Chapter 240

Her afternoon with Shavon was undeniably sweet, and chock full of a sexual intensity that Laura had not experienced for a while, more emotional than her recent trysts with Karen and Ada. But the thought of Ada would not leave her, or the pain she felt at having scared her so completely that she could think of no way out but to flee back to Texas. Laura knew Ada had loved 'playing tennis' with Laura, but the fear of her own sexual nature, apparently, had been too strong. And I wonder how complicated it was by the fact that she was my boss? Laura wondered, idly.

Even after leaving Shavon, her body still tingling in the afterglow of their exhausting sexual encounter, she found her mind gnawing over the Ada problem. I've got to talk to her, she thought. I've got to reassure her. It's okay for her to want it. Ada, I made you pant! she thought, for more than the second time.

When she got home to her darkened apartment, she poured a glass of wine and sat in the dark in front of her 'view' window, finally deciding to check her voice mail. She checked work first, surprised, as always, to find a message marked 'private.' It was from Ada.

"Laura... it's me. I know you must have been a little shocked. Can't say I blame you."

Ada's voice betrayed not a trace of the raw, nauseating, uncontrollable whine and twang it frequently did when she was upset or excited. It was calm, distant. Laura, though she felt everything had become a little cold, was relieved, since Ada's voice was, for all the woman's charm and sweet nature and irresistible sex appeal, the single feature that made her recoil.

"I guess I have an apology to make," Ada went on, now seeming nervous and sad at the same time. "What I had with you, what we had together, was a total shock. Don't get me wrong, I loved every minute, every second of it. I still think about it all the time. But I sure didn't expect something like that to happen. I'm pretty, you know, self-sufficient. My relationships have been... oh, you know, not successful, not deep or lasting." There was a brief pause during which Laura thought she could detect a very real despair, something she had seen hinted at in the past in Ada's face when she thought she was not being noticed. "Then you. It took me by surprise. Not only the... 'tennis.' You know what I mean by that. But the feelings I had. I really started... liking you too much. It just... didn't feel right to me, but it was so strong I couldn't stand it. I had to stop. I had to. I wish we could go back right now to the shower... and forget the rest, you know? But don't get me wrong. I think about the rest every day, every night. I still want you, if it makes you feel any better. There, I said it. I'm rambling. I have to stop talking. I loved knowing you. I'll never forget it. Really. Have a great life, okay? Bye."

Laura was in tears, in the dark, with barely enough volition left to hang up the phone. It was so quiet that she could hear the traffic in the streets downstairs. The city's lights were blurred by the stinging water in her eyes.

For some odd reason in her mind she heard the refrain of an old song that she didn't even know she remembered. More than you know, More than you know, Girl of my heart, I love you so...

And I don't even love her, she sniffled to herself, wondering where the Kleenex was. That voice... that horrible voice. I don't. I love Deshona. I love Randi. I even half-love Shavon, after today. I don't love you, Ada. How could you think so? Lately I find, You're on my mind, More than you know...

What did she mean by 'the rest'? Laura wondered. 'I wish we could go back right now to the shower... and forget the rest, ' Ada had said. It was inescapable. Ada had meant that the fucking was wonderful, but the feelings had scared the daylights out of her. Or maybe they had both scared the daylights out of her.

Fresh tears streamed silently down Laura's cheeks. I'm going to have to have something stronger than wine, she thought. This pain is too hard. She got up, went to the kitchen, and poured herself a vodka over ice. After drinking it, she felt better. She recalled that in the past, feeling this kind of pain, she would run to Karen, and they would torture each other into one excruciating climax after another through an entire evening of demonic and depraved perversion, until the emotional pain was driven into the shadows by a physical agony that could not be ignored.

But she had given that up in recent months. And anyway, she and Karen had already revisited their little 'chamber of horrors' only a few nights ago; enough to last them both for a while, Laura thought grimly. Whether I'm right, Whether I'm wrong, Girl of my heart, I'll string along...

The song would not go away. That was the bad thing about songs. Once they got lodged and stuck in your brain, there was no getting rid of them.

