We come down the river on the south side, on the Parkway, a lot faster than we headed out. At the college is a bridge like the Interstate, overpass on one end, traffic circle on the other. As always I come in at about seventy-five, shooting around it like a carnival ride. The car has gotten quiet, Candy hanging on my arm but not teasing me anymore. I guess I've gotten quiet, mostly. I try to remember exactly what I've promised – I don't like to honor my commitments grudgingly.
I don't know why I feel like we're making a mistake – maybe because this is the one thing she wants, out of a lot of oddball possibilities. She has gotten hopeful, happily silent, and seems younger; making me, relatively, feel older. She doesn't ordinarily depend on me or anyone else for much of anything; this seems a strange choice.
I park across the street and we roll the windows up, which I figure is a good sign, Candy carrying her shoes, now shorter than me by several inches. We walk up the two thin rows of cement blocks that once made a driveway. Now they, and we, are almost swallowed by the bushes on the fence side that are trying to get a year's growth into our short little summer. Already the narrow space next to the shingle-roofed garage is choked solid.
We go up the back stairs like a troop of cavalry, as my mother would say, but in this neighborhood they only hear gunshots and sirens. An exaggeration, perhaps, but not much of one; it is certainly no exaggeration to say that the only thing halfway new or working on this entire house is the deadbolt. In the darkness of the stoop Candy finds her key and lets us in.
Her room might be advertised as a studio apartment but there's not a lot to it, mostly a bed and then on the other side a small table and two chairs, and in the corner a bigger chair to watch the tiny TV that sits on the table. She's got the curtain to the kitchen open and through it I can see the brightly-painted cabinets and more over-ambitious plants that hope to be bushes someday. Everything else - walls, moldings, the ceiling, even - has been painted beige as if by a single burp of a spray-gun. One weekend we bought curtains for the window, white and sheer with a bright green stripe across the bottom. They look nice.
In the kitchen she turns on the radio and comes out carrying a drink – just water, not a real drink, though there's plenty in there. To be honest I'm feeling less receptive than ever, not moving much past the door except to close it and turn the lock. I guess I've got myself planted with my feet apart and my arms crossed because she tosses her hair back and says "You look very strict and stern." I suppose I do. She walks right up and bumps my arms with her breasts before pecking me on the lips.
"Okay?" she asks and I try to focus my swirling thoughts. Taking a sip she offers, politely, "Want something?"
"Candy, I'm not your father," I try to explain. "I am not going to hit you."
"Matt, if you were my father you wouldn't be here." She puts her arms around my neck, tilting her head and kissing me, for real this time. I resist – there are some things I don't like being manipulated into doing – but she just says "Thanks for being here" and breaks it off. "And you're not going to 'hit' me, you're just smacking my butt," she explains, turning around as she does so. "C'mere."
She puts her hands on the table with her backside stuck out. "Come over here and smack me one," she commands, which only stiffens my resistance. Seeing this she just says "Oh come ON!" and I feel like I'm acting stupid so I move.
"You're not going to hurt me," she promises. I'm a little dubious but I go ahead and slap her on the cheek, hard. My hand smarts a little, almost a satisfying pain. "See?" she asks over her shoulder. "Bad girls get a lot of padding back there. That's how you can tell," she jokes. "Try it for real this time."
I must have done something wrong the first time so I try again, harder, on the other cheek. My hand is going to have to get a lot tougher for much more of this.
Candy turns around and cocks her head to the side. Now her arms are crossed. "Getting ready?" she asks.
I glare at her. "Turn around," I tell her, and really let her have it. This time she sort of tucks her bottom in a little and her head goes back, then forward, her chin twisting away from me. I can't see her face because of her hair but when I could her eyes had closed in a slow blink then opened really wide. Instead of turning toward me she turns all the way around to the other side in a little wriggling, dancing-type move.
"What did I tell you?" she asks, unconvincingly breathless. "It's okay, really. See?"
I don't believe her but this isn't the first time she's had to explain how to do something and it's always worked out before. By backing up a step I'm sitting on the bed and she's right in front of me. I push up her top a little, touching her right below the navel with my fingertips. "How 'bout I do that other thing you like?" I offer. I've learned a few things, at least.
"Later, baby," she half-whispers, guiding my hand to the snap of her jeans. "Time for that later." She nudges my thumb toward unsnapping them.
