Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore (9780385538398) Read Free Page A

a thousand dollars for the finest fast-food marital service.
    What I remembered was the fact that he was thoughtfulenough to have brought the ring on our little holiday, that and the smile on his face when I said the words of acceptance. I felt something then, like a smile drifting from my center up toward my lips.
    Evoking that memory I tried to cry but couldn’t. Even the best moment of my thirteen years of marriage with Theon failed to summon up a tear.
    I lay there frozen and unfeeling, like a corpse in the snow waiting for the spring thaw. This sense of death brought an unexpected calm into my breast.
    Theon was gone, running into death after the same quim he’d chased since the day he achieved his first erection. Jolie, I felt, somehow died in my place, enticing him with her passion to be seen and adored while collecting a paycheck and pining for love.
    These plain truths soothed me. I shifted onto my side and lost consciousness while breathing in the sweet scent of Lana’s troubled sleep.
    Someone was kissing my left nipple. It was a feathery kiss with a small lick at the end. The kisser was experienced, knew how to keep their hunger at bay while physically expressing a rapacious desire.
    â€œHello,” I said.
    I opened my eyes on a sun-drenched morning. Lana was leaning over me, retreating from my big, black, wet nipple.
    She blew on it and said, “I’m sorry, Deb, I just always wanted to do that.”
    â€œIt’s okay with me but what would Linda Love have to say?”
    â€œYou won’t tell her, will you?”
    â€œOf course not.”
    Hearing this, Lana closed her small mouth and breathed in through her nose, somehow communicating that she’d like to show me other things she’d always wanted to do.
    â€œNot today, baby,” I said. “I just couldn’t after all that happened.”
    â€œI understand,” she said. And she did too. She understood that I would never be her lover but that I wasn’t rejecting her as a person.
    â€œHelp me up?” I said.
    Little Lana got on her knees and pulled my wrists. This movement imbued me with energy again. I remember feeling that if I had been alone I might have never gotten up.
    â€œI’ll go make us breakfast,” she said.
    When Lana left the room I went to the closet and was rendered immobile again for a time. There were latex minidresses, and cashmere pantsuits with holes stitched in so that I couldn’t really wear underwear with them. I had a few Catholic-girl miniskirt uniforms and a dozen pairs of pants that fit so tight they adhered to my sex close enough that the casual stranger could know my form as well as Theon did. I’m naturally tall, so the rows of five-inch heels and platform shoes were designed to make me tower over most men. My blouses were all two sizes too small—T-shirts too. I couldn’t sit without exposing myself in the little black dresses, and all of my panties were white and thong.
    â€œBlack-and-white is my signature,” I often said, “from me and my Caucasian husband to this small black dress and my white silk panties.”
    I could hear Lana in the kitchen making our breakfast. This act, more than the kiss, told of the love she harbored for me.
    At the back of the twenty-four-foot-wide, five-foot-deep closet was a brown paper bag that contained a calf-length yellow-and-blue dress that I filched from a BBW named Wanda in a specialty film I’d once made. Wanda weighed two hundred eighty-five pounds and that dress fit her like a glove. Under that was a pair of worn blue tennis shoes. Inside the left shoe was a .32 caliber midnight special, the only legacy my father had left after being shot in the street by a thug named Kirkland. He’d staggered into the house and into my mother’s arms, blood spilling over her clean white dress and the floor.
    As I was putting on the billowy dress the phone rang. I heard it but felt no need to answer.