Nicholson Baker - House of Holes

Rhumpa looked down at them. She smoothed her hand over them and jostled them a few times. The nipples had tightened and were pointing off, as they did. “Yes, they seem to be quite ready,” she said. “Unusually jiggly today, in fact.”

Daggett made a small whimper and gently flung the piece of transparent silk over her head so that it fell in a U in front of her. Very slowly he pulled it back, so that the folds opened. She watched her breasts fill them. He held the ends of the fabric with a light touch, not drawing it too tight. He paused. “There,” he said. “I can feel them resisting my pull.”

“Mm,” she said. The pattern on the silk was of peonies and birds of paradise. As he pulled, she felt the silk coming alive against her skin. It was clearly not just an ordinary fabric; it had an intelligence.

“I can sense the nervous vibration in your hands,” she said.

“Yes, sorry,” Daggett said. “Now we wait just a bit, and the silk will conform itself exactly to your shape, and it will understand your weight. But you must walk with me for a moment for it to work.”

Rhumpa walked slowly around the room, and Daggett followed behind her. She could feel her breasts bouncing a little in their sheer halter, and she knew that the fabric was recording how they moved. Suddenly she felt a surge of warmth that began deep in her breasts and burned upward till it reached the tips of her nipples and was gone.

“That’s it!” said Daggett. “Your breasts have communicated.” He withdrew the silk and Rhumpa hiked her robe back on and tied the sash.

Daggett dangled the fabric over the bras that he’d arranged on the bed and waited. Nothing happened. Then all at once there was a twitching, a tugging, a movement similar to that of a dowsing rod. “It’s working,” he said. “Watch.”

The very end of the fabric quivered and reached in the direction of a pale-yellow-and-white plaid bra with a white band of lace over its top. “This yellow one?” Rhumpa said. “I wouldn’t have chosen it.”

“It will fit you well and make you feel so beautiful and so new to yourself that you will make a movie that will cause many men watching it to bring out their cocks and yank on them till the jizz flies everywhere.”

“Okay,” Rhumpa said. “And, uhm, Daggett? I don’t know quite how to put this. You can have my old bra if you want.”

Daggett, reddening, reached under the pillow for it. “I just put it away for safekeeping.”

“I saw you manhandling yourself with it.”

Daggett moaned and dove facedown on the other bed. “I’m so sorry,” Rhumpa heard him say, muffled in the pillow. “I’m so utterly mortified.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “That’s okay. You wanted to see my breasts and you weren’t allowed to. You were a big bundle of pent-up desire.”

Daggett peeked at her. “Thank you for understanding,” he said, visibly relieved.

Rhumpa took the yellow plaid bra to the bathroom with her and put it on. And it was true, this bra fit her perfectly, and her breasts looked full and luscious and slightly squeezed together, and she had a feeling it would drive a man crazy to look at what she was carrying in that bra.

“What should I wear below?” she asked.

He handed her the Silken Flesh Communicator. “Tie this around your waist, it can be your skirt. Leave your panties on.”

Daggett helped her set up the tripod, aiming the camera so that she could dance next to the bed or on the bed. And he showed her how to turn on the music. Then he left.

Rhumpa danced at first on the balcony. Because it was so bright outside she was in a silhouette. Then she paused the camera and came inside and closed the dark-green drapes. “I’m going to do a pussy dance for you guys,” she said. She slowly took off her robe and shook her jerries in the bra for the camera. She danced with one finger up her stash, danced while circling her clit, danced with one foot up on the edge of a chair seat.

She knew it was good. She phoned down. “Daggett? I’m done pussy dancing.”

He came back to her room and retrieved the camera. “Have some dinner,” he said. “I’ll edit the tape and load it on channel six.”

Rhumpa had an eggplant panini down at the café, and then Daggett led her down a hall inset with sixteen square, mirrored windows. There were green and red lights above each window. “In each of these little rooms is a man,” said Daggett. “He has control of a video screen that has sixteen possible tracks. By clicking a button he can switch from one track to the next. You can look in any of the windows, but only when the light is green is someone looking at the movie of you dancing.”

She nodded. She stood for a moment. All the lights were red, and then one was momentarily green, and then it went red again. Another light changed from red to green and stayed at green. Rhumpa walked to the window and peered in through the one-way mirror. In it was a man she hadn’t seen before. Rhumpa was watching him from the side so that she could see a little bit of her own dancing performance. Mainly she saw him, sitting in a chair, squeezing his united parcel through his pants.

She looked at his face and saw how intently he was looking at her dance, and she saw that when she turned around and lifted the scarf he undid his belt. He stood and pushed his pants down and out flopped a heavy, ugly dick in the shadows of the little room. He stroked on himself several times and then he clicked the channel-selection button with the back of his hand. He began watching someone else strip. That was a rude shock.

Rhumpa stood back and looked at all of the doors: Three lights were on the green. She hurried to each window. In one room, a man had entirely removed his pants and underpants. He stood in his dress shoes, naked from the waist down, his feet tightly together, his fist shuttling over his small tuber. In the next one, a guy in jeans was leaning way back, his jeans unzipped and open, his dick-ball ensemble flaccidly out and about. In the third was Dune. He hadn’t yet taken his pants down.

Breathing softly so as not to fog the glass, Rhumpa watched Dune remove his suede jacket and hang it on a hook on the back of the door. She watched him study the video of her dancing with her finger in her snatch patch. For a while he didn’t move, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking; then all of a sudden he wrenched open his belt, unbuttoned his pants, and slid his boxers down. His dick bobbled once and stood still, its tip angling up slightly. He enclosed it with two hands and looked back at Rhumpa’s movie.

“He’s gorgeous — what a penis!” said Rhumpa to herself, enraptured. She was desperate to nibble on his pectoral manslabs; desperate to knead his suede-soft balls. She wanted him every-where, in all holes at once — she wanted to show him the real her and not a movie of her.

Dune now leaned with his left hand splayed flat against the wall, holding the other hand fisted and motionless in the air about a foot in front of his crotch. He nosed his free-hanging cock into the tightness of his fist and began pumping his hips, driving the unyielding dicklength deep into his hand tunnel. His long hair hung in his face. When, in her video, Rhumpa put one foot on the chair and held her pussylips open, Dune started thrusting hard. Again and again the head of his cock poked out, dark and bull-necked, from his immobile fist, until finally, at the end of one long plunge, he held still for an instant and sent a hot and heavy lasso of manstarch slapping against the video screen. Even through the soundproofing, Rhumpa thought she could hear his primeval cry. He squeezed his Pollock one last time, shaking the orgasmal dregs onto the floor.

Breathless, elated at what she’d seen, Rhumpa wandered in a daze of dicklust back to her hotel room. She put on a dress, one dangly earring, sunglasses, and a soft sweater with big buttons, and then slowly she took everything off except the sunglasses. She lay on the bed and stuck two fingers up her simmering chickenshack and shook them. She found a can of Red Bull in the mini-fridge and humped its coldness. She thought about plaid patterns and polka dots. She could feel her ovaries and her hipbones dying for dick.