I thought I had her figured out. I thought she'd be an easy fuck, a casual lay to rinse from my mouth the too-fresh taste of a broken love. I thought we'd fuck; I'd go home, I'd forget her. And she'd forget me. No harm, no foul, no long good-byes.
"Once," she told me, leaning against me in the bar. "I'll sleep with you once."
I'd seen her so often, looked at her body with lust in my eyes. She tended at Markers, the bar I frequented, a hip bar filled with young tattooed punks and staffed entirely by women. She knew what all the other bartenders knew—sexy clothes spelled big tips. But she didn't go the route the other girls' did—tight, low-slung jeans showing off their hips and the fact that they wore no underwear; short skirts and knee-high leather boots that made their thighs more tantalizing than a pair of high heels ever could have; belly-baring T-shirts showing off sexy tattoos and pierced navels.
Instead, every inch of Anita’s flesh was always covered except her hands, her face, and—just occasionally, when she bent forward within sight of me—the small of her back. Her tattoos were dense, indistinguishable; they adorned the small of her back so tight and finely-woven that I couldn't make them out. The tight leather pants she always wore kept them hidden most of the time; her long-sleeved, tight black turtlenecks forbade any real view of her slender arms, her flat belly, or her ample tits. But that didn't make her any less sexy; on the contrary, the clothes she wore were so form-fitting that no contour of Anita’s body was unfamiliar to anyone who went to the bar. She was a frequent source of discussion among male patrons, speculation often centering on how the hell she could have gotten into pants so tight they looked sprayed-on, how she managed to make her breasts stand so firm like that when it was clear through the tight, stretchy material of her turtlenecks that she wasn't wearing a bra. Nobody knew, but it titillated them to speculate. It titillated me, too; it made me want her more than I already did.
The bar girls at Markers were notoriously slutty, most of them recently out of college and moved to the city to be hip and be seen, to get high and get laid. A joint, a hit of E, or a baggie of Ketamine tablets, it was said, would get you pretty far with one of these girls. But Anita was different—no older than the others, probably, or at least no more than a few years. But her reputation was pristine despite her provocative clothes. Rumor had it she'd never gone home with anyone. Not men, not women—not anyone.
But she flirted with me. When I dropped in for a drink near closing time, when she was the only bartender on duty, she would kick everyone out, lock the door and chat with me while she cleaned up. She wanted to know about me—my interests, my dreams, my desires. She avoided all the like questions I sent her way. Even after a month of regular flirtation, I knew only a few things about Anita, all of them relevant but none of them terribly illuminating. She was straight. She was single—had been for some time. She was from London, but had lived in dozens of towns since running away from home at an early age. She was of mixed English-Indian parentage. And she never, ever showed off her skin.
But I knew one more thing, just a rumor, murmured by one of the bar girls I'd taken home one night: Anita's mother had been a tattoo artist, had died young, of a broken heart.
As she finished counting out her drawer one Thursday night, I sat at the end of the bar watching her, smoking cigarettes—another testament to the fact that she liked me, for the health department could have fined them even while the bar was closed. She glanced over to me between stacks of ones and clanking rolls of quarters, her eyes hungry, her lips full and red with lipstick.
"I was thinking I might stay up for a while," I said. "My place isn't far away. Would you like to come over for a drink?"
"I have to work," she said nervously.
"Friday's your day off."
"Oh, yeah," she said, and blushed.
"One drink," I smiled. "I promise I won't try anything."
She turned to me, her face washed with sadness. She ran her hand up the length of her sleeve, as if it itched.
"I want you to try something," she said.
"Then I will," I told her, fixing her dark eyes with my stare.
She came around the end of the bar, put her arms around me. She smelled like a mix of flowers and Johnnie Walker. Black label; maybe even Gold. We kissed, and I felt the press of her body against mine, the slick rub of a tongue piercing as she explored me. The taste on her tongue was definitely Gold label, a brand Markers didn't carry.
"Once," she told me. "I'll sleep with you once."
