Chapter 9

The night never seemed to end. Every now and again she would try to look at her "organic" notes and the textbooks. But everything blurred in front of her face. The letters made patterns which she knew were words but it was as if she couldn't read and they didn't make any sense to her.

She took a shower and tried to wake herself up but it wasn't mere fatigue which was plaguing her. She was crashing from the two solid weeks of speeding she had been doing. The sleepless nights, the coffee and finally the methadrine she had been using, came crashing down around her head.

She could hardly walk straight and when she lay down on the couch to rest even the soft pillows didn't feel good under her.

Finally it was light and she forced herself to eat some breakfast. It tasted like straw going down and she chewed completely without enthusiasm.

The exam was at nine o'clock and by eight-thirty there was a line off students outside the gym. But she hurried past them on her way to Professor Rosen's office. He was her last hope.

It was almost twenty of nine when she knocked on his office door and he let her in dubiously.

"What do you want?" he said looking ass sleepy as she was. "I'm pretty tired right now. I've been staying up for the past two nights to make sure no one gets a look at the exam. So what do you want?"

She sat down miserably on the chair in front of him and began to cry. She hated herself for doing it, the old female gambit being the thing she turned to when all her powers failed. But she felt so shitty that was all she could do.

He came up in front of her and rubbed her neck gently. She leaned her head harder against his belly and moved her head in rhythm to his caresses.

"You look really wasted," he said without stopping his delicious massage. Her head lolled lower and lower as he rubbed her neck and scalp.

Deep and gently she felt his fingers touch her. He caressed around her ears and she let him pull her back and forth sensuously.

She still had on the jeans and T-shirt she had been wearing to study in, each soaked with sweat and filthy. He bent and kissed her neck, tasting the salt of her tired sweat.

She moaned as his lips tingled on the tiny hairs under her long sandy hair. He nibbled and licked her neck and ran his fingers down her back. She wore nothing underneath her T-shirt and he felt the tired flesh of her back, caressing between each one of her vertebrae.

"Come here," he said lifting her up. She let him pick her off the chair, one hand under her knees and one under her arms.

He swung her gently over to the couch and laid her down on her stomach. She let herself go all limp and massaged her back deep and hard until she could feel the tension moving out of her like sand from a leaking bag.

She let him run his hands inside her shirt and under breasts until he had her nipples in his hands squeezing them lustily. Her whole body cried out with joy as he grabbed her boobs. Harder and harder he pinched her and she felt shivers move through her which erased all the agony of tight muscles and frazzled nerves.

"Oh that feels so nice," she murmured under her breath, but he couldn't hear her. His hands seemed to be moving of their own accord, caressing and tingling her flesh until she cried out with pleasure.

Faster and faster he moved his fingers in little quivering motions on her nipples until she was moving from them as if she were a dying swan.

Her cries were lost and she writhed on the couch, throwing her head from side to side. There were tears of exhaustion in her eyes.

Over and over she turned until she was on her back and he kissed her sensuously on the lips. His tongue slithered into her mouth and she drew him down hard on her, pushing her breasts against him and making him feel her passion.

He pulled off her T-shirt and opened her jeans. His fingers felt good as they slipped off her panties and she kissed his hands as he caressed her face.

He opened his shirt and she could see it seat-ringed. His chest was dark and thickly-haired, his nipples outlined with rings of hair which moved in whorls.

She reached her mouth up and sucked his nipples gently. Then she traced her fingers down his chest making him shiver as if in a high wind.

She clawed deeper and caressed him lovingly. Her fingertips moved down the washboard of his ribs and at each indentation he quivered with the delightful pressure. He twisted his body hard in her grasp and she rubbed him hard back and forth between her naked thighs.

She moaned as he pushed his thigh against her crotch. Her nude love lips tingled with the rush of feeling as he massaged them deep with the knee of his trousers. She felt the smooth of the fabric as it slid up and down on her membranes.

She ground around in a circle with her hips and forced the point of his knee high into her hole. With it came delightful sensations which made her want to devour him.

Harder and harder she ground at him and he pumped until she was moaning on the ouch, sending shivers of delight through her belly and nipples.

