Hex and the Single Girl (4 page)

“Okay,” she said.

Hoff started rubbing, massaging, kneading. The muscles in Emma’s back yielded. She softened. A sigh slipped from her lips.

“Better than a drink, right?” he asked. She nodded. He
was
good. Emma wondered how many back rubs he’d given to seduce women before. Not just seduce. He could make a woman fall madly in love with him because of this. Emma wondered if it was wrong to fuck a man for his thumbs. Not that she would.

Hoff’s hand slipped under her pajama top. Emma instantly tensed. Hoff felt her reaction, but he kept working his wonders, making her spine bend with relief.

She said, “Do you believe that everyone has a special gift? A special ’power,’ if you will?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“I think I know what yours is.”

Hoff laughed. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

He forged on, squeezing, pulling, hurting her the right way. Emma let herself float along, on a raft of relaxation, along a slow and winding river, pine trees on the bank like in Maine, the scent of clean air, the sound of running water.

Emma was still on that raft when Hoff raised her arms to remove her pajama top. She stayed on it as he lay her down on the couch, belly up. He began massaging her again, turning his attention to her large floaters.

Hoff was as good with the front rub as he was on the back. Better, even. He slipped off her pajama bottoms. And then nothing. Emma opened her eyes a crack and saw that he was undressing himself.

He caught her looking and said, “Is this all right?”

“So far so good,” she said. After that volcanic kiss at the restaurant and a float down the river thanks to Hoff’s magic fingers, Emma had high hopes. If she were ever going to have successful sex, it’d be tonight.

He removed his clothes in a hurry. “You have a nice body,” she said. Hoff was medium weight, not very toned, but not flabby either. His bare chest was freckled and pale, his belly cutely rounded. The legs were sturdy. He left on his boxers, and she wished he’d take them off. She hadn’t seen a naked man in at least eight months. And all she

remembered of that night was the guy’s bare ass as he stumbled into the hallway, his clothes a bundle under his arm.

Hoff knelt in front of Emma, who was still on her back on the couch. He put his hand on her belly. She cringed.

Hoff said, “Relax.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t apologize.”

“Sorry for apologizing.” Emma took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down.

“You’re all stiff,” he said.

“As are you,” she replied. His hard-on stretched the purple polka dot shorts before forcing itself through the gap, jerking and twitching like a puppet on a string.

Now or never, she said to herself. Emma patted the couch and Hoff sat. She took his place, kneeling on the floor in front of him. She opened her mouth and closed her eyes. Emma began moving her head slowly, her hands resting on his legs.

Emma had to be doing something right. Hoff moaned and put his hands in her hair. He was throbbing, puffing bigger in her mouth with each movement. William Dearborn, from what she could tell, had a bigger dick than Hoff. During their kiss, he’d pressed himself, rocked himself, against her hips. Emma imagined William now, on her couch, naked, legs spread, cock big and red as a fire hydrant, jerking himself off with one hand while the other hand rested on his stomach like a wounded bird.

Hoff made a strangled, caged sound. Then he went limp as a shoestring in her mouth.

Emma released him and thought, “Here we go again.”

Hoff sprang to his feet, tucked himself back into his boxers, and reeled away from her as if he’d discovered a pair of horns under her hair. He stammered, “I…I…I’ve got to go.”

He turned his back to her and searched crazily for his clothes. His face was bright red. When he put one leg in his pants, he tripped forward and fell on the floor. Rolling onto his back like a beetle, he tried to put his other foot in, the empty pant leg flapping above him.

Emma slipped on her pajama top and said, “I’m not letting you leave until you tell me what just happened.” She’d said the same thing to over a dozen men in the past. None had given her satisfaction.

Hoff got his khakis on and was buttoning his shirt. He said, “This has nothing to do with you.”

“My sex life has nothing to do with me?” she asked. “I’m repellant. I disgust you.”

“No, you’re gorgeous. Your body is fantasy material. It’s not you. Something’s wrong with me. I need to think about it alone. It’s private. I can’t talk about it.” When he said the last part, his voice caught like he might start crying.

Most of the men cried. Some wept. Some cursed, groaned in psychic pain, squeaked with fear. “I’m not anorgasmic,”

she confessed. “I only said that so we wouldn’t end up exactly where we are now.”

