Bedtime Eyes

THE PIANO PLAYER’S FINGERS

There is always a moment when I know: when my boyfriend I | is putting sugar in his coffee, shaking one of those sugar dispensers with the metal spouts to get the sugar out, and then suddenly the whole top comes off and all of the sugar spills into his cup, and he sits there with a stupid grin on his face; or when I see that bottle of musk oil with the faded label—they both might have been endearing at one time, but now they don’t seem to matter to me anymore. That’s when I realize I’ve fallen in love with someone else.

That, and when the only things I want in my mouth are cigarette smoke, hard liquor, and the taste of my new guy’s cum.

At first glance, love looks like some kind of terrible disease, but adults seem to develop a technique for dealing with it, like with that bitter French coffee that has too much milk in it.

The reason why everything had fallen to pieces on this occasion was because I had had too much confidence in my own technique. People will probably say it was just a love affair, and that’s how I want it to be.

I would rather die than let anyone know how important he was to me: my feelings for this man made me realize just how worthless all my other memories were, as well as all of the little tricks I had learned along the way.

All I knew was that I wanted him.

“Open the window, D.C.!”

There was no answer.

Clouds of white steam poured out the bathroom from the half-open door and seemed to make directly for me as I lay there on the bed. I hated waking up with my eyelashes all wet and stuck together because it made me think I had been crying in my sleep. But I never had any reason to cry. Then I would realize it was that jerk D.C.’s fault for letting all the steam out into the bedroom again.

I was always yelling at him to keep the door closed when he took a shower—he usually spent over an hour in there anyway. At first he would do as I asked and close the door, but after a while the steam made him feel like he was smothering, and, struggling for air, he would open the door a crack.

Today he hadn’t even bothered to ask me if it was okay, because I was asleep. He was such an asshole.

Irritated, I crawled out of bed and walked across the floorboards to the window, combing my fingers through my hair. I heard a small snap! and looked down at my hand—one of my fingernails was broken and a hair had caught in the split in the nail. Dammit, D.C.! It was probably his fault my nail was broken in the first place. It must have happened in bed the night before. The silver-polished tip was probably still buried in his shoulder. Shit! What a waste of a good nail.

But maybe I was being too hard on him—my fingernails were really too weak for me to grow them long, anyway.

I opened the window and looked out from the fourth-floor apartment. The sun was already high in the sky, and the May sunshine seemed to be the same temperature as my body. I was still feeling drowsy, like a pregnant cat at the end of spring, and I dropped into a chair by the window. I could feel D.C.’s sperm slowly dripping down out of me, leaving stains on my nightgown.

I turned the radio on and lit a cigarette, screwing up the empty red packet and throwing it on the floor. I knew that D.C. would pick it up I and put it in the wastebasket later.

I looked down from the window and could see azaleas blooming in the flowerbed below. They were so crowded together down there that they looked like they were growing on top of one another. Both the air and the flowers were perfectly still. But then, as I watched, the warm sun on the bushes seemed to make the flowers sway a little from side to side.

Strange. I stared a little harder and saw that it wasn’t the sun after all.

A man was in the bushes. He was gently pulling the bright pink flowers from their stems. He deftly removed the blossoms one by one with his large fingers and then sucked the nectar from the narrow end of the trumpet-shaped petals. The way he placed each flower to his big, thick lips made him look like some kind of carnivorous plant drinking cherry brandy. He raised his eyebrows and gazed skyward. He still had one of the flowers in his mouth. Suddenly, I realized that the flower was exactly the same color my toenails had been two years earlier.

That was the time he had knelt down in front of me and clumsily tried to paint my toenails with that vivid, shocking-pink nail polish. He had gazed at the nails so lovingly, but he just couldn’t wait for them to dry before putting them in his mouth, and it had all stuck to his lips like sticky slime. I just couldn’t stop laughing—he had looked like a little boy who had eaten too many grapes. He stared down at my feet, almost in tears. He could see the imprint that his lips had left in the nail polish, and he obviously realized that he would have to start all over again from the beginning, first taking off the old nail polish, and then repainting my nails.

I looked outside again to see if the guy sucking nectar from the flowers had any traces of nail polish on his lips.

But he had gone. The flowers were once again motionless. I wondered if it had been a dream, but I knew it wasn’t. I knew that the still-sweet-smelling blossoms were there, strewn naked and dying on the ground under the azaleas.

“What are you looking at?”

D.C. was standing behind me. He was big, like a bear, but he always looked so awkward, like he was embarrassed or ashamed of his size. I really felt sorry for him when he had that vulnerable look on his face, felt kind of motherly, I guess, but at the same time like I wanted to hurt him, too, so that later I could console him. You see, I liked to keep him guessing, to keep him on his toes. Sometimes I would show him all the love in the world, and then other times I would punish him, really hurt him. He was always so desperate to make me happy, but I took a lot of pleasure in destroying all his efforts, like trampling him in high heels.

It had been the same with my last boyfriend, too.

I was going over it again in my mind, dredging up old memories from the past, and the guy sucking nectar down in the azalea bushes seemed to be a part of it all. Those memories from two years earlier were much stronger than I had realized.

I always went for the same kind of guy. I liked my men big and pathetic—the kind of men I could control, the kind of men I could make deliriously happy or desperately miserable with a single glance They were difficult to find, but once our eyes had met there was no need for conversation—they would just come running to me, sniffing around me like dogs, and they’d be only too willing to fall at my feet and place me high on a pedestal. They were the kind of men who knew that I was the only one who could make them happy.

It was two years ago that I first discovered the pleasure of owning them.

D.C. interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, Ruiko. Why don’t we go to Great Fats for dinner tonight?”

“Huh? I don’t want to go there. The meat is always so tough. And anyway, there’s a new restaurant just a little further down from Fats, isn’t there?”

“There is?”

“You don’t know anything, do you? I want to go to the new place, okay? They have seafood.”

I could tell D.C. was already trying to figure out what to wear to the new restaurant that would please me, and I went back to daydreaming about my affair two years before. He’d been crazy about me, too; he let me treat him like a slave.

Just then, the telephone rang, and I answered in a cheerful voice.

“Hey, Ruiko, have you heard?” It was a friend of mine.

“Heard what?”

“Leroy’s back!”

“Oh yeah?”

I was surprised, but I tried not to give that away in my voice.

“I wonder if he came back to see you?”

“No way,” I said offhandedly.

But as we chatted, I began to consider the potential in the situation—sure, there were plenty of things I would find annoying about him being around again. At the same time there was also plenty to look forward to—and when I put down the phone I could almost taste the excitement.

The needle jumped on the Billie Holiday record I was listening to, but I didn’t even feel like shouting at D . C I just repeated to myself what my girlfriend had told me.

Leroy Jones is back.

The first time I met Leroy was two years ago at a party. He was sitting behind some of my friends. They were all dressed up, but he blended into the background like part of the furniture.

Compared with everyone else there—the women, who had obviously spent most of the day deciding what outfit to wear, and the gay men, determined to look their best in their sharp, well-made suits, Leroy was camouflaged—he stood out no more than the table napkins or someone’s jacket casually draped over a chair.

Every now and then I stole a glance in his direction. He was sitting behind a really talkative guy I knew called T-Baby, smoking cigarettes and listening to the music with his eyes closed. Everyone at the party knew one another, but no one seemed to know where anyone else worked or what he did. The fact was, we weren’t connected by our daily lives at all, only through parties—and we lived for them.

I was interested in Leroy because I couldn’t understand how he came to be a part of our scene—he didn’t seem to fit in with us party animals.

It wasn’t so much his dark skin or his extraordinarily thick lips that set him apart from the rest of us, but the hideous clothes he was wearing—his suit was a serious “World’s Worst” contender. But even more striking than that, he was unshaven and kept looking around nervously. Every thing about him said hick. And we hated people like that- he just wasn’t sophisticated enough to be one or us.

When Leroy got up from his seat, I struck up a conversation with T-Baby.

“Why’s he so quiet?” I asked.

“Who, Leroy? He talks with a long, Southern drawl, that’s why.”

So that was it. Listening to the sharp, snappy conversations everyone else was having, their fast-paced city talk laced with one-liners, it must have seemed like a foreign language to him.

Personally I kind of liked the way Southerners talked, although sometimes I couldn’t understand a word of what they said because of the slow drawl of the accent. But I found it strangely erotic, as if those long, lazy words were long, lazy fingers, softly stroking my skin, gently caressing me.

“Hey, everybody, Ruiko likes Leroy!”

I squirmed with embarrassment, blushing as I tried to deny the accusation, but my protests were drowned in a frenzied sea of cheers and whistles.

Suddenly all the noise and excitement died—Leroy was back in the room. Despite the excited chatter about us—someone had even suggested cracking open a bottle of champagne to celebrate—no one seriously imagined we would get together.

After that, people kept winking at me and smiling knowingly, making sure that Leroy was looking the other way first so he wouldn’t notice. Despite the sudden interest, however, no one paid any attention to him directly. Just because of the way he was dressed, no one wanted to allow him to become part of our group.

I felt a little ashamed to be part of such a stuck-up crowd, and I moved my chair over to where he was sitting. And as I did so, the topic of conversation changed to music and clothes; they soon forgot Leroy and me.

Leroy just sat there, his socks drooping down around his ankles. I was in quite a mischievous mood anyway, so, instead of starting up a conversation, I reached out with one of my red stilettos and hooked a long, sharp heel into the top of one of his socks, and gendy pushed it down as far as it would go—till I could see his ankle. He looked taken aback for a few moments. Then he seemed to come to his senses and reached down quickly to pull his sock up.

I pulled it down again, the same way. After I’d done it to him four or five times, Leroy finally turned to face me squarely.

I thought that his eyes would be angry, but they were clear and un-troubled.

“Why don’t we go out and grab some breakfast together?” he asked calmly.

His question took me by surprise and I looked around to see if anyone else had heard him.

Or would you say it’s too early?” He paused and looked down, then looked up at me again and said, “Why don’t you come over here and sit down next to me?”

So I did.

He didn’t talk much, but when he tried to say something and couldn’t find the right words, he’d just stop and gaze at me with those gentle eyes again. I was somehow more touched by what I saw in them—straightforward admiration—than I ever was by the flirty games of hard-to-get that our crowd loved to play.

