The Boyfriend
Nancy lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the thirty-third floor of a white-brick building on Third Avenue that she won in her divorce settlement. The sunken living room was large enough to hold a sectional sofa and comfortable arm chairs and offered glorious views of the Chrysler Building, and farther south, of the Empire State Building. The bedrooms and a powder room were on the other side of the entrance foyer and well separated from each other.
Nancy’s daughter Circe had recently given up her apartment in Brooklyn and moved in with Nancy to save money to buy a place of her own. She habitually left her bedroom door partially open and when Nancy’s boyfriend walked by he couldn’t help but notice Circe lying on her bed, usually in a tee-shirt or sports bra, which covered her top half, but left everything below her waist exposed, showcasing her extraordinary ass. Slowing his walk to ponder this beauteous sight every time he passed, he told himself there was no woman he could think of who had a more perfect derriere. Kate Moss came to mind when she was young. Pictures he found of her online corroborated his opinion. It was a pity, he mused, that Lucian Freud had painted her portrait with her posing on her back, depicting her bush and boobs in an unflattering but powerful artistic vision of her, and even then, as savage as the portrait was, you would jump her without hesitation. Brigitte Bardot was also a contender, right up there at the top of the list. It never appeared as if she was trying to purposefully flaunt her ass, particularly in Contempt, a film in which she was supposed to represent the dominant conception of a woman’s to be-looked-at-ness. More recently Zendaya’s ass came to mind but he hadn’t seen enough of it to form a solid opinion. Idle musing aside, his favorite ass of the moment was Circe’s, and his desire to see it up close, to appreciate it, to touch it, increased at every exposure.
One night on his way back from the bathroom to join Nancy on the couch for a movie, the door to Circe’s room was open wider than usual, inviting him in, as it were, and he accepted the invitation, slipped inside and found himself standing at her bedside. Lying in the midst of tussled sheets, a duvet and a damp towel, Circe was wearing only a cut-off tee-shirt. Her ass glistened with moisturizer she must have applied after her shower. She was watching videos on her phone and laughing loudly as she swiped, and swiped again. He inched closer to the bed and stood over her staring directly down at her gorgeous posterior. Soon, every fiber of his body began to burn, as if he were standing next to a fire and being scorched by the flames, his face flushing, his cock getting harder by the moment as the blood rushed to engorge his dick, draining his brain, leaving him light headed and faint. Adjusting her position, Circe wagged her ass and splayed her legs apart so that he could see her naked cunt. He moved even closer, drawn by a primal force. Looming over her, his eyes went into a frenzy, feasting on the beauty of her backside which, in its perfection, seemed to mock him, making him dizzy and disoriented like Meursault in the blinding Mediterranean sun before he pulled the trigger of his gun and killed the Arab. His cock felt like it was ready to explode and break through his pants. He covered it with his hand in case she turned around and saw his pathetic condition. Mesmerized, hardly aware of what he was doing, he stood stock still, while she continued to stare at her phone, watching video after video, seemingly oblivious, or indifferent, to his presence.
Suddenly Circe turned her head and stared him in the eyes, breaking him out of his trance and before he could form a sentence she said:
You want to touch it, don’t you?
He remained mute, contemplating her invitation to a violation, struggling whether to tell her that yes, yes that was what he wanted, wanted more than anything he had ever wanted, when Circe said:
Go ahead.
He was working himself up to comply with her command when Nancy yelled from the living room, Circe. Circe bounded out of bed, slipped on some sweatpants and nonchalantly walked past him to the door without even giving him a glance. Next time, she said when she was in the hallway.
Still under her spell he stayed in her room, unable to leave and join Nancy on the couch until the blood drained out of his dick and became flaccid again. He wondered how long before next time?
It was two weeks. Tired from work and tipsy from too much Prosecco, Nancy had nodded off to sleep while they were on the couch watching a movie. She was snoring lightly as he freed himself from her arms. Up the hallway he headed, to Circe’s open door.
