We’re back, and we brought junk food for your brain! Id est, Installment XVI (oh, sweet sixteen…) of our serialized novella, entitled The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known As A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen), wherein stockings are ruined, flights nearly missed, and altruistic plans for saving sisters placed in grave peril. For those who might be missing witchy Wanda, you’re in luck–she’s back, too. Sort of.
What about the guy? That’s what you’re really here for, admit it. You want to know what happened with the guy. Well, you’ll find that out, too, Bad, Bad Lovers, just scroll on down.
Now, if you were good last night and went to bed, sober and alone (or at least with the person the law says you’re supposed to bed down with), at a reasonable hour, and need a little catching up, this here link will take you right back to the very beginning, from whence you can either dive in or find your place.
NB: this installment contains mention of pay phones. If you’ve never seen one before, ask the Google. Or maybe your mother. Also, if there are no smartphones, paper airline tickets suddenly become much, much more important. Obvi.
~
More Rick
Livia’s mouth was paralyzed; it no longer answered the feverish movements of the tongue inside it. But–Livia’s mind was theorizing. But. Rick’s reaction, even if it had been the most violent one she had ever known the tarts to produce, had been one of pleasure. He had certainly tasted nothing bitter. Wanda’s warning had not mentioned ecstasy brought on by extreme pleasure. She had only cautioned Livia against manifestations of disgust over an inexplicable bitterness, bitterness in something the man had expected to find sweet.
The tarts never lied,Wanda had said. “Te lo juro por mi madre“– I swear on my mother’s grave. What had happened in her own mouth was, indeed, inexplicable, but Wanda had not warned her about her own reaction to the flavor of the tarts; the only reaction that counted, Livia deduced triumphantly, was the man’s.
Rick’s hands were opening the buttons of the black jacket. His lips followed them, both stopping briefly to caress her neck. Livia’s muscles tensed, but the lips, the hands, bypassed the hollow at the base of her throat (it throbbed faintly). Exultant, Livia decided that she was safe.
One hand moved lower, toward a hole in the silk stocking which covered the flesh of Livia’s right leg (it must have caught on the bar stool; Livia never would have worn stockings in which she knew there to be a hole). The hand was not content with simply making the hole larger. The hand kept right on going, until Livia’s stocking was open down the middle, as if it had a zipper. The skirt next, the jacket, the corset, she was naked.
The air inside the antique shop was unbelievably hot; Livia wondered at not having noticed the heat before. The heat, however, was not unwelcome or unpleasant. Nor was the sharp heat contained in Rick’s lips and tongue when they returned to her mouth, filling it, again, with the taste of roses and chocolate. Livia was no longer capable of reasoning about its origins; her delirious mind could only register the fact that the taste was there, that it had returned, and that its source was Rick’s mouth. She wanted more.
Which she got.
After which he was asleep, immediately. How could men do that?
Livia smelled chocolate and tasted roses, and she knew that she must disentangle herself from Rick’s body. She had promised herself to return to the safety of the fruit trees, the birds, the bower of Livia the emperor’s wife, before midnight. But she would rest for five minutes. She wasn’t on his bed, she reassured herself; she was on the chaise-longue.
She would count, to make certain she remained conscious. One, two. Still conscious. Three, and then four, and then five. Which would be the final number she would, on the morrow, remember.
Somewhere between five and ten, Livia fell deeply, irrevocably asleep.
~
Breakfast
Livia’s consciousness hovered on the blurry frontier between sleep and drowsy wakefulness. She smelled flowers; maybe she had fallen asleep in a field, or in the woods somewhere. Maybe she was behind the aunts’ house, in the garden, among Pearl’s flowers. She had sometimes taken naps there with Danae…the aroma…what was it? Roses, that was it. Pearl’s roses.
There were feather-light brushes of something soft against her forehead, her cheeks. Livia stirred, sighed, murmured something. The brushes moved lower, along her jawline, then lower, down one side of her neck. Grass. There were long blades of grass in the jungle behind the house where she’d last seen her father. The grass was waist-high on an eight-year-old girl; once she had fallen asleep among the grasses in the jungle. She had woken up because the grass was tickling her neck.
There was a light pressure, a presence, in the hollow at the base of her throat, followed by a surge of the most intense pleasure Livia’s startled body had ever known. The pleasure moved in waves, hot and delightful, out from the shadowed hollow toward the ends of her extremities.
Livia bolted upright, flinging the unfamiliar weight from her naked body. Naked. Her body. Rick’s face moved into her field of vision and she remembered. Her hand was pressing painfully over the hollow at the base of her throat. That was why it hurt, because her hand was pressing it.
