Amy Yamada - Bedtime Eyes

“Did anyone know he played the piano?”

“Nah…”

I knew. In my mind I was screaming, I knew! I knew he could play!

But I said nothing. I wanted them to think that as far as I was concerned, Leroy’s and my relationship had just been a passing thing. So I kept quiet. And because I wouldn’t say a word, they started teasing D.C. about me and Leroy. Poor D.C.: he was a good-looking guy, but not too bright.

Leroy stole a glance over in my direction once in a while, and though I had my back turned to him, I could feel his eyes burning into the back of my head. It was as though my whole body had become sensitized to his intense stare, and I could feel it getting hotter and hotter, like when you try to burn holes in a piece of paper using a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays. When I couldn’t put up with it any longer, I stood up, asked my friends to look after D.C., and left the club.

I wandered the streets aimlessly. I didn’t know why I was crying, but I couldn’t stop the tears pouring down my cheeks. I felt like a little girl who wanted to run home and tell her mother that someone had picked on her at school.

A car stopped beside me. I thought it must have been a cabdriver picking up a fare, but when I turned around to look, it was Leroy, his sharp eyes piercing the darkness, and I turned and ran. He put his head out the window and shouted, “You look like a hooker walking around on your own like that!”

Wiping the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand, I stopped and turned. The car drew up slowly and he opened the door for me to get inside. I stood motionless with my hands in my pockets, so he grabbed hold of my arm and dragged me into the car before I had the chance to run away again, and we sped away into the night.

It was drizzling and the road was wet. I didn’t have the strength to fight him any longer, and I just sat there, thinking vaguely that it looked like the beginning of a rainy spring. Each time his foot hit the brake Leroy turned to look hard at me, and there was nothing I could do but return his stare. Then, as he accelerated, he’d refocus on the road, and I wouldn’t know where to look, so I just stared at his hands gripping the wheel. His knuckles seemed much bigger than before. Now he really did have a piano player’s fingers.

We drove for a long time and the rain started to get stronger, bouncing hard off the windshield. It didn’t occur to me to question where we were going or to wonder what he was thinking, because I was conscious only of Leroy himself, sitting there next to me. His back was straight up against the seat, calm and relaxed despite the speed at which he was driving, and the only noise was the short gold chain in his ear making a faint metallic sound as it swayed from side to side.

I knew the guy sitting next to me in the sharp clothes was Leroy, but he didn’t look the same at all, and I wondered how it was possible to create such a completely different person out of the same raw materials. I wasn’t conceited enough to think that he had changed just to get back at me—we had only spent a very short time together. And even if I’d managed to have such a strong influence on him, Leroy was acting too naturally to give that impression. He looked so cool, as if he was just giving a ride to some girl he had passed on the road. And that hurt. If he’d acted like he hated me, I would have been bitter, but it would have left me my pride. Even though I was the one who had discovered his talent, I sensed that there was some other woman who had helped him realize he had it.

Leroy pretended to reach out his hand to the gearshift and grabbed my hand. But his eyes stayed on the road—he didn’t seem to think it was necessary to look at me. I felt as though there were lumps of ice behind my eyes and they were about to melt and pour out. Everything was blurred but I couldn’t blame it on the rain—all the windows were closed.

I was still trying to hold back my tears when I realized that Leroy had stopped the car. We were parked somewhere dark and he was leaning over me.

For the first time in two years, Leroy’s face was close enough to mine that I could feel his breath on my skin. His face was the same as before, but his eyes were completely different. I thought that he would try to kiss me and start making love to me immediately, but he didn’t. He continued staring at me, trying to despise me, but I could see from his eyes how determined he was to have me, too. He had only ever fucked me once before without first asking my permission, but that time I hadn’t had to watch his eyes as he mentally licked his chops.

Shaking with fear I turned my face away from him. But Leroy was too quick for me—he seemed to anticipate my move, and began kissing me passionately, taking my breath away.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,” he told me.

But there was no warmth in his voice, and it didn’t sound as though he intended this to be the start of a romantic affair. He pressed his lips to my ear and injected a hot stream of saliva, then motioned me toward the backseat of the car. Aroused, his kiss having dissolved my resistance, I obeyed and slid into the back. He got out of the car and, in the seconds before he got back in, I told myself that this was something that had to happen.

Leroy got into the back and once more gathered me into his arms, but as we moved about in the cramped space my head banged against the door. Droplets of rain sparkled on his skin in the soft half-light and he noticed some on my face, too, and although it was June, he turned the heater on.

Normally when I was smothered in the powerful scent of a man, my fingers would get to work almost reflexively, rapidly undoing his shirt buttons, but right now both my hands were balled into tight fists. Leroy pried my fingers open, one by one, and pressed his lips to the palms of hands. I couldn’t bear to watch, and shut my eyes tight, only to feel his lips move on to my neck. His stubbly chin, spiky, like an unmown lawn used to scratch my face painfully, but now it felt more like sandpaper, gently smoothing down the skin on my cheeks.

Who is this? I thought.

Leroy kissed me hard, forcing his tongue between my lips, exposing my teeth like he was pushing pills from a foil strip. I could have bitten off his tongue right there—he wasn’t going to use it to worship my body anymore, anyway. His tongue was hungry now, only licking my skin to satisfy that hunger, taking my moans and sighs as his nutrition.

A car sped past, splashing water up from a puddle in the road. No one knew I was being sacrificed in the confines of the backseat of this car. He pulled down the zipper on my dress.

“No …,” I said in a small voice. But he wasn’t listening.

His fingers burned as they touched my bare skin, and I cried out helplessly.

“You’ve won!” I told him. “It’s over!”

But for Leroy it was just beginning. The car seat squeaked as his fingers moved freely over my body—I was his keyboard. But he no longer thrashed at the keys—he stroked them so gently that I could almost feel his fingertips before they reached my skin. He had the same magic touch I recalled from two years ago, and I moaned deeply in acquies-cence. Leroy’s memory of my body was flawless.

He put his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me up. I knew that the thing I had feared most and tried to push away had grown over time, and was now about to devour me. I could never have imagined that something I had been so frightened of for so long would be so sweet, and I sobbed at my defeat. I had been terrified of the power in the sound I f his piano-playing, but now I was being invaded by its melody.

“You’d like to try to escape, wouldn’t you, Ruiko?”