She rides, she shudders. She sucks air into her throat, says
Ooh
as it cools her. She squeezes your knees with fingers so tense the knuckles have turned white. She swishes her head down and you wrap your fingers around black and yellow hair. Regrowth is coming through, fresh, happy hair pushing the sad hair away. She's facing away, twisting and shimmying on your lap. You count the vertebrae of her spine. She's short and plump. They're all misshapen in some way, these women, but they all have passion in their pink flesh. Your take off the brown and olive clothes and baggy track pants and reading glasses, strip the skin and fat off their skeletons, get inside them, feed on the raw woman.
She shudders, bends over, putting her face near her own feet. You withdraw your cock from her insides. It makes a sticky, plopping sound. Your lap is slick and shiny. Your thighs are white where her weight pressed on you. You unwind the hair from your hands, which have turned white too.
She lies on her back on the couch, legs open, inviting you in once again. You want to prise her open with your fingers, stroke her legs, ride the slippery waterslide of sweat back into her body, just to show her what you can do.
'Oh my GAWD,' she says, and laughs. 'No one's fucked me like that since... GAWD.'
'Since you were 39?'
'Try 29.'
'Kids'll be up soon,' you go. 'No sleep for you, huh.'
Positioned on her back, naked, one hand hiding her nipples, she strokes your chin with her big toe. 'I may not sleep, but I can tell people we slept together,' she giggles.
'What time you meeting your lawyer? Making it official – the divorce, I mean?'
'Baby, we don't need to talk about that. Snuggle me.'
'Cuddling's an extra ten bucks an hour,' you tell her, shifting along the couch. 'I'm real sorry.'
*
New week; new woman. Her name's Kathleen, but no one ever calls her that - people call her Kay, 'kay? She laughs at the little pun and takes off her glasses and flutters her lashes. Fine. Whatever. God, you just want one of the smokes you can see throbbing in her handbag, radiating temptation. You scratch your arms; your stomach screams. You've been eating once a day, showering twice a week, sleeping on couches with foam spilling out of tears. You look down at your tablet, seeing you've completed 50 minutes of work in the four hours you've been in class. Your student loan's piling up, and if you don't score some work off ladies on campus... It's not even worth thinking about. Four red bank accounts is enough. 60% of campus is women, women who need people like you to hold open doors when their arms are full of library books.
Kay has kids; she doesn't boast about any talent or point of distinction, just her beautiful little girls. Kay seems otherwise defined by Lotto tickets and novels with candles on the cover and photos of beaches on her Instagram, all spectacles and fish and chips and big fatty breasts and hairdressing qualifications. Her body says Kids, Couches and Chocolate. She's doing this course because she thinks the life she's driven off the road can be restored by 40. Maybe, Kay. Maybe. What she really is is a potential client.
God those smokes look good. Everything about Kay is warm and well-fed and abundant. She gets paid good solo parent support money by the government, you guarantee it. There's warmth and comfort between her legs. You sneak glances at the tight, damp valley, the cleft, the secret hibernation spot. Nothing bothers you when you're making women feel good. No one interrupts or taps you on your shoulder, tells you to do something else with your life.
Maybe women are what you'll do with your life. You'll always be 10 years younger than someone out there.
How old are they, anyway, the kids? Five and six, she goes, rolling her eyes. Little terrors, she laughs, You don't want to meet them.
Kids are alright, you shrug. My mum wants me to have kids, she keeps nagging my ass.
What about your dad?
Never had one.
You'll probably have a real hot wife by the time you're 30, she goes, licking her finger and wiping a spot of glue off the sleeve of your Misfits t-shirt.
I'll never be 30.
If you say so. I used to be like you.
You were my age, I'd'a totally asked you out, you tell her.
I would've sucked your neck in the movies. I would've bit your jugular vein open.
Five and six'll mean the kids are pretty big, you want to say, How old's that make you? 35? When did a man last take your weight in his arms and guide you as you collapse onto an unmade bed and listen to your belt buckle tinkle as you kick your jeans into a pile of laundr–
You put down your tablet, act interested in the photos on her phone. You may as well exchange numbers, now, you say. You've cornered the quarry.
