Chapter 7
When Chris returned from work to the empty apartment, her rage knew no bounds. She instantly suspected Ellen as being behind Lila's absence and wasted no time in going to Ellen's apartment.
"Where the fuck is she?" Chris demanded, pushing past the startled Ellen and peering around the apartment.
"Who?" Ellen asked in genuine ignorance.
"You know damn well who the fuck I'm talking about!" Chris shouted. "Now where is she?"
Ellen, who was dressed in her nightgown, and in fact had been sleeping when Chris rang her bell, stared sleepily at Chris.
"I don't know who you're talking about," she said coldly. "And furthermore, you have a hell of a nerve barging in here like this!"
Without even thinking twice about it, Chris hauled off and slapped Ellen across the face.
With a sharp cry, Ellen's hand flew to her mouth and her fingers were met with a sticky trickle of blood.
The sight of blood excited Chris even further. There were so many things about Ellen that Chris hated and feared and her rage was directed against all women like Ellen, rather than just Ellen.
"I m talking about Lila," she snapped. "She's gone and you know it."
Ellen made a sudden move then and Chris thought she was going for her whip.
"No you don't!" she yelled, leaping on Ellen and pinning her to the floor. Ellen began to struggle beneath Chris, but she knew she was overpowered.
"I swear to God I don't know where she is," she cried. "Please! Get off of me!"
Feeling the crushed Ellen beneath her, drove Chris to desire her. But her desire was so confused and mixed up with her hatred, she was determined to maim Ellen forever. She would bite her clit off and then see how Ellen would function in the high class gay circles she ran in!
Panting heavily, Chris raised the top part of her frame and peered down into the sobbing, yet still beautiful face of Ellen. She wanted to spit in that face, yet kiss it at the same time.
As for Ellen, the presence of Chris was a nightmare. The entire time she had lived with her, Ellen had never lost this vague fear of the strong country girl.
"You're hurting me," she protested, moving painfully around underneath Chris's weight.
"Tough shit," Chris said. She was convinced that Ellen was telling the truth when she said that she didn't know where Lila was, but she wasn't content to leave it at that.
She thrust her pelvis into Ellen's hips.
"Remind you of anything?" she asked.
Despite herself and her unfortunate position, Ellen felt herself becoming aroused. It was always like this when she just woke up. Maybe if she let Chris make love to her she would leave her alone.
"Yes," she said in this little girl voice, "it reminds me of when we were lovers."
Chris listened carefully for traces of sarcasm in Ellen's tone, but to her ears Ellen sounded sincere.
"Miss me, huh?" Chris asked, bringing her mouth to Ellen's ear and blowing little gusts of hot air inside.
Ellen's insides were beginning to melt. Having Chris eat her out would be most pleasant!
"Yes," she said, using again that small voice that always seemed to soothe the violent Chris.
Chris brought her mouth around to Ellen's neck and began sucking on the soft folds of skin, hickey-fashion. Ellen had always enjoyed this, though not the marks it usually left. Her arms went around Chris's back.
Shit! she thought to herself. If Elizabeth could see her imprisoned under Chris like this she would probably drop her from her social list like a hot potato!
Thinking of Elizabeth made Ellen determined to extricate herself from this whole Carol mess. In fact, Ellen vowed, when Chris left she would call Carol.
Now Chris was forcing Ellen's bruised mouth open with her tongue. Though it was painful to kiss Chris, Ellen disguised this fact and flicked her tongue inside her former lover's mouth.
Chris took encouragement from this action on the part of Ellen and looked eagerly towards going down on her in order to bite her clit off. She brought one of her hands out from behind Ellen's back and began fondling her tits, squeezing it slowly, bringing the nipple to a sharp pointy head.
Ellen's nightgown was in shreds now and Chris began sucking on Ellen's tits. So great was her pleasure in doing this, she almost forgot her anger at Ellen and her rage over losing track of Lila.
Thinking of Lila made her decide to go to the Cat later. And when she got through with Lila, it would be to Lila's advantage to leave the city of New York!
Ellen was also getting into the swing of things with Chris. She's just like a big, demented child! Ellen thought. Motherly feelings coursed through the barren woman and she moved her body around with pleasure underneath Chris.
