Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes Read Free

with the missing toe. It was so smooth, despite the scar.
    “I go to that club downtown, take off my shoe, and men kiss me there. Sometimes, if they—” Nicole shut up abruptly and pulled her foot back. “You probably think I’m a freak.”
    “I’m not shocked, you know. In fact, I’m relieved that you’re not as normal as you look.”
    There was light in her eyes when she asked, “Tell me your dark secret.”
    “I don’t have one,” he lied.
    ~
    The next time they met in her dorm room to work on the paper, Ted asked Nicole to bare her foot. He enjoyed looking at her naked skin, and that seemed to be the most naked part of her.
    “I think you’re secretly a devotee. You should come to the club with me. Anyway, you have to come to research the paper.”
    “I’ll go with you, but I don’t think I’m a devotee. It’s just that I’m comfortable around you, and I like it that you’re comfortable around me.” Ted held her foot while he talked to her. He bent down and gently kissed the tops of the four toes.
    Nicole gasped.
    Ted suddenly realized what he’d done. It was the first time he’d kissed a girl, anywhere. He wasn’t comfortable anymore. He felt trapped.
    Almost violently, he got up to leave.
    “Stay.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
    He looked down at her, hugging herself on her bed. She looked fragile, vulnerable.
    He felt dizzy and sweaty, but he sat next to her anyway.
    She ran her hands under his T-shirt. It calmed and excited him at the same time.
    ~
    Nicole fell asleep, but Ted was too fidgety. His skin burned with the new sensations of sex. He looked at her asleep and felt a deep tenderness toward her. It was a new emotion, tenderness. It felt good, letting that emotion warm his heart. In the moonlight, he admired her naked body, whole save for that one missing big toe.
    But it was the other big toe, the one he was now seeing for the first time, that was responsible for the strongest surge of desire he had yet experienced.
    Ted knew, then, that he would have to collect it.
    ~
    The club was called Devotion. The amputees were mostly women. Among the men, he noticed only two whose bodies were incomplete. An old man missing his right leg sat in a wheelchair nursing a drink and a scowl. A loud thirtysomething guy in an even louder silk shirt held court at a table in the middle of the bar, a clown who made the two women and three men who sat with him laugh. He had a nervous tick: he kept wiping his mouth with the stump of his right wrist; the foam from his beer had made a damp spot on his sleeve.
    Men and women greeted Nicole like they knew her well. The bartender greeted her by name, and Nicole responded in kind. “Hi, Germ.”
    Ted whispered, “Germ?”
    “Short for Jeremy. I started calling him that. Now everyone does.” Nicole answered a bit too loudly for Ted’s comfort. He was already nervous being here. And she wasn’t doing anything to make it easier for him by calling attention to them.
    None of the women were whole, but most of the men were. The women dressed to emphasize their deformities, their missing feet, hands, fingers, legs. Only Nicole’s was invisible.
    Although everyone was clothed and nothing kinky was overtly going on, Ted, who was still not fully comfortable with either the reality or the idea of sex, was keenly aware of the thick aura of sexual tension in the place.
    In particular, the lustful glances both men and women threw Nicole’s way made Ted awkward, as if he’d been sat in the middle of a high-stakes card game with no knowledge of the rules. As if losing would expose him as a fraud.
    He felt sweat pool in his armpits, dribble down his back, dampen his temples.
    Nicole sat at the bar and started taking her right shoe off. A dozen people, mostly men, ogled her every movement as she did so.
    Ted whispered, “I thought we were here to interview people.”
    “Relax. Let me get cozy.” Her foot was naked now. Ted saw a few of the men lick their