I smiled, shrugged. "Who said anything about sleeping together? I'm talking about a drink."
"Once," she told me. I opened my mouth to protest—if we liked it, couldn't we do it again? She put one finger across my lips, finding them still moist with her spit.
"Once," she told me. "I'll sleep with you only once."
* * *
My apartment was a few blocks away, and as we walked she leaned against me, seeming to need support. Perhaps she'd been single for long that the thought of being with me scared her. I wanted her so bad I knew once wouldn't satisfy me; perhaps if I was good enough, she'd be open to a repeat performance.
I slipped my hand down the waistband of her pants, feeling that she, like the other girls at Markers, wasn't wearing anything underneath. She cuddled up next to me as we walked. I took a deep breath of her—Scotch and flowers, fear and fire. I fumbled with my keys and let us into my apartment.
We tumbled onto the bed without turning on the light, and her mouth was insatiable. She pushed up into me, her back arching as my swelling cock found her leather-clad cleft. She moaned and pulled me hard against her. She kissed me like a savage, like a cannibal. She slipped her hands under my T-shirt and massaged my back, pushing her hands into my jeans to cup my ass. Her pussy rubbed firmly against my hard cock. She pulled her mouth from mine and my tongue worked eagerly after it, seeking. She grabbed my hair and forced my head back. I stared into darkness, Anita nothing but black, not even a shadow.
"Undress me," she said.
"Let me light a candle," she told me. "I want to see you."
"Not yet," she told me. "Take off my clothes first."
Kissing her tenderly, I unfastened her belt, peeled the moist painted-on leather pants down her thighs. I could smell her bare cunt the moment I exposed it; her musky tang was thick and hungry. I unzipped her boots and pulled her leathers off. Then she put up her arms and I pulled off her top.
My mouth found her tits and I felt the smoothness marred by tiny, almost imperceptible lines. They were barely there at all; my tongue could feel them, but my fingers couldn't. Her nipples were pierced, which I'd known ever since I'd first laid eyes on those perfect orbs in their stretchy silk prison. I suckled her tits and teased her metal-cool rings with my tongue. She moaned softly, and as I slipped my hand between her legs I found her wet. One finger slid easily into her; two made her tighten around it and moan louder; three, with a thumb on her clit, made her arch her back and gasp.
"Fuck me," she said her voice hoarse with desire. "But I need you to see me first."
I got up in the blackness, fumbled for the candles in my nightstand drawer. I'd done this often enough with enough women to know the procedure without being able to see. Before I lit a match, I stripped off my T-shirt, kicked off my shoes, dropped my jeans and stepped out of them. My under shorts joined them on the floor, and I lit the match.
Anita stretched beautiful and pale on the bed, her white skin crisscrossed with black lines from the top of her throat to her wrists, from her shoulders to her hips to the lengths of her slender legs, all the way to her tattooed feet. Only a dead white spot at the top of her left breast remained unadorned, her natural skin color without benefit of ink.
"What the fuck?" I whispered.
"Light the candle," she told me, and I did, snugging it into an old whiskey bottle.
I joined her on the bed, bending close to inspect her body. My eyes wide, I ran my fingers over the black lines, disbelieving.
They were names Hundreds of them. Written tiny in ornate script, large in dripping blood horror-letters and medium-sized in faux-typewriter. And a hundred other variations, two hundred, more than I could count. I ran my fingers over her, eyes wide, reading.
Raj. Darius. Ajay. John. Jerry. Rohan. Frederic. Manu. Jeremy. Sean. Stanford. Walker. Mikhail. Tobias. Saul. Lawrence. David.
And on and on, in swirls and slants and grids around her naked body, leaving only her heart untouched. Names repeated, but were they the same names? Or simply echoes of past loves?
She looked into my eyes, her dark orbs flickering in candlelight.
"Men," she told me. "Men I've been with, every one of them. Even a kiss," she said. "Even the smallest touch, Every one of them."
"You're crazy," I said. "Is it your....your mother?"
"You heard," she said.
