The Girl who Couldn't Come

by Comeau, Joey

  She lifted the sheet from my back, and she pulled my pants down and she pressed her tongue into me. I felt dry, even while she tongued me. Dry and warm.

  7.

  She wears my clothes. I know this, because she comes to the closet to put them in the hamper beside me. She tightens my belt around her waist. In the morning, she bites my sheet, and she takes it in her fist. She grabs the sheet that is my head and she leans against the wall of the closet and jerks off where my face used to be. She comes against the holes where my mouth and eyes should be.

  the steps

  The woman they send to landscape my lawn has mud all over the front of her tank top. She has a shaved head and from this distance her eyes are black like an animal’s. There is a smear of brown dirt up the side of her neck. Her pickup truck is filled with tools, a lawnmower and three thin trees, each with a ball of dirt and roots wrapped in canvas at its base.

  I watch her from the front step as she raises the pickaxe over her head and brings it down. I should be finishing my taxes. The deadline’s today. But look at her. She isn’t muscled, but she’s strong. Her skin is tanned the color of wet stone. The ground comes up in chunks where the pick goes in. She lifts it again. I want to run my hands up her body when it is stretched out in that way. I want to push my fingers into her skin.

  “Hey,” I call to her, and she looks up. “Do you want a beer?” I say. She watches me for a minute, and I realize that she didn’t know I’ve been sitting here, watching. She drops the axe on the ground.

  “Yeah,” she says, “all right.”

  I grab two beer bottles from the fridge inside and I can’t help smiling. I wonder what her name is. I wonder whether she will let me run my fingers over her shaved head. I can already feel the bristles. My tax receipts are on the table by the door. There are discrepancies. The totals don’t work. I need a break. I deserve a break.

  I open the front door and step outside. I am smiling at her when I should be watching where I’m going. My foot catches, and I fall forward down the steps. There is no sound when my skull hits the cement at the bottom. It feels like someone is pulling very gently at my hair. The ground underneath my head is a stack of numbers, profit and costs and taxes and interest rates on loans. It scrapes at me. It trickles. There’s something wrong.

  I can see one of the beers pouring out next to me, and then I can see her kneeling down to peer into my face. I feel like suddenly all of the totals are matching. I hit my head too hard. She looks terrified. She shouldn’t be. It all adds up. I lick my lips and reach out for her. The bristles tickle at my fingertips and her dark eyes go soft. I can hear her breathing now. Sound rushes back and I pull her toward me and we kiss. She rolls me over and it hurts like hell when her hand presses against my shoulder. She pulls at something and I feel faint. Her hand comes away with blood and a chunk of broken bottle and she tosses the glass and wipes the blood on her shirt.

  This all feels right, like I am filling in boxes on a form. She straddles me and when she leans forward to kiss me again, I press up against her. I pull her shirt up to expose her breasts, my hand leaving dirt and my own blood on them. She bites my neck and she presses against me in return. She grabs my arm by the cut and squeezes and I feel like I am emptying. When she pulls her hand away and the pain is gone, I realize that she’s undone my pants with her other hand. She wipes her hand through her hair, the dark blood streaking her shaven head.

  She rolls off me, onto her back and pulls her pants down and off. I close my eyes and wonder whether my neighbours are watching. I wonder how much time has passed. She climbs onto me and takes my cock in her hand. She presses the tip against herself and slides it once through the dry hair and then down into wet folds of skin and back out through hair. She presses me through again, sliding me against and around the mouth of her cunt. I am tracing figures onto her hard stomach with blood and dirt.

  She masturbates with me, pressing her forehead into my gashed arm and her breasts into my chest, breathing hard. She begins to rock against me, harder and harder, then she stops, pressing my cut harder and harder but not rocking and she says, “I’m going.” The ground underneath me is still numbers but everything is numbers, the sky and the planets and every little atom in my body and I feel like I understand everything all at once. I feel peaceful and I think maybe I am dying.

  She takes me inside her, slides down on me, her cunt wet and warm around my cock and she raises herself up again. She is a mirror in the sunlight. Her tank top is pulled up over one of her breasts, and I know that this isn’t really happening, the way you know things in dreams. Her second breast is covered. There is blood all over her. She is dark like a forest.

  christmas tree pornography

  I lost my virginity at noon, which was too early in the day for a first time. I wanted to go to sleep immediately, but I knew I couldn’t. It was the same strange sleepy feeling I felt when my

  father drove us into a tree. The paramedic knelt down and shined his light and said that I couldn’t go to sleep, even though I wanted to. I had to stay awake for a few hours at least. Four hours, he said.

  I lost my virginity at noon, which meant I couldn’t go to sleep until at least four pm. I couldn’t go to sleep and I couldn’t talk to her. She was angry that we stopped and angry that I wouldn’t make a deal with her. We sat until she went to the bathroom and I jumped to my feet. I found my sock. I found my two shoes. I got out on the street and I ran.

