Collide

“Candy Applegate?”

Candy looked at her with a grin. “That’s me.” “You have a restaurant,” I said. “And that cooking show on TV.”

The room bubbled with laughter. I was looking at the Enclave. I licked my mouth and tasted sweat.

“Naw, girl, that ain’t me.” Candy shook his head and dipped the spoon back into whatever was simmering so deliciously on the stove. “Must be some other Candy.”

“No, it’s you,” I said, but shut my mouth up tight before I could say the rest.

Fugues were never like dreams, which I could sometimes control. I’d never been able to fix the course of what happened when I was dark. Sometimes that meant they were scarier than nightmares. Other times, like now, I just had to remember this wasn’t real and I could do nothing about it. I could tell them I knew the future, but I’d only look crazier than I probably already did.

Johnny, in fact, was studying me. “Feed her, Candyman.” “I’ll feed her,” Candy said.

And they did. A great, steaming bowl of some spicy, meatless stew. We all ate it over fragrant, sticky rice and sopped up the gravy with thick slices of homemade bread. I had to stop to taste everything twice, not because I was greedy or hungry, but because it tasted so, so good.

We all ate a lot. Laughing and joking. Talking about politics and art and music I knew only from history lessons or the classic rock station. They dropped names casually—Jagger, Bowie, Lennon. They dipped bare fingers into the communal pot and ate with their hands. They passed a pipe without telling me what was in it, and I smoked some of it because, after all, none of this was real.

Through it all, Johnny watched me from across the table. I watched him, too. I hadn’t asked what year this was and knew even if I did it wouldn’t matter. By the length of his hair, I guessed Johnny was about twenty-four. This made me older than him by about seven years. He didn’t seem to care.

I definitely didn’t.

We ate and talked and laughed. Someone brought out a guitar and started to play a song I was surprised I knew the words to. Something about flowers and soldiers, and where had they gone. And then they sang “Puff the Magic Dragon.” I’d never known it was about marijuana.

Sometime during all of this, our places around the table changed. I ended up next to Johnny instead of across from him. Our thighs pressed together. Our shoulders brushed when he leaned forward to grab up a slice of Candy’s bread, or to refill my glass with the kind of rich, red wine I avoided in real life.

Johnny turned his face toward me and smiled. And I kissed him. Just a brush of lip on lip, his breath warm and soft against me. He smiled into the kiss and his hand came up to cup the back of my neck beneath my hair.

Nobody noticed, or nobody cared. By that point I think most of them were drunk and high. Ed had passed out, his head on the table, snoring softly. Johnny squeezed my thigh beneath the table.

“Take me someplace,” I whispered into his ear.

He looked into my eyes for a moment, curiously. Then he nodded. He took me by the hand and led me from the table. We didn’t say goodbye, and I didn’t look back. We went up the long, narrow stairs, our hands linked loosely. My hand trailed the banister. I looked over the side, to the floor below, then up to the floor above. Stuck between, Johnny leading me, woozy from the food and whatever was in the pipe … I followed.

But at the top of the stairs, I led. I kissed him. I pushed him back against the wall, my leg cocked between his thighs, against his crotch. His belt buckle, something huge and metal, pressed my belly through my skirt. I slid my hands up his front, over the slick-smooth fabric of his ugly-patterned shirt. And I kissed him, long and smooth and hard and slow and deep.

He looked at me curiously again when I pulled back. “Who are you?”

“Emm.” I wasn’t slurring, but my voice was definitely hoarser than usual. I tasted him when I swiped my tongue across my lips.

“Emm,” Johnny said, as though considering something important. “That’s your name, all right. But who are you?” “Nobody,” I assured him.

Our bodies pressed together. His hands fit on my hips. Downstairs, I heard the burble of laughter and music. Smelled the tang of weed. Here, up here, it was quiet.

I’d been away too long. Any minute I would start to fade from this place and wake, maybe blinking away only a few seconds of time. Maybe on my knees, or worse, my face, on the ground. Maybe I wouldn’t wake at all.

