For the first time, I was glad I wasn’t really paralyzed below the waist. I would have traded every pain I’d ever felt in my whole life for what Miss Dyson showed me I could do.
When she was done—when I was done, I guess I mean—she just stood up and walked off.
She came back quick enough. All she’d done was put some retouching on her face.
Something, something powerful, told me that if I had offered her money then, I would have lost something more than precious. Something I could never replace.
When she said, “Now, you have to promise to do something for me,” I thought maybe she wanted somebody to die. But I didn’t really know her, not then.
“Now—and from this moment on—you have to call me by my name,” she said. “Jayne. That’s my name, Esau. Jayne.”
went to see her any number of times after that. Tory-boy would drive me over, and come back whenever I told him to. Once I got him a cell phone, I didn’t even have to say a word. One ring followed by a hang-up, Tory-boy would know it was me.
At first, there wasn’t but one way we could … make love. I feel I have a right to call it that, because I know what was in my own heart. I had to lie on my back, and Jayne would kind of straddle me.
Later, she showed me some other things. They all worked, too. I mean, I worked. No, that’s wrong. Nothing we ever did was work. What I’m trying to say is that parts of me worked.
It was as if everything had come full circle. I remembered how proud Tory-boy had been when he was telling me he could cast spells himself. How he could turn a girl into a lady, by treating her like one. But that spell only worked if she believed she was a lady herself.
I realized, lying there, my arms around Jayne as I kept myself inside her, that she must have believed what she told me, too, that first time. She wasn’t casting any spell; she knew.
I must’ve gotten lost in that thought, because the next thing I remember was, Jayne started panting like she’d just run a race, making little gasping sounds. She bucked so hard I was afraid she’d come loose from me, but she put her face down and bit into the pillow I’d learned to slip under my head.
I don’t know how to write down the sound she made before she collapsed against my chest. But she recovered quick enough.
“Don’t stop, Esau. You’re not done yet. Come on!”
ou want to know what that was all about, don’t you?” she said, a few minutes later.
“Not if you—”
“Ssssh. That was an orgasm, Esau. That’s what you have every time when you … shoot off inside me. It’s not the same for a woman. We don’t feel such things in only one place; it takes over our whole bodies.”
“But you never—”
“Did that before? Of course not. I didn’t even know I could. Listen to me go on. I know what they’re supposed to feel like—I’ve faked them often enough.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Not every man wants the same thing, Esau. Most of them, all they care about is satisfying themselves. But there’s always a few that want to believe they’re such bulls in the bedroom that they can make any woman … come, that’s the word they use. Any woman, even a whore.”
“You’re no—”
She put two fingers over my lips. “Not to you, Esau. I know that. Just like you’re no … client to me. I knew you were a very special kind of man the first time I ever met you.”
“I—”
“Shush, now. I’m telling you things of value. It’s kind of a tradition around here for men to bring their sons to a … to an experienced woman for their first time. But they don’t really want their boys to learn anything, not from a woman like me. The only lesson they want taught is that there are women so low you can pay them to have sex with you.
“But you, you wanted Tory-boy to learn to be gentle. To kiss a girl sweet. None of these men wanted their boys to kiss a … woman like me at all. They didn’t want them to learn how to talk, how to caress, how to … well, really, how to do anything at all. What they wanted is to be able to take their boys down to wherever they hang out and brag that he’s a man now.”
“So, when a boy like that gets full-grown, when he gets married, what does he know about … doing it right?” I asked her.
“
“That all seems so … Well, you said it yourself just now: ignorant.”
“That doesn’t matter. Not to the men. If their wives don’t know what to do, there’s always women like me.”
“But there are folks who love each other. I know there are.”
“Don’t confuse those things, Esau. Just because a man may be faithful, he’ll still feel it’s up to the woman to make him happy. And the only way a man is going to be happy is if he thinks he’s got the magic touch when it comes to his own woman.”
“How would he know that?”
“Remember what I said before? About faking an orgasm? Well, for that, a woman has to be good. Good and kind, both. Faking the orgasm, that’s just a skill. Something you can learn; something you can get good at doing. With most men, you don’t even have to be all that good to fool them, because they
“But kindness, that isn’t faking it at all. There’s nothing in that for the woman, you might think. But you’d be wrong. Doing a kindness because you want to make your man feel more like a man, that’s love. True love.”
“So, before, you—”
“Just stop right now! You’re supposed to be such a genius, can’t you use your mind? If I was faking—before, I mean—if I was faking just to be kind, why in the world would I explain how that works? In this bed, that first time, the only virgin there was you. Understand? That was you, trusting me. Can’t you keep on doing that, Esau?”
“I never stopped,” I told her. And it was the truth.
aybe Lansdale had just used me to get rid of an old enemy, the way Judakowski had sent that hyped-up young man into Lansdale’s bar a year or so back.
Or maybe he was showing me real respect by knowing I’d want to square accounts with Judakowski my own self. The way a man should.
None of that matters. If it wasn’t for Jayne being gone, I never would have told a word of how she’d healed me.
But I don’t mind admitting that when she’d said “honey” that night, it made me think of the first woman to ever use that word on me.
I don’t even mind admitting that I couldn’t wait to drop in at Lansdale’s bar. Once I’d made sure it was a night Nancy would be working, that is.
aybe it’s just as well my hand was forced. Sooner or later, the day would have come when Tory-boy wouldn’t have been able to drive me home. So what difference was there between the hospital and the penitentiary?
ven after Judakowski, I wasn’t in any danger. Nobody was going to suspect me of such a thing. Yes, Judakowski always had a lot of jobs out. What happened to him can certainly happen when a man doesn’t get paid for work he did. But even the cops who knew what I did and who I did it for, they believed I only worked long-distance. How else is a cripple going to shoot anyone, especially a wary man like Judakowski had been?
Judakowski was right to be wary. I doubt there was a person in the world he could truly trust. His men