  Arms out straight, fingers extended, I ran. The road ended and there were woods. My feet went between the rocks, through the leaves. They landed exactly where they had to. I kept running. I thought, “She’s probably out of the bathroom,” and I thought about her breasts with white triangles and dark centres and I ran a little faster.

  My legs and arms and chest were burning but I couldn’t stop. Inertia was on my side now. I would have run forever probably, except a man stepped out from behind a tree and said my name. I slowed down. I stopped. His tie had a snowman made out of flashing lights.

  “Just give us a minute, Joey,” he said. “We’re still setting up.” Behind him, two more men were trying to set up a big white screen. One of them was tall and handsome, dark hair with streaks of grey.

  He looked professional. The other man was bigger and had red hair. Every time they unrolled the white screen, it rolled up again. Finally they succeeded.

  “I love slideshows,” the man with the tie said. The forest went dark and the white screen lit up. “Here we go.” Click. The white square blinked away and came back as a photograph of me underneath her, my sock stuffed in my mouth, my eyes wild.

  “That isn’t the start,” one of the men yelled. “Start at the beginning.” Click. The screen went white again. Beside me, the snowman was still flashing in the dim light.

  “In the beginning,” the man said, “Joey and Daryl stole some rum.” Click. Here was a photograph of my hand reaching out for a bottle of rum. “They went looking for a friend to drink it with.” Click. Outside Samuel’s house. “But Sam wasn’t home.” Click. Picture of Tina in the doorway. Her friend in the background. Click. Daryl pouring four drinks. Click. Tina pouring her drink down the sink.

  “She filled it back up again with water,” the snowman said.

  “Get to the good part!” a woman in the darkness yelled. It was too dark to see anything now. It sounded like a crowded theatre. There were people murmuring. Someone coughed. I heard what sounded like static, big speakers above us where there should be only leaves and squirrels.

  “Don’t stop.” Tina’s voice. “I’ll suck your cock if you promise to keep fucking me,”

  The sound of me crying.

  “That’s not me!” I yelled.

  Someone in the crowd was laughing. Now everyone was laughing. Click. Daryl and Tina’s friend, her legs pushed above her head, both grinning. A cheer goes up. Click. Back to Tina. Her mouth on my cock. Click. Her lips are shining with spit. It trails to the tip of my cock through the air. Her mouth is open.
Click. Reaction shot from my face. The crowd is laughing again. I can feel my face flushing with embarrassment. Beside me the snowman is still flashing.

  Click. A condom rolled halfway down my cock.

  A hand touches mine in the dark.

  Click. The screen is white again, with a big dark spot in the middle. Her breast, close up. You can see the teeth marks on it. “Ow, shit,” Tina’s voice on the speakers. “What is the matter with you?”

  The hand squeezes mine, pulls me close. Another hand touches my face. The snowman is closer now. Fingers slide through my hair, tighten, pull me down to my knees. The snowman comes closer, flashing, closer, and then he is gone and there’s a cock against my lips. I open my mouth and lick.

  “No,” the snowman says. “Like she did.”

  I open my mouth and take it inside. Click. I can’t see the screen anymore. There’s more laughter, though. Click. A gasp of shock from the audience. When he thrusts into my mouth I can feel it pressing against me, deep. His fingers still hold my hair tightly. He controls my movement. All I can do is slide my tongue back and forth against the shaft of his cock. I’m hard. I have my own hand in my pants now, pulling myself off.

  Click. Dead silence. I try to look, but I can’t see anything. I can see the edges of the bright screen, through his public hair. I don’t need to see. I’m full. I close my eyes again. Click. The speakers are still hissing a bit. I can hear a door slam and then the sound of feet pounding pavement. Click. The screen is brighter. He’s bucking against me harder now.

  Click.

  When I get home my neighbours yell at me, they call me names but I keep my mouth shut. I haven’t swallowed. His sperm is still in my mouth. My mother’s watching TV behind the door. I go into my bedroom and I sit down to do homework. My books and binders are all over the bed. I can’t concentrate on the math.

  The phone rings and my mother calls my name.

  I pick it up in the hallway outside my room. Tina.

  “I’m sorry I laughed,” she says. “Will you come back tomorrow?”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Joey?” Tina says.

  Nothing. I wait til she hangs up.

  Later, when my homework is finished, I watch TV. I listen to music. I start to worry that it never happened. Maybe there were no people in the woods. Maybe there was no man with a slide projector. I put my hand out like a cup and I drool out the sperm. It’s thick and white, mixed with spit now. I look at it for as long as I can stand it, and then I slurp it back into my mouth.

  My hand is still damp, and I slide it down the front of my pants.

  I’m hard again.

  Under my bed, Tina is crying.

  “Joey?” she says.

  I don’t say anything. She climbs out from under my bed and she lifts her legs up. There’s no panties under her skirt. She has a fake cock tied to her with a grocery bag. “You don’t have to look at me,” she says. “You can just fuck me.” One of her arms is sort of flashing, just under the skin. When I reach down to touch the cock, it lights up.

