THE CHASE OF THE THRILL
PART THREE
The scene of the seduction, set for so long, is the woman’s scene, her choices, her decisions. She is clothed; he is nude. She reclines on the special, mirror inflected bed; he stands on the rag rug. They are silent, staring at one another, each of them taking in all that they see, digesting it in their hearts. She smiles at him, standing naked before her. A fan, placed high in the ceiling and moving slowly through the stagnant morning air, wafts her scent upward and out, catching him by surprise.
"What’s that you’re wearing?" he asks her, his voice held behind his breath. "That perfume, I mean."
"Allure," she tells him.
"It’s a wow," he says. She raises a hand and puts it across his mouth. Her head is steady, but her eyes move back and forth, left to right and back, a simple indication that he has spoken once too often on this subject. She watches his eyes for an acknowledgement and when she sees in them what she needs to see, she removes her hand from his mouth.
"Kiss me," she demands.
He complies, still standing over her, still physically dominating, yet completely dominated, controlled by her impulses. She cranes her neck up toward his face, their lips meeting, touching lightly, holding fast. Their tongues dart. Their teeth scrape. His face feels heavy against hers now and she reaches up behind his head and pulls him harder in towards her. He moves his body downward, kneeling on the rug beside the golden bed, his mouth and hers, their breaths, their bodies all joined together now in one small space: their lips.
When she finally moves back, away from him, ending the kiss, she smiles at him.
"You likee?" he asks her.
"Don’t speak," she says quickly, "and I’ll like you much better."
"What’s that mean?"
"When you speak, love," she says to him, "you tend to spoil the image I see in you."
"Huh?"
"That’s what I mean. You’re a hunk, a man who can do the job. You have an extraordinary physique and sensual mouth and...other things," she says. "But when you talk you’re common, ordinary. For that I don’t need you."
"Okay. Sure," he says, not truly understanding what she means.
"You may join me here, on the divan of love," she tells him, patting a spot next to her. Quietly, for he is not stupid, he moves onto the bed and envelopes her in his well-developed arms. They are bathed in the glorious light of a new day. The sun’s glow turns their bodies into bronze, then into gold as the perspiration they share in their love-making turns them into the God and Goddess of Passion that she had envisioned.
Their love-making continues until, exhausted, they fall asleep, still wrapped up in arms, legs, sweat, and other fluids.
§
"How long did we sleep?" he asked.
"It’s eleven or so."
"I got work, Faith," he said. "I’ve got to get going."
"You can’t just leave like that."
"I got to," and he moved to the edge of the bed, ready to stand up, to stretch his muscles, flex his back and head downstairs where he left his clothes.
"Get back here," she demanded, but he paid no attention to her.
"Can’t." He moved to the doorway, unaware that she had also left the bed and was coming up behind him.
"You’re not leaving here. Not like this."
She placed herself directly in front of him, down one step, facing him. She put a hand on his chest, over his heart, inside the firm line of his left breast.
"Lemme go."
"I’m not done with you, buster," she spat out at him. He recoiled a step or two, then recovered and moved toward her again.
"Faith, this was great, but it’s done. I’m getting out now."
"You’re not!" She slapped him hard on his hip, then raised her hand again to strike higher up. He caught her hands and twisted it. Her foot slipped and she half-fell down a step, held firm by his strong grip. "Let me go!" she shouted.
"Suit yourself," he said and he let loose his hold on her wrist. As he would later say, he didn’t mean to do more than that, just to let loose, but his gesture somehow also included a slight thrust of her hand, her arm, away from him. It threw her off-balance, and she fell backward, away from him down the narrow staircase. He couldn’t recall, later on, if she had uttered a single sound as she fell away, tumbling backward onher heels, then on her ass, then over her head. He only knew that by the time she reached the second floor landing, she was already silent.
§
Her singing wakes him. It is soft, sweet, an angel’s voice buried in silken sheets.
He is mesmerized by the sound of it. There’s been nothing like it in all his experience.
"Beautiful," he murmurs, still only half awake.
"Like you, baby," she replies. "You complete me."
"Yeah?"
"Oh, yeah. Together we’re one perfect being. Don’t you think so, too?"
"Yeah, sure," he says, not sure, but not sure he wants to say that to her.
"Our baby will be the quintessence of humankind," she says. "We’ll create the best child, the finest man, ever to live."
"Hey!" he says. "I’m not fathering no kids."
"It’s okay, baby," she tells him. "You don’t have to take responsibility. Remember, I’m married. He’ll never know it’s not his.’
"No kids!" he tells her again. "Not from me."
"It’s going to be okay," she says again.
The man is out of the bed before either of them can say another word. She follows him. He’s looking around the room for his clothes, then remembers where he left them. He rushes for the door, then takes the steps two and three at a time. In a flash he’s on the landing and he’s reaching for his underwear. She comes up behind him.
"You can’t run out on me," she says. "Not on me."
"Oh, yeah, you just watch me," he replies not looking at her, but instead lifting his right leg to put on the briefs. He is off-balance when the wrench hits him behind his right ear. He is onhis side, still naked, except for the white undies over his right thigh, when she hits him a second time, on the left side of his skull, cracking it, metal meeting brain.
There is blood, but not much. There is no sound from him. She pulls him along the hallway on the carpet where he fell and when she reaches the laundry chute near the guest bedroom door, she shoves him into it, pulls back the blood-red rug and kicks him into the space that will take him down the basement.
He’ll join the other two bodies already there, men she had brought into her web earlier. He’ll lie there, crumpled up in a mass grave in the cellar, the men who disappoint the Goddess, then men who will not procreate. She vows to choose better the next time. She promises herself that the will succeed, that she will not fail a fourth time.
Then she goes to scrape the blood off the floor, to replace the soon-to-be scrubbed rug, to remove all traces of this man who disappointed her.
A typical suburban housewife married to a typical blue-collar drudge, she cleans her home.
END OF PART THREE
PART FOUR, CONCLUSION, NEXT SUNDAY
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