Laura had another vodka and glumly tried to get some sleep. By morning, she had managed only a few hours of slumber, and many of tossing and rumpling the sheets and staring hollow-eyed into the darkness. She dragged herself out of bed for work, going through the motions as if in a dream, the dream she had not had through inability to sleep.

Feeling emotionally and physically numb, she noticed Shontay Something again as she passed through the Project Management area on the way to her office. This morning Shontay wore a black business-style pants suit that was identical to the tan one she had been wearing yesterday. Looking at it, Laura thought the pants must be about two-thirds the length of her own, Laura's, whole body. God, she is tall. And skinny.

But this time Shontay was not surrounded by other employees, as she previously had been, and Laura was so fascinated that she again had to warn herself not to stare. The woman wasn't very attractive sexually (not like Ada! Laura realized with a pang), but there was clearly something about her that riveted Laura. The cold exterior, all business, aloof, even verging on the hostile, no smiles, no softness. Maybe it's the worst temptation of all, Laura thought. You want to break through it, like I did with Deshona. Talk about making Ada pant! That really wasn't hard at all. Imagine the challenge, making Shontay pant. It might even be impossible.

But right now she didn't have enough energy even to contemplate it. In her office she put her head on her desk and managed to sleep for twenty minutes before the telephone awoke her. She got through the rest of the day somehow, and, dead tired, found herself driving aimlessly down unfamiliar streets on her way home, until she realized where she was. In a kind of stupor, she had driven to the neighborhood where Tamara had lived, before fleeing to Italy with her boyfriend. Where Laura and the dancer Shayla had spent a wonderful night fucking and laughing and giggling and fucking again.

What am I doing here? she wondered. Why did I come here?

She parked down the street from the apartment building, only remembering slowly, as she sat in her car, refusing to get out, that Shayla had moved to New York to join the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and that her friend Dawn and Dawn's boyfriend had taken over the apartment. Dawn. Laura recalled having been sharply struck by her good looks and deeply black skin, as well as her friendly manner. For Laura, a girl's very black and silky smooth complexion was wildly aphrodisiacal, though even admitting it to herself was embarrassing, since it seemed somehow perversely racist or twisted to respond sexually to the color of someone's skin.

She had on a few occasions confessed it bashfully to Cecilia, to Charise-her darling Inky-two girls whose skin was just as deeply black as Dawn's, and both had seemed delighted to learn she found their skin so erotic. Both were artlessly pleased and flattered, and if anything had encouraged her to keep loving it and quit worrying about it. With them Laura had relaxed, and allowed herself the supreme pleasure of kissing every secret inch of their delicious, deeply black bodies, but she could not help feeling skittish and self-conscious about it around someone she had not shared a bed with.

On the other hand, sitting there in the car thinking it over made her hungrier than ever to see the girl again, as if to validate her earlier attraction, the brief, wild, hot, happy impulse of familiar lust she had felt on seeing Dawn, when Shayla had introduced them, for the first time. Dawn lived with her boyfriend, which clearly meant the chances of successfully beckoning her toward the kind of friendship Laura would cherish most were almost non-existent. So, as she got out the car, she questioned herself.

Do you really want to do this? You're just going to make yourself feel worse. You know how hard it is to chat and make nice with some ravishing dark black gorgeous girl you're dying for while she's cheerfully rattling on about her boyfriend. It'll kill you, Laura. Is it going to make you feel any better to see someone else you can't have? First Ada, then Dawn?

Meanwhile, as if sleepwalking, she was heading for the apartment house down the street. When she got there and quickly called up the courage to knock on the door of the correct apartment, it was answered by a young, quite handsome black man wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball cap and a yellow sweatshirt.

"Oh... maybe I got the wrong apartment," Laura stammered, blushing a horrific deep red. "I was looking for... Shayla. She's a... dancer."

He smiled. "No, you got the right one." He opened the door a little wider. "She went to live in New York. We took over the place for her."

Now he opened the door even wider, and behind him Laura could see Dawn, back in the kitchen, peering over his shoulder at her, too far away to register immediately on Laura's ever-ready lust meter. But now she seemed to recognize Laura and came toward them.

"Let her in, Robert," she said to him. "It's Shayla's friend. The one who knew Tamara. I told you about her."