"Candy, I don't know what to say," I blurt, finally admitting it. I don't want to spank her for sleeping with some guy and getting a ring out of it. I don't want to be angry like my father and sometimes it's hard not to be. I don't want to yell and say all those things he always does. And somewhere in here I notice the ring is gone. Probably in the kitchen. The thought of how well she knows me makes my heart hurt. I look up at her as I slide her zipper down and try to breathe.
"Ask me what I did," she says quietly.
I think of the cops saying "do you know why I pulled you over?" which always sounds stupid but I've got nothing better. The waist of her jeans is open, peeled back halfway off her hips; the plain white panties right in front of me can barely contain the hair beneath them. Suddenly I figure out that this is why she wore that ring tonight - not to look nice for dinner, not to show it off, not to make me jealous. She had this planned before I picked her up, even. I feel stupid for having taken so long to realize it.
"Candy, do you know why you're here?" My voice is kind of deep anyway and it comes out like a growl, almost comic.
"Uh huh," she answers unhelpfully, and I'm stumped. After a long pause she takes a deep breath and admits, hesitating, "You caught me reading a dirty book."
This confession, intended to be so perfect, so aware of all my many reservations, still manages to embarrass me, only in that it reminds me that she does read books while my immediate reaction is how unlikely that would be. I'm the smart one, the one who reads all the time and somehow, because she keeps her books under the bed, I forget that she does, too.
When I was in the eighth grade I had two teachers – well, two of six or so. One got so mad at me for talking back that she sent me to sit in the second-grade class the entire period, at one of those little desks. The other called me in to discuss my grades, which were ridiculously low. She told me she knew I could do better. Right now I want to be Mrs. Walters, the good teacher - the second one.
"Candy, what have I told you about those books?" I ask.
"That I'm not old enough?" Candy replies uncertainly. "That they're not good for me."
"They're not. They're not good for you, are they, Candy?" I parrot sort of mindlessly. She has my fingertips – of both hands – stuck inside the waistband of her panties, in the middle at the back. I am speaking directly into her cleavage, her knees against my own as she leans into me. "They will keep you from becoming the person I know you can be," I tell her, recalling that lecture from five years ago. "They will keep you from being the person I know you can become." The memory makes me somber with self-disappointment.
Candy takes her fingers off of mine and puts her hands in my hair, tilting my head back. "Baby?" she asks softly, "We're just playing, okay?" My palms are full of her cheeks, my wrists pushing her panties off of them, the tips of my index fingers brushing each other, almost between them.
I resist saying "Sorry," and instead choose, "Playing, maybe, but that doesn't make this okay." Before I finish she's lying across my lap. Do you know why I pulled you over? I think to myself with a private smile.
"I know," she squeaks, "I'm sorry." This is a side she doesn't show me very often, and I don't mean her mouth-watering ass, which looks better, smoother, and softer than ever – I mean the needing side, the wanting side. She's a provider at heart but can't always be giving, I guess. Who can? I manage to get my arm out from under her and reestablish some sort of balance.
She's tried to get a tan and though this is only June the shape of her swimsuit bottom is clear from where perfectly white cheek meets nearly white thigh. Remembering our practice from a minute ago, I pull back my hand and slap her cheek good, producing a sort of ringing sound with the suddenness of a rifle shot. To my surprise, no sirens are heard. My hand stings about a dozen times worse than it did on her jeans but I don't have time to notice because Candy jumps, wriggles, and bucks – all at once. I grab her hip to pull her toward me just as I spank her on the near side.
"Holy!" she starts, but doesn't finish it. "Eee! Ow! OW!" The last "ow" sounds indignant, as if I'm the one doing something wrong. She attempts to get up but is much too far over, tries to look at me over her shoulder through her hair, her feet coming up nearly to my face. "Baby? OW! Jesus!"
"Had enough?" I ask. She's taken about ten swats to some very emphatic – and negative – reaction.
"Baby?" she starts again. "Just... just... just almost that hard, okay?"
I'm kind of surprised at this but I smack her again, still too hard, I'm betting, trying to figure out what's okay. Of course, then I can tell it's not hard enough, I guess, though she seems to be suffering; or too hard again, it's difficult to find the right touch. Her ankles cross and rise and fall with a will of their own, waving her bunched jeans like a flag of surrender. Her cheeks and thighs squeeze or part and straighten or bend unpredictably as the band of her panties stretches and rebounds.