Chris relaxed to the extent that she allowed Ellen to lie on her side for a bit. This gave Chris the chance to squeeze Ellen's ass, one of her favorite things. Tonight she really squeezed her buns, hoping to leave finger marks on her precious skin.
Ellen didn't protest, though she resented the roughness of Chris's touch. If I can just put up with her a while longer, she thought to herself, she'll eat me out to orgasm and I'll be through with the cretin.
It was odd how the two of them, involved in the act of love, were thinking such hateful thoughts. Such was the treachery most people hid from each other.
"Eat me," Ellen was pleading in Chris's ear. "Let me feel your tongue down there, like we used to do!"
You're going to feel a lot more than my tongue down there, Chris vowed to herself. But the idea of licking out her ex-lover's cunt had her aroused as well.
She slid down Ellen's body quickly, nosing her way towards Ellen's cunt, her eyes wearing a glazed expression as though her lust was all she was thinking about.
Ellen felt the first stab of Chris's tongue and she relaxed completely. She lifted the short strands of Chris's hair lazily, letting her mind take off to pleasant thoughts. Maybe she should try and work out her differences with Chris after all? They weren't that bad together, now that Ellen thought about it. They had had a lot of good times together, and though Ellen was enjoying her freedom, she missed having one special person to feel close to.
The model that she had been caught in bed with had proved a great disappointment to Ellen. She was vain and self-centered, but Ellen had forgiven her because she was so beautiful. Maybe Ellen would be better off with the ordinary-looking Chris who could be as faithful as a dog. Ellen thrust her hips high into Chris's face to show her how much she enjoyed her familiar tongue.
Chris was so lost in eating out Ellen's cunt that she almost forgot she had planned on biting her clit off. Remembering it suddenly, she had to think back to the way Ellen had treated her towards the end when they were living together. Otherwise, she couldn't arouse herself to that state of anger necessary for such an act of mutilation.
Aside from beating the shit out of Chris with the whip and her act of unfaithfulness with the model, there was the day by day insulting treatment that Ellen had heaped on her. The verbal abuse and how Ellen most of the time had made Chris feel little more than like a dog that was around to service her sexual needs.
Like the time when Chris had gone to meet Ellen's big Park Avenue friend, Elizabeth. Chris may have been inarticulate in many ways, but she knew when she was being put down and insulted and here, in Elizabeth's apartment, she had felt like the butt of a private joke between the two women.
"Where on earth is Emerson, New Jersey?" Elizabeth had asked in a high, mocking tone. "I've never heard of it!" she added, as though that was enough to prove it didn't exist.
Chris had stumbled out that it wasn't far from Hackensack which brought new peals of laughter tumbling from Elizabeth's bright red mouth.
"Hackensack!" she had squealed. "Isn't that where that Italian singer, Frank whatisname is from?"
"No," Chris had said. "Sinatra's from Hoboken."
"Hoboken!" Elizabeth had hooted. And she and Ellen laughed so hard they almost dropped their fancy tea cups.
Chris had sat on the velvet beige couch feeling like a frog on a stump. As much as she hated both their upper-class manners, she envied them also. She stared down at her faded denims, remembering the way the doorman had looked at her when she entered the building with Ellen.
"And what does your father do?" Elizabeth asked when she had finally stopped laughing.
Chris was about to blurt that her father worked for the sanitation department, which was true, but caught herself in time.
"He's an engineer," she said, telling a half-truth.
"Oh!" Elizabeth had said, impressed and not quite believing. "What kind of engineer? Civil, electrical?"
"Sanitation," Chris had answered simply, hating her inability to lie.
"You mean he's a GARBAGE MAN!" Elizabeth had shrieked. "Oh dear God! Ellen wherever did you meet this girl? Why she's absolutely QUAINT!" Ellen had blushed. "Well," she said, "she IS a little primitive!" And she had patted Chris on the back.
Chris recoiled from this patronizing gesture from Ellen but Ellen was so wrapped up in discussing her latest sculpture, she hadn't even noticed.