“I was on the verge of a massive orgasm, and then…’’ Hoff looked terrified.

“Please sit down,” said Emma, managing to lower him to the couch.

He moved slowly, as if in shock. He said, “It’s not you, I swear it. You are amazing. What you were doing, I was in ecstasy. I was impressing myself with how hard I was, how big, and…then…”

“Go ahead,” she urged.

“At a very critical moment, I thought of something…it was horrible.”

“What was it?”

“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head, the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes.

“You’ll feel better if you just tell me,” she said softly.

“It was William Dearborn,” he blurted, voice jagged. “I saw William Dearborn, completely naked. He was…I can’t say it. He was performing a sex act.”

Emma’s heart skipped a beat. Was it possible? Had she sent an image by accident, without flicking the mental switch to transfer mode?

Hoff said, “I’ve always admired William Dearborn. I thought it was based on respect and envy. But now I see that I haven’t wanted to
be
William Dearborn. I’ve wanted to be
with
him.”

Emma head spun with revelation. She replayed botched sexual encounters in her past. To compensate for her

ambivalence, for her lack of attraction, for the man’s incompetence, she’d fantasized about other men, during.

“Seeing him in person at the restaurant tonight must have been some kind of trigger,” said Hoff. “I want William Dearborn! He’s a man. I’m a man. This means I’m gay.” He looked accusingly at Emma. “All because of your

blowjob. I don’t know whether to thank you, kill you, or throw up.”

“Are those the only options?” she asked.

Hoff stood. “I’ve never had the faintest interest in men. The idea of sex with a man has always made me gag. I’ve loved girls since I was five. I must have suppressed my homosexuality so deeply that I’ve overcompensated with unrelenting lust for women.”

“There could be another explanation,” said Emma tentatively.

“Such as?”

“Such as, I was thinking about William while blowing you and you somehow knew.”

He considered it. “Not possible. You were so into it. You were honest and loving. Right now, looking at your bare legs, I’m getting hard. I’m twitching in my pants. You’d think I was straight as a missile.”

On that tantalizing note, Hoff fled her apartment, leaving Emma alone with her revelation and frustration.

All this time, at the height of her excitement, Emma had been unwittingly sending a gay porn slideshow into the minds of her lovers.

No wonder they ran away screaming.

Chapter 5

“B
oudoir?” asked Victor. “Hay loft? Beach? Classroom? Forest of nymphs? Planet Strumpet?”

“How about the dungeon?” Emma sat on a beanbag chair on the floor of Victor’s studio, lazily flipping through the portfolio of photos he’d taken for previous The Good Witch, Inc. clients. The sun was brutally bright that late October morning, its rays burrowing into Emma’s hungover brain. Even though Victor’s studio windows were covered with blackout curtains, Emma couldn’t bear to take off her shades. When bloodshot, her eyes looked particularly bizarre.

After Hoff deserted her last night, she’d dipped into the Bailey’s. Big mistake.

“On second thought, don’t wheel out the racks yet,” said Emma. “Daphne is the type to bring her own props.”

“Do I get paid extra if she annoys me?”

“Charge her double. Triple. She can afford it.”

“Tell me again how you licked William Dearborn’s uvula.”

Emma shushed him. “Daphne will be here any minute. She can’t know about that.”

“She should know he has a girlfriend.”

Emma closed the portfolio. “I make men think they’re gay,” she whined. “This is just further proof that I am not destined for love. I’m stuck, I tell you. Stuck in a halfway world where I can see everything, hear a pin drop on the subway, taste a single grain of nutmeg in a muffin, smell the molded cheese in your fridge—please throw that away—

but I’ll never be touched. I’ll never have love. I’m broke and alone. Bamboozled out of my life savings; cheated out of having a life.”

Victor said, “Do I get paid extra if
you
annoy me?”

“Admit that this is a hell of a conundrum,” she said. “Sending images by accident, that’s scary.” Until last night, Emma believed she had complete control.

“From what you tell me,” said Victor, “William Dearborn didn’t shrivel at your touch.”

“I reflected on that fact for some time last night between obsessively plucking my eyebrows and alphabetizing my pantry,” she said. “He was like a throwback to the stupid, thoughtless sex of my teens and early twenties. Before the trouble began. When Dearborn kissed me, I could barely breathe, let alone think about other men.”