"Candace Marie, you will not read those books," I tell her, since I have to say something, though I worry that I'm getting too serious again. "They are *not* good for you." Meanwhile Candy's saying she's sorry but it sounds like "I'm sorry, mmm, I'm sorry, mmmmm," mixed with "ow's" and little "heh's" and other not-quite-desperate sounds so I keep smacking her.
Suddenly she says "Stop, stop, Oh God, stop, stop, stop" and I figure she means it so I do, right away. She slides from my lap to the floor between my knees, coming straight up between my legs, knocking me onto the bed so fast that we're lucky I don't split her scalp with my teeth. She's got both hands in my lap trying to get my pants open while wriggling out of her panties and trying to kick off her jeans. It might have worked better if we weren't in such a hurry but sometimes that's just not one of the choices.
She grips me like a stick shift on a bad clutch, knowing how I like it and in a flash I'm up and she's astride me. I mean, I'm flat on my back, my feet still on the floor, her knees against my ribs. Before I can even wonder if she's ready I get my answer and it's off to the races with her running way out in front. She plants her elbows at either side of my head and a big kiss right on my lips, hungry for the taste of me so I tilt my head back to meet her. She's moaning, but fast, a lot of little "oh-oh-oh-oh's" which she interrupts just long enough to pant in my ear.
"Baby? Finish my spanking later, okay?"
I grunt something in reply; maybe it has a vaguely positive sound to it.
"Promise? Promise me, baby. Promise me you'll finish it later."
When I reach down and slap her butt she shivers from cheeks to chaps, as they say. "Shut up, would you?" I tell her, "I'm trying to fuck." I slap her again to make her shake like that and she rears up and pulls her top off, dropping her breasts like the ball in Times Square at New Year's, only there's two of them.
She says she never fakes it with me and up till now I've believed her but it's not usually like this, thrusts an inch deep but three or four in a second. Not our usual Sunday-night climax, definitely.
I spread my arms out, crucified, and she reaches under them, burrowing her hands beneath my shoulders, pulling herself tight against me. Looking up I see that the window is closed as a rivulet of sweat runs off my face, then another. It's too hot but I feel chilled in my damp shirt and ridiculous with my pants and briefs pulled down on top of my socks and shoes.
After a while she raises herself up, looking into my eyes. Already I feel myself stirring for her, opening my mouth in the hope she'll lower her breast into it.
"You said 'fuck,'" she teases. "We'll make a wild one out of you yet."
I don't know why I feel like we're making a mistake – maybe because this is the one thing she wants, out of a lot of oddball possibilities. She has gotten hopeful, happily silent, and seems younger; making me, relatively, feel older. She doesn't ordinarily depend on me or anyone else for much of anything; this seems a strange choice.
I park across the street and we roll the windows up, which I figure is a good sign, Candy carrying her shoes, now shorter than me by several inches. We walk up the two thin rows of cement blocks that once made a driveway. Now they, and we, are almost swallowed by the bushes on the fence side that are trying to get a year's growth into our short little summer. Already the narrow space next to the shingle-roofed garage is choked solid.
We go up the back stairs like a troop of cavalry, as my mother would say, but in this neighborhood they only hear gunshots and sirens. An exaggeration, perhaps, but not much of one; it is certainly no exaggeration to say that the only thing halfway new or working on this entire house is the deadbolt. In the darkness of the stoop Candy finds her key and lets us in.
Her room might be advertised as a studio apartment but there's not a lot to it, mostly a bed and then on the other side a small table and two chairs, and in the corner a bigger chair to watch the tiny TV that sits on the table. She's got the curtain to the kitchen open and through it I can see the brightly-painted cabinets and more over-ambitious plants that hope to be bushes someday. Everything else - walls, moldings, the ceiling, even - has been painted beige as if by a single burp of a spray-gun. One weekend we bought curtains for the window, white and sheer with a bright green stripe across the bottom. They look nice.
In the kitchen she turns on the radio and comes out carrying a drink – just water, not a real drink, though there's plenty in there. To be honest I'm feeling less receptive than ever, not moving much past the door except to close it and turn the lock. I guess I've got myself planted with my feet apart and my arms crossed because she tosses her hair back and says "You look very strict and stern." I suppose I do. She walks right up and bumps my arms with her breasts before pecking me on the lips.
"Okay?" she asks and I try to focus my swirling thoughts. Taking a sip she offers, politely, "Want something?"