Chris thought grimly to herself that if it wasn't for her slinging hash in some Village dive Ellen would be out in the street giving her fucking sculptures away, and ground her teeth.
"What IS that noise?" Elizabeth had demanded, tilting her head like some aristocratic bird.
Chris had stopped grinding her teeth then, preferring not to admit it was she who was responsible for the grating sound.
"Thank God it's stopped!" Elizabeth said. "It sounded like someone was grinding their teeth! We had a dog that did that once. I found it so annoying I had him destroyed!"
"Not Pooh Bear?" Ellen had gasped. "I thought you loved him!"
"I did," Elizabeth admitted, helping herself to another watercress sandwich, "but I just couldn't take that noise!"
Chris stared at Elizabeth as though she had come from another planet. She didn't think women like Elizabeth really existed other than in the movies, but here she was, sitting with one right now!
"More tea?" Elizabeth had asked Chris. Chris stared into her empty cup. "No thanks," she said. "I'd rather have a beer if you have one."
"A beer!" Elizabeth had croaked. "Why it's only three o'clock in the afternoon!" She looked distastefully at Chris and then swung her gaze to Ellen, who shrugged.
"Yeah, a beer!" Chris repeated.
Elizabeth was startled by this and jumped off the couch. "Of course!" she said and disappeared towards the kitchen. It was at this point in life that it dawned on Chris that people generally dished out just as much as they thought you would take.
Several beers later and Chris was beginning to feel fearless about Elizabeth. She thought she was a vain, helplessly childish and useless woman, far inferior to her.
With the alcohol swimming around on her frontal lobes, she waited for Elizabeth to make one more smart remark. But it seemed as though Elizabeth knew that Chris would be dangerous with a few drinks inside her. Like an Indian.
Chris now knew why the white man didn't want the Indians drinking. They claimed that Indians were affected in a strange way by alcohol, but Chris just bet that Indians started acting like men around white folks, not acting like the subservient savages white folks wanted them to. The myth of Indians and alcohol, Chris thought, was probably just one more lie white men had forced on their culture.
But the thing that really pissed Chris off was the way Ellen made no attempt to defend her. In fact, she seemed to enjoy the way Chris's presence amused the shit out of Elizabeth, and for that, Chris could never forgive her.
As they rode back in the cab together, Chris had wanted to talk about it. She expected Ellen to apologize for her lack of defense, but instead she started right in, berating Chris was her lack of couth.
"Couth!" Chris had shouted. "What the fuck are you talking about? You're the one who showed no class! You're supposed to be in love with me and you let that bitch make fun of me all afternoon!"
"I don't know what I see in you!" Ellen had sniffed. She looked out the window. Chris grabbed her viciously between her thighs and gave a tight squeeze. "This, baby!" she told her. "THIS is what you dig in me!"
Ellen had fallen silent then and Chris felt she had won. Later, that night in bed with Ellen sobbing all over the place about what a wonderful lover Chris was and how she didn't know how she could live without her, Chris almost threw up.
That's the way it always went between them. When Chris was making love to Ellen she felt like her equal, if not her superior. But when they were in a social situation Ellen made Chris feel like the clod she always suspected she was.
It wasn't her fault that she was so large and awkward! As far as agility went, her tongue could stand up with the rest of them. Especially when it was buried in Ellen's cunt. Chris's problem was that her tongue refused to perform in the talking department.
Sometimes, when Ellen had her fancy artist friends over, it was insufferable to Chris. She had to wait on them as though she was a servant to Ellen, instead of her lover. Ellen had many friends, though they all seemed like jerks to Chris. The guys were all gay and the girls were either nuts like Elizabeth or so spaced out on their "art", they couldn't relate to real people like herself!
To Chris, being real meant being crude, Ellen had said. This simply was not the case, she went on to instruct, (right in a roomful of people!). This was the afternoon Ellen was celebrating her fortieth birthday though she told everyone else she was thirty-five!
Chris had been drinking for most of the day, and when it came time for Chris to carry out the cake, she had had just about enough.
As she advanced into the dining room with the cake between her hands, she almost fell twice from drinking and her clumsiness hadn't escaped the guests.
"Looks like your "friend" has been juicing it up," an art dealer from uptown said to Ellen as though Chris wasn't even there.
