She twisted round to see… yes, the flush had come to her cheeks and, yes, as always it made her tattoo down there glow. It was a red and blue rose, her smooth cream skin providing the necessary white. Frederico in Milan was truly an artist, she decided. He’d given her the tattoo years before she’d even heard of Isabel Rosa Diaz, but Niki tingled with a frisson of delight every time she spied one of the election posters or bumper stickers. Niki prized her body. She exercised daily, twice if she could. For her there was nothing better than working out on a simple bar, or sometimes two at a time.
Moments later, naked and very ready, she slid into the shower stall with Taylor and, before he could fake a protest or even turn his phony gape of shock into a hesitant grin, she dropped to her knees, her hands lightly stroking the insides of his thighs while her tongue flicked the water off the tip of his fast-rousing penis.
She knew what he was thinking: this was too good to be true… what if it were a set-up and someone came in… ummm… terrific… what if it wasn’t a set-up but someone came in anyway… like room service… there could be a scandal… thnyumm… wonderful… This was the part, when he was pressing his shoulders back against the tiles and thrusting his hips forward, where she knew it’d be: if only my Julia would do it like this… my god… ohmygod… oh, jeez-us.
She’d soaped up her palms. This was the moment, she could feel it, and without missing a stroke, her mouth and one hand switched positions so Taylor wouldn’t notice, not for a few seconds, anyway. At first she nipped him lightly, in play—she didn’t want to hurt him. He moaned. And while one hand kept pumping faster and faster, she nipped hard and quick, his whole body convulsed with intense pleasure and he squealed. While still pumping him with one hand, the fingers of her other started caressing and massaging, delicately, the spot on his sac where she’d bitten into him. Finally, she wrapped her lips round him for his final spasm. She locked on to him, tight, and, at the perfect moment…
No, Julia never did that, did she?
Niki would have smiled… if she’d been able to.
“ONE thing I don’t get, Niki,” said Mitch Taylor, who was licking the twin peaks of whipped cream and wild berries that Niki had dolloped over herself in ways too daring and exotic even for the award-winning chefs in room service. “Here I am a Democrat, and you, not just a Republican but a raging hawk, and we’re… you know… doing…”
Already slanted back on her elbows, Niki let her head dangle into the pillow elongating her neck into a silky arc that ached to be stroked, and she gurgled, “Mitch, sweetie… Fucking you Democrats… it’s my life’s work.”
19
ISABEL WAS NO fool. She couldn’t suppress her past forever; she knew that. How could she ask the people to elect her president if, whenever a glass smashed she’d risk losing it? It was time to confront it. For years, she’d been able to wave off probing journalists with “It’s a migraine” or, if they pressed or it was someone close to her, a rehearsed and till now respected “Please, some things should stay private.” But she knew that if she didn’t tackle this herself, it wouldn’t be long before someone’s insistence would push her over, as Davey had almost managed the other morning.
“Ed,” she said after the boy had gone off to play catch with George, “You’ve never pressed me, but the rape…”
“Don’t need to know,” he cut her off, but the furrow between his eyebrows told her differently this time.
“Maybe not,” she said, taking a breath, “but I need to tell you…”
SHE is fifteen. It’s a last, fading June light. Biting her lip with anticipation, Isabel is hunched over the kitchen table in their grimy trailer, scratching at her homework under a single globe, anxious for her mother to wake.
Her English term paper (a ten-page essay prophetically entitled, “If I were President…”) is placed neatly at the corner of the table, the large handwritten red “A+” screaming to be complimented.
Maria Rosa’s head is lolling on the arm of the sofa and a towel covers over the grey cottony tufts coiling out of the rips. The TV is on but the sound is down, and a half-bottle of cheap pink wine dangles from her fingertips, swaying precariously near the open bottle of gaudy red nail lacquer on the floor.
“Just brilliant.” Her teacher actually said those words in front of the entire class. “Isabel, what you’ve written is beautiful. I would be proud if you became my president one day.” Despite what happens that evening, Isabel will not forget those words.