"Candy, I'm not your father," I try to explain. "I am not going to hit you."
"Matt, if you were my father you wouldn't be here." She puts her arms around my neck, tilting her head and kissing me, for real this time. I resist – there are some things I don't like being manipulated into doing – but she just says "Thanks for being here" and breaks it off. "And you're not going to 'hit' me, you're just smacking my butt," she explains, turning around as she does so. "C'mere."
She puts her hands on the table with her backside stuck out. "Come over here and smack me one," she commands, which only stiffens my resistance. Seeing this she just says "Oh come ON!" and I feel like I'm acting stupid so I move.
"You're not going to hurt me," she promises. I'm a little dubious but I go ahead and slap her on the cheek, hard. My hand smarts a little, almost a satisfying pain. "See?" she asks over her shoulder. "Bad girls get a lot of padding back there. That's how you can tell," she jokes. "Try it for real this time."
I must have done something wrong the first time so I try again, harder, on the other cheek. My hand is going to have to get a lot tougher for much more of this.
Candy turns around and cocks her head to the side. Now her arms are crossed. "Getting ready?" she asks.
I glare at her. "Turn around," I tell her, and really let her have it. This time she sort of tucks her bottom in a little and her head goes back, then forward, her chin twisting away from me. I can't see her face because of her hair but when I could her eyes had closed in a slow blink then opened really wide. Instead of turning toward me she turns all the way around to the other side in a little wriggling, dancing-type move.
"What did I tell you?" she asks, unconvincingly breathless. "It's okay, really. See?"
I don't believe her but this isn't the first time she's had to explain how to do something and it's always worked out before. By backing up a step I'm sitting on the bed and she's right in front of me. I push up her top a little, touching her right below the navel with my fingertips. "How 'bout I do that other thing you like?" I offer. I've learned a few things, at least.
"Later, baby," she half-whispers, guiding my hand to the snap of her jeans. "Time for that later." She nudges my thumb toward unsnapping them.
"Candy, I don't know what to say," I blurt, finally admitting it. I don't want to spank her for sleeping with some guy and getting a ring out of it. I don't want to be angry like my father and sometimes it's hard not to be. I don't want to yell and say all those things he always does. And somewhere in here I notice the ring is gone. Probably in the kitchen. The thought of how well she knows me makes my heart hurt. I look up at her as I slide her zipper down and try to breathe.
"Ask me what I did," she says quietly.
I think of the cops saying "do you know why I pulled you over?" which always sounds stupid but I've got nothing better. The waist of her jeans is open, peeled back halfway off her hips; the plain white panties right in front of me can barely contain the hair beneath them. Suddenly I figure out that this is why she wore that ring tonight - not to look nice for dinner, not to show it off, not to make me jealous. She had this planned before I picked her up, even. I feel stupid for having taken so long to realize it.
"Candy, do you know why you're here?" My voice is kind of deep anyway and it comes out like a growl, almost comic.
"Uh huh," she answers unhelpfully, and I'm stumped. After a long pause she takes a deep breath and admits, hesitating, "You caught me reading a dirty book."
This confession, intended to be so perfect, so aware of all my many reservations, still manages to embarrass me, only in that it reminds me that she does read books while my immediate reaction is how unlikely that would be. I'm the smart one, the one who reads all the time and somehow, because she keeps her books under the bed, I forget that she does, too.
When I was in the eighth grade I had two teachers – well, two of six or so. One got so mad at me for talking back that she sent me to sit in the second-grade class the entire period, at one of those little desks. The other called me in to discuss my grades, which were ridiculously low. She told me she knew I could do better. Right now I want to be Mrs. Walters, the good teacher - the second one.
"Candy, what have I told you about those books?" I ask.
"That I'm not old enough?" Candy replies uncertainly. "That they're not good for me."
"They're not. They're not good for you, are they, Candy?" I parrot sort of mindlessly. She has my fingertips – of both hands – stuck inside the waistband of her panties, in the middle at the back. I am speaking directly into her cleavage, her knees against my own as she leans into me. "They will keep you from becoming the person I know you can be," I tell her, recalling that lecture from five years ago. "They will keep you from being the person I know you can become." The memory makes me somber with self-disappointment.
Candy takes her fingers off of mine and puts her hands in my hair, tilting my head back. "Baby?" she asks softly, "We're just playing, okay?" My palms are full of her cheeks, my wrists pushing her panties off of them, the tips of my index fingers brushing each other, almost between them.