My hair was touching his shoulder the whole time we sat together, and I felt as if each strand were alive and sucking up the sweat from his body. Leroy was smoking Marlboros and that was just something else to add to the list of things which made him look out of place: all the other black guys at the party were smoking menthols.

Leroy was terrible at making conversation, and the look on his face betrayed worry that I might be bored. But I wasn’t bored at all—far from it. For one thing, I could just see the neckline of his undershirt and I was fascinated by how white it was. He noticed that I was staring at it and in a flush of embarrassment, he pushed it back down under his shir collar to hide it. But I didn’t like that—he hadn’t asked for my permission first—so I leaned forward and pulled it back out again. As I did so I caught his scent. It was the first time I had been so aware of how a man smelled, and I christened it Southern Black Gospel Singer. I told him, and he replied shyly, “You know, I used to be a gospel singer.”

His Southern accent suddenly got the better of me—I just couldn’t hold back any longer—so I leaned forward again, put both my arms around his neck, and pulled him toward me, kissing him hard on the lips.

Near dawn, I began turning over in bed, intentionally brushing against him and tempting him while I pretended to be asleep.

In the end we hadn’t bothered with breakfast. We left the club and my noisy friends behind and walked through the grassy park. I was in the mood for love. Leroy was about to light another cigarette, but I pursed my lips and blew the match out before he had the chance. Then I half lay down on the ground, and as I did so, the heavy dew on the grass soaked through my silk stockings. I started to take them off but they stuck to my skin, and as I tore at them it felt as though I were peeling freshly burned skin off my legs. Finally, I pulled my skirt right up above my waist.

“Put your matches away and come over here and light my fire.”

He spread his wrinkled jacket on the grass for us to lie on. As he made love to me, my eyes never once left his face—I wanted to see his expression change as he reached the heights of passion. From time to time he opened his eyes and saw me staring at him, but that just made him hold me tighter. I remember how he seemed excited by my body, and that just made me want him more.

I didn’t reach orgasm on that first occasion, but I writhed around passionately on the grass to make him come hard, though it didn’t seem necessary to make the usual faces of agonized ecstasy that I did with other men. My skin was drenched with the sweet scent of wet grass, the slippery wetness adding to our pleasure as he sucked and sipped his way over my body. Each time he let out a moan of pleasure, a wave of satisfaction came over me. I knew I held him right in the palm of my hand, and it felt good.

There was no heavy sigh of relief when he finished. I lay in silence beneath him, the only sound the distant, somehow comforting noise of the party. His body, almost darker than the night itself, seemed to blend into the midnight air, and I felt sure that if anyone had noticed us, it would be because he’d caught the moving whites of Leroy’s eyes.

When Leroy finally loosened his grip on me, I reached out my finger and touched it to his sweat-soaked body, then drew it back to my lips and licked my tongue along its length, long and slow. He shook his head in surprise, almost moved to tears. Then I wrapped my arms around the thick trunk of his neck, and pulling him close, I ran the tip of my tongue slowly around the edges of his nostrils.

“Help me up,” I whispered.

My hot breath caressed his nose, and Leroy screwed up his face like a small animal just before it sneezes. He looked so funny I burst out laughing.

We hurriedly dressed each other, and headed straight for his apartment, leaving my silk stockings and Leroy s book of matches behind in the grass. The stockings were covered with sperm stains and the matches had both our fingerprints on them, so it was only a matter of time before everyone would know about us.

After we got back to his place, we made love over and over, and each time after I came, I fell into a light sleep. But as I dozed, I pulled on his chest hair so Leroy really had no chance to sleep himself. Then suddenly my eyes would open and I would see him quietly watching over me, protecting me. And I felt so happy to know he was there, guarding me—so happy that I wanted him to make love to me all over again.

It was easy to get used to. All the pleasure and all the protection, for me alone.

The next day everyone knew about us, thanks to my friends at the party we’d run out on the night before. And everyone referred to Leroy as “poor Leroy, Ruiko’s new toy.” I had never really used anyone before, but they seemed to have seen through my fa-cade and caught sight of the real me underneath.

But to be honest, I didn’t care what they said. I just loved being with Leroy.

We stayed at his place the whole next day.

I didn’t like going out with him much because we looked like such an odd couple. First, people would look at me admiringly, and then they’d look over at Leroy and their expression would change to one of surprise, and it made me feel impatient with him. The problem was that he just didn’t look sophisticated enough to be with me. I had always been able to turn heads, but not like this, so whenever we went out together I felt so uncomfortable, I’d break out in a cold sweat. Fortunately, he usually seemed to notice and took me home so that we could be alone together.

After we’d been out, 1 was always in a bad mood, so I’d kick my shoes down the length of the hallway to his apartment, then order him to go and pick them up. I would wait for him to go and get them, leaning my head back against the wall with my chin stuck out, and like a loyal hound, Leroy would fetch them. Then, stretching out my legs one at a time, I would imperiously wait for him to put them back on.

After that I would usually feel a little better, and we’d start looking for the key to the door, and as soon as we were inside and alone together, Leroy could relax again. And because we were alone I was able to love him again.

That sort of thing happened a lot, so after a while we came to the conclusion that we preferred to stay in the apartment.

One day we were drinking pina coladas and watching soap operas on TV. Leroy was sitting cross-legged on the floor and I sat leaning against him, using him as a couch, but each time I moved, my elbows dug into him and he jumped—sometimes when we were together he behaved just like a little kid. He seemed to have no experience with women at all.

One thing was for sure, he had certainly never come across a woman like me before.

I knew he wanted me—Leroy always wanted me—but I just ignored him and kept watching the TV. Then I sensed something strange and suddenly I turned around to see what he was doing—he had some of my hair in his hand and he was kissing it. He saw me staring at him and looked down, embarrassed. And I knew how much he truly loved me.

I loved certain parts of Leroy. Like the Leroy I knew in bed. I loved the thought of his tough, shiny black body drowning in my pussy. And I loved the miserable expression on his face when he was jealous. Of course, his eyes and his mouth were the same eyes and mouth in the photograph on his driver’s license, but when Leroy was unhappy, a mask of sadness dropped down over his face, and his bright eyes became dull and his breathing got shallow and jerky. After a while I learned how to recognize how he was feeling from even the tiniest changes in his expression.

Leroy treated me like a princess, and I loved feeling like that. To him I was fragile and precious, something to be treasured, and more than anything, that was what I wanted.

He was always so gentle with me, and when we made love he was careful to lean his weight on his elbows so as not to crush me—there was always a gap between my body and his. The gap was a very warm, comfortable space that enveloped my body. It was a quiet, relaxed place where I could rest, and I felt safe there, perfectly protected from the world outside by Leroy’s body.

He worshiped me. It was so easy to control him. Somehow he managed to get some rest while I was sleeping, but I’m sure that if I had stuck false eyes on my pussy and laid there with my legs apart, he would never have been able to get any sleep.

I really used Leroy. I suppose he might have mistaken that for love, but the truth was that whenever I saw him I was consumed with a passionate rage, the same sort of feeling I had when I came across something beautiful that I could make my own: my first reaction was to destroy it. I used to smash my beautiful crystal perfume bottles on the floor. And one day I threw my rabbit-fur muffler in the bath. But when it came to my beautiful, black cat, I could never really have hurt him—I was afraid of what he might do to me in return. Maybe he would wreak some horrible revenge on me like the cat in the Edgar Allen Poe story.

I poured my glass of pina colada on the floor. It was a large glass, full to the brim, so the floor was awash with the milky-white liquid, which lay in a thick, wet pool on the shiny wooden boards. I stood up and began taking off my clothes.

The room was filled with the heady aroma of coconuts. Leroy was already drunk. I sat down, naked, on the freshly poured cool, white sheet. A sliver of ice touched my hot skin. It felt good. I looked over at Leroy. He was kneeling down, staring at me, completely fascinated. He knew what I wanted. I felt as though my skin were soaking up the sweet alcohol like blotting paper.

“Hurry, or my pussy will be full!”

Leroy clambered over to where I lay and dived headfirst into my pussy to stop her from drinking too much. I writhed on the floor, wrapping my body in the sheet, a thin, white film covering my skin, but by then I was beginning to feel drunk myself and my arms and legs felt heavy. My hair spread out on the floor around me like the long tendrils of a plant on the seabed, swaying in a warm ocean current.

Leroy must have been thirsty. He lapped at me like a dog, slurping at my skin deliciously, flicking the tip of his tongue over my electrified body, gorging himself on every last drop of the sweet, sticky liquid that covered me.

The hot afternoon sun shone down through the open window, bathing my face in its warm glow. The powerful scent of the r u m was overwhelming, and I closed my eyes and let it wash over me in waves.

Looking down at Leroy, my eyes half open, I could just see his forehead bobbing gently between my legs. Like an old alcoholic, my eyes filled with tears as I watched him.

Leroy stopped licking and looked up at me questioningly, his eyes begging for permission to go further. 1 shook my head slowly from side to side: permission denied. His tongue returned to work.

Beyond his forehead 1 could see his firm, round ass and it gave me a warm feeling inside. 1 felt as though Leroy had been put on earth solely to make me feel good. And the only reason he had been given a tongue was so that he could lick my body like this. But while I refused to let him go any further than that, I did show him some compassion: I allowed him to start jacking himself off.

The hot sun moved slowly around the room and its golden rays filtered down across Leroy’s body, casting a long, dark shadow. In the apartment next door someone was playing old records and I could hear the gentle strains of “Where Is My Baby?” drifting in through the open window. I held Leroy’s head in my arms.

“Your baby’s here….”

The sunlight painted Leroy’s face scarlet. His fingers were wrapped tightly around his dick, his thick knuckles lined up in a smooth curve down the length of the shaft, and as I watched him, my pussy began to feel lonely, empty without him inside me. I felt as though she were crying to herself, whispering, I miss you…, from between my legs. But sometimes crying can make you feel better when you’re lonely.

“Leroy, you’re so sweet…,” I panted in his ear. Thick jets of hot sperm gushed out into the coconut juice, one sticky liquid almost indistinguishable from the other.

All I could think about was pouring more r u m over it and licking it all up off the floor.

Leroy loved the piano. Once, just before dawn when I was walking to his place to sleep, a familiar melody drifted over from a bar nearby. The bar was closed, but I peered through a crack in the door. And there was Leroy at the piano. He saw me and motioned for me to come in, and he sat me down next to him on the piano stool and gave me a glass of hot lemonade to drink. He was humming to himself as he played, but I couldn’t place the tune.

