Arla
It was three o’clock in the afternoon and it had started to rain. Wet leaves stuck to the glossy red trunk of the Jaguar, beaded with droplets, and a hazy sun caught the rear window. Bobby opened the door and sat down heavily, breathing in the leather. So that was it. The end of Arla. He looked across the passenger seat to the lawn through the streaked window, the lawn that led up to the house. The canopied street curved away before him, its houses and hedges and willows and mimosa trees dripping and green. He looked down. Suddenly he felt her legs around his head again and his face pressed so deep into her pussy that it was stopped by her pubic bone. Her fragrance was overwhelming, so close, so close…
…Arla was sitting beside him as they raced along the 101. The ocean to their right appeared and disappeared through the hills. The wind swirled into the Jag. He shifted gears. She seemed pleased with how he did that. They drove up through the hills and it got cooler. It started to rain, or was it mist? “Hey, we’re driving through a cloud,” he said.
The car felt snug and strong, and he looked over and what he saw, what he saw, was Arla slipped down below window level with her skirt hoisted up and her legs wide open and her panties pulled to the side. Smiling like the sun and moon, she seemed to fill all the space in the cabin. But Bobby was cool. He kept driving, as the wind tore at her skirt in the corner of his eye.
Another time he had overstayed his welcome–probably–on her sofa. He knew how to do that, and he knew what Arla would do about it. “Bobby,” she would say, “aren’t you tired yet?” There was a lamp to either side of the sofa, making the light in the room ever so soft and the quietness of the house ever so loud.
“Oh, I dunno,” said Bobby, “I feel kinda tense, you know.”
They’d had a really nice night, all in that room. She had rattled on and on about her girlfriends’ faults and life mistakes–all nineteen odd years of their various lives–and he had pumped her for lascivious details as though he could creep into her friends’ rooms also while they undressed. She knew this and she fed him tidbits, but mainly she was listening to her own voice. Six times at least, Bobby’s penis inflated and deflated. And now he was “tense.” What that meant was that he wanted to be rewarded for being such a damn good listener. This was not going to be a Platonic relationship if he could help it! And Arla was mixing things up. He was the only person she could trust. That didn’t sound good at all.
He had no need to worry.
“What’s that in your pants, Bobby?” she asked. “Your flashlight? Did you bring your flashlight? Let me see it. Its so dark in here.” And she clicked off a lamp.
Sweet talk….
…Arla, your name is Arla, your lips around my dick. Arla, I smell your hair rising off my lap. Arla, your fingernails are perfect and your hands are cool. Arla, your sweaters are spun from New Zealand sheep. Arla, you sucked me into you and swallowed me into your head and hair. I did not see your face until you turned over and said, as you laid on my right thigh, “I’m just going to rest a minute; and then you must go.”
Bobby’s fingers were drumming on the wooden steering wheel. The rain was coming down hard now. He should go. He pushed his keys into the slot and twisted. Nothing. A click.
Oh jeez! Now what? He could go back in, try to speak to her, make her remember. Or he could walk off into the rain. That would satisfy something. But then he would have to come back with tow truck and embarrass her and….
He tried to start the Jag again, and was about to try for a third time, feeling more rotten and stupid and panicked by the moment, when the passenger door opened.
Arla! Her hair was sprayed with drops but was not wet. Her face was shining and damp as she tumbled into the seat beside him. She smelled of wool and chocolate and everything good.
“Let’s drive!” she said.
Bobby prayed a prayer with the sincerity of an acetylene torch. He could have willed the car to fly, and kept it flying, on his desire and happiness alone. He turned the key. The Jag leapt to life. And the road crunched under his tires…
…From the house, Arla’s sister called her to the window.
“There’s that creep, Bobby James. I bet he’s been parked there for hours again. I’m going to get rid of him.”
“Hey, be nice” said Arla.
She came to the window and watched Belinda cross the wet lawn to the little Toyota. She saw Belinda open the passenger door and start yelling. She watched the car pull away, and Belinda walking quickly, almost running, back to the house.
–end–
an anonymous author