He stripped his pants and underpants. Still wearing his socks, which he hadn't taken off all night, he slid on top of her pushing his hard member into her with a sigh.

They moved together like the wave and the shore, hard and naturally as if his organ were meant to be nuzzled high up in her sweet honey hole.

He traced a deep hard pattern with one finger down her belly. It wandered over her hips and around her ass coming back again to her mons where he shoved it in between them making her shout with joy.

He pulsed his finger on her clitoris as she sucked him in harder and harder. His long finger made her shiver with delight but then the hood of her clitoris and his cock were doing what no finger could.

In and out he pounded pulling the lips of the pudenda back and forth over her love knob until she was crying for sweet joy and revelation.

In her head sweet rushing feelings opened and closed with the panting of his breath. Sweet and long she kissed him feeling his tongue caress and explore the inside of her mouth. She opened like a flower all parts of her and let him in.

Deeper and deeper she moved taking him inside and rolling him back and forth in sweet abandon. Harder and harder he took her, making her shout for joy and then she began to come.

Her whole body felt as if it were crumbling from the speed. But his penis slamming in and out of her took the exhaustion and made it a sweet agony as she quivered all over.

"I can feel it," she groaned and pulled his ass cheeks apart, running the tip of her moistened finger around on his ass-hole sensuously. "Oh I can feel it way up inside."

She rolled her hips in an off-center motion, first one and then the other, massaging his hips with the inside of her thighs.

He felt her and responded with a savage thrust of his cock which sent him boiling over the tip with a wrenching cry. Harder and harder he pounded his member down into her sweet, soft, pillowing flesh, taking her to the hilt and making her screech with delight.

Her finger clawed wildly at his back, completely unconscious of whatever they were doing. Faster and harder she pumped her legs around making him come harder and faster. She wanted to feel the hot spurt of his cock deep up inside. She wanted him more than anything she could remember.

To erase the empty tired longing at the back of her skull and deep in her stomach she wanted his thick member to spurt white, hot and craving into her. Harder and harder he snaked up her, obeying the powerful rutting lust.

Then together they writhed, close and smooth, as he came full and gushing. She felt him moving and went berserk, twisting and writhing on his member until she came, coaxing his jism hard and glorying in the terrific twisting burning passion which roared through her like the fire in a furnace.

Over and deeper he plunged until she felt her vagina hollow and aching, filled with his sweet hot come and her whole body exploded into tingly fragments of passion and fulfillment.

They clung together for a few short minutes, her vagina full to overflowing with his seed and her arms moving spasmodically clutching him. The weariness was gone and in its place was a sweet peace which filled her if only momentarily to the overflowing.

He got up and dressed quickly, glancing at his wrist watch as he picked it up from the desk. He smiled at her as she lay on the couch, her eyes glazed with satisfied passion and her mouth half-open.

"You can take a make-up exam," he said. "But I'm afraid you'll have to take the course again in summer school. You missed much too much to ever pass without a thorough review. Besides, I want to see you around here this summer. But I think I can arrange something about an incomplete for this semester. Don't worry about it."

He slipped his jacket on and bundled the exams under his arm. She turned her face to the wall and sighed as he left, wondering how it had come so far as to come to this.

Finally after a while she put her clothes on and slipped out of the office feeling more like a ghost than a student. But she didn't feel like going back to Bob's. Instead she headed away from town, walking in no particular direction except out, away into the surrounding countryside.

The town was not large and, like Dublin of old, one could walk all the way through it in one afternoon. Soon the houses thinned.

The ugly developments gave way here and there to truck farms and as she trudged along the road her body seemed resurrected from the agony of the speed.

It was a warm early June day, the wind whistling sweet and still in breaths. She headed up away from the roads, off into the hills which surrounded the town like a bracelet.

She couldn't believe the beauty all around her. The birds, trees and winds were almost a taste on her tongue which she savored every second she was sensing the day.

Every step seemed to be born of some impulse for beauty and change. She didn't understand it but she felt happier than she ever had before.

It was getting toward evening when she decided to go back. By the time she reached the road it was growing dim and the headlights of the cars glared in her eyes as she tried to thumb a ride.

