Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

Betty closed her eyes and ran her hands down Tony’s back. “I don’t have any books.”

“You still get only two for the fall list?” He kissed the faint line and then moved up to her small, delicate ear.

“You’re terrible,” she said flatly.

“Hmmm.”

“You say Fred and his wife. Bart and his girlfriend. That’s terrible. Probably they talk about me that way.”

His penis stretched against the elastic band of his greenies. His immediate desire for her surprised him. When would he tire of her? He felt like a teenager on a date: barely one kiss and he was ready to climax.

Marion had cooked, so the cleaning-up was Fred’s job. This chore suited him. He suffered from insomnia, and mechanical activity helped stop him from percolating his anxious thoughts. Marion, exhausted and tense, had drawn herself a hot bath and was now happily soaking. Fred made good progress, revved up by the five cups of coffee he had nervously drunk after dinner. Half an hour after his guests departed, Fred had meticulously cleaned everything, even drying to a sparkle the stainless-steel sink.

He knocked on the bathroom door tentatively, worried that Marion wouldn’t allow him in. He liked to watch her in the bath, lying naked in the soapy water, but Marion was shy of exhibition. Fred argued that her reluctance made no sense: they had been married for seven years, surely he knew what her body looked like. “It’s my right to be private and have a bath alone,” she would answer, striking a note of finality that implied she would resort to hysteria if he pressed his point.

“Hi.” Fred said in a meek voice. “Can I come in?”

He heard her move in the water, a soft languid splash. “Sure,” she said. I should get my cigarettes, Fred thought as he entered, but he was too eager to see his favorite nude pose. There she lay, fitting neatly into the tub, her head resting against its sloping lip, in water made faintly blue by bath oils. “Wow. Hot enough?” Fred said. The steamy room seemed to be weeping. The wall of mirrors over the sink was fogged and dripping moisture.

“Mmmm,” Marion said, closing her eyes, relaxing into the soothing bath.

“So. What do you think?” Fred asked, staring at the spooky and sexy levitation of her pubic hairs to the water’s surface.

“What do you mean?”

“The party. How’d it go?”

Marion laughed. Her nipples punctured the water, floating like pink buoys. “It was okay.”

He reached forward. His hand penetrated the liquid and touched her stomach. She accepted this without movement or comment. “You think everyone had a good time?”

“I think so. Don’t you?”

Her skin, or the water, or both, felt oily. His hand skimmed over her belly and up to her breasts like a sleigh skimming on ice, gliding on her hilly countryside. “I don’t know. Everybody seemed stiff. Didn’t they?”

Marion ignored his massage and answered in a polite tone. “Well, nobody knew anybody very well. Patty was crazy, throwing herself at every man.” Fred’s hand covered her groin, gathering her floating wisps of hair, and he pressed, one finger splitting her lips and entering briefly.

She winced.

Fred removed his intruding finger and stroked her thigh. “She’s lonely.”

“She acts horny, not lonely,” Marion said, frowning. She reached down and lifted Fred’s hand off her. “I’m trying to relax,” she said, placing his hand on the cool rim of the bathtub.

David Bergman’s loft was impressive. He knew that. The twenty-five hundred square feet he rented had had its beautiful oak floor sanded and sealed to a glistening shine with polyurethane. The meticulous tape job done on the plasterboard ceiling made the seams invisible. His cast-iron columns, standing in a dramatic row down the center of the space, were painted white, highlighting their fine details against the planks of glistening oak. His kitchen was a self-contained unit of handleless black Formica cabinets above a shimmering row of stainless-steel appliances. His large bathroom was outfitted with an elaborate marble sink, its faucet handles saying hot and cold in delicate blue letters. His bathtub could fit two and he had the luxury of a separate shower stall. Otherwise, the space was open. Wide open: eyes could look upward, past the gay yellow sprinkler pipes to a fourteen-foot ceiling: and then scan, when standing at one end, across the twenty-five hundred square feet to a set of windows at the other end. Even his furniture (though there wasn’t nearly enough to fill the place) was fine. Two large Oriental rugs floated on the floor like exquisite lily pads; two huge couches made an angle bordering one of the rugs; there was a long French country table near the kitchen exit, accompanied by a set of Breuer chairs; and, at another end of the loft, a king-size bed rested against one wall. In this cavern, it looked like a big pillow.

The effect of this splendor on Patty was increased by the deceptive prelude of the building’s seedy entrance. Three of the floors were still used for industrial purposes and thus the elevator was a dark, unfinished shell, roofless and spooky. It didn’t even operate automatically. David started it up by manipulating two cables, and the loud whirring noise of the elevator’s engine sounded labored. It lurched at the start. “Whoa,” Patty said, startled, and staggered backward, balancing herself against the rear wall.

David smiled. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. That’s the way it always sounds.”

Thus she was dazzled when David swung open the tall metal doors of the dim and scary elevator (she imagined rats and spiders and all sorts of horrible things lurking about) into the sweeping, brilliant loft.

Touring it made conversation natural. David had inherited the loft from his older brother, who had been a SoHo pioneer. David called him that with a sneer. “At the time, everybody thought he was crazy. There wasn’t a name for this area and this place was a filthy mess, the ceilings sagging, the oak floor a dirty, unrecognizable brown.” David’s brother had gotten a lot of work when SoHo conversions became fashionable. He made enough money to realize his dream: he moved to a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park.

“Maybe one day I’ll be that lucky,” David said as they settled on one of the couches. He had supplied her with wine and reheated a cup of that morning’s coffee in a desperate attempt to sober himself up. When Patty leaned forward to replace her glass on the coffee table after taking a sip, the pink cotton top billowed away from her breasts like a sail picking up a gentle breeze, and he saw (in astonishing detail) the firm creamy white terrain that had so discombobulated Fred. A green-blue vein ran vertically across her right breast, winding like a stream down a mountain’s face, disappearing into the chasm of her cleavage. On her left breast, a startling brown beauty mark was frozen in orbit about her nipple. All this he saw in the time it took for her to reach forward. Her big eyes rolled like a doll’s, down and then up as she straightened. He saw her see that he was seeing. He felt his face flush. His pale cheeks were all that his dark glasses and brown beard exposed, but they were enough— they turned red. His blushing wasn’t unusual. David liked to think of himself as a sophisticate, but nature had given him the cheeks of a bride. Years ago, he had made peace with them by training himself to talk through their flare-ups. “It’s a beautiful place,” he said loudly, noticing that she was smiling and staring at the display. “But I feel like I’m part of a warehouse sale. Or a parked car. It’s too big.” He paused, hoping she wouldn’t call attention to his embarrassment.

For a moment, she was going to, but instead she let her eyes roam, looking at the clear open space surrounding her. “I love it.” She squeezed her shoulders together. “I’m from the suburbs and these New York apartments make me claustrophobic.”