I resist saying "Sorry," and instead choose, "Playing, maybe, but that doesn't make this okay." Before I finish she's lying across my lap. Do you know why I pulled you over? I think to myself with a private smile.
"I know," she squeaks, "I'm sorry." This is a side she doesn't show me very often, and I don't mean her mouth-watering ass, which looks better, smoother, and softer than ever – I mean the needing side, the wanting side. She's a provider at heart but can't always be giving, I guess. Who can? I manage to get my arm out from under her and reestablish some sort of balance.
She's tried to get a tan and though this is only June the shape of her swimsuit bottom is clear from where perfectly white cheek meets nearly white thigh. Remembering our practice from a minute ago, I pull back my hand and slap her cheek good, producing a sort of ringing sound with the suddenness of a rifle shot. To my surprise, no sirens are heard. My hand stings about a dozen times worse than it did on her jeans but I don't have time to notice because Candy jumps, wriggles, and bucks – all at once. I grab her hip to pull her toward me just as I spank her on the near side.
"Holy!" she starts, but doesn't finish it. "Eee! Ow! OW!" The last "ow" sounds indignant, as if I'm the one doing something wrong. She attempts to get up but is much too far over, tries to look at me over her shoulder through her hair, her feet coming up nearly to my face. "Baby? OW! Jesus!"
"Had enough?" I ask. She's taken about ten swats to some very emphatic – and negative – reaction.
"Baby?" she starts again. "Just... just... just almost that hard, okay?"
I'm kind of surprised at this but I smack her again, still too hard, I'm betting, trying to figure out what's okay. Of course, then I can tell it's not hard enough, I guess, though she seems to be suffering; or too hard again, it's difficult to find the right touch. Her ankles cross and rise and fall with a will of their own, waving her bunched jeans like a flag of surrender. Her cheeks and thighs squeeze or part and straighten or bend unpredictably as the band of her panties stretches and rebounds.
"Candace Marie, you will not read those books," I tell her, since I have to say something, though I worry that I'm getting too serious again. "They are *not* good for you." Meanwhile Candy's saying she's sorry but it sounds like "I'm sorry, mmm, I'm sorry, mmmmm," mixed with "ow's" and little "heh's" and other not-quite-desperate sounds so I keep smacking her.
Suddenly she says "Stop, stop, Oh God, stop, stop, stop" and I figure she means it so I do, right away. She slides from my lap to the floor between my knees, coming straight up between my legs, knocking me onto the bed so fast that we're lucky I don't split her scalp with my teeth. She's got both hands in my lap trying to get my pants open while wriggling out of her panties and trying to kick off her jeans. It might have worked better if we weren't in such a hurry but sometimes that's just not one of the choices.
She grips me like a stick shift on a bad clutch, knowing how I like it and in a flash I'm up and she's astride me. I mean, I'm flat on my back, my feet still on the floor, her knees against my ribs. Before I can even wonder if she's ready I get my answer and it's off to the races with her running way out in front. She plants her elbows at either side of my head and a big kiss right on my lips, hungry for the taste of me so I tilt my head back to meet her. She's moaning, but fast, a lot of little "oh-oh-oh-oh's" which she interrupts just long enough to pant in my ear.
"Baby? Finish my spanking later, okay?"
I grunt something in reply; maybe it has a vaguely positive sound to it.
"Promise? Promise me, baby. Promise me you'll finish it later."
When I reach down and slap her butt she shivers from cheeks to chaps, as they say. "Shut up, would you?" I tell her, "I'm trying to fuck." I slap her again to make her shake like that and she rears up and pulls her top off, dropping her breasts like the ball in Times Square at New Year's, only there's two of them.
She says she never fakes it with me and up till now I've believed her but it's not usually like this, thrusts an inch deep but three or four in a second. Not our usual Sunday-night climax, definitely.
I spread my arms out, crucified, and she reaches under them, burrowing her hands beneath my shoulders, pulling herself tight against me. Looking up I see that the window is closed as a rivulet of sweat runs off my face, then another. It's too hot but I feel chilled in my damp shirt and ridiculous with my pants and briefs pulled down on top of my socks and shoes.
After a while she raises herself up, looking into my eyes. Already I feel myself stirring for her, opening my mouth in the hope she'll lower her breast into it.
"You said 'fuck,'" she teases. "We'll make a wild one out of you yet."
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