Finally she got one with a young blonde guy with eyebrows so bright they seemed to glow in the dark. The good feelings she got the instant she slid next to him in the car were the end to a perfect day.

"I guess you're going back to your old man," the kid said after a pause.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"Oh I know things like that," he said smiling, yet somehow not being smug. She shook her head as if answering herself that she was indeed going back to her old man. But somehow she had a feeling that things would have to be different.

The blonde guy let her off in front of Bob's place and she gave him a long tender kiss. As soon as she had climbed the stairs and opened the door she knew things would be different.

"Where have you been the whole freaking day?" he said clearly pissed-off. "You didn't take your exam because I called Mark and he said he never saw you there. Where were you?"

"I went to talk to Professor Rosen about taking an incomplete. I would have failed if I had taken the exam today."

"Well what did he say?" Bob asked.

"He was very nice and said I could take the course over again this summer and take an incomplete this semester. Then I could take the final at the end of the summer and I'd be sure to 'ace' it."

"Yeah I'll bet he was nice to you," Bob said suddenly furious. "I bet you spent the whole day putting out for him. No wonder he'd be nice to you!"

He threw himself down on the couch folding his arms in front of him and glaring straight ahead. His face looked hard and the long lines which she had loved to run her tongue over seemed to be set in ice.

"If you have to take organic over this summer then how the fuck are we going to go out West like we planned?" he asked.

"Oh my gosh," she said. "I forgot all about that. I was so happy at not failing organic that I forgot all about it. Gee Bob I'm sorry!"

She sat down next to him and put her arms around his neck. But he was unmoving on the couch next to her. His mouth was hard and cold.-

"That's pretty shitty," he said. "Well if you think I'm staying around this ass-hole of a town in the summer you are out of your fucking brain. I'm leaving next week and if you want to stay you can. But not HERE!"

He got up, shrugging her arms off his shoulder violently and stomped out the door. She heard the door slam and sat listening to the reverberation inside her head.

She knew he wouldn't be back that night, nor would she be there to wait for him any other night. One long night was all he had for that was all she could give.

After that she would find someplace to live alone for a while and study. It didn't appeal to her especially but there was no other way.

She went into the kitchen and threw open the window wide. Outside she heard the linden tree rustling in the breeze. It was getting cooler and the evening was getting late.

She made herself some tea and drank it silently in the living room. One long night was all she could give him. She sat for about an hour not moving.

She was listening to the sounds of her heart. First the soft rhythm of her heartbeat filled her ears and she let it carry her gently away.

Then as she grew more tired the memories of his long hard body sliding smooth and graceful on top of her filled her mind.

As if they came up from her heart and belly, like vapors, they swirled around and made her dizzy. His long hard cock slipping silently inside her and making her shiver, made her sigh even yet.

His ribs and belly, heaving and twisting with passion as she went down on him taking his member in her mouth wetly. So long and sweet were those times when she felt him growing harder and longer in her mouth as she sucked him.

The way he bucked his lean body as she flicked the tip of her tongue over his penis, they way he pulsed in and out of her mouth making her move like a flower opening more and more with each stroke.

The way he slid into her vagina smooth and tender with the first tentative strokes and then almost brutal when the way was wet and open. Harder and harder she had loved to take him. Of all the men she had ever had, his strokes thrilled her more than any other's.

The way he nibbled and chewed on her neck and made her twist this way and that under his tongue was delicious. She sighed, turning her head from one side to the other on the back of the couch. She would miss his loving.

NO matter how much of a bastard he was she could never hate him. All the sweet love which had poured over her like fountains of semen and caresses had steeled her heart tight against any hatred of him.

But still she had to do what she had to do and if he couldn't go along then they would have to be apart.

It hurt more than anything she could remember. Her parents were different and there was nothing like the feeling for them in her feeling for Bob. She loved and cherished them simply for who they were and what they had given her so long ago in the past it was less than a memory.

But what Bob had given her was more than just a memory. Every ball with him had sent her so high she thought she was never going to come down. Every time he kissed her it had seemed as if she were going to go into orbit.

Of course she remembered only the good times and those times were so sweet that despite herself she found herself wanting him again. She listened for the turn of the doorknob and the sound of his heavy tread over the hall floor.