Into her room he slunk, silent as a cat. She was on her stomach, facing away from the door. A floor lamp illuminated her ass creating a sumptuous golden nimbus around it, the type of glow you saw in Medieval paintings to indicate a sacred figure. She was scrolling from screen to screen on her phone. She didn’t acknowledge him. From where he was standing, he could just make out a hint of her outer labial lips pressed together in a vertical smile. He moved closer to her bed and while considering how to begin, his hand launched downward, his fingers spreading wide to take possession of as much of her flesh as feasible. All five fingers landed softly on her right ass cheek, which welcomed his touch with a delicate and inviting twitch that nearly made him swoon. Exerting more pressure on her buttock it responded in kind, tensing then relaxing, causing him to inhale sharply. As he got on the bed his nose picked up the scent of sex escaping from between her legs. On his knees now, he took one cheek in each hand and began kneading them together—and the scent became even stronger. He gave her anus a flick with his tongue and she moaned. You can fuck me, she said flatly. But I’m not going to turn over. You can’t look at me and I’m not going to help. Those are the rules. And you can’t fuck me in the ass. At least not now.
He lowered his pants and pulled out his prick, lubed it with spit, and after fingering her and getting her wet, he slid inside her. The weight of his body crushed her into the mattress, which seemed to be trying to keep them apart. He had to struggle to stay in her. It was hard with his pants on because he couldn’t spread his legs wide enough to penetrate her deeply, but Nancy was in the living room he had no other choice in case he had to rapidly withdraw. He kept asking her, is this good, are you ok. Mmmm she murmured, breathing heavily, mmmm. After he came, he collapsed on her and she complained she couldn’t breathe and he pulled out and sat up. Go, she said. I have to clean myself.
In the days that followed not a word passed between them about what had transpired. The one time he tried to bring it up—you know, what happened—after Nancy had gone to her room to get ready for bed and he and Circe were alone in the kitchen doing the dishes, she walked away, went to her room, and closed the door.
After that failed communication his anxiety level rose when he and Nancy were in the kitchen cooking or making drinks and Circe joined them, or when Circe came into the living room and sat with them while they were on the sofa watching a movie. But apparently, he didn’t have to worry. She conducted herself with aplomb, as if nothing had happened. Which was as it should be. After all, the three of them had often spent time together in front of the television when fifteen minutes previously in Nancy’s bedroom she had her mouth locked around his cock sucking it until it spewed sperm all over her tits. Why should what happened between him and Circe be any different. What happened in the privacy of the bedroom between two consenting adults was nobody’s business but the participants.
Circe continued to treat him with the same bland indifference she had exhibited toward him prior to their fucking. Like the girl in that song1 by Elliott Smith, she didn’t exhibit any emotion at all, she sat there and stared into space like a dead China doll. A trait in her that he found quite appealing. Her flat, affectless personality was a result, he knew from Nancy, of the anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications she had been taking since puberty, now supplemented with Adderall.
Circe worked at an advertising agency and put in long and excruciating hours. She frequently came home late and faded, having partied with friends or colleagues. Sometimes she went on a date with someone she met on Tinder or Bumble and didn’t come home at all. Nancy didn’t concern herself with her. She’s thirty, she can take care of herself. The sooner she moves out the better, so we can have the place to ourselves again, she said, snuggling up to him on the couch.
No matter how you looked at it, because he was dating her mother, Circe should have been off limits sexually. But desire, like justice, is blind and doesn’t see or recognize limitations. Desire knows no law and follows only its own imperious, implacable needs. Circe had cast a spell on him, inflaming his desire, making it impossible for him to stay away from her. Inappropriate though his relations with her were, he forgave himself for his transgression since she was the one who had initiated their coupling. She knew what she was doing leaving her door open, flaunting her ass at him. She had given him permission to touch her. If exposing herself to get him excited, and then letting him fuck her, was supposed to be a test of his integrity, of his righteousness, then he had failed—miserably. Yet, as despicable a person as his betrayal of Nancy made him, he didn’t care because Circe didn’t seem to care, she kept on fucking him. Was she using him to get back at her mother in some way. Her motives were none of his business. He only wanted to keep fucking her for as long as he could since every good thing ultimately came to an end. And what Nancy didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Circe held firm to her rule that they not look at each other while they were fucking. She wouldn’t let him flip her over on her back and fuck her in the missionary position. Mostly, she insisted on lying flat on her stomach, her head buried in a pillow. Infrequently, she let him pull her up and fuck her doggy style. Once—only once—she acceded to reverse cowgirl, her long brown hair raging around her head like a tornado as she bounced up and down on his cock. When he pressed her to try a different position, if there was any possibility that they might look each other in the eyes, she told him no. I don’t want you seeing my face, my expressions. I don’t want to see yours. I don’t want our eyes to meet while we’re fucking. I want it so you could be anybody, that I could be anybody.