Leroy’s fingers looked far too big and ungainly to play the piano. But his music moved up through the soles of my feet and I felt it on my skin.

Without thinking, I held on to his arm, mesmerized by his fingers as they wove their magic spell across the keyboard. He gave me a sidelong glance without turning from the piano, then winked at me and smiled. I realized that, for the first time, he’d outwitted me.

I snatched the cigarette from his mouth and placed it between my lips. The brown filter was squashed and wet, and it had his teeth marks embedded in it.

“This is a great tune to smoke to,” I said.

Leroy smiled. His hands flowed over the keys like water, his elbows thrusting, punching the air as he played. I had never seen this side of him before. Those taut, muscular arms were the same arms that held me at night, but I had never seen them move that way before. I thought to myself that if the only things left in the world were me, Leroy, and that piano, our roles would probably be reversed.

“Leroy, if you had piano wires stretched across your teeth…”

He stopped playing.

“…I think I could have fallen in love with you.”

Suddenly, he grabbed my arm and pulled me sharply toward him. I lost my balance and reached out to break my fall. My hand struck the keyboard, and the heavy wooden lid came crashing down onto my arm.

I screamed in pain and surprise. I had never screamed in front of him before, but he just lay me down across his knees and made love to me anyway. He didn’t give me a chance to resist. And with my arm still trapped under the lid, I let him.

It was only when he had finished that he realized what had happened and moved quickly to free me. I could see my red fingernails poking out from underneath the lid—the same nails I had made him paint for me the night before. My arm, now pale from lack of circulation, lay there motionless, pressed down onto the keys in one long, silent chord.

He returned the key to the guy who ran the bar and we headed back to his place together. We walked in silence. I felt as though my pussy lips had wet tissue paper between them, tissue that had been used to wipe down a very dry musical instrument. Because of that, every now and then I stumbled a little and Leroy had to support me.

He looked at me with a worried expression, his bright, piercing eyes shining into mine, and I had to turn my face away. His shirt was stained red, but I couldn’t decide if it was blood from when I had bitten his neck or lipstick from when I had kissed him.

Leroy drew me toward him and held me tightly in the dark alley.

“Please, Ruiko, I need you to love me,” he whispered. The words seemed to explode into the dark silence.

Wrapped in his arms, I drowned myself in the strong, musky scent of his body, powerful and heavy like the aroma of bay leaves in a rich chitterling stew. And I knew we didn’t have long left together.

A short while later I stopped going to Leroy’s apartment altogether. I went back to partying with my boisterous friends and staying out all night. We weren’t satisfied with what Tokyo had to offer, so we often went to a club on the base, and sometimes I even saw Leroy there, too.

But we didn’t speak.

One night he was staring at me and my friends from across the room, but he didn’t come over. He just sat slumped at the bar drinking rum and Coke, staring into his glass, deep in thought. He didn’t speak to anyone. The only time he really looked at me was when I was sitting on another guy’s knee, laughing loudly and drawing attention to myself, and then he just turned his head slightly and looked at me from over his shoulder. I could see the critical look in his eyes and it made me feel very small and self-conscious, like I’d been caught stripping or something, but I pretended not to notice and covered the guy’s cheeks in thick lipstick kisses. Leroy stood up and stormed out of the club, kicking his way through some chairs as he left. It was such a relief when he’d gone—I felt free again.

All I wanted to do that night was to get drunk and get laid. I didn’t care where I slept, and I didn’t care who with. I was with the guy whose knee I had been sitting on earlier, and as we walked along the bar-lined street, I suddenly had a horrible feeling—almost a premonition. I could hear the familiar sound of a piano coming from one of the bars, and I quickened my pace as we approached. I tried to get the guy I was with to walk faster, too, but he was even drunker than I was and he couldn’t stumble along any faster.

Suddenly the door of the bar burst open. Leroy stood there motionless, silhouetted in the doorway.

“Yo, man…,” the drunk guy slurred.

Leroy glanced over at him and then looked at me. Then he drew back his fist and punched the guy hard in the face, sending him reeling, his arms and legs flailing wildly, into the doorway of a shop across the street. He hit the door with a loud thud and fell in a drunken heap, knocked out cold.

I was frightened that Leroy might hit me, too, but he just stood there staring at me hesitantly.

“I don’t want to walk,” I told him, and he picked me up and carried me to his car.

Once inside I was enveloped by a strange sense of relief. I looked in the rearview mirror, thinking that the guy I had been walking with might be chasing after us. But all I could see was the crisscross lattice of the wire mesh as we drove through the gate and off the base.

I’m not sure what I wanted to prove that night. I turned my chair I around the wrong way and sat facing him, straddled across the I seat with my legs wide open, my pussy hidden by the back of the chair. Then, leaning my elbows on the backrest, I ordered him to get undressed.

Without taking his eyes off me, Leroy slowly began unbuttoning his shirt. When his fingers reached his zipper I motioned for him to come closer and he shuffled forward on his knees. He was at perfect kissing height. He didn’t look at all embarrassed or uncomfortable with the situation, more like a child obediently waiting for my next command.

I spat hard in his face. That was the command I had been making him wait for. Leroy frowned, a confused look in his eyes, but in an instant his face returned to its placid, innocent self. I spat at him again.

Then, quickly reaching out my hand to his half-zipped fly, I wrenched down the zipper. He wasn’t wearing any underwear. His zipper gaped wide like some cheap whore’s pussy and I felt bile rising in my throat; I was nauseated with jealousy.

I stood up and turned the chair around to face him, and sat back down again. Then, slowly, I opened my legs. Like Leroy, I wasn’t wearing any underwear—I didn’t like it when my panty line showed through my clothes, so the only things I had on under my tight, black skirt were the scarlet garters holding up my stockings.

I made Leroy sit on his knees on the floor in front of me. Then, reaching out my leg toward him, with one long, sharp, red heel, I stood on the soft, limp creature between his legs. His face screwed up tight in pain. But the creature came to life, growing as rapidly as if it had just been fed.

I pulled Leroy’s head toward my skirt and put my legs up over his shoulders so we wouldn’t look like some weird, hermaphrodite monster.

The chair squeaked as it rocked backward and forward, and I gripped his neck tightly between my legs and threw my head back. My stilettos dug into his back and fell to the floor—I was reminded of those coin-operated horse rides that I used to cry and beg my mom to let me go on when I was small. Now I had my own horse and I could ride it as often as I liked, not paying with coins, but with my eyes, my teeth, and my lips.

I buried my fingers deep in his thick, wiry hair, and arched my back like a cat, my body stretched taut like a spring, moving up and down, up and down, as his tongue lapped deliciously over me.

But I wasn’t ready to come yet, so I clenched my fists in his hair and pulled his head up with both hands to stop his tongue. Leroy just gazed up at me with that guiltless expression of his. He must have known how much that look in his eyes excited me.

I pushed him away and peeled off one of my silk stockings. Then I tied it tightly around his wrists. I doubt whether 1 needed to have bothered—he would never have tried to resist me. He would have hand-cuffed himself if I had asked him.

Now it was his turn to writhe. My lips melted like hot crayons on his skin, and the tight, black canvas did not resist. My long hair wandered on its own over his body as my head moved to and fro, and before long I had him crying out.

“Give it to me,” he begged.

I looked up at his contorted face, the sadness and pain in his eyes bringing a lump to my throat, and I gave it to him.

Leroy called my pussy his toothless, hungry woman. And he was right—that night it was ravenous, and I was desperate to fill it. It had always seemed that I could never shake the feeling of impatience gnawing away inside me, like the brush in a bottle of nail polish, always too short to reach the bottom. But that night I really tried for the first time, and the brush finally touched the bottom of the bottle. Hot tears poured down my cheeks.

The next thing I remember I was straddled on top of Leroy’s body like a little girl. He slowly sat up and put his tied-up arms over my head.

It felt like a noose as he brought them down to my neck and drew my face toward his. I could feel my own black stocking rubbing up against the nape of my neck. Leaning his head to one side, he kissed me, and I fell onto his chest as though I had fainted, and took my punishment.

That was the last time I saw Leroy. I heard rumors around town that he had been looking for me, and that he was often to be found drunk, crying in bars. But no one would give him my address or my telephone number.

I spent my nights alone in my apartment, just staring into space, and by the time I started going out again, Leroy had quit the military and gone back to the States. But by then I had a new boyfriend anyway.

No one seemed surprised that Leroy was back. It had been two years since he left Japan, but nobody thought anything much about it when he returned. In a way it was such a small thing—the number of quiet, black men in town had increased by one. None of the people who remembered Leroy had even seen him yet.

Even if they had, they probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

One afternoon, I sat in the apartment, rolling his name around in my mouth. Leroy. It tasted like one of those sugarcoated pills the doctor gives you—nice at first, but it begins to taste bitter if you keep it in your mouth too long without swallowing. In spite of that, the two years he had been away had given me the chance to distance myself from his memory, and now that he was back again, I thought I deserved the chance to have some more fun with him. And of course, it was Leroy’s duty to let me. I began to feel restless just thinking about that bitter flavor that only I could taste. When I began to recall the way things had been between me and Leroy, and considered the possibility of picking up where we had left off, I began to feel horny and excited. I lit a cigarette to calm myself down, but D.C. seemed to have already noticed my change of mood and was looking at me suspiciously.

Memories suddenly began to flood back… the smell of wet grass… the echo of our passionate sighs breaking the silence; Leroy’s silhouetted figure standing in the dark kitchen in front of his opened refrigerator, getting himself a beer; the quizzical expression on his face when he was eating fish and realized he could still smell my musky scent on his fingers.

My heart sped up. I remembered the man who had been sucking nectar from the flowers under the window the day I got the telephone call about Leroy, and, although it was unlikely, I wondered if it could have been him down there in the bushes. But I would have known him if it were. The image of his face was burnt so deeply into my mind that I would have recognized him anywhere. And anyway, if it really had been Leroy, he would have recognized me, too, leaning out the window.

And no matter how far away he had been, his dark, piercing eyes and his thick, black lashes would have blazed with passion, screaming out that he still wanted me. It wasn’t that I was being conceited. That’s the way our relationship was. When we were together, we just slipped naturally into our assigned roles. So I knew the guy in the bushes couldn’t have been him.

“What are you wearing tonight, Ruiko?” D.C.’s voice pulled me back from my daydreams.

“Huh? Tonight? Why, what’s happening tonight?”

