by Turner, V T
After ten minutes I decided to speak, to ask her what I had been wanting to ask her, a long list of questions. She silenced me again, her finger slightly salty from the sweat of our bodies, then she moved her hand to my cock, still wet from both of our juices. She worked it until it was hard again, then she lay on her back, her arms out above her head, her wild hair framing her beautiful face.
I took my time with her, coerced every delighted scream from her mouth, ever shudder from her body. I gave her all the pleasure she had given me.
“I need to go,” she told me afterwards, standing up abruptly, leaving a trailing hand on my chest before pulling it away.
I tuned to look at her, afterwards, when she had left, I was furious with myself for not stopping her, for not asking what needed to be asked, but at that moment I was sedated, breathless, speechless. I was happy to watch her dress, content to see her leave and then rest in my own little heaven. It wasn’t until the buzz faded, until I began to feel the cold on my naked body and the drying moistness on my flaccid member, did I wonder if I would ever see her again.
3
“So, how are things with you and Lisa?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Just wondering.”
“Hm.”
Andrew looked at me suspiciously, shrugged it off and then continued to play on his Xbox. I sighed, slumped out of his room.
I hadn’t seen her for a week, not a long time in the scheme of things, not when I had waited an eternity for her to show up in the first place, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t get through a second without yearning for her. Every day felt like a year, a week felt like a lifetime.
I woke up early everyday, jumped at the sound of the doorbell and sprinted to the door, hoping to see her there again. I was desperate for her, melancholic after not seeing her for a week. The good thing, the way I saw it, was that I now knew she wanted me. It wasn’t just a drunken fling, a one-night stand, she had shown up during the day, sober and wanting me just as much as she had on that first night. I was sure that if I saw her again, if I went to find her, showed up at her door or outside her work, she would greet me with the same beaming smile.
She worked in an office building, a generic prison-like structure with a battleship grey facade that overlooked a torn and dilapidated industrial estate. I had no idea what she did but knew it was something menial, something pointless and mundane, not worthy of her beauty.
I waited in the car park at noon, watching as streams of smokers made their way outside, gathering around the entrance to get their intoxicating fix. Others went to catering vans that had pulled up just after I did, supplying cheap meals to the hungry office workers. I watched for Lisa, trying to spot the angel in the haystack of noisy strangers, but she didn’t show. After twenty minutes, when the throng had died down -- the smokers satisfied and the eaters full -- I made my way over to the stragglers.
“Hey, I wonder if you could help me.” I said politely.
A sour-faced woman in her twenties look up at me, her eyes frowning away the glaring sun that bore onto her pale face from over my left shoulder. Beside her, an apathetic woman in her fifties looked on, a cigarette between her dried lips.
“I’m looking for someone who works here. Lisa…” I trailed off. I didn’t know her surname, it never occurred to me to ask, but it didn’t matter. Through the front doors, a large glass entranceway which looked out into an expansive foyer, I could see her approach. She didn’t see me, she had her head down, her shoulders humped.
She pushed open the door, looked up briefly at the two women and then shuffled to the wall, resting against it. The women exchanged a glance, a nod, stumped out their cigarettes and reentered the building.
I walked over to Lisa just as she was lighting a cigarette.
“Hey.”
She looked up, confused. The sight of her face looking into mine stirred up delight inside of me, delight that suffered when she lowered her head again.
“How are you?” I asked
She shrugged, took a couple of quick, long pulls from her cigarette.
I was stumped. I had planned to say a few things, planned to hug her or kiss her, but I had never expected such a cold reception.
I stood there in the silence, willing her to look up at me, acknowledge me, speak to me. I watched as she smoked the cigarette down to the filter, flicked it onto the ground and stared at it distantly.
“Lisa,” I said, sensing I was losing the opportunity. “I was wondering if…”
When she looked up at me, her eyes grey and lifeless -- nothing like the eyes I had fallen in love with -- I lost track. My words caught in my throat, I stumbled towards the end of the sentence without saying anything coherent. She made a move to leave, entering the building again.
“Goodbye,” I said, in lieu of anything else.
She turned to me, attempted a half smile, a weakened almost expressionless twist of a goodbye, and then she left.
I stood there for ten or twenty minutes, until the catering vans drove away, until everyone inside the building had returned to work, until the morning sunshine gave way to a cloudy, grey afternoon.
I hoped she would come back, that the smiling, angelic Lisa would wrap her arms around me, kiss me, talk to me. She didn’t.
***
The fact that she had ignored me didn’t deter me, didn’t affect my feelings for her in any way. The fact that I thought I had lost her made me want her even more. It made me linger on the memories of the times we had spent together. When I remembered those times, when I thought back to her angelic smile, her wild and untamed beauty, I wondered just what I had done wrong. Had I said anything, done anything? Was it because of my brother?