Sure you love kids, you tell her – don't look so surprised. She gets warm, she gets wet, she takes off her glasses, makes some joke about getting back to work. Teacher tells you off for talking, asks if you're certain you're making the best use of your time here, and you giggle like school kids and then it's Let's do coffee, then right on through til lunch, then she breaks it off, slaps herself, curses, apologises for relaxing. She has to pick up the kids, has to drop the magazine cover she's designing and go and tuck pyjamas into drawers and hang out laundry and scrub the peanut butter out of lunchboxes. She has to go back to unhappiness. This has all been a mistake, but it's too late, someone's paying attention to Kay, Kay's taking the offer, Kay's smoking nervously in the car, the smoke's blowing back into the girls' faces as they watch YouTube on their iPads, Kay's asking you to dinner, sneaking glances at your triceps, your shoulders, Kay's anticipating your muscular thrusts, hoping she's earned your company. She can't imagine you're desperate for shelter, for a fridge with cold ham and milk, for money for crushed ecstasy tablets and Jägermeister tipped into bubbling beers.
Kids, eh? Not usually your bag but fuck it, why not. They're part of the job. Take some photos of you holding the little squirmers, pxt your mum. Tell mum you're a builder of families instead of a wrecking ball.
Kay cooks and serves you cans of Czech beer she says she was saving for a special occasion, and you tickle the girls and channel-surf. The girls crawl on your lap, mash your crotch with their knees. They're so trusting, you want to tear the lying organ out of your mouth and confess all the holiday homes you've raided, the medicine cabinets you've left empty, the Lego sets you've swapped for tiny little bags of crystallised happiness– but all you tell the girls is corny answers to the corny jokes they read from the TV Guide.
They pour piles of tomato sauce on the fritters Kay apologetically makes for tea, 'cause she bought only wine, forgot to get food. They play with your earrings. They stroke the patterns of your tribal tattoos. You lift them toward the ceiling fan. You're the strongest person in the house. Kay slips in these comments about your "build," a term which sounds old-world to you. You don't have muscles, really, it's just you're so starving that your skin clings to your muscles. There was the Finnish globetrotter with the Western accent you proposed to in the mud under the bridge. You went through three Facebook identities and two phones and four Instagram accounts before you shook her off your shin. You enrolled on the easiest course you could get into. You borrowed some stranger's designs off Deviant Art. You're a spy. You're a James Bond with a backpack full of underwear, pursuing sad women. You must be compensated for keeping these women company.
The girls crush pepper into your drink. They lift your gums up, tap your teeth. They squirt soy sauce in a glass of wine Kay's told you she tossed between her hands for 20 minutes in the supermarket aisle before paying thirty bucks for it. The girls force you to drink the soy-wine. You say a wine-baby is growing in your belly. They cackle. They're amazed someone so old can be so immature.
The girls go to bed 90 minutes late. You recite a story for each girl. The stories are plots of movies you've seen,
Gladiator, Master & Commander
. Kay recites 30-second stories for each girl, slams their bedroom door, puts her back against it, rolls her eyes up at God, calls his name, laughs. You move to the couch. She pours wines, puts her right knee over her left, then the left over the right, takes her glasses off, moves her hair behind her ear as if it's competing with her.
Kay's trying to upskill herself with a two-year diploma so she can break the $20 an hour barrier, she says. You tell her she could model, if she wanted. She tells you to stop, swats your shoulder.
"Out of interest," you go, swallowing merlot, "How much you making? Y'got much saved?"
Kay gasps and stares. Tracey's out of bed, standing in the door frame. "Are you gonna be my daddy?"
You carry the girl like a load of laundry into her room, tip her into her bed. "Course I will, sweetie."
Kay's in the hallway, hands behind her back, brushing the wall with her shoulders. "It's only nine o'clock," Kay says, pushing the glass of wine to your mouth, pinching the back of your head. "What are we gonna do now?"
You press one hand against the wall on either side of her. The short woman in the trackpants and Kmart shirt with her name embroidered on the breast closes her eyes, tips her head down. She's waiting for approval. She has no idea how much approval her Mastercard gets her. You exhale into her ear. Your lips brush the skin on her neck. She's sprayed perfume and put on dangly earrings. You bite the throat, she claws your chest, squeezes your shirt.
"I need something."
"Anything," she goes.
"Listen very carefully: I need cash – or vouchers. We can't go any further unless... y'know. I'm really sorry."
She clears her throat, keeps her eyes down. "No worries," she says. She will shatter if not handled gently. "Not ayyy problem. Can I give you the stuff...