The first door in the hallway, just to Johnny’s left, was cracked open enough to show me a bedroom. I took his hand and pulled him toward it. Through the door, to the bed, which was neatly made up with a blanket of orange, ribbed fabric. My grandmother had used bedspreads just like that one. I sat on the bed and spread my legs. My skirt, too long for this era, dipped between my thighs, and I pulled it up inch by inch, watching him watch me.

I pulled the fabric up over the torn remnants of my panty hose and crooked my finger at him. “Come here.”

Johnny, grinning, was already unbuttoning his shirt. He tossed it to the floor and then crawled up over me. Our mouths locked. His tongue stroked mine. I cradled him against my cunt, my legs open wide to accommodate him. My fingers drew circles on the bare flesh of his back.

I rolled him onto his back and straddled him. I hooked fingers into my nylons and tore them to keep any barrier from between us, but his jeans were still there.

“Cock blocked,” I murmured, and tugged at his zipper.

“What?” Johnny laughed and put his hand on mine to help me pull down the zipper.

“Your jeans. They’re cock-blocking me. Take them off.”

He laughed again. I wanted to eat it up, that laughter. His mouth. All of him. I bent to kiss him with my hair hanging down all around us, and when he was naked underneath me, myself still clothed, I covered his body with my kisses.

He didn’t protest when I nipped and sucked, or when I licked. He didn’t protest when I lifted my skirt and pulled my panties aside to slide down on his cock. And Johnny didn’t protest when I fucked him, sweating, both of us concentrating hard, not speaking, not even kissing, as the pleasure built higher and higher and crashed over us both.

He only protested when I got up to leave, but by then it was too late. The edges of this place were fading. Shaking in the aftermath of my orgasm, I kissed him. My skirt fell down around my knees. Johnny held my hand and made a wordless noise of complaint, but I tugged my fingers gently from his and stepped backward out the door, closing it behind me.

And then I woke up.

Chapter 06

My knees hurt. Throbbed and stung. Blood oozed from several scrapes. My panty hose had indeed been shredded, but on this sidewalk now, not from me tearing them away in order to get at naked Johnny.

He had one hand on my elbow, the other at my hip, holding me in place. “You all right?”

I blinked rapidly, putting myself in place. I knew where I was. I knew who I was. Most importantly, I knew when I was.

“Fine. I slipped on the ice. I’m sorry, did I hit you?”

My breezy explanation wasn’t cutting it with him, I could tell. How long had I been dark? I hadn’t conveniently glanced at my watch before the fugue.

“You should be more careful,” Johnny warned, sounding stern.

I could still taste him. I swallowed against the flavor of his mouth and skin. We were standing too close for strangers, which is what we really were. He let go of my hip but kept hold of my elbow, and I was grateful because my legs had suddenly gone trembling and weak.

“You look like shit. You better come in here.”

Yew bettuh come in heah.

From anyone else I’d have laughed a little at that accent, but on Johnny it was utterly drool-worthy. I couldn’t say anything, could only let him pull me along and up the brick stairs, through his front door. And then I stood inside Johnny’s house.

It was beautiful, of course. I hadn’t expected anything less. I stood on his parquet wood floors, my panty hose shredded and the hem of my coat dripping. I hadn’t noticed that before, that I’d gotten wet. I looked at my feet and the growing puddle of dirty water, then at him.

“Oh, God. Sorry.”

Johnny had been hanging up his long black coat and that scarf on a brass hook on the wall just inside the door, and he turned to give me an up-and-down look that left me feeling totally lacking. “You should come into the kitchen. Get a drink. You look like you’re going to pass out.”

I felt white-faced and shivering, certain I looked like shit just as he’d said. “Thanks.”

“C’mon.” Johnny made a shooing gesture down the hall toward the kitchen, then followed me. “I’ll make you a cuppa tea. Unless you want something stronger?”