Come on, it will be okay, he said. Everything will be okay.
They took another subway. He lived six stops away. How had he not known how to get there? He had known, of course he had known. They walked out of the station. It was night then. Late. Would he just let her go to sleep? she asked him. Could she just. Sleep.
Don’t you want to take a shower first?
They walked for a while, through the suburbs of Paris. The streets were quiet and damp, like it had just rained. All the lights were out in town. The street signs were in French, but otherwise they could have been anywhere. And the houses there all looked the same as the next, just like they did in the suburbs of Omaha. She had gone all that way just to go back to where she started.
His house had three stories and was narrow. Every room was carpeted. There was no furniture in the living room except for one chair. There was a small kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door. It was empty.
There is nothing to eat, he said. Sorry.
She followed him up the stairs. There were two rooms on the second floor. One door was open, and there was a mattress on the floor.
I have a friend who sleeps here sometimes, he said.
On the third floor there was a bedroom with a king-sized bed, draped in satin sheets. A closet with mirrors for doors. One of the doors was open. It was full of suits. He dropped her bag on the floor. There was a bathroom attached to the room.
Let’s go, he said. Time to shower. He took her by the arm.
I just want to sleep, she said.
First, you shower.
She walked into the bathroom. The tiles on the wall were brown. He followed her. She turned and faced him.
What if I don’t want to take a shower?
He put his hand in her hair. He stroked it. He turned it around in his hand, caught it up in his fist.
You have been traveling so long. You will feel better after you shower.
I don’t want to, she said.
He gathered up more of her hair in his fist, twisted it tight, and then slammed her head against the wall.
“THAT WAS ALWAYS THE PART that made me cry when I was a kid. Every time I heard it. Somebody hurting my mother. That was the worst thing in the world I could think of,” I said.
I was curled up tight against Prince. His hand was in my hair, and he kept stroking it, and I liked it.
“It scared me,” I said to Prince. “I have been scared forever.”
“No one should tell a little kid those kinds of stories,” said Prince. “It wasn’t right, what your mother did. I am sorry for her pain, but you cannot lay that kind of thing on a child.”
“It was our secret, I guess.” I pulled up closer to Prince. I kissed him.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “We can just lie here. It’s late, and you’re feeling all kinds of emotions right now.”
But the kissing felt necessary to me. I was desperate for Prince to touch me. I got up on my knees and pulled up my dress from the bottom, up over my thighs and hips, up over my breasts, till I stood there naked in front of him. “Well, there you go,” he said. He moved one hand over me, then got up on his knees, too. He put both hands on my breasts. “They’re so nice,” he said. He kneaded them, then he started sucking on my neck with giant juicy kisses. They spread from my neck to my face and then my lips. There was his tongue in my mouth. He licked the inside of my mouth. Then there were kisses down my body and he had his hands on my ass and then behind my thighs. He pushed me back calmly. “Let me lay you down,” he said. He ran his hands all the way up and down, then very gently down the insides of my legs. Prince rubbed his palm on the outside of my crotch, and it warmed up. And then he leaned over and blew on it and it was like a wind to a flame.
That was when I started making all kinds of noises. I must have sounded like a real loon to him. But holy moly, I was feeling good.
Then he put one finger inside me, and I clenched up. He knew it, too. I stopped making noises. I was just concentrating. He put another finger inside me and moved them back and forth slow only for a minute. “Do you like it?” he said. He looked at me. He would not let me look away. I was thinking too much, though.
So he pulled his fingers out of me, dropped down and blew on me some more, before he started licking me up and down. I asked him to keep going. Okay, I begged him. I had my hands up to my breasts and I was pinching my nipples. It took nothing, just a minute of that, and then I came, his tongue still inside me. Then he pulled back, his face damp with my wetness, and said, “That’s right, baby girl.” Then he pressed his palm against my crotch again and then stretched his other hand around my neck and stared at me. He waited until my breathing calmed down.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.