“Oh, shit! You’re kidding me, right? It’s the Black Ball tonight.”

I had forgotten all about it. It was just a bunch of young people having dinner together, pretending to be sophisticated for the evening, but everyone took a partner and you never knew what might happen—you might even find yourself sitting at the same table as a guy you had once slept with, who had brought his new girlfriend with him. I knew because it had happened to me once. He and I spent the whole evening trying to stifle our laughter, pretending not to know each other so the people we had come with wouldn’t notice anything was wrong. And when our feet touched under the white linen tablecloth, I pretended to cough, spluttering into my champagne to hide my giggles. Actually, I had really enjoyed myself that night. It had been a lot of fun.

I never imagined that I would bump into Leroy at the ball. I wanted another taste of that relationship of ours, which only the two of us could understand, but I never wanted to hear his piano-playing again.

For the past two years I had been so frightened by the memory of his piano-playing that at times it felt as though I’d built my new life around that mixture of hatred and fear.

By the time we got to the ball and handed in our tickets at the reception, most people had already started eating.

I was wearing a skintight red dress, so tight that D.C. couldn’t even squeeze his hand inside. I often wore red when I went out, and after a while it sort of became my signature color, so that when a guy saw something red it would remind him of me. My red stilettos were a good example. I had worn them during so many encounters that just the sight of them was bound to make any number of faces turn red.

We washed our meal down with expensive brandy, and while we were eating I leaned close to D.C. and pulled his ear down to my lips.

“I want to fuck you,” I whispered, just to get him going.

His eyes flashed wide in surprise.

On the stage, a black woman was singing a recent hit, “Somebody Else’s Guy,” and I led D.C. onto the dance floor, feeling the eyes of all the men in the room on me. D.C. kept up a constant lookout for guys making passes at me. He wasn’t that smart, but at times like this he was my knight in shining armor. It made me feel great.

There was a guy dancing behind me whose elbows kept digging into my back, so I turned my head slightly to see him out of the corner of my eye. I could just glimpse the bottom of his tux jacket—he seemed quite tall. His gold watch peeping out from beneath his starched, white cuffs was catching the light as he danced, and half intrigued, I turned around to get a better look at him.

When I did, he was already standing there facing me, looking directly at me. He had wavy hair, slicked back with gel, and a single gold earring in his left ear. It took me a few moments to recognize him, but the suave, smartly dressed lady-killer standing in front of me was Leroy.

I was stunned. Then, without a word, he turned around again and continued dancing. Dancing! I couldn’t believe it. Leroy had always had two left feet and his dancing had been even worse than his pickup lines. I couldn’t imagine anything more ridiculous than seeing Leroy dance.

But this guy was far from ridiculous, and with his arm wrapped around his partner’s waist, his feet seemed to move on air, like he was born to dance.

I was sick with shock and tried to drag D.C. away by the arm, but then Leroy turned back around again and spoke.

“Your stiletto heels have worn down pretty thin, haven’t they?” he said in a dry, sarcastic tone.

His voice was so low that only I could hear him, and I flushed with embarrassment, the blood pounding hard in my head, making me feel faint. But my embarrassment then turned to anger, and as the blood drained rapidly from my face, I went pale with fury.

Unsuspecting D.C. half carried me to my seat, worrying that I might be anemic. I sat there pale and shivering, and when he handed me a brandy. I downed it in a single gulp, the fiery liquid slipping easily down my throat. Then I took a deep breath and turned my attention back to Leroy.

He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, a small cock-tail glass in his hand, sparkling like a jewel in the light. I watched with irritation as his fingers toyed with it nonchalantly and he smiled and chatted casually to the steady stream of girls who came up to him. His neck was no longer thick and oxlike—it was far more slender and re-fined now. And I didn’t once see him lean forward to talk to any of the women who came over to him—they were the ones making all the effort craning their necks to look up at him.

One of the girls kissed his cheek, and I could see Leroy staring at me through her hair. With his arms spread wide and a glass in his hand, he looked supremely confident and happy. But his eyes were cold. He smiled at me sarcastically, the corners of his mouth curling up into his cheeks.

At that moment I decided to forget all about him. I’d forget our past and if I saw him again, I’d see him as the complete stranger he was now.

It was a relief, having made the decision, but I hated him for forcing me to make it.

“Do you know Leroy Jones?” asked D.C.

I was startled by his question and just stared back at him, surprised.

How could he possibly know about our relationship?

“What? How do you know Leroy?”

“Are you kidding me? Everyone knows Leroy Jo… ahh, wait a minute. You only listen to old jazz, don’t you? Well, let me tell you, Leroy’s the best young jazz pianist there is. I wonder why he’s here? I’ve heard he was stationed at the base here in Tokyo when he was in the military, so maybe that has something to do with it Oh man, what a great chance. Do you know him? Can you introduce me?”

“D.C.! You can be so clueless sometimes….”

“Huh?”

“What’s he doing in Japan, anyway?”

“Well, an article in Ebony said he’s here for a couple of months on vacation. He can probably afford it, too. Musicians like him are loaded unless they get into drugs or something. Must be great to be a success.”

“Success? Big deal!”

“Huh?”

I remembered him fucking me by the piano; he must have figured out that he could move other people the way he had me.

I looked over at Leroy again. He had confidence now. He no longer looked up to people or turned away when they looked him in the eye, and I knew I would never be able to treat him the same way I used to, crushing him like the pig’s ears in a hot head cheese.

“C’mon, D.C., let’s go get some soul food.”

“What? You’re still hungry?” he groaned.

Muttering to himself under his breath, D.C. followed me out into the night. After all, he was black, and black guys can’t resist soul food.

We ate in silence. The food was rich and pungent, and I remembered how Leroy used to smell exactly the same way. But somehow I didn’t think he would smell like that anymore. The guy at the ball wasn’t the same Leroy I had known.

For the next few days we stayed in my apartment and all we did was fuck. D.C. couldn’t believe his luck—I couldn’t get enough. I just wanted more and more, and eventually his dick began to sound like a fountain pen sucking ink up from a bottle as it plunged in and out. But, while my body may have been going wild with passion, my mind was somewhere else entirely.

Finally I spat out, “What’s the point in all this fucking?!” and D.C. s face took on a hurt expression.

I sat there sulking for a while, and eventually D.C. decided to take me out to cheer me up. My skin felt tight because I hadn’t worn makeup for a while, but it wasn’t long before the neon signs and the taste of strong liquor began to put the color back into my cheeks.

We went to a club where my friends hung out, and as we walked through the door they cheered. We all talked and laughed together, our conversation a grab bag of cynical criticisms and dirty jokes, but it made me realize just how much I loved laughing at life. If all I had to do was talk, drink, and fuck, I knew I could be happy forever.

Suddenly the atmosphere in the club changed and everyone’s eyes moved to the door. I knew what had happened, and I knew I’d rather die than turn around.

Leroy was with a girl. He pulled a chair over for her and she looked up at him coyly as she sat down. She was nothing special—there were plenty of other girls just like her all over Tokyo. All she had was her beauty and her fake vulnerability.

Leroy must have recognized my group, but he pretended not to. He was wearing his tuxedo again, but this time he was dressed down, with white sneakers and a black hat perched on his head at an angle. We used “dressed down” to describe people who could look great even dressed casually, and while nobody said anything, we were all thinking the same thing—Leroy looked great.

“Who imagined that Leroy would come back looking like that?” said Roscoe, speaking for everyone.

Leroy and the girl sat chatting and laughing together.

“Yeah, who would have thought he’d turn out like that? When he was with Ruiko he looked fresh off the plantation.”

D.C.’s eyes widened. Shit! Roscoe and his big-mouthed friends had really messed things up for me this time.

“No way! Ruiko was Leroy’s girl?”

He seemed genuinely impressed, but Roscoe cut in sharply to correct him.

“You got it backward,” he said sarcastically, pushing his finger into D.C.’s forehead, “Leroy was Ruiko’s guy. Two years ago he was so un-cool no one would have anything to do with him, but Ruiko picked him for the hell of it.”

D.C. stared at me with renewed respect. He didn’t have enough brains to realize that he should feel jealous. He just figured that Leroy had become a success after leaving the military.

“Did anyone know he played the piano?”

“Nah…”

I knew. In my mind I was screaming, I knew! I knew he could play!

But I said nothing. I wanted them to think that as far as I was concerned, Leroy’s and my relationship had just been a passing thing. So I kept quiet. And because I wouldn’t say a word, they started teasing D.C. about me and Leroy. Poor D.C.: he was a good-looking guy, but not too bright.

Leroy stole a glance over in my direction once in a while, and though I had my back turned to him, I could feel his eyes burning into the back of my head. It was as though my whole body had become sensitized to his intense stare, and I could feel it getting hotter and hotter, like when you try to burn holes in a piece of paper using a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays. When I couldn’t put up with it any longer, I stood up, asked my friends to look after D.C., and left the club.

I wandered the streets aimlessly. I didn’t know why I was crying, but I couldn’t stop the tears pouring down my cheeks. I felt like a little girl who wanted to run home and tell her mother that someone had picked on her at school.

A car stopped beside me. I thought it must have been a cabdriver picking up a fare, but when I turned around to look, it was Leroy, his sharp eyes piercing the darkness, and I turned and ran. He put his head out the window and shouted, “You look like a hooker walking around on your own like that!”

Wiping the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand, I stopped and turned. The car drew up slowly and he opened the door for me to get inside. I stood motionless with my hands in my pockets, so he grabbed hold of my arm and dragged me into the car before I had the chance to run away again, and we sped away into the night.

It was drizzling and the road was wet. I didn’t have the strength to fight him any longer, and I just sat there, thinking vaguely that it looked like the beginning of a rainy spring. Each time his foot hit the brake Leroy turned to look hard at me, and there was nothing I could do but return his stare. Then, as he accelerated, he’d refocus on the road, and I wouldn’t know where to look, so I just stared at his hands gripping the wheel. His knuckles seemed much bigger than before. Now he really did have a piano player’s fingers.

We drove for a long time and the rain started to get stronger, bouncing hard off the windshield. It didn’t occur to me to question where we were going or to wonder what he was thinking, because I was conscious only of Leroy himself, sitting there next to me. His back was straight up against the seat, calm and relaxed despite the speed at which he was driving, and the only noise was the short gold chain in his ear making a faint metallic sound as it swayed from side to side.