"Yes Ellen darling," another one had piped up, "are you so difficult to live with you have to keep the help stoned?"
The party of five that were assembled around the table burst into gales of laughter at this and Chris stood there, holding the cake and staring through her blurred vision at the guests.
"Let's talk about something important," another woman said.
"No, let's sing Happy Birthday," another suggested. This suggestion went over real big with the group and they lustily burst into Happy Birthday, though Chris noted that half of them forgot Ellen's name!
When they had just finished the song, Chris had lurched into the dining room. As she struggled to set the cake in front of Ellen's place, she fell. Struggling vainly to catch the cake, she managed to seize its mangled ruins only to smash it into Ellen's face in the process.
The guests stared at the spectacle of Ellen sitting at the head of the table, the entire part of her top body covered with frosting and bit of crumbs.
There was deathly silence from everyone until Art, another sculptor, burst into high, uncontrollable laughter. Pointing his finger at Ellen, he choked: "If only I had my camera!"
His laughter broke the tension at the table and the rest joined in merrily. The only one who wasn't laughing was Ellen. Finally they noticed this and their laughter died down.
"Are you quite through?" Ellen demanded between the layers of frosting that obscured her face from their view. Her voice was as cold as ice.
"Chris!" she snapped. "Where are you?"
"Here," Chris had mumbled thickly from where she still lay on the floor.
"Come over here this instant," Ellen had commandeered, her voice still icy, "and lick this cake off my face!"
No one dared to breathe.
Chris rose on one knee and stared at the mass of goo that covered Ellen.
"All of it?" she asked.
"Every single last drop!" Ellen had said shrilly.
Guiltily, Chris began licking the cake off Ellen's face. The others stared fascinated at this spectacle, so engrossed were they in the perversion of the act, they didn't even seem to realize that now they wouldn't get any cake!
When Chris had licked the entire cake off Ellen's head in about fifteen minutes, Ellen blinked coldly at her. Then she said in a steel voice: "Now go and bake me another one!"
Chris had stared at her in disbelief. It had taken her all day to bake THAT one!
"Aw no," she protested. "Ellen! Don't make me do it!"
"Goodbye," Ellen had said, turning back to her guests. Chris had stood there for a minute or so, staring at Ellen's back dumbly. Then she turned on her drunken heels and stumbled back into the hot kitchen. Ellen heard the pots and pans banging around and said to the others, "Well, now that we have had our touch of levity, perhaps we can get on with the celebration of my birthday!"
And they had all gone into the living room to sing songs around the piano while Chris stayed in the kitchen trying to bake another cake.
She was still there the next morning though the guests had gone long ago.
She never did manage to bake another cake and Ellen had never forgiven her for it.
For several weeks she had refused to talk to Chris other than . to give simple commands like: "eat my cunt!" "Make my dinner!" "Wash my underwear!"
Chris had put up with this bullshit for almost a week before her brain began to snap. Losing her temper in a fit of drunken passion, she had forced Ellen's head under the tap in the tub, threatening to drown her.
Finally Ellen had begged for mercy and Chris had gotten bored with her game. She released her and slept on the couch that night.
Now, while eating out Ellen's cunt, these memories served to remind her of the real reason she was here and her old hatred flamed afresh.
She began nibbling on Ellen's clit, taking little baby bites in preparation for the big one.
"Oh!" Ellen was babbling. "You haven't lost your touch! How I envy Lila!"
Hearing Lila's name set off new waves of anger and purpose within Chris and this time she was so bold as to actually bite into Ellen's clit.
"Ow!" Ellen protested. "Not so rough, my dear!"
Right then and there, Chris seized Ellen's large clit between her teeth and hung on for dear life. The shriek that escaped Ellen's lips would have brought the entire building to her apartment had not Chris cut it off mid-scream with her broad palm.
Then she stood up over the still prostrate Ellen who was holding her cunt with both hands and moaning.
"Who's a primitive?" she demanded, kicking Ellen in the ribs when she didn't answer instantly.
"I am!" Ellen sobbed.
"Who is going to stay up all night in the kitchen and bake ME a cake?" Chris asked angrily, kicking Ellen again even before she got a chance to answer.