I lost my job. I hadn’t been there long and I didn’t particularly enjoy it, but I was skipping days and when I did show up I was distracted, too absorbed by Lisa. My boss tried to help, tried to talk to me, to ask me if I had any problems at home, but I couldn’t tell him. I blanked him like Lisa had blanked me and that was the final straw, enough for him to fire me.
It gave me more time to think. It also meant I had more free time to try to figure Lisa out. I went to her workplace again, watched from a safe distance as, around dinner time, she repeated the same actions as before, slinking out when no one was there, quickly smoking a cigarette and then returning.
I watched her do this for a few days, then a different Lisa appeared. This one came out with the others, although the others didn't seem entirely comfortable around her. She was laughing and joking, but they looked awkward, unsure. She seemed to be flirting with one of the men, an arrogant looking guy in his mid thirties. Watching her flirt with him boiled my blood, I wanted to step on the accelerator and run them both over but I kept my cool, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. The man seemed interested, but he held back cautiously.
I understood his interest and his caution. The happy, flirting Lisa was an angel, an irresistible goddess, but the other one, the one that had disregarded me outside her workplace and on the morning after she took my virginity, was apathetic and cold.
I decided to bite the bullet and talk to Andrew about her. It had been a couple of months since the party, since the day I first slept with his girlfriend, and I hadn’t heard him talk about her, or seen him with her, for a long time.
I tried to keep my cool, to work the question into an innocuous conversation, to try to make out like she wasn’t constantly on my mind, that she wasn’t the only thing I could think about or talk about. It didn’t seem to work, it was as if he could see the desperation in my eyes, hear it in the fluctuations of my voice.
“I finished with her,” he stated simply, giving an apathetic shrug.
I struggled to hide the look of bemusement on my face. “Why?”
“She’s fucking nuts,” he said simply. “She gets all crazy, don’t get me wrong, when she’s crazy, she’s sexy, a demon in the sack, but most of the time she’s…” he shrugged
, but I knew what he meant. She was silent, timid, disinterested. I had seen it myself, it had broken my heart on both occasions. I still loved the crazy part of her, the part that I had fallen for.
“So, what now?” I asked. “I mean, is she with someone else, or--”
He eyed me suspiciously. “Don’t go getting any ideas.”
“I wouldn’t, I--”
“She’ll break you heart kiddo,” he cut in, surprising me that his interest seemed to lie in protecting me and not keeping me away from his ex. “She’s a demon that one, she’ll lure you in, fuck with your head, make you fall for her and then completely change, turning into someone who doesn’t give a shit, someone who just blanks you all the time.”
“I’m okay,” I assured him.
He shook his head, sensing that I was already under her spell.
It should have made me happy that he wasn’t with her and that he didn’t seem to mind the possibility that I had been with her. She was single and she was available, but I wasn’t convinced that she wanted me, despite what we had done together.
I was losing my mind. I struggled to eat, struggled to sleep. I didn’t know if she liked me and I didn’t really know who she was. I knew then that I had to get some finality. I had to stop pining. I had to find her and get some answers. Rejection would break my heart, but if I didn’t ask, I would go insane.
4
I waited outside her workplace for a couple of days but I didn’t see her. On the third day, after waiting through the noon rush and still failing to see her, I approached one of her colleagues -- a plump middle-aged woman -- and asked her if they knew where she was. She gave me a blank stare, something flickered behind her eyes as she looked me over. Then she sighed, half to herself, put her hands on her hips and gave me a strange, almost pitying smile.
“She’s dangerous, that one,” she told me.
I shook my head, I didn’t need another lecture. “Where is she?”
She shrugged. “Hasn’t shown up for a few days. She does this though, goes through stages. She should be sacked, but well...” she looked towards the entrance, making sure no one was listening. “She’s good friends with the boss, if you know what I mean.” She looked me up and down again, saw the misery in my eyes at hearing those words. “I’m guessing you probably do.”
“Do you know where she lives?” I pushed on, refusing to let any images of Lisa having sex for favors sink in.
She shrugged again. “I know the building but--”
“Tell me.” I said quickly. “Please.”
She gave me another long stare and then wrote the address down, watching me with more pity as I scuppered to my car.
Lisa lived in a rundown building, a dilapidated shell of concrete and brick that stood out against the bleak horizon like a grey brick on a murky riverbed. The building had seen better days, seemed to be waiting for the apocalypse to kick in; for shabby-decay to become the fashion.
I scoured the intercom by the door but half of the buttons had been ripped out and none of them displayed any names. The front door was open, I pushed it forward with a loud and threatening squeak and entered a hollow and grey foyer, leading into a couple of ground floor flats and some cold stairs strewn with detritus and various stains.
