In her plaid pencil skirt and white button-down, she crawled under his desk on all fours, taking him in her mouth. He was smoking a cigarette on a video call, occasionally reaching down to ash the Marlboro on her head. When she returned home an hour later, her mom ran her fingers over her scalp, said it looked like she had a lot of dandruff.
The next time she saw him, she timidly requested that he fuck her hard while her legs were closed and she was screaming No. He agreed as long as she was not loud enough for the neighbors to hear. If you actually want me to stop, he said, just pull away. Afterward she asked if he liked it. He said it made him feel bad. But he had come fast and hard anyway.
A dinner in the East Village. She played with the pasta on her plate. She did not like going out to eat, though she knew she was supposed to. Girls liked to be taken out, treated to expensive meals by older men. Girls were not supposed to love older men; girls were supposed to use them then hang them out to dry. Whenever she tried to start a conversation, he shook his head, said it wasn’t appropriate to talk about in public. It was like dinners with her parents from her childhood. Deeply boring. Except on her thirteenth birthday when her dad had been overserved and kicked out for throwing a tantrum when he was finally cut off. He threw a plate at the wall and it broke into two pieces. She felt like doing that now even though she wasn’t angry. Just for kicks. Instead she twirled a noodle on her fork and said, I was thinking next week you could tie me up. He chewed his steak and sighed. Took a sip of his wine. Put his head in his hands.
He wanted to eat her out while she read his book aloud. Some philosophical novel inspired by Kant. It was met with lukewarm reviews and even worse sales. Girls were supposed to date older men for their money, but he didn’t have any. His financial instability only strengthened her desire. He was too busy meeting deadlines to seek out other girls to fuck. She considered capitalism to be her sole competition. He moaned between her legs, her delivery of his words turning him on. When they were done, she spit on a page, intending it as a gift. But he looked upset, offended. He went to his office to send emails.
She started receiving disturbing phone calls. A breathy, unfamiliar male voice on the other end would describe his fantasies of her. Fucking her without mercy, dismembering her, hiding the remains in a dumpster. Sodomizing her with a grill fork, pouring gasoline over her, dropping a match. His buddies gang-raping her on the roof of her apartment then pushing her off. When the calls came, she answered, listened, and hung up when the voice instructed her to. The voice called once a week at five in the evening, not on any fixed day. She began anticipating the call, disappointed when it didn’t come.
He flipped her onto her stomach and slid inside her effortlessly. Come inside me, she said, after trying her best not to say it, it was irresponsible, reckless, but she couldn’t help herself. You want me to, he said, you want me to impregnate you, don’t you, fuck. He pushed her head into the pillow, ejaculated before he could stop himself. A heavy sigh. He pulled out, soft now, said he would get her Plan B. His body fell onto the mattress beside her. He kissed her on the cheek, the nose, the forehead, the lips, she had earned it. When she told him about the disturbing phone calls, he appeared unfazed, said to block the number. But she didn’t want to.
One morning, she went into his office and looked through his phone while he was sleeping. There were texts from his ex-wife, Simone. She had been texting him for weeks, begging for a call or at least a reply. I can’t live without you, one message read. Seven fucking years and you don’t give a shit about me at all. You’re just gonna leave me here to die. She returned the phone to the nightstand. He was snoring, dreaming, mumbling incoherently. In a week he was leaving for Germany for a month to work on a book inspired by Goethe. He said he would send her handwritten postcards and emails with excerpts from the book. He had forgotten to buy her Plan B. She touched her stomach hopefully.
On his couch, she moved on top of him slowly as porn played on the TV, a skinny blonde getting fucked by a stranger on a bus while passengers watched indifferently. His eyes flitted between the screen and her. It was the night before his flight. He squeezed her tits, pulled her hair. She took his hand and wrapped it around her throat, said Harder, felt the muscles in his fingers tighten. Harder, she wheezed, and felt the air abandon her, felt her head become weightless, like she’d just smoked several cigarettes at once. Yes, she tried to say, then everything went black. When she awakened after thirty seconds or so, he was sobbing, almost screaming. He held her in his arms like a baby. She imagined him fucking women in Germany. Whores in fishnets. Students in knee socks. For a night he would possess them, but he belonged to her, she had his sperm, his tears.
The disturbing calls stopped. One week went by without the call, then two. No postcard arrived, no email. The only thing that came was her period. She cried and dreamt of giving birth to a clump of blood and guts. She considered texting him, but she was too scared of sounding like his ex-wife, of taking on the role of a pathetic, dependent woman. She would never show a man that she needed him. Men were replaceable. She loved him but she could love anyone if she tried hard enough. Finding a man was like apartment hunting. You try to do it as fast as possible. You compromise. You make yourself at home. In the back of your mind you know someday you will leave.
