes. It was about that time that the storm growing inside mirrored perfectly the storm outside.

  It started with the dishes in the kitchen cabinets. They began rattling at the same time as a sudden burst of thunder. I thought at first that the vibration of the thunder had caused the noise, but the sound continued even when the thunder abated.

  Angie slowly stood. Oscar Marie squalled loudly and leapt from my arms to disappear behind the sofa. I rose to my feet just as a butcher knife dislodged from the knife block and whizzed past my head to stab into the wall behind me. I heard the twang of metal as it vibrated.

  “Oh, no,” whispered Angie. “The storm has given her strength!”

  “Is it Eleanor?” I asked, eyeing the knife as it seesawed, its point buried in the wood.

  “Yes,” Angie hissed.

  “What will she do to us?” My voice quavered.

  Sudden repeated thuds against the door to the Bookmark set my heart racing. They were so hard, I felt them in the floorboards beneath my feet.

  “I’m not sure,” Angie answered when the sound quieted, “but I’m sure it won’t be pleasant.”

  One by one, the kitchen cabinets creaked open. The doors stopped as if meeting resistance until each one was precisely aligned. Drawers opened. As I watched, the contents rose and hovered until a sharp wind appeared and swept them into a whirling spiral.