  “Joey,” it says. “Dinner.”

  and then the werewolf

  In the park, we drink the wine right from the bottle and stretch out on our backs on the pine needles.

  “You got any kids?” she says.

  “No.”

  “I’m never having kids,” she says. My fingers are cold, but when I touch her, she smiles again. I slide my hands across her stomach, so smooth and warm. I think about life growing inside, under my hand, and we stay like that.

  She sits up and she pulls her sweater off. It pulls her undershirt up with it, showing me the very bottoms of her breasts. I reach out and take the shirt in my hands and I hold it down as she pulls her sweater the rest of the way off.

  “Thanks,” she says. Underneath she’s wearing a strapless shirt that just sits on her small breasts. I am still holding the bottom of the shirt and she looks down at my hands. I haven’t let go and I don’t want to. All I can think about is how I know she’s not wearing a bra underneath. Her skin is smooth and pale and the shirt clings to her. It is so perfect and thin.

  “I don’t want any kids either,” I say. I feel stupid for saying it. She’s looking at me like I’ve got my lines all out of order. I might.

  I still haven’t let go. I grip the sides of her shirt tighter and I pull slowly downward. The elastic top catches on her nipples. I can see the soft pink skin right above them. I tug and the shirt falls down around her stomach. She has such small nipples. I touch them with the tips of my fingers and thumb.

  “Kids ruin everything,” she says. We do have the dialogue all wrong. I should be saying something about these breasts.

  She turns me around, and takes hold of the front of my blouse. She gets hold of each side and then tears it open, buttons popping everywhere, the breeze suddenly on my own breasts. She pulls my pants down, just to my knees, just enough so her hand can reach between my thighs, and then she shoves me forward.

  “I ought to slap that lawyer,” she says. “Right in that smug face.” I am on all fours, with my face in the pine needles, and she is pushing one finger into me, slowly. She pulls it all the way out. I can feel the finger’s nearness. My body knows it’s there, but it isn’t touching. Then she pushes it in again, a little further than before. Something underground is rumbling. I can hear cars honking on the street nearby. “He said that the judge would like me better if I were a mother. I’d have a better chance.”

  “You should kill him instead,” I say. “You could be a murderess.” I love that word. Murderess.

  “He’s not worth it,” she says.

  But it would be worth it. Of course it would. I used to read about murderesses, hidden in the back of the library. The big book of murderesses. I read that book again and again. That was the first time I fell in love. Page 67. She killed her whole family in the middle of the day one Sunday afternoon. In her picture, she scowled.

  My murderess.

  This girl is no murderess, but she scowls. She has another finger at the mouth of my cunt now. Two fingers. She has a wet fingertip against my asshole and then everything is hot. She is breathing on me and I press my face harder against the pine needles.

  I think of my own lawyer, of the condescending frown he must have given the judge when I didn’t show. Her finger is inside my ass now. She breathes on me again. Oh, please touch me. No. Don’t touch me yet. My lawyer frowns at the judge, and the judge frowns at my lawyer. The prosecutor frowns at everybody. The big church windows burst inward and my murderess is standing above the courtroom screaming. Guns are firing everywhere. She has her tongue on me now. It is too soon. It is perfect. She’s licking all the way from my clit to my asshole. She licks so slowly and so firmly. Back and forth. She spends her time with each.

  The courtroom is on fire, everyone is standing on their chairs. There is music playing and the air smells like pine needles. I have pine needles in my mouth, I am moaning and biting the ground, driving my teeth and tongue into the dirt while she fingers and tongues me.

  My mouth is full of dirt. There’s a sound in the brush, and I look over, expecting a man out walking his dog in the park, hiding in the bushes and watching the free show. But it isn’t a man. It’s an animal. It’s so big.

  She doesn’t see, her tongue still working between my legs. The creature goes straight for her, and there is a sound like crisp lettuce being broken. Then I am on my back, trying to get out of the way, blood on the backs of my thighs, her finger still inside me.

  patricia

  I have a list of six names scrawled on a grocery pad, and in block letters up top it says: “Geniuses to have sex with.” Underneath, I’ve added: “(in order of sexiness)” but that’s hard to do. I hemmed and hawed and in the end I just listed them randomly, boy girl boy girl boy boy.

  Genius number one was “Richard Feynman (1918-1988)” and his name’s already crossed out. I took a red pen and drew a little frowny face, too. Asshole.

 
Genius number two is “Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995)” She’s standing behind the counter over there, twenty one years old, gaunt and fierce. There are pimples along one side of her forehead, but when she turns everything is fine again. Her skin on this side is smooth and perfect, like in the photographs I’ve got up on my walls.

  With Feynman, we made love after he’d already won the Nobel Prize. That kind of success does something to a person in bed. It was awful. But Pat hasn’t even begun her first novel yet, and I have a chance at the real her. The real Patricia Highsmith, blemished, violent, brilliant. I want something from her, but I don’t know what it is. I guess that means sex.

  She’s straightening the dolls on the shelf behind the counter. What do you say to someone you’ve stalked through time? Do you come here often? Can I buy you a drink?