The way he had of coming in softly and pouncing on her, tumbling them into bizarre postures and not letting her move, made her laugh. Yes, what she felt for him was not the love she felt for her parents, for what he gave to her meant something to her as she was right at that moment. It meant something to her as a woman and as a woman she craved him.

But as the small hours of the morning crawled on she fell into fitful sleep on the couch. She awoke at four and pulled a knitted afghan over her in the chill.

The wind was blowing hard outside but she was too cold to get up and close the window. When she opened her eyes next it was seven o'clock in the morning and the sun was shining in her eyes. She rubbed them and sat up stiffly.

The sleep had not been enough to wash the numbing fatigue of the speed from her body and it was painful to pull herself upright.

She washed her face and looked around the apartment as if the confirm what she already knew. Then without putting on any music or even humming to herself, she got her clothes and records together. She piled everything in some boxes and stacked them by the door.

Then she stood by the front door looking down the long stairs. They seemed to stretch down narrow and close and for a moment she felt like Alice peering down the rabbit hole.

All at once she couldn't bear the place. She didn't want Bob coming back and finding her. Scenes like that were so unnecessary when something had been decided once and for all.

She hurried back inside and carried each heavy box over to Tammy's place. She woke her old friend up but Tammy took one look at the boxes and understood.

"I just want to leave them here," Sheila said. "Is it okay?" Tammy threw her arms around Sheila.

"Of course it's okay," she said. "You can live here too if you want. I'd be glad to have you back."

They hugged for a moment then Sheila hurried back to get the other boxes. They were very heavy and it wasn't near. By the third trip her arms were aching and she caught herself wishing Bob were there to help with his long powerful muscles.

She set the box down and sat on it, laughing at herself. Harder and harder she laughed in the early morning light. Her head was cradled in her hands, and she laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks. Her eyes were red and she kept on laughing until the laughter turned to tears and the sobs to tears of joy.

She turned her face to the sun, cursing and blessing Bob for being all the things he was, and all the things he had to be. Laughing softly to herself now, she lifted the heavy box higher in her arms and stumbled down the sidewalk into her future.

Where would she go? How would she get there? She was going to need a room for the summer, at least, and a job in order to get some bread to pay for the rent and food.

She could have let it crowd in on her and overtake her sensibilities but she didn't. Suddenly, her mind was calmer than it had been all her life, and she felt capable of handling any difficulties that could come up.

The Damned box was heavy now, and Sheila pushed it to the side of the road. Across the street was a small diner where she could get something to eat. If they were pleasant, perhaps they'd let her store her package at their place while she looked around for an apartment during the day. Naturally, they would think her rather strange, coming in at such an odd hour, but she didn't care at this point. She knew what she had to do, and she simply would go about doing it.

She walked into the coffee shop with her box, and the hostess looking rather bleary-eyed from a long night of work, told her to put it behind the counter, that it would be fine to leave it there, as long as she planned to come back and get it.

Sheila smiled, and sat down at a small booth. She wasn't particularly tired, but neither was she wide-awake, so the quiet booth, and the coffee and Danish she ordered was just right for the moment. The steaming liquid felt good sliding down her throat, and the time she lingered over it was time spent feeling out the situation. How much she had to do! How intensely she was going to have to make up for the time lost wasting away her life with too much sex and too many drugs.

How had she come this far? Sheila wondered to herself. Was being a doctor something that was just too much of a challenge? Was it a falsehood to believe that it was a goal she could, realistically, reach? Sheila's hand woundaround the warmth of the coffee cup, and the tears came easily to her eyes. Maybe her parents, after all this time, were right in thinking that she should "settle" and not try to achieve the unachievable.

But damn them! Sheila cried to herself, lifting her coffee to her lips and sipping at the heat of it. Damn all of them! I can do what I want to with my life, and nobody-nobody-is going to tell me differently.

I've really fucked up, though, Sheila's thought process continued. I've fucked up badly, and I'm going to have to get with it, or I'll never make it. I'm going to have it three times as hard, anyway, because I'm a woman. Why did I have to feed right into what everyone believes, and fuck up because of sex? I'll show them and I'll show myself, that I can do it.

