Page 94 of Two Marlboros

We spent the whole afternoon together, during which I tried to start a conversation by asking him if he attended clubs or any classes, but I got nothing out of him.

“So, you don’t do anything besides work?” I asked, by now surrendered.

“Not right now, but we could do something together. In the meantime, why don’t we end on a high note with a littleNatharveyevening, like in the old days?”

“That is, sex and pizza delivery?”

He tried to approach me, but I was quicker and pulled out a cigarette and lighter.

“You never seemed to dislike that.”

He gave me an amused look. I realized only after a few seconds that he was pleased with my bad habits, as if I had been his creature, someone he had molded in his image. Fuck it.

“I don’t, indeed,” I replied, and took a quick puff, “but I’m not really in the mood to fuck.”

Harvey slipped back into a street away from prying eyes, and I followed him. It was a narrow, smelly alley. He stopped right next to a dumpster, then pinned me to the wall.

“At least give me a blowjob.”

I looked around. There was no one there, but we were on the street anyway, and his seemed more like an order than a request. The worst part was that his rudeness aroused me, and he knew that well.

“Why should I?” I asked, and I puffed to feign indifference, when in fact I imagined myself on my knees unbuckling his belt.

Harvey, in response, pounced on my lips. He pulled me close and began to kiss me, and I to kiss him, as his hands traveled down my back until they stopped on my ass. He pulled away from my lips only when he realized that I was panting.

He looked me straight in the eyes and came up to my ear.

“Because I know you like being my slut.”

I was still panting when he said that last word, and I hated myself for the way I was reacting. He was still treating me like the Nathan he had known, but, just as then, I found no strength to oppose his ravenous tone.

“That’s why we’re going to your house now,” he whispered again, and left a kiss under my chin, “you’re going to blow me,” and the trail continued all over my neck, “and I’m going to watch you smugly, just the way you like it.”

My breath was so heavy that saying no to him would have been impossible. Besides, I wanted him. I wanted to be hisslut.

The evening went just as he described. I did everything he asked, not paying too much attention to the fact that, once again, there had been attention only to his pleasure. I took care of my own, in the shower, and soon after the taste in my throat began to repulse me, and I was ashamed that I had obeyed his orders without saying a word.

I put my clothes back on, avoiding crossing my image in the mirror. I didn’t want to see the face of that little boy who had fallen for it again, and who somewhere deep down wondered what more he could do to get the attention he deserved from Harvey.

When I returned to him, I found him lying on the couch with the phone in his hand. He barely looked up at me, too absorbed in his cell phone. I, meanwhile, ordered pizzas to be delivered.

We ate together in front of a movie whose name I did not know, after which Harvey got up to go to the bathroom. Once again, I was alone with my squalor, because he played so well with my feelings and weaknesses, and it was hard to accept that a part of me found him arousing and almost wanted him. Feeling like his slut should have pissed me off a lot more, but I couldn’t fake a feeling I didn’t have.

I got up and reached the bathroom with the idea of knocking to see what happened to him, but I found the door ajar. I opened it and found Harvey leaning over the cabinet at the side of the sink, in a silence filled only by a snort and a satisfied sigh from him soon after.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked.

He turned sharply toward me. It was a rhetorical question, because I knew right away. I just didn’t want to believe it.

“It’s none of your business.”

He rubbed his nose, without the slightest distress about that situation.

“You’re doing in my house, you know, it is my business.”

Drugs. Cocaine? It was hard to tell. He sniffed the remnants that were left on the cabinet, and then walked over and glared at me.

“I guess I’ll just have to go somewhere else then.”

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