Tess

I smeared the condensation, fogging up the glass, as if the amber liquid inside carried a chill to it. Maybe I wanted to soften the edges though, the way I had of memories so over the top good they hurt. I drained it again, letting the fire pool on my tongue, then radiate down, my throat, my chest, the tight place below my belly and let the heat come to its natural head.  No matter that I'd sent it to join the better part of the bottle.

It is the music that does it. That smoky voice, heavy with Cajun spice and a cadence only a broken heart knows courses across the polished bar with the one song I can’t hide from. My body responds; it has no more shame now than it did ten years ago. The blood drains all reason; once again memory and lust combine in sweet anticipation.  Of Tess.
     
There is a house in New Orleans,
They call the Rising Sun…

Craig, behind the bar, watches me, and asks, "Another one Scott?"

I nod. Again. Yes. Again.  Craig knows I can handle the liquor. It isn’t the first time for either of us, Craig or me. The woman singing? Who knows. With any luck, before I leave, I will.

But she won't be Tess.

I was just twenty-five and newly wed. Should have been still on my honeymoon, but I bought into a bill of goods about virgin brides and got waylaid with frigidity. All I had to do was reach for Molly, feel the warmth of her skin against mine and I couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. It wasn’t Molly’s fault. I should have known more, better. I should have taken my time.  I tried; I swear I tried.

I suppose if I ‘d realized how futile it was, I’d have never decided to buy the house. We were almost finished with the paperwork when she panicked and ran home to her mother. I thought she might be pregnant, and knew she was just too young. I wasn’t sure if she was coming back. Wasn’t sure what I’d do with her if she did.

It might have been okay, eventually. But then I met Tess.

I'd gone to the Realtor's office to see if I could get out of the deal. The receptionist sat behind a glass block counter so I couldn't see more than the back of her head and the coral tipped finger she held up to me while she finished her call. The black hair cascaded around her shoulders in tousled, just-been-fucked curls and the nail was chipped at the edges like maybe she chewed it. I listened to her conversation, her voice scaling from a musky whisper to an innocent incredulity, spiced like jambalaya.  She threw around terms I’d heard, but didn’t understand. She stopped mid-sentence at one point and turned to me, as though she felt my stare on the back of her neck.  I swear she licked her lips when our eyes made contact.

She was older than me, how much I’m not sure. Could have been a tough two years, or a very well done twenty.  She finished the call and listened to my story, gazing out in space somewhere.  She looked up to explain to me, but before I could bring my eyes back to hers, she caught me.

I couldn't help that either. Her breasts were small, and the nipples pressed against the fabric of her silk sweater, barely concealed by the smooth fabric.  No lines at all; she wasn’t wearing a bra. She smiled with half her mouth, and said, “We’ll deal with that later. For now, tell me if you still want the house?”

I hoped the shadow of the beige stress I wore since Molly had left covered the color I felt rising, and stood closer to the office partition so she wouldn't feel obliged to comment on the response from below my waist. I couldn’t speak, didn’t speak until she cleared her throat. “Oh. Yes. I want it, if there is enough money…my wife had to go away…” It was hardly a stammer.

“You told me that. Hang on.”

I couldn’t tell you today what made her intoxicating. I couldn’t say it was her body, or her hair or her eyes. None of the parts were beyond special, but together? Together it was like immersion in some mystical aphrodisiac. She explained to me that the owners would go for a smaller down payment, so the house was mine. Ours that is. Molly's and mine.

I just didn’t care. All I cared about was the way her tongue flicked at her lipstick when she concentrated, the way her bottom lip pouted into a smile.  I sucked my own bottom lip tight against my teeth, and did my best not to growl.

She looped a strand of her dark hair around one coral tipped finger. “So your wife is away?”

“Yeah.”

“Pleasure trip?”

“Trying to get away from me.” I wasn’t in the mood for flirting. Not when all I could do was stand closer to the partition to hide my arousal. Even that pressure felt too damn good.

She laughed, icicles melting in the heat of the moment. “You should celebrate.  I'll get my coat.”

That was all it took.  We went to a local dive, where two pool tables and a dartboard in the back seemed to be waiting for her. Something magnetic about her shook a room when she went into it; I could almost feel the collective pulse of the men in the bar quicken, just being around her. She made contact with them all. If it hadn’t been so amazing, it would have been strange, like a female lead on Broadway decked out in sequins and spotlights, a whole company of men in non-descript black ready to catch her falls, lift her high or just keep the rhythm going.

I got hooked. I spent every night, trailing after her. In every club she had a dance partner or three. She never dug for quarters or bought her own drinks. The sight of her stretched over the pool table, breasts neatly hugging the cue, made me as hard as the pool cue, and god help me, jealous of it.