"I am!" Ellen yelled.
"Who is better than who?" Chris asked not caring her grammar was probably incorrect.
"You're the best!" Ellen screamed. "You're a better person than I could ever hope to be!"
"Now you're talking!" Chris said with a great deal of satisfaction. She was having so much fun at Ellen's expense, she seriously considered moving back in with her so they could continue this game forever!
Finally Chris stopped kicking Ellen's inert body and told her to get off the floor.
"I can't move!" Ellen wailed.
"Get off the floor right now and make me something to eat!" Chris ordered.
Ellen struggled painfully to her feet and staggered towards the kitchen. Chris went into the living room, sat down in Ellen's chair and kicked off her shoes. Flipping the remote control button that brought the TV on, Chris sighed with contentment. This was even better than living with Lila! With Lila, Chris had to be the slave. She decided it was better to be a master any day of the week.
"Hurry it up in there!" she shouted towards the kitchen.
To think that she had put up with all that bullshit before was now inconceivable to Chris! She felt elated with power as though she had found her true place in the sun. Fuck trying to be good and decent, she decided to herself. All that ended up in was her eating other people's shit!
Ellen entered the room then, holding a tray in her hands full of steaming food.
"I hope you didn't try and poison me," Chris asked, as it suddenly occurred to her.
"Of course not!" Ellen protested, going into her superior sniffing routine.
"You eat it first," Chris ordered. "Get down on your knees and open your mouth. Now!" she roared when Ellen dumbly stared at her.
Ellen dropped to her knees and suffered the humiliation of eating out of Chris's dish like a dog.
When Chris was satisfied she wouldn't keel over from Ellen's cooking, she snatched the plate away from Ellen and ravaged the rest of the meal.
Then she made Ellen leave the kitchen spotless, adding that she would force her to eat a cockroach if she found one.
Not only was Chris getting a great deal of enjoyment out of this reversal in their roles, it seemed to her that Ellen was too. This was the only way she would be able to live with Ellen, or anyone, that way again.
"I'm moving in," she told Ellen. "Starting right now. And I'm going to tell you something else ... " she started to say, when Ellen interrupted with, "what about Lila?"
"Shut up when I'm talking," Chris said, hauling off and knocking Ellen in the head. "I'm not finished."
And she stretched expansively in the chair.
"To begin with," she said, "I'm throwing out every single piece of sculpture that you can't sell in a week. That's it. I'm only giving you a week to prove what kind of artist you are. If you are left with any of your work, I'm throwing it out and I'LL start painting! YOU can be the waitress and I'll be the one that stays home. Now I'm warning you. Don't think I won't find out if you get all your friends to buy that junk either!"
At this point, Ellen began to cry. Real tears poured out of her face, much to the amusement of Chris.
"Blow your nose!" she ordered. "And stop that sniveling!"
But Ellen couldn't stop. She could just see how their life together was going to be! Not the way it used to be, that was for sure!
Chris would probably bring all her uncouth friends over, the ones who played pool, and she, Ellen, New England bred and raised would be forced to cook and clean for them! The prospect of this horror sent Ellen off on a fresh group of tears and wails.
But to Chris who already was planning on heaving the grand piano out and replacing it with a juke box, nothing could wipe the smile off her face. Not even the fact that Lila was gone.
Chris knew that with Lila, her life would have been one hellish repeat of the grief she had previously known with Ellen. Now that she had been lucky enough to turn the tables around, nothing but nothing could ever make her pursue the likes of Lila again.
In fact, so pleased was Chris that Lila had split, leaving the way to something like this, she even hoped that whomever found her would make her as happy as she was feeling right now.
"Get me a beer," she ordered the sobbing Ellen. "And hurry it up."
Ellen returned with the beer and handed it to Chris. She stared at Chris with wonder. A terrible thought had occurred to her. What if she wasn't able to sell her sculptures? What if she couldn't even GIVE them away? That would be horrible. And then a worse thought occurred to her.
What if Chris became a successful artist? The idea that Chris might be more talented than her, sent Ellen off into a fit of choking sobs that lasted for several days.