Alissa Nutting - Tampa

I had to admit that Trevor was all wrong for my purposes. But the roar and the stink of the passing buses made me feel like Trevor and I had been placed inside a dangerous war zone together and needed one another to survive—I was impressed by the way his lips managed to look pristine, like inner meat, despite the smog filling in around us. I could feel the growing wetness between my thighs in the wind. The way Trevor was looking at me now, his wry smile, made it seem like he was reading my mind. Perhaps we were sending one another chemical signals. His growing body surely smelled upon me the dank catalyst of experience that could take him from theory to practice.

“Good-bye, Trevor,” I whispered. I could feel the start of tears stinging my chest; it was hard to turn down such certain pleasure. How easy it would be to stand and chat with him just a bit longer until the parking lot emptied out, then offer him a ride. He’d sit a bit awkwardly in the car at first, his legs bent up too far as he tried to avoid touching the tender skin behind his knee against the seat’s hot leather. After two blocks, we’d be on one of the main roads leaving town; after ten minutes we’d be outside of town completely, surrounded by the undeveloped grass expanse of land fenced off for future suburbs. Then I would turn down the radio and tell him to pull off his shorts, stressing that I was serious. At the first rural stop sign we came to, I’d instruct him to say my name when he saw a car coming from any direction. Then I would turn the radio back up and bend over into his lap, filling my mouth with him until I felt his tentative fingers brush my head, heard his voice say, Mrs. Price —quietly at first, a conflicted admission, and then again more loudly with panic, Mrs. Price, I see a car .

“Mrs. Price?” Trevor had his cell phone out; he was trying to show me something on the screen I couldn’t see in the bright glare of the day. I pretended he was trying to show me a photo he’d taken of his penis held up against the length of a ruler and gave him a smile filled with gratitude.

“Till tomorrow, Trevor.” I turned toward my car and didn’t look back. The rage of lust was like an IV drip in my veins; I felt it beginning to spread inside me with the helpless awareness of someone realizing she’s been slipped a drug. I tried to gain some release by pounding my heels into the asphalt as hard as I could. I felt like I might rip my car’s metal door off its hinges if I wasn’t careful. Inside, I lifted my hair up into a quick bun and let the seat burn at the back of my neck. With a shaking hand, I reached up to the rearview mirror and turned it to face me directly. “You will go home and snort a small amount of the cocaine you keep in the Altoids tin in your pajama drawer. You will robotically fuck your husband until your box feels like a gaping wound. You will be so aggressive that he will be frightened, and his fear will keep you from being completely repulsed by him. You will get this bothersome spark out of your system for long enough to buy you a little more time with Jack. Jack needs to know you before he can trust you. Jack needs to trust you before you can trust him. You need to trust him before you can fuck him. The end.”

“Hey, hey, Celeste!”

I jumped in my seat; Janet’s pork-chop fist was suddenly raining down on my window in a repeated knock. Had she heard any of what I’d just said? I quickly turned on the car and rolled down the window. She leaned her head inside until her long tapestry of neck was guillotined below from the windowpane. Taking a few congested mouth breaths, her eyes began to rove in an exploratory survey of my car’s interior. “This thing is in mint condition,” she warbled. When placed into direct sunlight, I’d noticed, Janet’s major systems began to shut down almost immediately. Her mouth now involuntarily hung a bit open. From her vitals it seemed like she’d just been shot in the back.

“So I don’t know, my van won’t start. I guess I should’ve seen this coming. They say bad things happen in threes.”

Rather than ask about the universe’s other two injustices against her (her looks and personality?), I decided to cut to the chase. “What do you need, Janet?”

“Triple A will spend upward of an hour just trying to pull their heads out of their asses. Can you give me a ride? I’ll call from home and have it towed. From my air-conditioned living room. I can’t even think about it until I get into the air-conditioning.” Our faces were so close they were almost touching, yet she managed to look past me instead of making eye contact. Did she have cataracts? I was in awe of her as a creature in sum; every one of her parts had its own individual defect, yet here she was, a basically functioning unit.

“Sure, just get in.” I reached over and gingerly unzipped my gym bag, trying to worm out the towel without the dildo springing out too. “Let me put this down so the seat doesn’t burn you.”

I felt the car ominously lower as she transferred her weight inside. Her abdominal bumpers extended out against the gearshift. When we began to drive, each time I went into third, my hand disappeared into the borders of her stomach. “Excuse me,” I mumbled. Janet shrugged.

“I can’t even feel that side of my body,” she said.

Although Ford’s affinity for gender roles meant he hated women smoking (“Nothing’s more masculine than puffing smoke. That’s the business of men and tailpipes”), after sex he’d consent to just about anything, and if Ford had touched me for any length of time I usually needed a good half a pack to calm down.

He gave me a cheerful spank, followed by a satisfied wink. When I noticed the ring he’d left on, I crammed a second cigarette in my mouth and began smoking two at once. There had been a time in college when I’d told myself, as a cardinal rule, that I’d never have sex with any guy who was wearing a man ring. Ford had plenty—high school, college, fraternity, police academy, gemstone. It was a purely adult form of male sleaze and I abhorred it. “Babe, I know I give you shit sometimes for not giving it up more,” he announced. “But when you do, goddamn.”

“See,” I said, my face expressionless. I felt like I’d sufficiently beaten him up and gotten beaten. I’d managed to choke out, just for a few hours, the angry desire inside. “When I say ‘no’ I’m just protecting you. You need time in between to recover.” I blew a long puff up at the light on the bedroom ceiling, remembering the weightless shine of Trevor’s lips. I’d have to start being crueler, less encouraging to Trevor. I couldn’t let him tempt me that way again. Today in the parking lot, I’d gotten the feeling that he was pursuing me. And if he could pursue, he could tattle. He could barter and leverage and blackmail. Some student chasing me down wasn’t what I was after. What I needed, what I desperately hoped to find in Jack, was a student whom I could wear down. One who, even if he initially felt like running, would gradually slow his pace and let me catch him.

By the time fall open house arrived at the end of September , I felt like I had a legitimate virus. Every erogenous spot on my body was inflamed and aching. Between classes I often went to the faculty bathroom and stood, one knee resting on the toilet seat, to dully finger the already sore heat between my legs. Romeo and Juliet provided an outlet to talk about sex in the classroom, and I often sat behind my desk and pressed the swollen nest of my genitals against the chair with a friction that nearly made me moan. Most of the kids, drunk on the freedom of speaking about the subject aloud with openness, were eager to discuss. Marissa, for example, was certainly a vocal ringleader. Her teeth stained in ombré shades of red from a fruit punch drink, whenever she thought of something to say she’d boost herself up in her chair, sitting on one leg, her arm waving with the desperation of a plane crash survivor hailing a rescue chopper.