“Oh, my God, what time is it?”
“Early.” The voice was lazy, and Ophelia liked the laziness.
Livia, on the other hand, was panting, madly searching for her clothes. She found them. They were neatly, perfectly folded, at the foot of the bed, Rick’s bed. Livia’s stomach tightened and churned. She was hung over, that was it. A hot, nasty hangover. Though not nearly as nasty as she deserved.
“Oh, God. I have to go to New Orleans today, to help my sister. My plane’s at twelve…Oh, God. Oh shit. Oh fuck.”
Rick was standing. His body was dreadfully beautiful. Livia forced Ophelia to look away. She was buttoning the jacket. Where were her panties? She then remembered that she hadn’t worn any.
“Ophelia…Ophelia.”
Rick’s hand touched Ophelia’s arm. Livia felt his hand through the sleeve of the jacket, as though it were touching her bare skin. She withdrew her arm, with the pretext of securing the deadly chopsticks into the messy beignet she had made of her hair.
“Ophelia, don’t panic, it’s only a quarter to eight. You have plenty of time. Let me make you some coffee. Then I’ll get dressed and go out and get a taxi for you…wow. Your stockings are ruined…Sorry. There’s a drugstore just on the corner. I think they open at eight.”
Livia, no, no, Ophelia. Ophelia wouldn’t meet Rick’s pale blue gaze, wouldn’t look at the curious angles of the beautiful temples, the tendrils of blond hair. Livia refused to allow it. Livia rummaged in her bag and saved Ophelia the pain of looking at that face.
“I have to go by my friend’s before I go home…there’s something really important I have to pick up. She lives near here…”
She was dressed–they both were, Livia and Ophelia. Livia began to push Ophelia toward the door; Ophelia resisted. Ophelia wanted to drink coffee on the chaise-longue, wanted to feel the intense, unbearable pleasure again at the base of her throat, but Livia directed her pitilessly, implacably, toward the door. Rick was calm, lazy; he had fallen back onto the bed. His eyes were there, pale blue and beautiful, waiting for Ophelia’s when Livia turned, despite herself, to look at him.
The eyes reached right down to Ophelia’s soul.
“You have my card. Call me when you get back.”
Livia nodded, raised a protective hand to her throat and hurried into the darkened shop. The door that opened onto the unknown street, thankfully, was unlocked.
~
At the corner, Livia saw a storefront she recognized. The unknown street spat her out onto Seventh Avenue. She had her bearings. She headed south.
Wanda’s studio was in a commercial building in Chinatown. It was illegal for Wanda to live there, and her studio had no buzzer. Livia would have to call from the pay phone on the corner. She felt in her bag for change, extracted some coins and deposited them with a shaky hand. She dialed Wanda’s number. Four rings. Livia’s heart sank as Wanda’s answering machine picked up. There were thirty seconds or so of tango–Carlos Gardel–then Wanda’s curt, “I’m not here. Leave a message.”
Livia looked at her watch; it was only eight fifteen. They had agreed on ten. Maybe Wanda was still asleep.
“Wanda…Wanda…Soy Livia…Wanda, ¿estás allí?”
Silence; the tape would still be recording.
Livia’s heart dropped into her bilious stomach. She had endangered her soul. She had slept next to the man–to Rick, that was the worst part, now he wasn’t, could never be again, `the man’. He was Rick. Maybe that was because his soul–which she knew to be similar to hers, despite the tart–had acted on hers during the vulnerable oblivion of her sleep.
Much more gravely, however, she had endangered her sister’s well being, by jeopardizing the effectiveness of the filter Wanda had prepared. Livia, had she truly been concerned about Danae, should have been chastely channeling her own energies toward Wanda’s expenditure of hers.
Wanda was out. It was Livia’s punishment, castigation for sins committed the night before, a lifetime ago. The plane left in just a few hours. Her ticket had been delivered the day before. It was at home. Whatever Wanda had concocted to help her rescue Danae was inside the studio and Wanda was either out or asleep. If Livia waited for her, she would miss her plane. If she left the filter in Wanda’s apartment, there was no point to her trip.
The impossibly blue eyes filled with tears. In her heart of hearts Livia, no, Ophelia, no, Livia, was also perfectly aware that she had just wrested her soul out of the arms of its lost half. The pulse point at the base of Livia’s throat throbbed painfully.
She hung up the receiver and turned toward the street. She would take a cab home, collect her things, cab it back down to Chinatown and hope to find Wanda at home. She prayed that her plane would not leave on time.
~
More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.
Right here, next week, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…
Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.
~
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