Little Cat

ound.

It had been just over two weeks since Adi got into that white car and never came back. I thought about calling the cops and filing a report, but almost all of the girls at the club had overstayed their visas and I knew I couldn’t do that to them.

I also had no idea what Gio had to do with Adi being gone.

Mostly I knew that I wanted Gio all to myself. I wanted Gio Mogilevich mine. Because something came out from his heart that was dark and alive, some kind of ray that pierced through my weak protection.

And Gio came back for me seven days later. Fucking bastard, it took seven long days! I made a measly $200 because I was only thinking about him. To get myself to sleep I imagined Gio and me in Japan, drinking like gangsters, praying like slugs.

It was noon when he came and I was just getting up. He was wearing a grey suit jacket, which was strange because it was hot out even though it was September. Gio sat beside me on the edge of the bed and started tickling my ribs with his fingertips. I had to choke back my laughs. Then he did the same thing up near my throat. That made me yell, louder than I meant to. My head was lifting off the bed and slamming back down and Gio began tickling me even harder from throat to waist, throat to waist, until the whole bed was moving and I was spinning. I squeezed my eyes and let myself go …

‘Shhh, Mira! Stop breathing so heavily.’

My eyes opened up. Stop laughing? Stop breathing? Gio’s lips were pressed together. He was staring at my neck. He thought he was looking at my face, but he wasn’t. I knew that look from other guys. The glazed eyes that meant: I want to be with someone I don’t feel guilty about right now.

‘Hey, why’re you wearing that jacket?’ I asked loudly. ‘Where were you? Where are you coming from?’

Gio wasn’t going to tell me where he had been. He sat there vacantly, like I’d ruined the moment or something.

‘Is something wrong?’ I asked. ‘Did something just happen?’

‘No.’ Gio took off his jacket and arranged himself over my body. His thighs locked like walls at my sides. He scooped his hands under my neck and brought me up to the big lump in his crotch. The smell of sweat charged the creases in his pants. I wanted to rub my face down there, burrow.

‘You’re hungry, yes?’ Gio asked. ‘Tell me you’re hungry.’

I was mute. Hungry.

‘You want to put it in your mouth?’

Yes. Up and down, up and down like a fool!

‘Why do you like putting things in your mouth?’

I don’t know. Just give it to me!

As my mouth opened, Gio’s zipper came down. He let out his cock. I couldn’t look at his face. His cock was the only thing I could look at: the thickening root, the slit like an eye. His cock was the part that already loved me.

Put it in my mouth, gimme, gimme, gimme, please …

‘If you don’t speak, we’ll do it like this then.’

Holding the back of my head, Gio shifted toward my face. He placed his hard flesh on the groove of my tongue. I was stunned. I got hot. I dropped into his cradling. I was sucking his body in gulps down my throat. I wanted to swallow to see how we fit. A suctioning clasp. Forever. No key.

With my mouth on his cock and his cock in my mouth, I didn’t remember any other man I’d ever been with. No other man had ever been inside me. I was a bud, sprouting fresh from the mud.

Ezrah, maybe you think that’s dumb female essentialism, but it’s not.

It was daytime when I went back to the park. I walked to the top of the hill, up a set of wooden stairs. I hadn’t realized that there was a clear way up – that what looked like a forest at night was just a bunch of crooked trees. I could see the club down at the end of the street: the silver door where the men came in and the brick part at the back where all of us lived. The buildings of the city were packed together in the distance. The sky hung above them like a heavy white sheet.

Lani and Coco sat together on the grass. They were passing a bottle back and forth, waving me over.

‘Come, Mira!’ Coco shouted, almost standing.

For a second I thought she might start being nicer to me. Lani shoved her cigarette butt into the grass. The patch they were sitting in was yellowish, flat. When I got up close, I saw they’d both been crying.

Coco passed me the bottle. I sat down and took a swig.

‘What is this?’ I coughed. It was fizzy and off.