Robert looked a little puzzled but not unfriendly. He now opened the door wide and invited Laura inside. But she realized that Dawn was giving her a weird look. The last time they had met, Dawn had mentioned that she and her boyfriend were moving into this apartment the next day. Why would Laura come here looking for Shayla, whom she knew very well had moved? In fact, why would she, Laura, be here at all?

But in the confusion of the moment, and out of the urge to be polite, she smiled and came in from the kitchen, holding a dish towel in her hands. Robert, however, seemed to be in a hurry. He grabbed a jacket and a lunch cooler.

"You'll have to excuse me," he said to Laura. "I was just on my way out. Nice to meet you."

"Oh. Nice to meet you too, Robert," Laura smiled, genuinely.

Not really knowing why she had come there herself, except to dissipate her sadness, she really hadn't viewed it as a sexual opportunity, or him as a competitor. She had been fiercely attracted to Dawn the first time she had seen her, but Laura was used to that happening, even on the street, or in a store.

But as soon as the door closed behind him, and she could get a better, less guarded, look at Dawn, she realized that she was kidding herself. Her thoughts of Ada were instantly relegated to the background. How could I have thought I wasn't interested in her? Laura wondered, letting her eyes, though surreptitiously, roam all over Dawn's face, then take furtive glimpses of her body.

The girl might not be conventionally beautiful, but to Laura she was thrillingly lovely. She had dark, intelligent eyes, an amused, sensual mouth, a high forehead, and her smooth very black skin was every bit as dark as Laura had remembered. Reliving the twinge of embarrassment she had felt sitting downstairs in her car, Laura could feel a tiny, hot, insistent itch inside her pussy as she wondered how Dawn's smooth cheek would feel under her fingertip. Even Dawn's hair, which was wiry and coarse, black and shiny, spritzing up from her head in a disorganized array of stiff filaments, tied by a white cloth and spewing out the top in an unruly bush, was enchanting to Laura, who found it touchingly natural and fetching.

Afraid she might be staring without knowing it, Laura looked away nervously. But Dawn was friendly and relaxed.

"You must've forgot, right?" she said, gently. "I mean, about her moving? She been gone a few weeks now. I just got a letter from her yesterday."

"Oh," Laura smiled. "How's she doing?"

"Fine, I guess. She says it's hard work."

"I'll bet. Well, she's in good shape. She can handle it."

Laura only realized after saying it that this remark seemed to have sexual innuendoes. Dawn only smiled and said nothing.

"I was just cooking up some beans and rice," she said, smiling very warmly. "Why don't you come over here and sit so I don't burn 'em."

They moved to the back of the apartment, where the kitchen was located. Laura realized, following Dawn, that she was completely aroused and stimulated by Dawn's lovely face and her marvelously smooth and very dark skin, but that she had no idea what the girl's body looked like, other than the fact that Dawn was not shockingly skinny, like Shontay Something, or fat either. And Dawn wore a large, roomy sweatshirt and baggy brown pants and sweat socks, so that it was impossible to draw any other conclusions. She was charmingly oblivious to her personal appeal, apparently, and seemed unembarrassed to be talking with Laura, who was dressed to the nines, while looking like she had just thrown on the nearest rumpled garments.

She looks like a college girl just cooking up a quick dinner, Laura realized. Laura watched, fascinated, enjoying every exquisite detail of Dawn's presence as Dawn moved around her small kitchen, whipping up a fragrant, appetizing meal.

"Wow, it looks good," Laura said. "Where'd you learn to cook like that?"

"My Gramma," Dawn smiled. "She mostly raised me. I can cook a lot more than this. I just do this cause it's quick, after I get home from school."

"I'll bet Robert likes it."

Dawn grinned, as if to say, Laura suspected, 'He likes my pussy, then he likes this, in that order.' I don't blame him, Laura thought. But Dawn surprised her.

"Oh... he probably won't eat any of this at all. Says I make it too hot. And it don't have any meat in it. I like it hot, though. You want to try some?"

Laura shrugged. She was certainly enjoying Dawn. Just being in her presence felt good. Dawn was fresh and bright and friendly, devastatingly attractive too, though Laura tried not to think about that part. Robert, after all, had only left a few minutes ago.