Let’s get this straight. We’re not having an affair, we’re fucking, she said one night when he suggested she should come to his apartment to reduce the risk of Nancy catching them.
You like to live dangerously, he told her.
I don’t think about how I like to live. I live how I like and no other way. And I don’t care how you live. Don’t be confused, she said, I really don’t want anything to do with you. I feel nothing for you, except maybe a little contempt. Anyway, you have an old-fashioned, mystical view of sex, she said, all that face-to-face stuff. I’m just a hobbyist and think it’s fun to fuck. Of course, it wouldn’t be fun if my mom found out. She’d probably kill you. But I’m not worried.
I would kill me too if I were her, he laughed. Then, concerned, he wondered how she would find out.
Not from me, Circe said. I’m not going to tell her.
I’m not either, obviously, he said.
She shook her head in agreement.
If they had nothing else, at least they had a pact. If fucking didn’t create any kind of emotional bond between them, a vow of silence did.
After initially refusing—and perhaps to stop his requests to fuck her in the missionary position—Circe let him fuck her ass. Just go easy, she warned. Her ass remained the god he worshiped. He bowed to it when he entered her room, stroked it softly, ran his tongue up and down her intergluteal cleft, drilled his tongue into the dark, pink-puckered hole. Sometimes he just penetrated her ass with his fingers, first one, then two, while at the same time slipping two into her vagina. He pushed them in and pulled them out in unison, quicker and harder when he found the rhythm, while she took her clit in hand and stimulated herself until she came in a long quiver and shudder and he then disengaged his fingers and inserted his waiting cock. Yet, he still longed to have her on her back, all ten of his fingers gripping her delicious meaty ass, holding her steady as he thrust into her while staring into her eyes.
Circe barely talked while fucking. He would whisper endearments and commands in her ear, telling her how good she felt, asking her to move a little more like that, just like that, yes, yes. She responded in moans and, sometimes, in her deep cigarette rasp of a voice, don’t stop, don’t stop. But that was all.
No matter how solid an emotional or psychological foundation a couple has, boredom in the bedroom eventually finds its way into their sexual relations just as surely as water finds its own level. His preoccupation with Circe, and the intense pleasure she yielded him hastened its arrival and began to adversely affect his sexual performance with Nancy. Sometimes he could hardly stay hard. She began critiquing his lovemaking, oscillating between derision and solicitude, depending upon how badly he disappointed her. She always threw in his face the memory of the first months they were together when his insatiable appetite and unflagging stamina had gone hand in hand, and he had never failed to satisfy her. He was becoming a lackluster lover, she said. There was no remedy for the situation. His white-hot burning desire for Circe had evaporated any remaining passion for Nancy.
What’s wrong with you, Nancy finally demanded to know. You barely even make an effort to be interested anymore.
Nothing’s wrong with me, he said.
Something’s wrong, she said, and we have to solve it because I’m not feeling it and this isn’t working for me. Are you seeing someone else.
No. When would I have time.
Men always find the time when they want something. Don’t think I’m an idiot, she said.
He reported this conversation to Circe. That’s your problem, she told him. If you want to stop fucking me because you’re afraid of getting caught, go ahead. What do I care. I’m seeing other guys. I won’t miss you. Anyway, if she finds out, I’ll move out, which I’m planning to do pretty soon anyway. I’ll blame everything on you. She’ll be hurt and furious, but I’ll play the victim and eventually she’ll believe me because that’s the way the world works these days, and then she’ll feel sorry for me in order not to feel bad about herself. And we’ll be ok. You, she’ll hate.
How Circe said she was going to play it if they were discovered was cruel, and calculated to absolve herself of any responsibility while casting him as the villain, even though she was as devious as he, and equally culpable. She had obviously come up with this strategy to be able to live with herself in case they were caught. Her plan allowed her to reap all the pleasure she could now without worrying about remorse later since she knew how she would repair her relationship with her mother if it broke. There was something diabolical about it.
