By Alex Poppe

As I hang up, a Mexican delivery boy plops a paper bag on the bar in front of me. ‘I didn’t order that.’

The delivery boy stares at me as if I were a car crash. ‘It’s from that table outside.’ He points at a cock-fuck sampling of post-college frat boys raising their beer mugs to me. They look like they’ve been vended by Mattel for eight bucks a pop. Inside the bag a burrito dribbles sour cream.

Slip a ten in the delivery boy’s hand as I give him back the bag. ‘See that guy with the Don Draper hair?’ Point to a frat Twinkie smiling with coital suggestiveness. ‘Bring it to him and tell him I’m not hungry for what he’s got.’ When he gets the burrito back, Frat Twinkie jumps on the table and humps the air in my direction. Is he sexy or alarming?

Googling Lukas is a welcomed distraction. His writing is like brain sex: intimate, generous, feeling. Reading it lets me rummage around in the cupboards of his mind and leaves me roiling, restless. Is there some secret drawer where we can lie like spoons? In his Rikers piece, Lukas profiles a kid who was sent there because someone said he stole a backpack. He couldn’t pay his bail, so he sat in Rikers, waiting for his trial. The kid lost almost three years, a lot of it in solitary, without ever being tried or convicted. When the kid says, “There are certain things that changed about me and they might not go back,” I shiver like water in the wind.

‘Since you didn’t like the burrito, can I buy you a drink?’ Frat Twinkie must have come inside to use the bathroom. He gives off a testicular air.

‘Black Label, straight up. Water back. Nice Magic Mike moves.’ If you like foreplay aerobics.

‘We all have our talents.’ He crosses to my left side. ‘My name’s Brian.’

‘Jax.’ Alat brings a fresh round. ‘Your fly is open. Cheers.’

Brian hiccups on his shot then assumes a posture of masculine nonchalance. I watch him zip up with my measuring tape eyes. His build suggests good old grass-fed Americana. In the beer garden, his crew is clearing out.

‘Do you like what you see?’ Brian’s laugh is like loose change rattling around the bottom of a paper cup.

‘Some.’

‘I’m not used to such frank scrutiny.’

‘I am.’ The way you look. ‘How does it feel?’

‘From you? Flattering. From the bartender? Probably not as good.’

‘Let me do it again.’ My stare pushes his legs ever so slightly apart.
‘My turn.’

Hold my profile position. ‘I’m not done looking.’

‘Afraid to face me?’

‘No.’

‘Then look at me woman.’ He unbuttons restraint.

Turn my head and lower my eyes, imagining the taut plain of pelvis, his smooth, stiff shaft. I’m ready for some loveless fucking.

‘Look me in the eye.’

I level my stare. Watch the light in his eyes dim as he takes in my physical ruin and brighten again as he leaves it. I lay my hand over my heart as his eyes transverse my breasts. My hand accompanies his gaze as it caresses my thigh. When his eyes return to my face, they nest in my lips. It feels like a kiss. I am plugged in.

‘Good God, woman.’

‘No one calls me that.’

‘What?’

‘Woman. Usually it’s “girl”.’

‘Trust me. You’re all woman.’

‘You ready to go?’

‘Where?’
‘Your place.’ I want to wild out.

‘See? Woman.’ Brian finishes my water. ‘What if I’m not that type of guy?’

‘I will be greatly disappointed.’

‘What about your place?’

‘My husband’s home.’ Why not make a game of life?

‘I hope you’re kidding.’

‘Would it matter?’ Slather a look of concern across my face.

‘It might. Depends on how many friends he has.’

‘He’s a loner. That’s why he’s home.’

Outside there are more stars than we need.

‘This way.’ Brian heads toward the East River and the condominium towers where money lives. We pause near the ferry dock to watch moonlight play hide and seek with the waves. Turn to him and feather my lips along the lush cup of his mouth. Kiss him in time to the secret breathing of the pier. His lips taste mysteriously of figs. What does he taste in me?

‘Let’s go.’ Brian’s voice is a speed bump in the silence. As we enter the building, he nods at the doorman who gives me a tough, slithered look. Hey buddy, you can’t tickle yourself.

Our conversation takes on a shapeless quality until we are lying naked, my tongue graffitiing his body. The ridges of his ribs morph into river waves, his cock becomes the North Fifth Street Pier, his keen loan moan echoes the foghorns haunting the East River. I put him inside me and ride him to the rhythm of Merengue blasting from the Puerto Rican bodegas east of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Outside his bedroom window, darkness stands back behind the persevering skyline. In my mind’s eye, the industrial warehouses glow under a slow sun. I come, triggering an internal sunburst. Brian comes, his eyes all dark and buttony with pleasure. Unsticking skin from skin, I roll off him into an airy, bottomless quiet. We lie coated in the starch of sex.

He looks happy but with something else on his face too.

The air between us changes.

He watches me cover my body with clothes again. ‘You don’t have to go.’

‘I know,’ and finish dressing.

‘At least let me take you.’

Brian probably walks curbside while escorting the ladies and gets all the doors. ‘That’s OK.’ My words reflect on his face. Outside, the predawn light is a translucent, misty blue. I want to live in the all of it.

‘Why so cold? I thought we had a good time.’

‘We did. But now we’re done.’ I can’t help he’s fucked my attraction to him right out of me. Find my left shoe under a chair. Replace the door as I leave.

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Alex Poppe is the author of two works of fiction Girl, World by Laughing Fire Press (2017) and Moxie by Tortoise Books (2019). Girl, World was named a 35 Over 35 Debut Book Award winner, First Horizon Award finalist, Montaigne Medal finalist, short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and was awarded an Honorable Mention in General Fiction from the Eric Hoffer Awards. Her short fiction has been a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Family Matters contest, a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and commended for the Baker Prize among others. Her non-fiction was named a Best of the Net nominee (2016), a finalist for Hot Metal Bridge’s Social Justice Writing contest and has appeared in Bust and Bella Caledonia among others. She is an academic writing lecturer at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani and is working on her third book of fiction with support from Can Serrat International Art Residency and Duplo-Linea De Costa Artist in Residency programs. When she is not being thrown from the back of food aid trucks or dining with pistol-packing Kurdish hit men, she writes.