I knew the guy sitting next to me in the sharp clothes was Leroy, but he didn’t look the same at all, and I wondered how it was possible to create such a completely different person out of the same raw materials. I wasn’t conceited enough to think that he had changed just to get back at me—we had only spent a very short time together. And even if I’d managed to have such a strong influence on him, Leroy was acting too naturally to give that impression. He looked so cool, as if he was just giving a ride to some girl he had passed on the road. And that hurt. If he’d acted like he hated me, I would have been bitter, but it would have left me my pride. Even though I was the one who had discovered his talent, I sensed that there was some other woman who had helped him realize he had it.

Leroy pretended to reach out his hand to the gearshift and grabbed my hand. But his eyes stayed on the road—he didn’t seem to think it was necessary to look at me. I felt as though there were lumps of ice behind my eyes and they were about to melt and pour out. Everything was blurred but I couldn’t blame it on the rain—all the windows were closed.

I was still trying to hold back my tears when I realized that Leroy had stopped the car. We were parked somewhere dark and he was leaning over me.

For the first time in two years, Leroy’s face was close enough to mine that I could feel his breath on my skin. His face was the same as before, but his eyes were completely different. I thought that he would try to kiss me and start making love to me immediately, but he didn’t. He continued staring at me, trying to despise me, but I could see from his eyes how determined he was to have me, too. He had only ever fucked me once before without first asking my permission, but that time I hadn’t had to watch his eyes as he mentally licked his chops.

Shaking with fear I turned my face away from him. But Leroy was too quick for me—he seemed to anticipate my move, and began kissing me passionately, taking my breath away.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,” he told me.

But there was no warmth in his voice, and it didn’t sound as though he intended this to be the start of a romantic affair. He pressed his lips to my ear and injected a hot stream of saliva, then motioned me toward the backseat of the car. Aroused, his kiss having dissolved my resistance, I obeyed and slid into the back. He got out of the car and, in the seconds before he got back in, I told myself that this was something that had to happen.

Leroy got into the back and once more gathered me into his arms, but as we moved about in the cramped space my head banged against the door. Droplets of rain sparkled on his skin in the soft half-light and he noticed some on my face, too, and although it was June, he turned the heater on.

Normally when I was smothered in the powerful scent of a man, my fingers would get to work almost reflexively, rapidly undoing his shirt buttons, but right now both my hands were balled into tight fists. Leroy pried my fingers open, one by one, and pressed his lips to the palms of hands. I couldn’t bear to watch, and shut my eyes tight, only to feel his lips move on to my neck. His stubbly chin, spiky, like an unmown lawn used to scratch my face painfully, but now it felt more like sandpaper, gently smoothing down the skin on my cheeks.

Who is this? I thought.

Leroy kissed me hard, forcing his tongue between my lips, exposing my teeth like he was pushing pills from a foil strip. I could have bitten off his tongue right there—he wasn’t going to use it to worship my body anymore, anyway. His tongue was hungry now, only licking my skin to satisfy that hunger, taking my moans and sighs as his nutrition.

A car sped past, splashing water up from a puddle in the road. No one knew I was being sacrificed in the confines of the backseat of this car. He pulled down the zipper on my dress.

“No…,” I said in a small voice. But he wasn’t listening.

His fingers burned as they touched my bare skin, and I cried out helplessly.

“You’ve won!” I told him. “It’s over!”

But for Leroy it was just beginning. The car seat squeaked as his fingers moved freely over my body—I was his keyboard. But he no longer thrashed at the keys—he stroked them so gently that I could almost feel his fingertips before they reached my skin. He had the same magic touch I recalled from two years ago, and I moaned deeply in acquies-cence. Leroy’s memory of my body was flawless.

He put his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me up. I knew that the thing I had feared most and tried to push away had grown over time, and was now about to devour me. I could never have imagined that something I had been so frightened of for so long would be so sweet, and I sobbed at my defeat. I had been terrified of the power in the sound I f his piano-playing, but now I was being invaded by its melody.

“You’d like to try to escape, wouldn’t you, Ruiko?”

His voice was calm.

“You’d like to run away, back to your slaves, wouldn’t you? So they can look after you, lick your wounds, and kiss your hurts away? Well, I’m telling you now, this is just a fuck. It means nothing to me. So if you want to run, you’d better do it now.”

But he had already driven the stake through my heart. What good would it do to try to run away? Leroy coming back had been a miracle.

And now he had become the same guy who had made love to me by the piano. Another miracle. But unless I got a third miracle, a miracle of my own, there was really no point in trying to run away—there was no chance of escape.

“What for? What would change if I ran? Everything already has changed.”

A thin smile appeared on his face. Apparently I was cleverer than he’d thought.

“You wouldn’t believe how much more they still can change.”

“You want to despise me, right? If you think fucking me will work, go ahead and try. I’m just about to come, you know. If you think by being able to make me come you can despise me, go ahead and try. But you’d better hurry.”

Leroy shot sperm out over my body, like he was spitting out mouthfuls of saliva. The only difference was that when I had spat on Leroy, he had enjoyed it. There was no pleasure in this for me.

He put his arm under my back and lifted me up so that we were face-to-face. We stared closely at each other, looking for battle scars, both of us hoping to see signs of defeat in the other’s eyes. I frowned and lowered my eyes first; I was the loser.

Leroy placed his tuxedo jacket around my shoulders to cover my naked body. I shivered as the cool, silky lining touched my skin. Then he put his arm around me and pulled me close, the tattered remnants of his bow tie hanging lifeless around his neck, tapping my shoulder lightly like a black, silk pendulum. Over his shoulder I could see the window misted up with condensation.

“Would you turn off the heater?”

He turned it off and switched on the radio. An old O.V. Wright tune was playing. He was singing about how his lover was always on his mind, and that if she ever stopped loving him, he couldn’t go on living.

I wiped my tears on his shoulder and reached out my hand to write on the misty glass. But then I let it fall again.

“What were you going to write?” Leroy asked.

“P-A-S-T.”

“The past means nothing,” he told me.

“I’d like to believe that.”

Dawn began to break. It was still raining. It was probably going to rain all day. It felt cold for June, and Leroy’s body no longer warmed mine. Things were different now. But he would still keep playing the piano. That’s all he ever did. Even when there was no piano in front of him.

I put a thermometer in my mouth to check my temperature. I had a I fever. I had got out of Leroy’s car partway home and walked the I rest of the way in the rain, so now I had a cold. When I opened the door of the apartment, D.C. was dumbfounded to see me standing there with my hair dripping wet. I stared back, but my gaze went straight through him.

He wrapped me in a towel and guided me to the bedroom, then went to the kitchen to open a can and make hot soup for me. I wanted a cigarette but mine were too damp to light, so D.C. offered me the one he was smoking. I was grateful for his kindness.

“I love you.” I smiled.

I made it a rule never to tell lies to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, and it felt the same as when I pretended I wanted to fuck even though I really didn’t. D.C. stared at me in surprise, pinching himself to make sure he wasn’t hearing things. He didn’t even notice the soup pan boiling over.

And of course, he didn’t hear me apologizing silently to him in my heart.

I pretended to be much worse than I really was and spent the whole day on my back, trying to think of anything but Leroy. But he was hiding behind my eyelids, and as soon as I closed my eyes his face appeared, enveloping my mind as if he had been waiting for me, so I had to keep my eyes open to avoid him. I found I could shut him out by concentrating on D.C.’s smile and the things in the room around me, but little by litde my concentration would lapse until I could hear the name Leroy screaming out from every pore of my body, and my mind was swamped by a flood of memories of the touch of his hands, his feet, his tongue, and his dick. Then, when I tried to escape into sleep, his fingers would seize my body, tickling me and confusing me. When I woke, my whole body would be drenched in a sweet, passion-soaked sweat, an ironic sort of wet dream.

D.C. was sincerely concerned because I wasn’t pushing him around the way I usually did.

“You’re freaking me out. I’ve never seen you like this before. Why aren’t you drinking the juice I made you?”

“Leave me alone. I can’t even look at that juice unless I’m starving.”

D.C. tried cooking dishes made with liver and kidney to give me vitamins and iron, but just looking at them made me feel sick. I only wanted one thing. I felt like a young girl again. My whole lovesick body was weeping quietly to itself.

“You really don’t give a shit about me, do you?”

Apparently D.C. had been talking about the weather and I hadn’t replied. The weather? That was the last thing on my mind.

“Goddamn it, D.C.! Why do I have to talk about the fucking weather with you?”

“You said you loved me. But I can tell you don’t.”

I was too fed up for words.

“So if I listen to you go on about the weather, that proves I love you?”

“Yeah,” said D.C., breaking down in tears.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a man cry, so I wasn’t particularly moved.

“All right,” I said, “come over here and hold me. That’ll make you feel better.”

It was the easiest way to stop his crying. Anybody would start complaining if he couldn’t touch the person he loved. I used to purposely push my boyfriends away whenever they’d get like this, but I didn’t have the energy right now.

As I lay in his arms, I tried to pretend it was actually Leroy who was making love to me. But my imagination wouldn’t stretch that far. I knew Leroy’s touch far too well to fool my senses into thinking it was him.

Leroy and I crossed paths a few times after that rainy night. He was always with a beautiful young woman and I was always with D.C. or some of my friends, but when I caught sight of him I’d prick up my ears like a rabbit and strain, hoping to hear what he was saying from a distance. My friends didn’t talk about him anymore and they didn’t realize that I was completely focused on him instead of them.

But Leroy no longer looked over at me in that way that excited me and made my nipples hard: his attention was focused on his new girlfriend, his smoldering eyes so deep and passionate that from time to time she blushed. I had to try hard to conceal the anger building up inside me, but I couldn’t help wondering if she had ever been in Leroy’s car and whether she could smell me there on the backseat.

Girl, you don’t know anything about me and Leroy. He fucked me out of pure contempt in the backseat of that car. You could never be that close to him. My heart pounded, beating with a strange sense of superiority.

Leroy’s fingers, playing my body, had captured my heart. Heat flooded over my body just thinking about them. What had happened to me? Once I had been able to twist him around my little finger with a glance, and I could have had him licking my boots with just a sigh But now J was fixating on every flicker of his thick eyelashes.

If this went on, I would start rotting like a discarded corpse. I had to do something. I looked at D.C. There would be no miracle with him.

