Late Monday night, the night before we drove back to Queens, Lee Anne and I were talking and smoking in a stairwell. She clasped her cigarette unlike anyone else I knew, between her thumb and forefinger, daintily, almost as if she was trying to avoid burning herself. She took long drags, and didn’t open her mouth all of the way to release the smoke, but instead blew it out of the corner of her mouth in a thick stream. I was disgusted by it, and yet I ached to rip her top off and suckle her white breasts.
After ten silent minutes, she casually dropped her cigarette on the cold concrete floor of the stairwell, stomping it out with the heel of her sandals. Again: stupid, but sexy.
“Hey, look,” I said, “it’s us.” I was referring to our reflection in the chrome of the fire extinguisher behind the closed stairwell door, right next to her. That was about the most stimulating piece of conversation I’d had with her until that point. She disregarded my observation and gazed wearily at the fluorescent light above.
“You’re kind of cute,” she said, looking in my direction but not at me, with a twangy accent that she probably didn’t even realize she had.
“Well, thank you. You aren’t so bad yourself.”
Suddenly, I had the feeling that I could fuck her right then and there if I chose. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to even kiss her, though. I don’t know, it was sort of weird. I wanted to fuck her, but at the same time, I didn’t want to say another goddamn word to her. And even though I smoked too, just the thought of tasting her menthol cigarettes on my tongue nauseated me.
But Lee Anne was so hot, unlike any girl I’d ever hooked up with in New York. Her hair was the color of a lemon. She had hairless arms and milky white teeth. There were so many stylish thready holes on her shorts that they revealed more than they hid. For a moment, I could have sworn I saw pink panties through one of the openings. Rock hard, I extended my arm toward that hair and decided, I’m gonna find out if she’s a real blonde.
I was just about to kiss her when she asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”
I didn’t answer immediately. I thought about it for a moment. I loved Maria. I really did. But at the same time, I was jealous of all those boys she kissed. She was a year younger than I was, yet she’d kissed more people than me. I detested the thought. I also hated her friend, Guido. I kept thinking about Maria cruising around in his goddamn car, laughing and joking with her friends, her tits bobbling in her tight bikini top, and Guido catching a peak of her cleavage in the rear-view mirror. I couldn’t escape these memories of a time so long ago, a summer I wasn’t part of. Her past was my present and there was no changing that.
I love her, I kept saying to myself, silently. But maybe, I thought, if I kiss Lee Anne, Maria’s past won’t hurt as much. I’ll just be replacing Maria’s past with my own present. Nothing is wrong with just kissing one more girl, a girl I knew I’ll never see again.
“No,” I said. “I don’t have one.” And, without thinking a second thought, my tongue was twirling around in her warm mouth, hers in mine. I yanked her bikini top off, and exposed her perfect breasts. They were huge—even bigger than Maria’s—and immaculate and chalky white, in contrast to her tan body.
Like a piglet fighting his siblings for his mother’s teat, I pressed my head into her bosom and sucked her breasts not knowing where to begin or end. Leaning over, grunting and groaning, I licked her stomach and poked her belly button ring with my tongue. Desperate to impress her, but clueless as to why, I slid my tongue up the middle of her belly, between her tits, and ended by nibbling her chin.
As quickly as we’d begun, we stopped. I figured that having sex with her in the stairwell was a crazy idea. I’d already accomplished what I’d set out to accomplish. I wiped her slimy red lip gloss from my face with the back of my hand, kissed her on the cheek, and said good night. “Good night,” she said with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong, A.J.?”
That’s how Maria began our first phone call after I returned from Virginia. Those words still echo in my mind. I hadn’t even said anything yet, but she suspected something was up. Of course, I was determined to conceal what had happened. I hooked up with two more girls in the very next day, one in the afternoon, one in the evening. Each was a member of a different group of people hanging out there, so they didn’t know about Lee Anne.
Vicki, a French-Canadian girl visiting the beach all the way from Ottawa, was even sexier than Lee Anne. She was also tall, almost my height, but with brown hair and blonde highlights. But unlike Lee Anne, she was intelligent. I think she said she wanted to be a doctor or something, I really can’t remember.
The other girl’s name I forget. I think it was something like Linda, or Melinda. Or it could have been Cindy, I’m really not sure. She wasn’t too attractive, anyway. I’m not into fat girls so I didn’t hook up with her for long. But it was long enough to count.
So, by the time I’d returned to New York on Tuesday evening, Maria and I had both kissed the same number of people, and that was all that mattered. It was only a little white lie. A venial sin. She didn’t need to know—not about the first three, at least. In fact, I promised myself that if I ever cheated on her again, then maybe I would tell her. Evening the score would make me feel a lot better in the long run, I thought, especially when I became jealous of her past. Whenever an image of Guido popped into my head, or I thought about any of the guys she’d hooked up with, I would just think of Lee Anne or Vicki, and forget all about being jealous. I thought it was a pretty good plan.
In my mind, I was doing what I had to do. I remember thinking: I’ve actually matured. It’s not like I have a back-up anymore. See, before I met Maria, whenever I dated a girl, I’d always have a back-up. Basically, I’d talk on the phone with a girl that I knew liked me while I was dating somebody else. That way, in case my girlfriend ever broke up with me, I could just call up the other girl and ask her out. I can’t even remember actually using a back-up. But I always had one, anyway. The last time, of course, was when I was dating Lynn but working on Maria.
I’m trying to think of the words to describe how I felt about cheating on Maria. I really didn’t feel depressed. I didn’t’ cry myself to sleep at night. Instead, I felt frightened—frightened of myself, I think. I kept wondering what else I was capable of doing to her. It was so easy to hook up with Lee Anne, Vicki, and the other girl that I was afraid that someday I’d break my promise to myself, and cheat on her again, and then have to tell her. But I knew I had my reasons for cheating on her, and I eventually forgot all about it.
When I arrived home from Virginia it was pitch black outside. I ran up the stairs, fumbling with my suitcase, trying to avoid the hunter. I hadn’t seen the hunter for a while before that night. Of course, my shadow must of been there all along; but I probably didn’t notice it. That’s all. Nevertheless, the hunter reappeared that night. I guess that for the few months prior I’d just forgotten about him.
For a moment—and I know this sounds ridiculous—I almost thought he’d caught up with me. When I reached the top step, I suddenly felt as if I was being pulled back, like I was going to topple down the staircase. It was pretty scary. But, I figured, it was just the weight of my suitcase pulling me back.
The first thing I did when I got to my room and calmed down was call Maria. As the phone rang, I glanced over at the World War II V-J Day poster on my wall. The aircraft is depicted was sleek and dark; it was the type, I thought, that I’d like to fly someday. Was it a North American T-6? A Supermarine Spitfire IX? I made mental note to ask my father what model plane it was, and to find out more about it. But before I had the chance to do so, I heard Maria’s inquisitive voice.