“You may have gone overboard on the eyebrows.”

“Too thin?” she asked, touching them.

“Makeup table’s free,” he said, taking her by the wrist and escorting her to the vanity. “Do all women fantasize about other men during sex?”

Emma sat down and cringed at the sight of her eyebrows. “I have no idea,” she said. “I bet Monica fantasized about a straighter straight man.”

“You should ditch the case, and go out with Dearborn yourself,” he said. “And then I can be his best friend by proxy.”

Victor picked a medium brown eyebrow pencil and went to work, fattening, lengthening her eyebrow. “He’s so out of my league,” said Emma. “Besides which, he’s a slut. And my job—my housing—hinges on making him fall for

Daphne Wittfield.” She studied her reflection in the mirror. “Dearborn got a good look at my face. And my body. I need a disguise that’ll make me invisible.”

“Cop. Men never look at women cops. The uniform is as sexy as soap scum,” said Victor. “Homeless person. Religion nut.”

The buzzer. “Must be Daphne,” said Emma.

He buzzed her in and opened the loft’s inside elevator door. While the car lifted Daphne to the third floor, Victor and Emma scurried around the vast space, tidying. They threw dirty clothes under his bed, hid dirty plates in the cabinets.

Emma made sure the bathroom door was closed.

The elevator clanged and whirred upward. As the platform rose, Daphne appeared behind the metal gate. First the buttery hair, her taut, tense face. Then the lean arms, a slim torso and long legs that kept getting longer and longer, shod at the bottom in high heeled boots. Head to toe, Daphne wore leather, tight and black.

“Definitely the dungeon,” said Victor.

Daphne stood in the elevator, thwacking a rolled up
New York Post
against her thigh.

I am that newspaper,
thought Emma.

Victor pulled open the gate, bidding her welcome. Daphne said, “You’re Victor Armour?”

He said, “That’s me.”

“Am I paying you by the hour, or by the shot?”

“Both,” he said brightly.

“Then we’d better not waste any time—or film,” she said.

He said, “I’ll be using a digital camera.”

“Then why am I paying by the shot?”

“For the prints.”

Daphne chewed on that one.

Victor said, “No need to waste time thinking about it. I’m worth every dollar.”

Emma held her breath, fearing Victor had overstepped there. But Daphne seemed to like his confidence. She said,

“Let’s get on with it.” She unzipped her leather jacket, revealing nothing under it but a black bra.

Emma said, “Whoa, Daphne! Don’t you want to look at the book first?” She retrieved the previous client portfolio from the beanbag chair. “Victor has two dozen backdrops, racks and racks of costumes—lingerie, shoes, props.”

Daphne said, “I won’t need any of that. We’re doing nude portraits.”

“Just check out the book,” implored Emma, holding it open for Daphne to see. “It’s full of great pictures. Look, this client dressed up like fairy princess. Okay, maybe that’s not you.”

Emma started to flip through the pages. Daphne took the book out of her hands and said, “I excel at targeted

marketing, Emma. I’m not selling my image to a simpleton wanker who blows his wad at the sight of a garter belt. My target is sophisticated and intelligent. I need images that will not only titillate William but intrigue him.”

Victor said, “I love garter belts.”

Emma said, “But I’m used to working with a certain kind of image.”

“You’ll have to get used to working with something else,” said Daphne crossly.

Emma sulked in the corner while Daphne and Victor discussed backdrops, filters, lighting. They spoke quickly, in short hand, seemingly meeting minds on what was to happen.

Victor started arranging a white backdrop and lighting equipment. He said to Daphne, “I’ve done some advertising work. Maybe I can show you my book.”

“Consider our shoot a tryout,” said Daphne amicably. So this was how Daphne treated someone she
liked.

Emma was not usually a jealous person. But she could smell her own slow burn, watching Daphne get chummy with Victor, her best friend, the one man in her life who’d never run away from her. Wasn’t it enough that Daphne had the big job, the upturned nipples, huge discretionary funds, and enough self-confidence to go after a man like William Dearborn? The same man Emma’d thought about, much to her quivering satisfaction, in the ten minutes between going to bed and going to sleep last night.