Rather than concern himself about Circe’s potential endgame, or that his sub-par performances in the bedroom with Nancy were heightening her suspicions about his fidelity, he doubled down on his attempts to fuck Circe. She had made it clear she would only entertain him in her room in this apartment and nowhere else, and once she left, he would never get to fuck her again. A thought that pained him, and inflamed his desire to fuck her as many times as he could before that fateful day.
Since his window of opportunity was closing fast, he went out of his way to be at the apartment as often as he could, hoping to catch her alone. Circe was rarely there when he showed up. On the days that she was, she was sometimes with a friend, or friends, and after a little polite conversation, they would quickly disappear into Circe’s room.
When he managed to catch Circe alone, the two of them would chat in the kitchen or living room, about this, that, but mostly about her apartment search. Sometimes, in the middle of their conversation, she would begin texting someone madly and ignore him, or take a phone call and go to her room for privacy. He would eventually wander down the hall to check on her. If her door was open and she was on her bed with her butt in the air he would strip off his pants and pounce on her, penetrating her without preliminaries which drew from her a gasp of reproach followed by total submission. He had to pull her up off the bed and force her into doggy style to fully feel his hips and balls slapping into her ass. It was only in that position that he could reach around and take her breasts in hand and feel her nipples perk and tense and tease him. He wanted desperately to suck on them, but she wouldn’t permit it. Kissing the back of her neck he worked his way around to her ear, which he fellated with the same dedication he applied to her ass. He tried to get from her ear to her mouth—for he longed for a kiss, a full-on lip-lock kiss with deep tongue penetration—which she violently refused, allowing him only to peck at the side of her lips, always turning her head away as he strained to latch onto them, accompanied by a curt command: don’t. Frustrated by her denial of his desire he became increasingly ferocious in the way he fucked her. He began pumping her punishingly hard without giving a thought to her pleasure, which nevertheless she seemed to extract, for after he came and collapsed on her, she breathed omg, omg over and over.
More and more frequently, however, when he arrived at her door it was closed. If he heard music or heard her talking on the phone, he didn’t disturb her. When there was silence, he knocked. She never answered. Humiliated, he would return to the living room and glumly wait for Nancy, hoping for an opportunity latter in the evening. Which rarely arrived.
The next time they were together he asked her: Is it over.
It is what it is, she said, shrugging.
That’s not an answer.
That’s all there is to say. Anyway, I’m going to the Hamptons with friends, so…you can start to get used to missing me.
Circe was supposed to leave that Thursday, but when he arrived at Nancy’s on Friday, while making himself a drink in the kitchen he heard music coming from her bedroom. He made his way down the hall. Circe’s door was open and she was in her bed, and appeared to be sleeping since she wasn’t on her phone and her ass wasn’t totally exposed as it usually was. He sat down next to her, took a sip from his drink. He slipped his hand under the cover and began to massage her ass, his middle finger tickling her taint and then trailing down into her vagina, which was uncharacteristically dry.
He leaned down and breathed into her ear, I thought you were going to be away, but I’m happy you’re here.
He was surprised when Nancy rolled over, stared him in the eyes and before he could form a sentence, said, you ass hole, and plunged a knife into his chest ripping through all the layers of his skin and the visceral pericardium, and pierced his heart.
The plastic liner she had placed under the sheet caught the modicum of blood that seeped out of his wound because she left the knife lodged in his chest, as she had read was the right way to reduce exsanguination when you had to move a corpse to a different location. She drained him dry in the bathtub and cut him into pieces with a Sawzall, there was really nothing to it. Rage blinded her to the gore. She bagged the body parts, first wrapping them in the bloody sheets from the bed and old towels and securing everything with duct tape.
The garbage chute on Nancy’s floor was located in a closet at the end of the hallway, just beyond the elevators. The chute fed the automatic compactor in the basement, which pressed the garbage bags the tenants dropped in the chute into bigger, industrial-strength bags that the compactor sealed automatically when the weight on the scale reached a preset limit. When the bags were full, they were pulled off the compactor by the super and stored along the wall. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays a hauling service came and collected them and dumped them in a land fill in New Jersey. Over the next week, while Circe was in the Hamptons, Nancy dropped a bag a day down the chute and waited—it only took seconds—for it to hit the bottom with a satisfying thump.
There are worse ways to go!