Her coffee cup was empty, and she was more than grateful when the tired, but smiling waitress came over to the booth to fill it for her.

"Starting the day early?" she asked hesitantly. It was a good way around what was quite obvious about a young girl with a big box, wandering the streets at dawn.

Sheila looked up and half-laughed. "Yeah," she said. "Real early. I seem to be out of an apartment." What the hell-the truth might get her someplace, after all the shit she'd been through.

"I figured," said the waitress. "I only asked, because I figured, and because I know a place you might be interested in, if you want a quiet pad."

It was sort of a testing question, and Sheila responded positively. "Quiet is just what I want," she answered. "Quiet and solitude."

"Let me get you the number and address," the waitress said, "and you can copy it down."

Her cousin, it turned out, was leaving town for the summer and wanted to sublet his apartment. He was a young doctor, and his internship in the town hospital was ending. The city in which his residency would take place required him to be there during the summer, and he would be returning in September only to formally break his lease. He simply hadn't the time to go through with moving everything right now, and wanted to sublet for the summer.

The place wasn't far from the diner, Sheila saw, and thanked the waitress profusely. She had imagined a whole day of walking around, trying to find a place, but if this one turned out, it would be time and headaches saved. A young doctor ... Fuck off, Sheila! her mind contradicted her other mind's urging.

While she drank the second cup of coffee, she thought more about the life she had to live. It was ridiculous, of course, to think that she had to cut off all personal relationships simply because she wanted to be a doctor: she simply had to put inflexible limits on herself. She had a lot to do in a short time, but she also had to realize that she was a human being, and that, as such, had sexual longings that could realistically-and in a reasonable fashion-be fulfilled.

How good it would feel to just have a pleasant, ongoing affair with someone, to love that someone and yet still get the work done that she had to do. It was possible-she knew that. It was more than possible; it was done every day by millions of people. Millions of people had jobs, and work to do, and still lived their lives together. It was what she wanted, too.

She'd forgotten to eat the Danish, and picked at it a bit with the end of the coffee. She was somewhat hungry, but impatient, and didn't want to sit still. It was only six in the morning, but she wanted to get over to the apartment.

Don't be ridiculous! she laughed at herself. You can't go over there so early in the morning. You know exactly what you'd set yourself up for! She could picture herself waking up the cousin and having the usual sexual scene ensue.

It was probably just what the part of her who wanted to fuck up her life wanted. Shit, how would she ever get out of it?

Her Danish was uninteresting; her coffee was gone. Sheila picked up the check, paid it, said a few words to the waitress, and told her she'd see her later in the day when she picked up the box.

Out on the street, the sun was breaking through the darkness, and Sheila watched the leaves of the trees become clearer and clearer. What the hell, she thought, so what if I am setting myself up? I'll just resist, that's all, because I want that apartment more than anything, and I'll just have to tell the guy to fuck off if he tries anything.

She walked fairly quickly to the address she'd written down on a napkin, and buzzed the correct apartment. There was no answer, and she continued to buzz until a voice answered. "Yes?"

"My name is Sheila Overton. Your cousin gave me this address ... about subletting the apartment. I'm sorry I came so early, I ... "

The buzzer signaled the door being unlocked, and Sheila walked in.

Two flights up, the apartment door was open, and as she looked in, she saw that it was a blaze of lights. A fully clothed young man in levis and a work shirt was standing at the threshold, looking rather surprised, but smiling.

"Hi," he said, rather quietly. "Don't mind me if I seem a little stupored. I've been up all night with my research project."

Sheila was more than relieved. He'd been studying all night? Terrified he'd understand her situation perfectly, and maybe she wouldn't have to use her body in order to get something she wanted.

"Anyway, come on in. My name's Michael Davis, Sheila." He reached out and shook her hand, ushering her into the apartment. "Sit down. I was just about to have my thirtieth cup of coffee-join me?"

Sheila did. She marveled at the apparent ease with which this young man went about his business, the ease with which he had stayed up all night working because he had to, because he wanted to, because something mattered to him that much.

He sat down with the coffee, and asked her why she was hanging around this town during the summer, and suddenly it was quite easy for Sheila to spill the whole story.

