Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 4)

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“Okay. Here’s what it is. You’re a full-fledged woman, one who’s grabbed sexy and taken it beyond where anyone thought it should or could ever go.”
    “No, I have not!”
    “Yes, yes! You have! And you pretend not to know it, which is precisely what I mean by beyond. You take a man beyond what he believes is possible. And yet, at the same time, you’re innocent. It’s not that you seem innocent, but that you are. You’re a child. And I mean that as a compliment. Not a child, but childlike. You see me as a daddy. That’s the only reason you’re here. And I want to love you like a daddy, protect you, make sure you’re gonna be all right, but I see the willingness of your flesh, and I want that, too. So bad. You don’t aim to incite me, but I respond. But the need in you for daddy puts the clamp on the man in me who wants you in the nasty fun way. I want to embrace you, for the course of the night. But that’s all. Don’t ask me for more, for I know you want no more, and we can do no better for one another than to love each other in just that way.”
    “Oh, Walter.”
    “Don’t call me that. Where did you get that?”
    “I’m sorry! I just thought that was your name.”

“I like it when you call me that”

    He kissed her shoulders and her cheek tenderly, cherishing the feel of her curls against his cheek.
    “I don’t know if you’re right about me, Daddy, but I’m glad you see me that way.”
    She sat upright, twisting her shoulders to relieve some pain in her neck. She turned first one way, then the other.
    He reached for her breasts and clasped them with his big hands and drew the left one into his mouth.
    She said, “I’m your baby, but I’m not a baby.”
    She leaned down to his ear to say, “I want you inside me. Walter.”
    He said, “Now we’ve become children. Children loving. I know that’s the highest form of loving, and I knew it only once before: my first time.”
    “Me, too! I guess it happens the first time, so we just wanna make it happen again, and we try, and that’s when we begin to find out not everybody loves us. A lotta people just wanna use us. Well, they’re lonely, I guess. Loneliness does strange things to people.”

“Say it, sister! Go on”

    “Say it, sister! Go on.”
    “Yeah, they’re lonely, and you’re with them. . . . You want that first happiness again, and it’s not there, or the next time, either, or the next time or the next time. You want it to be there, but after it’s not for so long, you sorta stop looking for it. And then you find out, sometimes, you know, some people are really crazy, but you don’t know it til it’s too late.”
    “Oh, poor precious baby.” He held her tight, more deeply saddened than he’d ever been, even by the prospect of dying old, childless, alone. Here was his own darling daughter. She’d been out there on her own, and where had he been in her need? He should have been with her; they could have been together. But she was here now, and he had to hold her, comfort her, and with a few words, she’d changed his feelings towards her so utterly. She was but a poor, hurt child, and her hurt pained him beyond imagining.
    They stayed locked like that a long time.
    She asked, “Did I ruin it? The playing like kids?”
    “No. No, darling.”
    “I did. I killed it! I’m sorry.”
    “There’s no need to be sorry. Why do you say that?”
    “Oh. I can’t tell you. I want to tell you. It feels so good lying here in your arms. You’re so strong, and so tender. I’m sorry what I said about us being kids. I don’t wanna ruin it more than I already did.”

“I would cherish every word you said to me”

    “I can’t. I mean, when I agreed to meet you here, I felt sexy. I wanted to seduce you.”
    “And you succeeded admirably, dear. Look at us.”
    “But I ruined it! I made us sad, and now you’re paternal.”
    “Well, I guess. What’s wrong with that? I love you more now. I have the father’s fear that you’ll soon be leaving, and I can’t bear it. It’s a cliché, but I feel as if I’d been only barely alive, without even noticing how dreary my life had become, before you came along. You excite me so! What are you trying to tell me, my love? Have no fear of me.”
    “I came here to make a baby.”
    “Not seriously!”
    “Seriously, Walter!”
    “I’m so old and decrepit, not to mention, a laughingstock in the world!”
    “No you’re not! Besides, who cares what the world thinks? Not me. I think you’re a genius, and your work will live on beyond you. I’ll help you get it out into the world. Plus, you just turned me on from the moment I saw you! Isn’t that weird? Is it that only daddies drive me wild?”
    “You turned me on, too! And it’s starting to come back now.”
    “The gray in your beard. But now you’ve become comforting! Protective and safe. Like my father or something. But since I never knew him.”

“I need a drink. You?”

    “Well, damnit. I suppose the moment has passed, now that you’ve compared me to your father, whom you never knew. I need a drink. You?”
    “Sure. What have you got? I don’t want any more of that absinthe, that’s for sure! You look around and wonder where did the whole day go?”
    “How ’bout rum? Jamaican rum. Rich and syrupy and sweet. Like candy.”
    “Sure!”
    He handed her a glass and filled it with a little bit, which she drained immediately. He laughed. “And you can’t even wait for me?”
    “Sorry!” she smiled. “Guess I was thirsty, after all that melodrama!”
    He filled her glass again, then tipped the bottle to drip the dark liquid onto one breast, then another, and drain down her belly and into her dark nest of hair. He waved his arm so the flow splashed down onto her thighs and her knees. He drank deeply from the bottle and dropped to kiss and lick her thighs, her creamy thighs and knees, moving quickly to lap the rum collecting between her legs, drinking from her mouth and going fast to her breast and back down again to lick even where the rum hasn’t gone and back to the other breast and back down, finding more liquid collecting there than when he had drunk before.
    “Give me a baby, lover! It’s the only thing I’ve craved no one has offered me before. I want something of me to live on after me.”
    “But your poems!”

“I want heirs, babies to teach”

    “Yes! Of course! Fuck that! Homer’s immortal, has been a long time, but no one reads him. I want sons! Daughters, too! I want heirs, babies to teach. I want to train my army of little soldiers to fight the bastards!”
    “Yes! Keep kissing me, Walter!”
    She was happy in this moment, but still, she let herself imagine he was Abe, sometimes. He wanted to know more about Edgar:
    “Aren’t you with him?” he asked afterwards.
    “No, no. We’re just friends.”
    “Just friends. That is, sometimes, the saddest expression in any language, sadder even than that saddest of them all: ‘No.’ Will you not give me the chance?”
    “Sure! That’s funny! That’s almost the same thing he said to me, one time. Yeah. But still, you know, for a woman, sometimes, friends is good, better than the other. He understands me. And now you’ll lose interest in me.”
    “You know what it’s like to hope a woman will understand you? I guess you wouldn’t. Still, perhaps we are of a similar temperament. At any rate, I should like to understand you better.”
    “Really? You’re not just saying that?”
    “Really. Why should I just say that? Here you are, with me. We are quite naked. I would say that my seduction has been an unqualified and thorough success! Though, to tell true, the credit belongs entirely to you. I could never have imagined this state of things.”

“You’re such a good, kind man”

    “You’re such a good, kind man. A genius. But one day, you wait and see, there’ll be plenty of people like you. I think I understand him, too, but I never will. There won’t be many like him, ever.”

Copyright © 2022 by Pat Hamilton Pat Hamilton has written three novels, hundreds of songs, and a handful of book reviews for the papers. He taught College English for 30 years, which helps him blend popular and classic literature in his writing. As an Army brat, he traveled the USA and Europe before settling into the beauty of Tennessee, but the rock star he used to be still lives on inside him.