They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

The World Did Spin

I lie in the dark listening to the faint hiss of the hotel shower. There is a red-and-yellow neon light flashing through the blinds. I’m up now, an unfiltered Camel dangles from my lips. Reaching into my suit jacket, I come away with a pint bottle wrapped in brown paper. I break the government seal with a twist and take a bracer of the cheap hooch. It goes down smooth as a mouthful of cut glass. I take another swig. The glass is still cut, but the edges aren’t as sharp. I unholyster my.38 and spin the cylinder just because I enjoy the clicking sound it makes. I press my ear against the bathroom door. The shower’s still going. I unclasp her handbag and use the barrel of the.38 to poke around. Never know what a frail might carry in there that’ll jump up and bite you. But this one’s smart. There’s nothing to let me know the real motive for her sharing my bed. The water’s off. I clasp the bag, replace it. I holster my piece and pour some of the liquor into the glass marked with the come-and-get-it silhouette of her painted lips. She steps back into the bedroom, towel wrapped just above her pink nipples. I hand her the glass, saying: “I missed you.”

“Well,” she says, “I had to give you enough time to go through my bag, didn’t I?”

“You’re smart, angel, very smart.”

As she reaches for the glass, the towel falls conveniently to the floor. The smart talk stops there.

Of course, there was no neon sign. There was nothing remotely neon about Riversborough. And though I lay in bed listening to the hiss of the shower, distracting myself with pulp cliches, all I could think about was that slender blade of glass.

She had been remarkably shy, not coy, not virginal. She did not want light. And there in the blackness, we moved slowly. Kira removed my clothes, marking her progress with gentle kisses. There was no clawing, no fury. It was ritual. Her clothes fell away without much urging. I took hold of her at the back of her thighs and pulled her weightless body up along my torso. Her breasts were smallish and firm. I held her nipple between my teeth and used the tip of my tongue to tease it hard. She purred, clutching at the back of my neck, wrapping her legs above my waist. She began to roll the nipple of her other breast between her own fingers.

“Please! Please! Please!” She stiffened, shuddered, shuddered again.

I could feel moisture pouring out of her, meandering through the hair on my abdomen. She released herself and slid down my body washing her orgasm off me with her tongue. She took me into her mouth and I exploded almost immediately. I might have in any case, even without physical encouragement on her part. She braced herself against my thighs, struggling to take it all in. I fell back on the bed and for the first time in a long time, I remembered that the world did spin.

“I knew,” she whispered in the darkness, “that I would love your taste.”

“How long have you known?”

“Later,” she said, “I will show you.”

She crawled up onto the bed next to me. She coaxed my hand onto the sparse, wet hair of her pubis. I massaged her clitoris and as I felt her muscles tense, I slid my finger down hard inside her. Kira clamped her hands around my wrist and held my hand in place until the waves had fully passed. When she relaxed, I pulled my hand up to my mouth and licked her off my finger. She licked, too. I wanted more and moved my mouth along soft skin until I picked up the taste of jasmine mixing with something raw, untamed and mildly bitter.

That was. . Jesus, I don’t know. I wasn’t keeping time. I wanted to join her in the shower, but she resisted. She said she liked the scent of sex on a man. I was stunned by her, by her skillful blend of ritual and spontaneity. I had never been with a woman so understanding of her partner, so aware of herself and so young. It was an addictive combination to a man with as many miles on him as I had. She had the rare ability to make the few seconds leading up to orgasm more exciting than the orgasm itself. It was no wonder that Zak was intimidated by her. At nineteen I was so unsure, so inexperienced that I wanted to jump out of my own skin. I would have been completely overmatched by a woman like Kira. I was overmatched now.

As I waited for her to return to my bed, I wondered if Zak had been embarrassed by Kira, if he still hurt when he thought about her. I wondered if he was all right. I fell asleep wondering.

I felt her slide herself around me as I opened my eyes. Light crept in through the shade, but it was so diffuse that it did not blind me. My vision was grainy, faded like a blowup from a cheap photo lab. Her back was to me, riding slowly, the muscles of her vagina tight against me. I lay back for a minute and let her ride. I reached up and ran my fingers through her thick, straight, ebony hair. It was frighteningly like silk, too perfect.

“Pull it!” she demanded, picking up her pace. “Pull it! Make it hurt!”

As I pulled, I got an eerie feeling that I had done this before. I hadn’t. Believe me, I would remember. But I couldn’t escape the familiarity of the scene. There was a resonance in her words, even in the way she rode me.

“That’s it!” she sighed. “Harder!”

I pulled harder. She quickened the pace. She reached back, taking my right hand, and guided it onto her right nipple. I pinched it, but not too hard. She gasped. Her back muscles flexed erratically. Her thighs began to stiffen. And as they did, another wave of resonance passed through me. My head was swimming, fighting to keep one part of itself uninvolved. Was I losing it completely? Had I done this before?

“Harder!” she repeated. “Pinch it! Pinch it!”

I sat up some and placed my left index finger on the moving target of her clitoris. When I found it, Kira wrapped her hand around my finger and rubbed herself. We rubbed together, fast and faster. We were very close now. I waited for her to start crying: “Please! Please! Please!” But that cry never came.

“That’s it, lover,” she sang. “That’s it! Hard-er. Hard-er”’

Breathless, she could barely speak the words. And again the words, even the intonations were familiar to me. But how?

“Oh God, Wyatt! Wyatt! Wyatt!” she screamed, stiffened around me, and shook so fiercely the bed moved. “Wyatt.”

As I writhed in orgasm beneath her, the confusion vanished. Wyatt Rosen was my character, the detective featured in my two novels: Coney Island Burning and They Don’t Play Stickball in Milwaukee. In They Don’t Play, Wyatt Rosen hooks up with a newspaper reporter named Anne Curtis. In an attempt to gain insight into Rosen’s investigation of an allegedly corrupt Wisconsin congressman-a transplanted Brooklynite, hence the title of the book-Curtis enters into a steamy affair with the detective. On the morning after their first night together, Anne Curtis wakes Rosen up in exactly the same manner Kira did me. Curtis speaks the same words Kira spoke. No wonder the scene was familiar to me. I wrote it.

“You’re better than Anne Curtis,” I said, pulling Kira onto my chest.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “That scene between Wyatt and Anne is the most erotic thing I have ever read. It’s ironic, when Zak bought me your book, I avoided reading it at first.”

“Not much of a detective fiction fan, huh?”

“No. And I didn’t want to hurt Zak’s feelings anymore than I already had.”

“What hap-”

“Let’s not talk about it,” she cut me off. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, but I never thought I could be with you.”

“Dream big, that’s what I say.” I laughed.

She punched my arm playfully and slid her hair down my chest, down my belly. “As I recall, Anne couldn’t get enough of Wyatt,” Kira said as she put me in her mouth.

Anne Curtis, of course, was lying about that. But for some odd reason I chose not to remind Kira of that.