The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Lucy Taylor by Lucy Taylor Read Free Book Online

by having sex with me, and now I can’t get over that experience. It haunts me. Not the sex itself, but something else I can’t put into words . . .” There was a long pause from the other side. Nicholas slammed his fist against the inside of the confessional and said, “Fuck, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You can’t possibly know what I mean. You must think I’m crazy. Hell,
I’m
starting to think I’m crazy.”
    “Don’t go.” The firmness of the priest’s command halted Nicholas as he was rising to leave. “You say you’re haunted by what you felt when you were with this woman. If you could see her again, if you could be with her, do you think this time you could hold onto the experience you describe, that you could absorb it into your soul?”
    Nicholas, surprised, responded, “I don’t know, Father. All I know is I want to try.”
    “I don’t know if I’m damning you to hell or guiding you along the path to heaven, but maybe I can help.”
    Beth had packed the car in a rage, not knowing where she was going, only that it would be in the opposite direction from Nicholas. They’d been married five years. She had known it was dicey going into it, that Nicholas had spent time in prison for dealing cocaine, that his youth was a black hole which he described to her only in the vaguest, most general terms or not at all. She knew the power of his erotic appetites, so the idea that he might cheat on her was more dismaying and disappointing than outright shocking – that he would leave her altogether, though, with no more explanation than that he
had
no explanation, beggared all comprehension.
    She had decided to drive south, with New Mexico as a vague and dreamily envisioned destination. She knew no one there, had never indicated to her husband any desire to visit. It was a destination where, should Nicholas ever tire of whatever adventure he was on and decide to look for her, he would never find her. And, in the meantime, she had her own fantasies of Marlboro Men with studly bulges and swarthy, muscular Mexicans on the prowl for paler flesh.
I’ll show him
, she thought, before reflecting sadly on the futility of inspiring jealousy in someone who didn’t give a fuck.
    All this was on her mind when she got the letter postmarked Toronto. Given the contents, outwardly, it was strikingly genteel-looking. Expensive Mayflower Hotel stationery addressed in an elegant cursive that resembled the handwriting of her elderly aunt, not a psychotic-looking T-bar or manic-looking flourish to be seen.
    The very elegance and neatness of it, however, like an exquisitely gift-wrapped package that contains manure, flagged her attention as much as if the letters of the address had been clipped out of a magazine and taped onto the envelope.
    Inside she found a sheet of stationery with a single sentence written in that same overly controlled hand, as though the writer were making a conscious effort to contrast the vile inscription with the fastidious lettering. And along with that, a faded Polaroid of a much younger Nicholas. He wore a tie-dyed body shirt that showed off a ripped and gleaming chest. Long hair stringy around his face, eyes blank and strange.
Nicky-boy, age 19, the best hustler in the business
, the caption read.
    Naked, Nicholas sat on the tier nearest the stage, breathing the heady, almost nauseatingly sweet scent of incense and sickness and sex. It was the same basement room that he remembered from the first time he’d seen Myriam, but on a different street in a different section of the city.
    A girl so thin, her biceps were scarcely bigger than her wrists, lay on the mattress. Her face was turned towards the audience. Her eyes were huge and frighteningly vacant. The tattoos on her stomach and legs had become misshapen squiggles of color as her flesh withered and shrank beneath the designs. The shroud-color of sickness clung to her.
    Behind the blue swirl of incense, Myriam moved over the girl. Her