Suddenly, he grabbed me roughly and dragged me up off the floor, pulling my hair so that my head snapped back. He kissed me forcefully, and with his mouth planted on mine, he ripped off my blouse. He sucked so hard on my mouth that I thought he’d turn me inside out.
Then, removing the rest of my clothes, he bound my hands together with his tie, and pulling my legs apart, he tied them to opposite corners of the bed. It wasn’t really necessary—I would never have resisted him.
Finally, when there was no way for me to escape, Leroy calmed down. He took off his bathrobe and sat down on the bed next to me with his legs stretched out in front of him.
It was a blistering summer afternoon. The air was completely still, hot and stagnant. On the floor was a sweet pool of Leroy’s sweat, and his body, shimmering in the light, reminded me of a golden sunflower. He put the wine bottle to his lips and took a deep drink of the cool, clear liquid. Then he quietly turned to me and spat a large mouthful onto my face, spraying the bedsheets, the white fog suddenly turning to gold, falling gently like cool rain on my skin. I gazed at Leroy through the droplet prisms on my eyelashes, a delicate rainbow cast around his body like a halo.
Leroy began licking the thin film of wine from my stomach, his rough tongue sliding smoothly over my soft skin. The pleasure he was allowing me was not like him at all. A wind chime whispered gently at the window, the cool notes like flowing water. Without warning, Leroy sunk his teeth into my flesh. It was a delicious feeling, as though my body were dripping onto the floor like molten wax.
“Don’t leave me, Leroy. I never want to stop feeling like this.”
Leroy said nothing. He just tickled me with his tongue, running it lightly over my skin. How I wished that his tongue could understand my feelings. The downy hair on my body was stuck to my skin with his saliva, each hair licked clean and facing the same direction.
“I’m yours,” I said with tears in my eyes.
“I don’t need you,” he replied. “I don’t need anyone.”
I gazed adoringly at his tiny nipples in the curly hair on his chest, and his stomach muscles, as hard and smooth as rocks. I wanted to kiss him all over. But even though he was within reach, I knew I could never make him mine.
Leroy buried his face between my legs and began to work his magic.
I succumbed willingly to his tongue, breathing shallow h in anticipation, eager to feel the waves of passion washing over me as they grew in intensity. But that didn’t happen.
“What I once accepted as happiness is now just the object of my hatred,” he said, thrusting his dick into my mouth to show his contempt for me. I choked, gagging on his length, struggling to breathe.
“Listen to me!” he barked. “Suck me—slowly and gently.”
I did as he said. I wanted him so badly, I didn’t care how much pain I had to endure. But he pulled his body away again.
“Leroy, I want you! Fuck me!” I screamed.
He laughed sarcastically and started running his fingers over my body.
“Please, Leroy. Please!” I begged hysterically.
I followed the movement of his fingers with my eyes as they traced patterns over my body, but when I began to writhe and moan with pleasure, he stopped and jammed his dick back into my mouth, repeating the same pattern over and over again. Eventually I was exhausted, and although I couldn’t stop wanting him, I knew he didn’t want me he was just toying with me. His fingers told me in no uncertain terms that he had already left.
“Fuck me, you bastard!” I screamed.
“You dirty bitch…” Leroy’s fingers stopped moving.
He gave me a look of utter contempt. I was crying now, desperate for his touch.
“So you want me to fuck you, do you?”
I looked up at Leroy, tears in my eyes, and nodded. He spit in my face.
“Why don’t you just kill me?”
“No,” he said quietly, “I can do better than that. I’ll leave you instead and you’ll miss me so much that you’ll grow to hate me. All you’ll have left is your memories of me and booze.”
His eyes were so cold.
“Leroy, don’t leave me! I want you! You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted!”
Somehow I thought that he would continue making love to me, even if it was only out of sympathy. But he just turned from me and said, “Looking at you now, I can see what I must have been like two years ago.”
Silence. I stared at him, stunned. I wasn’t crying anymore. I could see that he no longer despised me. There was no hatred left in his eyes.
He started to untie my hands, his big, thick fingers carefully undoing the knots, but my struggles had made them tighter. I watched transfixed as his fingers continued to work. Eventually he managed to pull apart the knots and free my hands.
“I love you, Leroy.”
For the first time in my life I meant it. I was absolutely exhausted and my wrists burned, hot and painful. Leroy looked down at me on the bed with a sad but serene expression in his eyes.
“And I once loved you, too.”
It was just an accident. Leroy lifted me up and my hand brushed against a bronze statuette by the side of the bed. My fingers clenched it and brought it crashing down on his head in a sweeping arc. He dropped without a sound. It was only a knickknack—I could hardly believe that such an insignificant lump of metal was enough to kill him. He lay motionless on the floor in front of me. There was surprisingly little blood.
“Leroy…?” I whispered.
But there was no reply.
People treated the accident like a big deal. I suppose one of the reasons must have been that Leroy was a famous jazz pianist, but at the same time, everyone wondered why such a talented guy would try to rape a nobody like me. In the end they decided he must have been crazy.
My sentence was light. The large, purple bruises around my wrists and ankles where I had been tied up painted a vivid picture of rape.
The police questioned me about the deep cuts on his hands. They said they looked like someone had tried to sever his fingers with a knife, but I said very little about it. Their opinion was that my actions were simply self-defense, and I nodded in agreement.
I guess you could say that it was self-defense. But I was protecting my sanity rather than my body. In the end, that’s exactly what I did.
When I got home, D.C. was blazing, furious about what Leroy had done to me, and angry with me for going to see him in the first place.
I was so tired I slept for days. When I finally woke up again I managed to have some of the soup D.C. made for me. He fed me himself, holding the spoon up the way he might feed a tiny bird, smiling at me every time I managed to get some down. It was a great relief to me to know that the hand holding that spoon had just ordinary fingers with no special power to work miracles. I even found myself laughing at D.C.’s jokes.
Now I can smile again, but I can clearly remember that scene under the window at the end of spring. While I still love to laugh and enjoy myself, deep in my heart I know that I am just one of those dying flowers left under the azalea bushes after all the nectar has been sucked out of them.
JESSE
“She ain’t pretty. She’s okay, I guess, but she ain’t pretty at all.”
That was Jesse’s first impression of Coco. And to her, he looked like a little fiend. Just eleven years old, but over the coming months he would prove to be the cause of constant grief and pain.