Tim Culver lays out a long thin line on Martha Grace’s heavy stomach. It wobbles as she breathes in, breathes out, the small ridge of cocaine mountain sited on her skin, creamy white avalanche grains tumbling with her sigh. He inhales cocaine and the clean, fleshy smell of Martha. And both are inspirations for him. Now her turn. She rolls the boy over on to his stomach, lays out an uncertain line from his low waist to the soft hairs at the curve of his arse. She is slow and deliberate, new to this, does not want to get it wrong. Tim is finding it hard to stay face down, wants to burrow himself into the flesh of Martha Grace, not the unyielding mattress. She lays her considerable weight out along his legs, hers dangling off the end of the bed, breasts to buttocks and inhales coke and boy and, not for the first time in her life, the thick iron smell of bloody desire. Then she reaches up to stretch herself out against him full length, all of her pressing down into all of him. The weight of her flesh against his back and legs has Tim Culver reaching for breath. He wonders if this is what it is like for the little girls he fucks at college. He a tall, strong young man and they small, brittle beneath him. At some point in the sex he always likes to lie on top. To feel himself above the young women, all of him stretched out against the twisted paper and bones of the young girl skin, narrow baby-woman hips jutting sharp into his abdomen, reminding him of what he has back at home, Martha waiting for the weekend return. He likes it when, breath forced from the thin lungs beneath him, they whisper the fuck in half-caught breaths. Tim has always been told it feels good, the heaviness, the warmth, the strong body laid out and crushing down, lip to lip, cock to cunt, tip to toe. He hopes it is like this for the narrow young women he lays on top of. Tim Culver likes this. He is surprised by the feeling, wonders if it is just the coke or the addition of physical pressure, Martha’s wide weight gravity-heavy against his back, pushing his body down, spreading him out. Is wondering still when she slides her hand in between his legs and up to his cock. Is wondering no longer when he comes five minutes later, Martha still on his back, mouth to his neck, teeth to his tanned skin. Her strength, her weight, like no other female body he has felt. He thinks then for a brief moment about the gay boys he knows (barely, acquaintances), wonders if this is what it is like for them too. But wonders only briefly; momentary sex-sense identification with the thin young women is a far enough stretch for a nineteen-year-old small town boy.
They did not take cocaine together again. Martha liked it, but Martha would rather be truly in control than amphetamine-convinced by the semblance of control. Besides that, she had, as usual, prepared a post-sex snack for that afternoon. Glass of sweet dessert wine and rich cherry cake, the cherries individually pitted by her own fair, fat hands the evening before, left to soak in sloe gin all night, waiting for Tim’s mouth to taste them, just as she was. But after the drugs and the sex and then some more of the bitter powder, neither had an appetite for food. They had each other and cocaine and then Tim left. Martha didn’t eat until the evening, and alone, and cold. Coke headache dulling the tip of her left temple. She could cope with abandon. She could certainly enjoy a longer fuck, a seemingly more insatiable desire from the young man of her fantasies come true. She could, on certain and specified occasions, even put up with a ceding of power. But she would not again willingly submit to self-inflicted loss of appetite. That was just foolish.
It went on. Three months more, then six, another three. Seasons back to where they started. Tim Culver and Martha Grace. The mask of garden chores and DIY tasks, then the fucking and the feeding and the financial recompense. Then even, one late afternoon in winter, dark enough outside for both to kid themselves they had finally spent a night together, an admission of love. It comes first from Tim. Surprising himself. He’s held it in all this time, found it hard to believe it was true, but knows the miracle fact as it falls from his gratified mouth:
“Martha, I love you.”
Martha Grace smiles and nods.
“Tim, I love you.”
Not ‘back’. Or ‘too’. Just love.
A month more. Tim Culver and Martha Grace loving. In love. Weekend adoration and perfect.
And then Martha thinks she will maybe pay him a visit. Tim always comes to her. She will go to his college. Surprise him. Take a picnic, all his favourite foods and her. Martha Grace’s love in a basket. She packs a pie — tender beef and slow-cooked sweet onion, the chunky beef slightly bloody in the middle, just the way Tim likes it. New bread pitted with dark green olives, Tim’s favourite. Fresh shortbread and strawberry tarts with imported out-of-season berries. A thermos of mulled wine, the herbs and spices her own blend from the dark cupboard beneath her stairs. She dresses carefully and wears lipstick, culled from the back of a drawer and an intentionally forgotten time of made-up past. Walks into town, camomile-washed hair flowing about her shoulders, head held high, best coat, pretty shoes — party shoes. Travels on the curious bus, catches a cab to the college.
And all the time Martha Grace knows better. Feels at the lowest slung centre of her belly the terror of what is to come. Doesn’t know how she can do this even as she does it. Wants to turn back with every step, every mile. Knows in her head it can not be, in her stomach it will not work. But her stupid fat heart sends her stumbling forwards anyway. She climbs down from the bus and walks to the coffee shop he has mentioned. Where he sits with his friends, passing long slow afternoons of caffeine and chocolate and drawled confidences. He is not there and Martha Grace sits alone at a corner table for an hour. Another. And then Tim Culver arrives. With a gaggle of laughing others. He is brash and young. Sits backwards across the saddle of his chair. Makes loud noises, jokes, creates a rippling guffaw of youthful enjoyment all around him. He does not notice Martha Grace sat alone in the corner, a pale crumble of dried cappuccino froth at the corner of her mouth. But eventually, one of his friends does. Points her out quietly to another. There are sniggers, sideways glances. Martha Grace could not be more aware of her prominence. But still she sits, knowing better and hoping for more. Then Tim sees her, his attention finally drawn from the wonder of himself to the absurdity of the fat woman in the corner. And Tim looks up, directly at Martha Grace, right into her pale grey eyes and he stands and he walks towards her and his friends are staring after him, whooping and hollering, catcalls and cheers, and then he has stopped by her table and he sits beside Martha Grace and reaches towards her and touches the line of her lips, moves in, licks away the dried milk crust. He stands again, bows a serious little bow, and walks back to his table of friends. Who stand and cheer and push forward the young girls to kiss, pretty girls, thin girls. Tim Culver has kissed Martha Grace in public and it has made him a hero. And made the fool of Martha Grace. She tries to leave the café, tries to walk out unnoticed but her bulk is stuck in the corner arrangement of too-small chairs and shin-splitting low table, her feet clatter against a leaning tray, her heavy arms and shaking hands cannot hold the hamper properly, it falls to her feet and the food rolls out. Pie breaks open, chunks of bloody meat spill across the floor, strawberries that were cool and fresh are now hot and sweating, squashed beneath her painfully pretty shoes as she runs from the room, every action a humiliation, every second another pain. Eventually Martha Grace turns her great bulk at the coffee shop door and walks away down the street, biting the absurd lipstick from her stupid, stupid lips as she goes, desperate to break into a lumbering run, forcing her idiotic self to move slowly and deliberately through the pain. And all the way down the long street, surrounded by strangers and tourists and scrabbling children underfoot, she feels Tim’s eyes boring into the searing blush on the back of her neck.