A. Homes - The End of Alice

“I thought I heard something in the woods,” I say.

“What did it sound like?”

“I don’t know, I’m not used to the country. A wild boar possibly.”

“My daughter,” she says, finishing her drink. “You’re probably hearing my daughter. She’s out there somewhere.”

I make no acknowledgment.

“I hate this place,” the mother says spontaneously. “Damned greedy lake.”

A striking but buxom young woman opens the back door. We see her through the trees. “Mother,” she calls into the woods. “Mother, I’m leaving now, see you on the weekend.”

“Be right there,” the mother shouts, grinding out her second cigarette. “My middle one, Gwendolyn. Just graduated Emma Willard and very anxious to see the world.”

“Up near Troy.”

“Yes. You’ll come to dinner one night. Gram doesn’t get out much, she’s starved for company.”

“Thank you.”

I am lost without her, thoroughly depraved. I spend the afternoon alone in my hut, masturbating endlessly, failing to find relief. Near dark, I go and jump in the lake. For dinner I take toast and three shirred eggs. At twenty past nine, I go to bed.

Again in the night she comes. Pretending to sleep through her arrival, the clumsy, clunking clattering of her small paws prying the window open, the grunts and groans as she hoists herself in, through it all I snore sonorously.

In the morning while she’s aslumber, I slip the ring on her finger. She wakes looking at it as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Going to the window, she scrapes the stone across the glass and asks, “Is it real?”

“Of course.”

“Are we engaged?”

“Apparently.”

“Gwen and Penelope will be so jealous.”

I struggle to find the words. “Darling, sweetheart, dainty dumpling…”

“Get to the point.”

“Our arrangement is best kept between us. The ring, a private gift from me to you; something your sisters might easily misunderstand.”

“You mean, you don’t really love me.”

“Oh, but I do.” I pause. “But my age. I’m so much older than you.”

She cuts me off. “How old?”

“Halfway through thirty-one.”

“That’s nothing,” she says. And that’s the end of it.

It occurs to me that if she does turn rat, if anyone ever asks, I can easily suggest that the ring once belonged to my mother and Alice so reminded me of her that I made a gift of it.

“And what should I offer you in return?” she asks. “Is the pleasure of my company enough?”

I cannot even bring myself to answer. So pious, so holy, still so sure this is entirely a fix. Secretly she is wearing a wire, a microscopic camera has been implanted beneath her skin, they are there somewhere, watching me, maybe even staring out from inside her titties.

And despite my priestly guise of apparent abstention I excuse myself frequently, furiously frigging in the bathroom eight or nine times a day if only to relieve the pressure, so steady is the need. At some point, too, I abandon all efforts at concealing my interest and she sees it bobbing excitedly beneath my worsteds.

“Does it have a name?” she asks.

“I call it Walter, after my father.”

Her calves are the loveliest, longest, and most subtle shape.

Thin ankles, delicate feet, long toes.

Her armpits are dappled with fuzz, a thing about to bloom yet oblivious to any notions of what it means to finally blossom.

Again and always I wish I were a photographer, could master the light, could make a picture that would illustrate, with all clarity, the effect she has on me.

Later I will ask myself what made me break my Philadelphia vows; was it a particular event or simply, stupidly, the path of least resistance?

What you should know is that in this rare case, it was she who took me. A seduction somewhere between a romance and a rape. I have no explanation for behavior such as this except a few theorems hinting at a sad and sordid explanation for her apparent, if addled, understanding of adult desire. I’m hinting at the possibility of some previous acquaintance with goings-on such as this — perhaps we had that in common as well. I wouldn’t doubt it. Details and the like, admittedly, I didn’t want to know.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” the old woman asks. “I couldn’t make it out. You mumble. Speak more clearly. Enunciate.”

Again, they are annoying me.

My speech is slurred, s’s sibilant, l’s lazy, my mouth is sore from Henry’s injection. And there’s this damned pain splitting my cheek, my neck, shooting down into my left arm.

“I was saying that I think perhaps she’s been abused as a child. If they write you another letter, you might want to write back and ask them that.”

“Are you speaking now of yourself or her? I’m not clear what you’re getting at,” the old woman says.

Why do they take everything and turn it, make one thing into something else? In trying to help her, I’ve just made it worse for myself, I’ve said something they don’t want to hear.

“Explain yourself,” the old woman demands.

I shake my head. “Everything is not autobiography.”

“We’re losing our focus,” the black woman says. “We were talking about the events that occurred in New Hampshire.”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything you’d like to add, to clarify.”

I’m thinking about how the story goes — I wake to find myself tied to the bed, wrists, ankles, bound and even a rope around my neck.

Dressed only in cowboy boots and a skirt, Alice dances around the room, grabbing at her chest, pinching her nips. Hopelessly hard beneath the cover of a stale sheet, I watch the devil parade.

“God, I hope I don’t get big boobs,” she says, looking at me.

My heart races.

She plays with her breasts, having named them Mildred and Maureen.

On an earlier occasion she has told me that she paints narratives around them with watercolor and then jumps in the bath and watches her stories disappear.

At the time I offered to buy her paper, but she said it would defeat the purpose, suggesting instead that I might take a Polaroid of each painting as she finishes.

I decline, not wanting to create evidence.

Now, she dances half-naked singing a little song about Mildred, Maureen, and the man they’ve got strapped to the bed.

She hoists herself onto the mattress and straddles me.

I distract myself by asking what poem she has on the bottom of her boot.

“ ‘The Cowboy’s Lament.’ ”

She crouches over me, drawing on my chest with a pink Magic Marker. Simultaneously I’m straining toward her, wanting more and recoiling in horror.

“You might want to think about cutting off this hair, it’s kind of disgusting,” she says, making pictures of horses jumping fences. “If Mother’s new husband wasn’t such an arse, I might be able to have a pony.”

She begins to post as if she’s riding me, the motion of her sliding, bouncing on the bed, works to pull the sheet down. Quite unexpectedly I feel her flesh against me.

“You’re not wearing underwear!” I scream.

“I like to catch the breezes.”

With no warning she is down upon me, unforgivably on me, riding me like an experienced equestrian.

My eyes are closed. I’m in heaven. I’m in hell.

It is the tightest fit. Despite her apparent experience, she hasn’t done exactly this before. She pushes herself down, taking her time, clearly struggling. Yet she makes no exclamation, her face merely curls into a scowl.

My stomach turns, I’m sure I’m feeling the bones of her ribs against the top of my prick.

“You’re my precious pony,” she says, stroking my skull. “My best horse.” She slaps my flank and keeps on with her ride.