"I heard," I told her. "Is it true?"
"That part's true."
"Is it why you do this?" I asked.
"I don't really know," she told me. "It just happens. Every time. It's too late now," she said. "We're here. We've kissed. You're mine." Her hand moved to mine, took it, pressed it to the blank spot in her breast.
"I'm running out of space," she said.
I kissed her, hard, and her tongue swelled against mine as her back arched and she pulled me onto her. My tongue traced a path from her mouth to her heart to her nipple, then down her belly to her pussy. I could barely see with the dancing shadows from her body writhing on the bed, but there were names there, too. Even on her lips; even on her pierced clit, so tiny I couldn't read them. But the names above it I read; Anthony and Vicky and Ajay stitched on the shaved, smooth mound of her sex. I closed my eyes and listened to her moan as my tongue worked her clit. When she came, she begged me to enter her, and I did, climbing atop her and sinking into her pussy so smoothly I almost came, myself, right away. But I held back and fucked her, my fingers tangled in her hair, each strand parting to show names written there, too, on flesh that must have once been shaved. I kissed her hard when I came, and she pulled me down onto her so hard I could feel her pubic bone against mine; she bit my tongue, drawing blood in the instant my orgasm peaked. When our lips parted, her lips were glossy with blood. "I love you," she said, shuddering. "I'm sorry. I love you."
Deep into the morning, I rested, Anita clutching herself against me, sighing almost sadly and murmuring in her sleep. The candle burned down to a ruined mass of wax, leaving acrid strains of smoke curling through the apartment, illuminated by the slanted light of the rising sun, segmented into improbable patterns by the fabric hung in my window.
I stared into the smoke and asked the question all men ask, or perhaps only most—how many? Hundreds, clearly, but how many more? Were names written in names on Anita's body, the writing so dense that the names of new men had covered those of long-lost ones, the kind of cover-up you get when they throw you out of the street gang?
And what of the blank spot on Anita's left breast—virgin white over her heart? Untouched, unspoiled, unknown?
Anita lolled to one side, dozing fitfully. She rested in a hot band of sunlight shooting molten from the window. I looked down at her and froze.
There it was. Written large, in block letters the color of blood My name.
I might have thought I'd only missed it before; my name is not uncommon, and Anita could have had one of me before. But there was no mistake. My name was written on her breast, in the spot that had been blank.
My name was written on her heart.
I shook her, softly, whispering her name. She stirred and shivered. She looked up into my eyes, and saw the question there. She looked down at her breast and her mouth dropped open slightly.
She turned her face to mine, sad, and shook her head.
She curled up onto me and whispered into my ear, her breath warm and Scotch-scented.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry."
* * *
When I woke she was gone. She'd left no trace except for her discarded leather pants and turtleneck top, her discarded boots. Perhaps she'd borrowed clothes from my drawer; smaller than me, Anita never could have fit in my jeans or my boots or my turtlenecks. Nonetheless, she was gone; the only trace of her the scent of her cunt on my body, the smell of her Scotch and her sweat and her tears on my bed. I went into the bathroom to wash her from me.
I stopped.
Staring into the mirror, I drew my hand to my breast. An inch above my left nipple, it was written in letters the color of blood. In feminine script, but shaky, fragmented, as if rendered by a tattoo artist being forced to do so at gunpoint.
The tattoo was fresh, as if she had rendered it while I slept, without waking me. Blood oozed from the fresh marker, trickling down my chest.
I knew she wouldn't be there when I went back tonight after work. I knew she wouldn't be anywhere that I would find her, ever again. I knew she was gone, vanished into the wind, roaming the planet wearing my name on her heart—touching it sometimes, late at night, whispering into the darkness "I'm sorry....I'm sorry....I'm so sorry...."
I stood there in the mirror and ran my fingers over the bloodied script of Anita's name carved across my chest like the notebook scrawling of a very small girl, lovesick and alone.
I could smell her in my nostrils, taste her on my lips. See her named on my body, rendered by a lovesick girl in the middle of the night.