Hopelessness washed over me. On the other side of the room, Leroy was drinking from a glass in one hand and was absently stroking the girl’s cheek with the back of the other. She’s not a keyboard. She’s not your keyboard, Leroy!

“Ruiko, are you okay?” asked a friend.

My forehead was covered in sweat.

“I’m fine. Why? Really, I’m fine.”

“She’s much better,” supplied D.C. in a serious tone. “We’re back to making love every day.” Everyone collapsed, laughing.

I was quiet—I didn’t have the energy to get angry with his big mouth. Recently he started crying every time I tried to ignore him. It was such a hassle, I just took him to bed to avoid dealing with it.

“So, call me sometime. I’ll give you my number—it’s…”

I almost leapt out of my seat at Leroy’s voice. My mind instantly became a blank sheet of paper, a pen poised, ready, and I memorized the figures as they tumbled off his lips to some woman, his familiar voice cutting through all the background noise, but far too low for D.C. or any of my friends to hear. At last I had it. Leroy’s number was emblazoned in my mind, fiery, hot, and glowing.

But then I began to wonder what to do with it. Did I want more fucking in the back of his car? Why was I letting myself down like this now? I’d always made a point of upholding my pride in front of men.

I had the feeling something powerful was moving me along. Maybe it was some kind of divine retribution for having recognized Leroy’s talent, something governed solely by emotion and totally beyond control. Why was it to hard, and why couldn’t I break free? I felt trapped, thrashing against the sweet, sticky threads of a spider’s web.

When monkeys want to get honey from an anthill they use a piece of straw. There are lots of holes in the hill where the honey is stored, and the monkey just inserts the straw into one of them, then takes it out again and licks the honey off the end. But the monkey can only get a tiny bit of honey that way, so next he crushes the end of the straw to make it look like a little broomstick and sticks that in the hole instead.

That way, he can get much more honey each time. But once he takes the crushed end of the straw out of the hole, he finds it’s very difficult to get it back inside again, so the clever monkey never pulls it out completely: he puts his mouth down close to the hole and keeps moving the straw up and down, licking the sweet honey from it each time he pulls it up.

How can I make a broomstick like that? I’d have to become a witch. If I had a broom like that I would stick into Leroy and never take it out again.

But I’ll never be a witch. And I don’t know any magic.

Overwhelmed by frustration, I burst into tears.

“Ruiko! What’s wrong?”

My friends were all staring at me in disbelief.

“Lay off, will you? I’m just drunk. I’m feeling sentimental, that’s all.”

They all looked at one another, worried. It was the first time any of them had ever seen me cry, and they were at a loss. D.C. was the only one smiling, the love shining in his eyes as he gently stroked my back to comfort me.

Six crushed, empty beer cans lay under the bed. D.C. was sleeping peacefully, snoring gently to himself—the alcohol was working nicely. I wanted to get him to sleep as quickly as I could that night, so I plied him with beer to get him drunk while he was still hungry, then filled him up with food afterward. Never once suspecting that I might have some ulterior motive, D.C. took my kindness at face value, as I knew he would, and ate and drank till he fell asleep.

I left quietly, and ran to a phone booth near the apartment. I felt as furtive as a spy on some kind of secret mission. It felt strange to be out there, catching my breath next to the phone booth when there was a perfectly good phone in my apartment, but I didn’t want to leave any evidence behind—even if it was only in D.C.’s dreams.

My hand shook as I reached out to put the coins in the slot. Then I silently mouthed the numbers that had been burned into my brain as I punched them into the dial. The phone on the other end of the line, the one in Leroy’s room, began to ring. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be asleep yet, but I did begin to wonder if he might be sprawled out under tangled sheets with another woman. I was mortified by what 1 was doing. But then he picked up the receiver.

“Leroy?”

He was silent.

“Were you asleep?”

“No, I was working on a composition.”

“Do you have a piano there?”

“Yes, I’m staying at a friend’s place.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Ruiko, are you crying?”

“Can you tell it’s me?”

“Sure I can.”

“I want to see you.”

“Why?”

“You know you want to see me, too….”

“Shit!” he muttered, and I heard a low chuckle. “What about that other dude I saw you with?”

“He’s asleep.”

“You treat him like you used to treat me.”

“No, I don’t!”

For a moment Leroy was silent, but then he gave me the name of a hotel and a room number, and told me to meet him there. I waited for him to put the phone down before hanging up myself. Then I closed my eyes and let myself breathe again.

I went back to my apartment. There were some records scattered on the table, so I jotted the hotel room number down on one of the album sleeves. D.C.’s breathing was slow and rhythmic. But something was pulling me, dragging me away.

I had left a record playing on the turntable, and a deep, husky voice was singing the blues. I could hear the needle scratching over the grooves, leaving traces behind as the record went round and round and round.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before I too, had the same sort of scars.

I spent fifteen minutes waiting in the hotel room before Leroy finally showed up. He glanced over at me as he came in, then took his hat off and threw it down on the bed. I’d have expected him to know that leaving a hat on a bed is supposed to be bad luck.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

He called room service and ordered spaghetti and escargots for two, and a bottle of champagne.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Hey, come on, let’s eat. We’ve never had a proper meal together.”

He took off his tie and undid the top button of his shirt.

“I just don’t feel like it.”

“Ahh, I see. Well, maybe you’d prefer some of this instead then?”

He unzipped his trousers and took out his flaccid dick, gripping it tightly in his hand. Disgusted, I scowled up at him, but before I could say anything there was a knock at the door. It was room service. Leroy turned away and told me to let them in. I did as he said. He signed the check and gave the waiter a tip, holding his hat casually over his crotch.

The natural way he pulled it off was really something.

Leroy laid the food out on the table and opened the champagne.

There seemed little point in just standing there, so I sat down, too. First he ate one of the escargot, tipping his head back to slurp the spicy, melted butter from the shell. Then he wound his fork in the spaghetti, picking up a large forkful and sucking it noisily into his mouth. Finally, he wiped the dark, bloodred sauce from his lips, and taking a glass of champagne in his hand, he looked over at me. His zipper was still open and it looked as though his dick, which had been hanging limp till now, was coming to life at last.

“You’re just dying to tell me that I can’t hide my upbringing, aren’t you?”

“Is this what you call a proper meal?”

He continued to eat. From time to time he would lick the tomato sauce from his lips and, without raising his head, look up at me across the table. Then, when he had finished, he leaned over and swapped his empty plate for mine, which I had hardly touched, and began eating that, too. I was incensed.

“You only asked me here to eat, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

As he slurped down the last string of spaghetti, he stood up. Then he grabbed my arm and pushed me down on the bed.

“Just to eat… ”

He kissed me roughly and I tried to turn my face away, but he forced his tongue between my lips.

“I never knew you could be like this.” I was seething.

“You should—you were the one who showed me what I could do. If you hadn’t dumped me like that I’d probably still be happily running around after you, wiping your ass, even now.”

“So you want revenge?”

“Now let’s get this straight.” His face took on a cruel expression as he continued. “Your dumping me was just the beginning. I really don’t care about that anymore. In a way, I should be thankful. I used to play the piano because I wanted to, just because I enjoyed it. The surprising thing for me was that other people wanted to hear me play, too. And now people admire me. They treat me like a god.”

“Don’t talk shit. You’re just trying to get me back for what I did to you. You’ve been planning this for the past two years, haven’t you? I bet you’ve thought of nothing else since then. Tell me I’m wrong! You can’t, can you?”

“Baby…” His brow knitted and he smiled. “People say I’m a genius….”

I was lost for words. And my last shreds of hope disappeared, too. It was clear to me now that nothing he had done had been for me.

“Then why do you want me?”

Leroy didn’t answer. He just tore my clothes off and went at my skin the same way he had the spaghetti. T h e n without asking, he pinned down my arms and forced himself on me. My legs were free but might as well have been bound by cord—I couldn’t move.

I opened my eyes and stared at him and he stopped his violent thrusting.

“I love your hands,” I said.

For a moment he looked terribly sad.

“I knew…” I tried to go on, but the words stuck in my throat and I swallowed hard. “I knew what amazing talent you had in your fingers and… ”

Leroy frowned.

“…and it frightened me.”

“Look, just shut up, okay?”

But I had said all I needed to say and now I could rest and give myself up to him. He started thrusting again.

Once I’d had a slave called Leroy. By ruling him, I knew I existed and I wanted to rule forever. But my slave broke the rules and he had been punished for that.

I moaned, and Leroy slapped me hard across my face. My lip split and blood poured out. He hated me now. But I knew he loved me, too.

He continued thrusting, trying to humiliate and defeat me, and I let him do what he wanted. I’d pretended not to recognize his genius and now I was being punished. He could do as he pleased with me. He’d earned the right.

I could tell he was feeling the same way now that he had two years earlier when he had fucked me by the piano. As soon as people had begun to recognize his talent, he had started a new life as that pianist. I wondered what else I could possibly do for him. Perhaps the only thing I was capable of was crying to make him feel superior.

I nearly lost consciousness a number of times, and Leroy was obviously very satisfied with his work. When he had finished I couldn’t speak. My hair was plastered to my forehead with sweat and he brushed it away with his fingers so he could look into my eyes.

“Now I’m going to be living for the touch of your hands,” I confessed.

“But they don’t belong to you.”

I started to weep quietly, and Leroy stroked my hair.

“You’re just too late.”

“But I’ve changed. You’ve changed me.”

“No, you mean my hatred for you has made you change.”

That was how Leroy laid out his feelings for me.

After that Leroy often summoned me over to see him. It wasn’t k that he wanted to hold me—he didn’t pretend that he did. I knew he would probably abuse me, but I always dropped everything and rushed to our usual hotel room, sometimes even forgetting to put on my lipstick.

Each time, the pattern was the same. I was always hungry for him and that hunger was never satisfied. The way he screwed me was humiliating. He hurt me and threw me out of his room without giving me the time to lick my wounds. He made me feel like I was nothing, but I couldn’t stop myself from going, no matter how miserable I knew it would make me.

Once, on my way back to the apartment, I got a cup of coffee from a vendor, hoping to soothe my jangled nerves. A fly landed on my hand and I brushed it away, but it kept coming back to annoy me. The vendor was crowded but for some reason the fly was only interested in me, vindictive, as if it knew all the things I had done. I felt as if it were black-mailing me or something, and that was just how I felt about Leroy.