A couple of kids my age, bleary eyed idiots, sat on the stairs, staring at me as I entered.
“I’m looking for Lisa--” I began to explain.
“Fuck off,” one of them spat.
I held up my hands in a submissive, defensive gesture. “I heard she lives around here--” I continued.
They both stood up. “I told you to fuck off,” the taller, bigger one repeated.
I took a step back, away from the stairs, away from the door, into the corner of the building. “I don’t want any trouble,” I told them.
“Trouble?” the tall one turned to his friend, exchanged a sly smile. “Who said anything about trouble? Did you say anything about trouble, Matty?”
“No,” his friend answered.
I watched their exchange, my eyes darting beyond them, wondering if this was where she lived, if this was where my angel was hiding.
“You’re in the wrong part of town,” the one called Matty chimed in.
I shook my head. “I don’t want any--”
“Trouble, yes,” the other one finished. “We heard you.”
He gave me a quick once over, studying me with leering eyes. “What’re you carrying?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Empty your pockets.”
“I don’t have anything.”
His sly smile turned to a sneer, a sinister, menacing expression. He balled his fists, strode closer to me. I backed into the wall, felt the grime encrusted concrete soaking a chill through my back.
“What do yo think Matty?” he asked his friend, both pairs of eyes on me.
“I think we rob him, beat him up and then send him back to where he came from.”
I lowered my arms. “Please, I just want to find a friend.”
They both laughed. Then the big one punched me. His fist caught me on the bridge of my nose, sent the back of my head crashing into the cold wall. I slumped to the side, my submissive hands grasping at my face. They both piled on me. I tried to shake free, tried to swing and kick my way out, but they had me pinned to the floor in moments.
I felt hands dipping into my pockets as fists and feet continued to pound me. They took my keys, my wallet, even a pack of chewing gum. I was weak, weary. I thought I was going to die there on the cold, stinking concrete and yet the only thing I could think about was if I was close to Lisa, if she would witness this and think less of me, or if she would be the one who found my bloodied, beaten corpse.
They finished when they had what they wanted. They left me there, spitting blood, curled up tightly to protect what little dignity remained. I heard them leave, heard their laughter and boasting as they exited the building and drifted off.
After a while I managed to drag myself to my feet. My face was bleeding, cuts from my nose, my cheek, my nose, my eye. I had broken a rib or two, had suffered some bad bruising on every inch of flesh, yet I pushed on. I knocked on one of the ground floor flats and when no one answered I moved onto the next, then the next.
The third one was answered by a woman in grubby pajamas who instantly shut it in my face. There was no answer at the final flat, nor was there anyone home on the first two flats I tried after dragging myself to the second floor. I got an answer at the third, nearly falling inside when the door swung open. I prepared myself to ask if they knew who Lisa was, stopped when I saw it was Lisa who had answered the door.
She looked glum, gave me a quick once over.
“Lisa,” I said, beaming brightly at the sight of her. “I need to talk to you.” I wiped saliva and blood from my chin, tried to stand up straight.
She shook her head slowly, a gesture to herself. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to look for you.”
This time she shook her head at me. “Not now.”
“What? But--”
“Not now,” she insisted.
“But I’m hurt, I--”
“Have you been fighting?” she asked simply, an accusing tone to her words.
I looked at her bleakly. I didn’t want to tell her that there had been a fight, but I had done very little actual fighting.
“Something like that,” I said meekly. “Can I have a word?”
“Not now.”
“Please.”
She shook her head, took a step back and then slammed the door in my face, the rush of air was nearly enough to topple my weakened body backwards.
5
I tried to forget about her. I cried for her, lost sleep, lost weight, but I did my best to stay away. There were a few moments of weakness, I was drinking to drowning my sorrows, to forget about her, and, more than once, the drink led me to conclude that I needed to see her again, needed to speak to her. I managed to stay away.
&n
bsp; A couple of weeks passed. I healed after my beating and I was healing inside as well. I still thought about her a lot and I still wanted her, but I was keeping the desperation at bay. I had applied for a few new jobs and was even entertaining the idea of finding a girlfriend, one that wasn’t insane. I had spent some awkward moments with a friend of a friend, we didn’t do anything more than talk -- I was still too disheartened to make any moves -- but she liked me enough to give me her number.
Just when I managed to get through a day without thinking about Lisa, I ran into her. She was waiting at the bus stop when I walked passed. My heart sank at the sight of her, I wanted to keep walking but I couldn’t. She was alone, bathing in the last dregs of evening sunshine, a broad smile on her cheeky face. It was the smile that I had loved, the face that I had loved.
