The Invisible Man Part 4

It's one of those nights that would make for a sweltering day, the lights on the softball field haloed and the air murky. Here on the aluminum bleachers, though, the air moves around Elise on its way to wherever air is headed for, separates around her form and shoves together again at the other end. The players are friends of Morris's. The game would normally take on a barely contained sentimentality for her, imagining him there at shortstop, still alive and waiting for the hit that never seemed to come his way, but tonight she can't concentrate on it, feels for disturbances in the wind around her, imagines that the conversation she'd had that day was with a real person, and indulges in a little self-pity, that the two people that she has the strongest relationships with are equally dubious in existence.

The shortstop scoops a slow-roller, bouncing softly across the turf. Elise should be happy for him. She decides to take a walk instead, and slides across the banded aluminum, looks over the drop and takes it. She walks to the sidewalk, the bump-bump of her feet on the grass taken up by a scratchy tap-tap of concrete. The loud clink of the ball hitting a fence hitting a fencepost rises behind her, some yells and claps from the stands, the ghost of Morris running the bases and showing her the injuries to his finger joints later at home.

"Elise," she hears, and though the voice is not Morris, it strikes her just as hard. She walks a few paces with her eyes closed. "Elise," it says again.

She looked around, but knew it was him, Damen. She was out of sight of the field, the houses grey and quiet. She answered him.

"Yes. I thought you would leave me alone tonight."

"How could I? Where would I go?"

"Where would you go? Where do you go? Anywhere! Sneak into a movie or a theme park or go watch some celebrity or something or...."

"I've done all that."

"Or catch a plane somewhere. Paris or um Thailand or something."

There is silence. She regrets the plane suggestion. She walks for a few more steps, then stops. "Which celebrities have you spied on?"

"Their lives are expensive but boring."

"What did you see, though?"

"Um. Well, Tom Cruise is gay. Ewan McGregor cheats on his wife, or did at least once, but so do most of them. Gwyneth Paltrow wears men's tightie-whities and The President jerks off to strictly Asian bondage and peeing videos."

"God, really?" Elise says, forgetting to speak without facial expressions, she grimaces.

"You asked."

"What else?"

"Elise. I don't care about anyone anymore but you."

"This is too weird. You're too weird."

"You let me kiss you."

She feels his breath, close and fast. "I don't know you," she says.

She feels lips on her again, the heat and the moisture in the air wrapped up in a solid package on her mouth. It sucks her air out too. Her belly drops, becomes heavy, but he holds her. He releases her, but doesn't leave.

"And you've... you've been all over the world?"

"Yep. War zones and everything."

"Have you been to space?"

"No."

He kisses her again, heat rising in sweat between them.

"No space?" she says, genuinely surprised.

"I want to touch you."

She's lifted and hovers down a paved path through the park. Though her feet dangle a few inches off the ground, it's not them that makes the swash and catch on the ground. She sways her arms as if walking, but giggles to herself, waves her legs too. She's placed on a short hill for dirt bikes and feels knees press between hers. They separate them and rest under her open thighs. A mysterious rise appears under her shirt and tickles up her ribs, then another. She watches her shirt rise and fall above her bra. She sees her breasts bend into a slight cone shape followed by small double dents in the skin above the material. When they move, she feels that they were kisses, the moisture evaporating. She is frozen in place, fascinated and now, inexplicably, as if this is what she'd been waiting for her whole life, pot-boiling turned on.

"Damen?"

"Yes," she hears right at her ear, though the space in front of her appears to be unoccupied.

"Do whatever you want, just don't stop okay?"

She hears him exhale with a bit of a whine. He speeds up. Her jeans are unzipped, a hand down the back of her thigh. Crickets open up around her, scratch their legs against each other. The houses beyond remain grey. His hand skirts her pussy and she bucks. His knees are removed and her jeans slide down her legs, her sandals popping off. She watches and feels moans gather in her breathing. She sees her pussy lips spread and her clit expose itself. It's bent, pushed down, popped sideways. She laughs, deep and loud. She realizes she's been laughing. She hasn't laughed in forever. She feels something warmer, softer, and watches her clit flatten. He's licking her. Her neck stretches over the dirt mound. Her hands grope in the nothing in front of her until they feel hair, the top of his head. Waves rise in her hearing. A noise breaks out of her throat and her stomach clenches, whipping forward and back. The stars blur above for a while, then return to silent twinkling. It's ridiculous. All of life is imaginary and strange.

She leans forward when she feels his knees return, and watches her pussy spread open, the bottom rim tight, feels him enter her. Her arms reach out and she feels him bending over her, his back in the crooks of her elbows. And this is the strangest thing of all. To be pressed into the ground and made love to by nothing, or just something, someone, who doesn't look like anything. And that's okay for her now, because it was never meant to be normal, any of it, anyway.