Leroy swore at me as he fucked me. He only used those words with me. He pulled my hair and dragged me around the room, sinking his teeth into my skin, leaving bruises and bite marks all over my body I begged him to stop, but he just laughed scornfully, and when I couldn’t take any more, I’d make a run for the door.

But he was too quick for me. I’d have my hand on the knob, but he’d push me down to the floor and use his agile fingers to make me cry out in ecstasy. In my hazy half-consciousness I could see the shoes of the people walking down the hallway through a gap under the door. Once in a while, people would step on my hair as they walked by. Leroy noticed but didn’t care, and just kept on screwing me.

I was losing weight. I couldn’t get any food down. D.C. tried his best to take care of me, but he couldn’t cheer me up the way he used to.

I became weaker as my feelings for Leroy began to consume me. I knew that even if he decided to piss in my mouth, I would have been happy to swallow every last drop. I was frantic, knowing I had to do something to get myself out of this. But once Leroy’s body and mine were entwined, twisted and coiled like a rope, I gave up struggling to get free and started floating instead. Afterward I would pick my panties up off the floor and put them back on again with a resigned sigh, wondering why I had even bothered putting them on in the first place.

I always wore black underwear when I went to see Leroy because I felt like I was in mourning. Or like a criminal trying to bury myself alive. I couldn’t understand why I had to degrade myself like this. I just wanted his fingers to play sweet music on my body like they did on the piano keyboard; his eyes, his bad language, and his all-knowing tongue joining in as the backup band. When they did, the melody took over my senses and destroyed my reason like a drug. His fingers were made of fire, the flames licking and burning my heart until all that was left was ash. There was no longer any order to my life. I’d lost all my possessions and I’d become his prisoner. His ten fingers surrounded me like the bars of a cage and robbed me of the will to escape. I could see his fingers and they were well within my grasp, but I knew they would never be mine.

Even though I did exactly as Leroy commanded, I began to wonder how I could get his fingers all to myself again. But I also had the feeling that if I managed to do it, his fingers would disappear altogether in their grief. As long as his fingers had any life, they would hold me in their powerful grip, forcing me to face my uselessness. It was to that extent that Leroy’s fingers controlled me. I felt like a bear waiting to catch a salmon in a river in the snowfields; I could tell if it was his hand or not just by biting it. The salmon’s bright, red eggs lay hidden between Leroy’s fingers, but however much I begged, he would never let me have them.

Once I imagined how Leroy would make love to other girls. The image was vivid in my mind; it was like watching a movie. His open-faced expression would tell her that he wanted to sleep with her, and she would give into the guileless little boy before her. He would escort her in a gentlemanly fashion to his bed. No matter how eager he was as he unlocked the door, he would take the time to set things up right. Once they were alone, the girl would pretend she wasn’t interested, but she’d let him unzip her dress and then quickly give into him. But by the time she put her head on his shoulder to show him how she really felt, Leroy would no longer be paying attention—he would be staring into space and there would be a tired look in his eyes as if to say, What, again? and he would smile sarcastically to himself. And although he would stroke his fingers over her skin, lightly caressing her body, she would never experience the full extent of his talents.

By now the girl would be feeling good, and she would moan softly to let him know, thinking that his fingers were nothing more than tools to give her pleasure. Then, when she was finally reaching ecstasy, Leroy would whisper lie after sweet lie in a low, husky voice, all the while knowing that he could have given her so much more pleasure if he had wanted to. He would feel frustrated with himself for holding back, but he would also be relieved that he had pulled it off.

In the end the girl would believe that she had experienced the ultimate in carnal pleasure, and she would be grateful to him, never knowing how much more had been possible.

I accepted everything about Leroy. If he were mine, I would even have lapped up the last drop of his sweat. I’d been pissed off because I lost a fingernail when I buried it in D.C.’s shoulder, but if it were Leroy, I would have liked to smash my nails with a hammer, bury them in his flesh, and leave them there as evidence. My hair, on the other hand, was too transient for that—the strands tangled up in his fingers during sex were too easily removed.

Leroy was living in an apartment he was subletting from one of his musician friends, and when I phoned he usually answered very curtly.

Once, however, he was actually pleasant. He said he was too busy to go out, and he invited me to come over. I was surprised by his sudden, unexpected invitation, but he told me that it was okay because it wasn’t his place anyway—typical Leroy—and he gave me the address.

I rang the bell and heard his voice from the other side of the door.

“Come in!”

I opened the door timidly.

It was a big, sparsely furnished room with a piano at one end.

Leroy’s suitcase was laid out on top of the bed, and sheet music was scattered all over the floor. Nothing else particularly caught my eye. He sat at the piano, and without looking up said, “Wait over there.”

I found an empty spot under the open window. Leroy had a pencil in his hand and was writing on the lined music paper. He tapped the keys intermittently with his index finger, concentrating hard, like a small child playing a difficult tune. I leaned my elbows on the bed, and with my chin in my hands, fixed my eyes on him.

Once in a while he stopped writing altogether and put his cheek down against the keyboard, remaining there in perfect silence, his lips pursed thoughtfully, obviously not quite satisfied with what he had written. I had the urge to go over and put my arms around his neck and hold him, but then suddenly he would look up with a flash of inspiration and begin tapping the keys again, followed by furious notations.

The sun was going down and a breeze blew in through the window, gently ruffling my hair. I had been soaked with perspiration when I walked in, but now it had dried and felt like part of my skin. I stayed where I sat behind him, staring at his back. Leroy had made the mistake of forgetting that I was there.

Suddenly he struck his head on the keyboard and kept it there, motionless. He looked absolutely desperate.

“Why…?” he whispered. “Shit! Shit! SH-I-I-I-T!”

He banged his head again and again against the keyboard, strange, mutant chords belching out from the piano, echoing around the room.

The keyboard was wet with his tears.

I didn’t know what to say. My mind was screaming, This is your chance! This is your chance to escape! Do it! Do it now! I knew that if I got up, went over, and put my hand on his shoulder and held his head in my arms, I would finally be able to escape the torture. All I needed to do was to say in a gentle voice, “Are you okay?” and he would fall into my arms, sobbing quietly on my chest, kissing me.

My heart was pounding so loud I could hear it, and I found it difficult to breathe. My whole body tensed and I just sat there in the background, rooted to the spot.

“Why can’t I do it? Why? Why? Why?”

Leroy’s voice echoed in my head.

The next thing I knew, Leroy was back at the piano again. The room was getting dark and the only thing I could see was the eerie, blue-white hue of the sheet music scattered on the floor. I looked closer. Every single sheet of paper overflowed with Leroy’s illegible handwriting.

He played with passion now, not just tapping at the keys with his index finger as he had before, but deftly conjuring the melody, both hands weaving across the keyboard, the piano giving voice to his new composition.

I had missed my only chance to get away.

When I got back to the apartment, D.C. was lying on the bed.

I He jumped up when he saw me and poured me a glass of chocolate milk from the fridge.

He stood by me, watching as I changed my clothes.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked. “You’re acting weird.”

“Ruiko…” His voice was shaking. “Have you found someone else?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Things aren’t the same anymore. You’re always so nice to me these day ”

“Does that bother you?”

I pulled my earrings out irritably and bunched my hair up at the back so he could unzip my dress. I often let him unzip me, but it was completely different from how Leroy did it.

I began to wonder if I had left any clues that he might have picked up on. We hadn’t made love recently, but that was because I found it difficult to hurt D.C. right after being hurt myself by Leroy. And after being in bed with Leroy, D.C. made love too gently.

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“You have scratches on your back.”

“I bumped into something, okay? It was an accident.”

“Do you really think I’m that stupid?” he yelled, throwing me down on the bed. “You’re always completely exhausted when you get home and all you do is sit there, staring into space with tears in your eyes. You used to be so selfish and vain—and so happy. But now look at you!

You’d never have let me push you around like this before. What’s got into you?!”

“Sometimes I like being pushed around—you’ve just never noticed it before.”

D.C. began to cry, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand.

“Ruiko…”

He brushed one of his tears from my lip.

“I can smell him on you.”

I lay still on the bed. Although he was crying, I didn’t feel annoyed with him the way I had before—this time I felt sorry for him. He couldn’t get what he wanted. But then, neither could I, so I understood how he felt. D.C. wanted my heart in the same way that I wanted Leroy s fingers, so I could sympathize with him because I knew how hard it was to be in love with something you just couldn’t have.

I stroked his face gently, and gave up trying to deceive him. We were both in the same boat now.

“I didn’t think you’d notice. I never imagined you’d be able to smell him.”

“Are you going to leave me?”

I had no response to that.

“Oh god, I know you are. You’ll dump me like you dumped Leroy Jones,” he sobbed.

Like Leroy Jones.

I know how you feel, D.C. But what D.C. still didn’t know was that it was Leroy who was the cause of all our misery, the root of all our problems and for the first time I realized just how stupid I had been. And now we were both in pain, hurting in exactly the same way that Leroy had been hurt all that time ago.

I felt as though D.C. and I were gradually turning into the same kind of people, the kind of people I used to despise.

“Show me your hand, D.C.”

He stretched out a big, innocent hand and I gently wrapped both of mine around it. His skin was shining; it looked as though it might melt and dissolve into my own. It could never make my blood churn like Leroy’s hands did. Lifting it to my lips, I kissed it gently. D.C. flinched in surprise and pulled away from me.

“Let me hold it a little longer….” I pleaded.

But D.C.’s hands didn’t stick to me the way that Leroy’s did. They just seemed to rest on my skin, gauging my temperature. I closed my eyes at the futility of it all. We were both in the same sad, leaky boat.

“I love you, Ruiko. I really love you,” he whispered over and over, knowing it wouldn’t make any difference.

D.C. and I lay awake, huddled together, motionless. I had never seen him so quiet before, and when my eyes finally became accustomed to the darkness, I could see his dark, worried eyes staring back at me. But he didn’t hate me. He stroked his hand softly over my skin as if he were gently caressing velvet, and somehow he seemed to know that we were both suffering from the same pain.

“I could die happy like this,” I told him.

D.C. just smiled.

The white bedsheets gradually turned a dark, dusty blue and before dawn, as the night air coming in through the window began to get cooler, I greedily embraced sleep, grateful at last for the opportunity to abandon conscious thought and forget everything.

The next morning I woke to find that D.C. had already made coffee and was reading the newspaper. He drew up a chair for me and poured me a cup, and throughout breakfast he said nothing about what had happened the night before. He was carefully sticking to our usual morning routine. He seemed to have decided to ignore the problem, for the moment at least.