It didn’t feel like cheating. It felt like having my lottery ticket drawn and someone telling me I’d won, when she started paying more attention to me. I sent flowers every day. I bought her trinkets; a toe ring once, a feather-trimmed sweater another time, just to see her smile at me. Mostly, I forgot I was married. That was the sweetest part of all, to have that Scott back in my life.

Tess didn't forget though. When she joked with me to name the place, she reminded me that she never slept with married men, at least in her own town. I was near broke, having closed on the damned house just to be near her. It took the last hurrah of the visa card to deliver the tickets, but the thought of Tess, the Big Easy and me was half my undoing. The kiss on my cheek when she said yes was the rest. She said it would be like going home.

I’m not a lucky man when I think straight, and that day I couldn’t get past my waistline with common sense. I got plane tickets, but forgot about Mardi Gras. We got to New Orleans and had no place to stay, no prospects. I expected temper, anger. I didn’t make allowance for the Tess factor. She flipped my hair from where it fell in my eyes, and traced my jaw with those nails. "Let's just hang out for a while and see what happens."

I couldn’t speak at all.

And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy


She took my hand. Like kids playing hooky we walked along Bourbon Street, meandering through the alleys. We stepped over horse dung from the carriages, kicked through the litter and discarded beads scattered over the French Quarter, and I listened to her voice, as mellow as any jazz singer, as sweet as a choirgirl. I have no idea what she talked about. It was the tone of promise that kept me going. She moved her hands up my arm to my elbow, then around to my back. She dropped it to the back pocket of my jeans, and I had to think about the rats in the gutters to keep from going off right then.

She saw the empty townhouse first, gave me that one-sided smile, and winked. "Let's go in."

"It looks vacant, but I'm sure it's locked." I couldn’t stand to disappoint her.

We climbed the front steps, three from the damp street, and peered through window glass that warped the inside of the house into the carnival outside. I fell into that warp, losing my inhibitions the way the revelers on Bourbon Street did with their masks and beads.

 I tried the door. It opened to a landing, which led to a courtyard on the inside of the street. I bowed to her, then followed her across the anteroom. The walls were covered in gilded velvet-on-velvet brocade and smelled like the musk of a night of elliptical passion. The windows inside were framed by heavy red velvet drapes. Her laugh, low, full of challenge, abandoned all semblance of innocence. "It looks like a brothel. Let's see what's upstairs.”

I laughed then too, a laugh so easy that I made a point to make a memory of it. I guess I knew even then that my world was changing.

Three flights led to a stack of discarded movers' quilts at the top floor, and the door to the roof closed tight.  I took the heel of my hand and pushed hard on the window light of the door, and the antique glass shattered with the force.  I reached through to undo the lock and caught the back of my hand on a shard of glass.  The bright red blood beaded, and Tess reached for it, lapped it into her own mouth. I couldn’t have stopped her if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to.

And God, I know, I'm one.

"Scotty, come and look!" I stepped through the doorway, winded from the climb and effort. She was breathless as well, but smug as a teenager out past curfew, nearly skipping across the roof. She was on stage there too, framed by the liquid silk of the New Orleans sky, a backdrop of a thousand stars, the full moon her spotlight. I walked up behind her, to see what she saw, and slid my arms around her waist. I felt her press her back against what had become my non-stop erection.

"I think we could travel roof to roof all over the Quarter," her voice wistful as I kissed her hair.

"Anywhere you want to go, Tess." I brushed her hair aside, and touched my lips to her neck. Beneath the web of her hair, a spider tattoo, black ink with a bright center. I traced it with my tongue.

I felt her shiver and heard her moan of pleasure for the first time as she turned toward me inside my arms. "Let’s spend the night here, Scotty."

And then she kissed me, in a way that I didn't think existed outside of fantasy.  Full lips pressed against mine so that I was possessed. I yielded, pressed close against her and felt her tongue claim mine.  Her teeth nipped my lips, branding her seal on me.

Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and a trunk

We gathered the quilts, and spread them over the tiles of the roof close enough to the edge to see and hear the revelry. She raked her fingers through my hair, along my jaw, letting them scrape the tender skin behind my ear. The jazz from the street, the song, over and over, wound around me, matching the rhythm of her dance as her fingers skimmed my clothing, a moth looking for the best place to alight. My tongue, molded to hers, trembled. She exhaled into me, my lungs taking in her hot liquid air. I tasted almond as she slipped her fingers beneath the buttons of my shirt.  When I inhaled, it was the scent of cinnamon or something hot and spicy, cumin or pepper or maybe it was just the scent of the city.  I'll never forget it though.