"I've just really fucked up," she said, "and I've got to have the peace and solitude enough to undo it all. If I'm going to get into med school, I'm going to need a record three times as good as any male's."

"That's true, Sheila," answered Michael, relaxing back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment. "And you're going to fight damned hard, even once you get the good record. It's a man's world, in medicine, and they don't generally want women around."

"What do you think about it?" asked Sheila, hesitantly.

"Sheila," sighed Michael, "I think that if you're qualified, if you've got something to offer to those people you'll service, then by all means you should fight like hell to get in. If you're only out to prove something, don't: get out of the field now, before you get hurt."

Sheila listened to him. She'd never been quite so impressed with another human being. Michael was attractive, and yet serious about his career. He knew what he had to do, and he was going about doing it.

"I want to sublet the apartment, Michael. I need time and a place to be alone, time to make up for all the shit I got myself into."

"Then it's yours, Sheila." It was as simple as that. "But I'll tell you what-why don't we meet later in the afternoon, after I get some sleep, and we can talk about the rent and the telephone and shit like that?"

"Sure, great," said Sheila, and she rose from the chair. Her hand reached out for Michael's, as he reached out for hers. "And thanks a lot, Michael."

"Thank you, Sheila. I was getting a little desperate when I couldn't find anyone to sublet the place. It's a load off my mind to know that it'll be taken care of."

Sheila left the apartment, feeling somewhat settled, but still unsure. After all, she needed a place to stay right away, and what if Michael wasn't leaving for a few days, even a week? She'd seen a few suitcases open in his living room, but nothing complete-looking. Well, she would simply have to hang out in the park, and maybe go back to Tammy's.

She spent the day in the park, and in some of the shops in town. She was fatigued, but she didn't feel as though she could stop. At about three in the afternoon, she went back to Michael's place and buzzed. The return buzz let her in, and she climbed the two flights to where the young man stood, clean-shaven now, and in a fresh pair of dungarees.

"Hi," he greeted her. "How's it going?"

"Okay," she said quietly. She felt as if she and Michael were old friends, and she didn't feel the need to put out any facade of false feeling in front of him.

"Hungry?" Michael asked. "I've got some bacon and eggs going, and there's plenty more for two."

"Great," said Sheila, because she was famished at this point. "How come you're so nice?"

"Oh, I have nothing better to do," laughed Michael.

"Not much. Is that why you were up all night?"

Michael smiled at her, and brought her into the kitchen while he finished the eggs and bacon. He told her about the research project, and how special it was to him, and then asked her about the sort of thing that she wanted to do in medicine. She was more than willing to talk to him, and found it a relief that someone finally understood her when she spoke seriously about her future career.

"Everyone told me I was a fool, Michael," Sheila said, and it was hard for her to keep back the tears. "You're the first one who can understand."

"That's because I know for myself, Sheila. I know precisely how much guts it takes to become a doctor, and that's for a man. It takes a hell of a lot more for a woman."

They ate the eggs and bacon in relative silence, and Sheila was aware that Michael was watching her.

Finally he spoke. "You're beautiful, Sheila. I'm sure you know that. You're going to have one hell of a Fight ahead of you."

"I know," Sheila whispered. The right relationship, she was thinking ... it would be so perfect with Michael. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, she wanted to-

"Don't think it, Sheila. If you give in to those feelings, I'll give in to mine, too, and the way I feel right now, I could be in the bedroom in an instant, making love to you. So let's leave it for now. There's too much work to do, and there's a lot of time in the future."

"Sure," spoke Sheila quietly, "okay."

Michael touched her hand briefly, gently. There was a silence too long between them, and then the stronger and more mature broke the touch. "Help me pack?" he asked her.

"Sure," Sheila smiled.

At six, Michael was at his threshold, where Sheila had first met him. Untouched and undiscovered, somehow she still felt he was hers. She had all the instructions about the apartment, all the keys.

"See you soon," said Michael, "probably around Labor Day. But I'll be in touch before. Please take care-"

Michael leaned over and kissed her lips lightly, then turned and walked down the stairs.

My new lover, Sheila whispered to herself. You'll be enough for me until I can get myself out of this hole, and yes, I'll see you soon-around Labor Day.