It was the first night I had slept well in quite some time, and I had dark circles under my eyes as a result. Holding my cup in both hands, I sipped my coffee. D.C. turned his attention back to the newspaper, but I knew he was only looking at the sports pages and the music column, so I didn’t bother to ask him what was new.

“Leroy Jones is doing a special concert.”

I was only interested in seeing Leroy alone. “So what?”

“It says that it’s a farewell concert. He’s going back to the States to make a new album.”

“Going back?”

I looked over at D.C., the cup gripped tightly in my hands.

“You’re kidding, right? Why does he have to go back to the States?

“Well, I suppose that when you’re in as much demand as he is, it’s not easy to take a long vacation like this. He probably has no reason to stay here any longer. I don’t think Japanese people like jazz that much.”

“I like it!” I said angrily.

“So you’re still interested in him? I didn’t think you cared about guys once you’d dumped them.”

D.C.’s voice faded to a murmur in the background. Leroy was about to disappear. But he couldn’t go yet! I hadn’t got what I needed from him. All he had done was take, take, take from me, and he hadn’t given anything in return. Bristling with fear, I desperately tried to think what I should do next.

D.C. tried to slip his hand inside my bathrobe.

“Cut it out!” I slapped at his hand in irritation.

But D.C. didn’t stop. He tore off my robe, kissed me all over, then carried me back into the bedroom to make love to me. I didn’t try to stop him. I just let him do what he wanted. My mind was occupied with far more pressing matters. How could I stop Leroy from leaving me? How-could I keep him within reach?

I showed up at Leroy’s apartment uninvited. He opened the door, and I when he saw it was me he had a defenseless look on his face, and I was obviously angry at being caught off guard. But I looked so pale and nervous that he invited me in anyway.

The room was much messier than last time, and there was a stale odor in the air, as if he had been sleeping and just woke up. The sheet music was all gathered together in a pile now, but in its place, his dirty underwear and crumpled shirts lay strewn around the room. In the ashtray was a mountain of cigarette butts, and on the bed the blankets were piled high like the whipped-cream topping on a dessert. A tangled mess of bedsheets was screwed up suspiciously and thrown over them.

Leroy handed me a glass of white wine. I suppose I must have looked quite ill, but the cool aroma of the wine seemed to neutralize the stuffiness in the air. He sat on the piano stool, wearing nothing but a navy blue bathrobe, and looked me over as he thoughtfully stroked the stubble on his chin. It was obvious that he hadn’t taken a shower that morning, and I was flustered by his unkempt appearance; I imagined a film of dried sweat covering his body.

Neither of us spoke. Leroy went over to the record player and chose a record to play. It was only when he had turned his back that I was able to find my voice again.

“You’re going back to the States?”

Bud Powell started playing, but Leroy said nothing.

“I hear you’re going back to the States,” I repeated.

“You gonna miss me?”

I slapped him hard across the face instead of saying, Yes, I am. Leroy grinned. But it was more of a smirk than a smile. You fucker!

I flew at him in a fury, my arms flailing, but he dodged me nimbly and I ended up in a heap on the floor, lying on my back. I looked up at him.

His foot was resting on my stomach and he was looking down at me.

“You just don’t understand, do you?” he sneered coldly, the heel of his bare foot pressed hard into my stomach.

His foot was big, cold, and heavy. It was like being tortured with a brick, and I was scared of what he might do if I struggled so I kept very still.

Leroy pulled my skirt up with his foot and pushed his toes inside my flimsy panties. His big toe buried itself into my soft pussy lips and I moaned loudly. Then, pushing harder, it sank deep inside me.

“I’ll light your fire, all right,” he said viciously, “just like you told me to in the park that night.”

Christ, I hated him.

Then, removing his foot from my underwear, he brought it up to my face and thrust his big toe forcefully into my mouth. It was warm and wet, and tasting myself on his toe, I felt a sense of betrayal, almost as though I’d been forced to reveal a precious secret.

“You must feel pretty frustrated that you can’t get the same kind of satisfaction from your mouth that you can from your pussy.”

Oh, but I could. And my satisfaction came from being able to say,

“No.” Venomously, I bit his toe, but Leroy just pulled his foot away and kicked me in the face, then stood on my neck to stop me from moving. I couldn’t breathe and I began to feel faint. I thought he was going to kill me, but I didn’t struggle. I just lay there with my eyes closed.

Suddenly, he grabbed me roughly and dragged me up off the floor, pulling my hair so that my head snapped back. He kissed me forcefully, and with his mouth planted on mine, he ripped off my blouse. He sucked so hard on my mouth that I thought he’d turn me inside out.

Then, removing the rest of my clothes, he bound my hands together with his tie, and pulling my legs apart, he tied them to opposite corners of the bed. It wasn’t really necessary—I would never have resisted him.

Finally, when there was no way for me to escape, Leroy calmed down. He took off his bathrobe and sat down on the bed next to me with his legs stretched out in front of him.

It was a blistering summer afternoon. The air was completely still, hot and stagnant. On the floor was a sweet pool of Leroy’s sweat, and his body, shimmering in the light, reminded me of a golden sunflower. He put the wine bottle to his lips and took a deep drink of the cool, clear liquid. Then he quietly turned to me and spat a large mouthful onto my face, spraying the bedsheets, the white fog suddenly turning to gold, falling gently like cool rain on my skin. I gazed at Leroy through the droplet prisms on my eyelashes, a delicate rainbow cast around his body like a halo.

Leroy began licking the thin film of wine from my stomach, his rough tongue sliding smoothly over my soft skin. The pleasure he was allowing me was not like him at all. A wind chime whispered gently at the window, the cool notes like flowing water. Without warning, Leroy sunk his teeth into my flesh. It was a delicious feeling, as though my body were dripping onto the floor like molten wax.

“Don’t leave me, Leroy. I never want to stop feeling like this.”

Leroy said nothing. He just tickled me with his tongue, running it lightly over my skin. How I wished that his tongue could understand my feelings. The downy hair on my body was stuck to my skin with his saliva, each hair licked clean and facing the same direction.

“I’m yours,” I said with tears in my eyes.

“I don’t need you,” he replied. “I don’t need anyone.”

I gazed adoringly at his tiny nipples in the curly hair on his chest, and his stomach muscles, as hard and smooth as rocks. I wanted to kiss him all over. But even though he was within reach, I knew I could never make him mine.

Leroy buried his face between my legs and began to work his magic.

I succumbed willingly to his tongue, breathing shallow h in anticipation, eager to feel the waves of passion washing over me as they grew in intensity. But that didn’t happen.

“What I once accepted as happiness is now just the object of my hatred,” he said, thrusting his dick into my mouth to show his contempt for me. I choked, gagging on his length, struggling to breathe.

“Listen to me!” he barked. “Suck me—slowly and gently.”

I did as he said. I wanted him so badly, I didn’t care how much pain I had to endure. But he pulled his body away again.

“Leroy, I want you! Fuck me!” I screamed.

He laughed sarcastically and started running his fingers over my body.

“Please, Leroy. Please!” I begged hysterically.

I followed the movement of his fingers with my eyes as they traced patterns over my body, but when I began to writhe and moan with pleasure, he stopped and jammed his dick back into my mouth, repeating the same pattern over and over again. Eventually I was exhausted, and although I couldn’t stop wanting him, I knew he didn’t want me he was just toying with me. His fingers told me in no uncertain terms that he had already left.

“Fuck me, you bastard!” I screamed.

“You dirty bitch…” Leroy’s fingers stopped moving.

He gave me a look of utter contempt. I was crying now, desperate for his touch.

“So you want me to fuck you, do you?”

I looked up at Leroy, tears in my eyes, and nodded. He spit in my face.

“Why don’t you just kill me?”

“No,” he said quietly, “I can do better than that. I’ll leave you instead and you’ll miss me so much that you’ll grow to hate me. All you’ll have left is your memories of me and booze.”

His eyes were so cold.

“Leroy, don’t leave me! I want you! You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted!”

Somehow I thought that he would continue making love to me, even if it was only out of sympathy. But he just turned from me and said, “Looking at you now, I can see what I must have been like two years ago.”

Silence. I stared at him, stunned. I wasn’t crying anymore. I could see that he no longer despised me. There was no hatred left in his eyes.

He started to untie my hands, his big, thick fingers carefully undoing the knots, but my struggles had made them tighter. I watched transfixed as his fingers continued to work. Eventually he managed to pull apart the knots and free my hands.

“I love you, Leroy.”

For the first time in my life I meant it. I was absolutely exhausted and my wrists burned, hot and painful. Leroy looked down at me on the bed with a sad but serene expression in his eyes.

“And I once loved you, too.”

It was just an accident. Leroy lifted me up and my hand brushed against a bronze statuette by the side of the bed. My fingers clenched it and brought it crashing down on his head in a sweeping arc. He dropped without a sound. It was only a knickknack—I could hardly believe that such an insignificant lump of metal was enough to kill him. He lay motionless on the floor in front of me. There was surprisingly little blood.

“Leroy…?” I whispered.

But there was no reply.

People treated the accident like a big deal. I suppose one of the reasons must have been that Leroy was a famous jazz pianist, but at the same time, everyone wondered why such a talented guy would try to rape a nobody like me. In the end they decided he must have been crazy.

My sentence was light. The large, purple bruises around my wrists and ankles where I had been tied up painted a vivid picture of rape.

The police questioned me about the deep cuts on his hands. They said they looked like someone had tried to sever his fingers with a knife, but I said very little about it. Their opinion was that my actions were simply self-defense, and I nodded in agreement.

I guess you could say that it was self-defense. But I was protecting my sanity rather than my body. In the end, that’s exactly what I did.

When I got home, D.C. was blazing, furious about what Leroy had done to me, and angry with me for going to see him in the first place.

I was so tired I slept for days. When I finally woke up again I managed to have some of the soup D.C. made for me. He fed me himself, holding the spoon up the way he might feed a tiny bird, smiling at me every time I managed to get some down. It was a great relief to me to know that the hand holding that spoon had just ordinary fingers with no special power to work miracles. I even found myself laughing at D.C.’s jokes.

Now I can smile again, but I can clearly remember that scene under the window at the end of spring. While I still love to laugh and enjoy myself, deep in my heart I know that I am just one of those dying flowers left under the azalea bushes after all the nectar has been sucked out of them.