“Will you take it off if I give you beads?” she murmured as she slipped the last button of my shirt open and I felt her lips diving into the soft curls of my chest

“Beads?” I gasped, an effort to uncloud my head.

“Maybe pearls.”  She giggled then, no child's giggle.  Sultry, that is the only word I can think to describe the melody of her laugh. I tried not to focus on her warm mouth, the incubator of the tongue searing my skin where she'd released the shirt buttons. I felt her teeth against my belly, then her tongue running along the top of my pants. She glanced up at me, eyes shining, and while she held my gaze, those coral tips slid to the front of my jeans.

I let my sleeves fall away, and stood as tall as I could, my hands shaking like a junkie about to get a fix. I tightened the my muscles, to try and balance the building pressure and knew that if she touched me, I wouldn't stop. “Pearls?” My voice cracked like a twelve year old.

She stepped back, that half smile spread to her glistening eyes. I could focus on nothing but her as she pulled the black sweater she was wearing over her head. I was caught in the motion of her shining hair, shattering in the dark like waves released from the tidal pull of the moon, but falling to splash on her shoulders as she shook it back in place.  Pulled by her undertow, I stepped toward her, sucked into that sea where I wanted to drown in her fluids.

Where the fabric had been, champagne-glass breasts toasted me so that the only response was to sip from them. The nipple was warm, and it awakened in my mouth like a ripening berry in the sun.  I heard her gasp, and felt the moan in my own throat.

She smoothed my jean all the way down to my feet where I stepped out of them and left them pooled on the roof. I felt the heat of the night on my skin, intoxicated by the scent of her so close and wanted to howl myself.  The surge built within me.

Before I could catch my breath, she stepped back again, and slid out of the skirt she’d worn on the plane.  She stood naked there before me on the roof, her arms lifted to the night and wore the glorious sense of being unrestrained like the force of nature it was meant to be.

She spun in the moonlight, swaying to the rhythm of that song, lifting her hair and reaching to the sky, her fingers splayed and extended, the coral tips catching the light and shining like blazing triangles.  I needed release, and I wanted her. The echo of the music on the street throbbed in my groin.  I reached for her, and her eyes darkened, deep, like there was no end to them.  All I could think was to dive in, and I did.  I lifted her up, and entered her.  It was over for me, a detonation of pleasure quaking to my core before she arched in my arms.

I would like to think the rest of it blended together, like so many other sessions of lovemaking. I would like to think that for a moment I remembered Molly, or at least that I was not free. But what I know is that every detail of that night, every sensation of what followed, her touch, her scent, the pungent taste of well aged whiskey that met my lips as I traveled down her body to its center and back again, are burned into every pore of my skin. We drank of each other, indulgent and greedy and mirrored the humid New Orleans night without rest. Perhaps it was the city that had hold of us, its pleasure spell cast, or perhaps she was something beyond mortal.  It didn't matter.  Her lips covered mine, covered me, drank me as though parched in the desert and taught me that there was so much more to making love.  I was confident that it was special, that no one could love her like I could; no one could possess me like she.

Fatigue has a way of humanizing a man, and when I was no longer able to come back for more, despite her touch, her mouth or her sweet body sliding wet and slick against me, she simply kissed me.  We fell into the quilts, and I must have slept.  I woke slowly, feeling her feather touch trace across my chest, my arms, and my legs at once.  I opened my eyes to the crimson fingers of dawn and the noise of garbage trucks on the street below.

But she was gone. I sat up, and all around me, on my chest, my legs, my arms, and even between my legs, crawled spiders, shining black spiders, with coral triangles on their backs.  The quilts were alive with them.

And the only time when he's satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk.

Now instead of spending time with my wife and child, I sit in bars and alternate between tracing the tiny scar on the back of my hand, fingering the gold band I still wear, and drinking the best whiskey I can afford. As much as I can afford.

You see, given the chance, I would do it again without hesitation. Even now, years later, every time the music turns sultry, I reach for Tess. Whenever dawn strokes my temple, I turn to kiss Tess. And whenever I come across a glistening web strung across a window, or a tree branch or a doorway, I wonder. I look for her shining hair and coral nails in every woman I meet, her cadence in every voice I hear.  It doesn’t matter, because she is never there. I can't go home, because no one knows. No one could understand.

But I know. I know I would sell my soul for one more taste of that sweet poison, one more night with Tess. Maybe I already have.

I lift up the foggy glass, and motion both to Craig and the woman as she finishes her set. “Pour me another, Craig. And one for the lady."

That's how it is, once you are bitten.