A. Homes - The End of Alice

When she finally crawls off, she makes the strangest comment: “I’d keep going, but I think I’m out of quarters.”

She pops off my prick with a thick sound like a suction cup released.

I’m drenched in sweat. She releases my restraints.

She goes into the other room, talking to herself all the while. “First, I’ll sponge you down, and then you’ll get a big bucket of oats and, if you’re good, maybe an apple.”

Delicately, I use the sheet to clean the mess and then rearrange things to cover myself.

She comes back and begins dabbing at my chest and neck with a kitchen sponge. “Doesn’t that feel good? What do you like on your oats, butter or sugar?”

I don’t answer.

She leaves again, returning with two steaming bowls of oatmeal. She climbs into the bed. We eat.

“Isn’t this fun?”

I feel nothing but fond of her. Although undoubtedly I’ve not said it before, I do firmly believe it is up to an adult to ignore the attempted flirtations of the young, to allow the child to express her powers of persuasion in a seemingly safe setting. She is asking for it, if only to learn, to practice such; it doesn’t necessarily mean that she really wants it or even knows what it is. She is in fact compelled by the culture. For the first time in my life I feel vaguely paternal.

But soon I am brought, nearly forced, to the conclusion that if it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. And quite frankly it’s lucky it was me. I loved her. It should always be one who loves you who is given such a thing; that greatest gift best goes to someone who can truly treasure and appreciate, someone for whom it continues to accrue meaning.

I know whereof I speak. My sweet concubine.

“Do you find me attractive?” she asks.

“Undeniably.”

“Do you desire me?”

“Indefatigably.”

“What part do you like best?”

“The entirety.”

“My breasts?”

She aims the buds at me and all I can think of are those flowers that squirt water into a fool’s eye. Instinctively I duck.

“No,” I say.

“But don’t I have beautiful breasts?”

“Your question was what part I like best.”

She nods.

“Your hidden smile.” I aim my finger at the spot— cracked slit.

She preens, kisses my cheek, and asks, “How do you make a hickey?”

“How do you know the word hickey ?”

She doesn’t answer. “Give me a hickey,” she says.

I shake my head, refusing.

“You’re mean.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. I want to know what a hickey is.”

I pick up her foot and suck on her toes. “That’s a hickey.”

She laughs and shakes her head. “No, it’s not.”

I kiss my way up her leg. She squeals, “You’re tickling me.” She grabs my hair. I am in her thighs, long muscle and soft skin, no fat, nothing extra here. I flick at her with my tongue. She stops squealing; I continue. She looks dreamily out the window and lifts one leg so it hangs over the edge of the bed. She is the most lovely thing.

When we fuck — and we do fuck, frequently — there is something so familiar about her skin, about the way we fit into each other, that it is as if I’m inside out, touching myself. There is something between us not made on earth.

“No matter what happens,” she says later, handling me her six Schmitt boxes, her butterfly collection, “I want you to have these. Don’t forget, every now and then change the paradichlorobenzene crystals, otherwise they decay.”

“I’ll treasure them always,” I say entirely honestly.

“They claim you kidnapped Alice on more than one occasion.”

Again they’re at me with annoying questions, sonorous statements.

I shake my head. They have no idea.

For a break, a bit of an escape, we go on excursions, dainty day trips. I drive us in increasingly large circles round and round the state of New Hampshire — sightseeing.

“Clam rolls,” she calls to me as I leave the car. “Two clam rolls and some coleslaw.”

We have stopped at a roadside stand modeled in the shape of an ice cream cone.

“And don’t forget my soda,” Alice bellows as I reach the ordering window. “And maybe some french fries. Suddenly, I’m starving.”

Darling Alice, gone despicable, wolfs down everything in arm’s reach, including half my sandwich, my fries, and finally a large ice cream cone, of which she doesn’t even offer me a lick.

When she’s nearly finished, having indelicately dripped her melting sweets over my interior upholstery, she smiles, flashing clots of clam roll and cake cone pressed between her teeth. And although momentarily she disgusts me — I believe she does it on purpose — I remain in love, still plotting at summer’s end to marry her.

“Here’s to Labor Day,” I say, making a toast.

She raises her cone into the air and dabs what’s left of the ice cream onto my nose.

“How laborious,” she says, licking my face.

I shrug and have a close look at her. Her skin has gone shiny, become a massive oil slick, a sea of sebaceous secretion. One must blot it before kissing.

As I back out of the parking lot all too quickly, an oncoming car swerves and hits its horn.

“Sweet Jesus, be careful,” she says.

“Pardon me, I was distracted,” I say, wiping the remnants of her ice cream and lick off my nose.

We stop to shop. I buy her things, not so much what she desires but what I decide she should have, mostly books. Recently she’s been asked to surrender her library card. The matron of the town facility had reached the end of her rope when apparently every book Alice borrowed was returned with its pages heavily marked with bright red pistachio stains.

While I peruse the Book Worm’s stacks, she excuses herself to the five-and-dime, saying, “I just need something.” Whips and chains and coils of rope, no doubt.

When she’s gone, I ask the owner for a volume of Ovid’s love poems, thinking they would be more appropriate than Ferlinghetti for dear one’s patent leathers.

“Finally, a true bibliophile,” he cries, coming out from behind the counter, slapping me on the back.

I blush. “Hardly that,” I say, and am quickly out of the store.

Having fast abandoned my professorial pursuits, I find my way to Woolworth’s and unintentionally observe her shoplifting.

“Don’t you get an allowance?” I whisper in her ear.

She has pocketed, of all things, a thick padlock. I daren’t ask for what.

“The new husband doesn’t believe in allowances,” she says, slipping a bottle of nail polish remover under the band of her skirt.

“What about baby-sitting? Don’t most young women make pin money baby-sitting?”

“I hate little children. Can’t stand them.” She picks up a Mars bar, peels the wrapper back, and eats it on the spot.

“You’ve already had lunch.”

“So?”

“And dessert.”

“Well, I’m starving, absolutely famished.” She pops the whole of an Almond Joy between her lips.

I am beside myself with frustration and attempting to shield her from the eye of the woman working the luncheonette, who seems quite drawn to our argument.

“If you get caught, you’ll be in trouble,” I hiss.

“No, I won’t. I’ll say you made me do it.” She turns away, tucking a Chinese jump rope into her shirt. “You put it in my pocket and made me walk out of the store.”

“I’ll be waiting in the car,” I say, fuming.

She takes ten minutes more. I’m hardly surprised when she comes out carrying an all-too-new red-plaid overnight case.

“You lifted that?”

“Nope. Paid cold cash for it.”

“Planning a trip?”

“Shouldn’t we be getting back?” she asks, checking the time on her new watch, having filched a fresh Cinderella whose arms are time’s hands, making the passage of the minutes a slow-motion version of the Mexican hat dance. “Do I ask where you’ve left your beloved Mickey M.?” She shakes her head. “No.”