I gave him partial truth, decorated it with smiles, left out the part about my lovers being friends, best friends as a matter of fact, kept my confession simple, in my favor, no shame or real pain revealed.

Karl asked, "Was that exciting?"

I created a brave smile, one that said I was stronger than I really was. "Very."

"Stolen fruit always tastes the sweetest."

Karl's hand touched me, rubbed me. I smiled. He was with me. He accepted me.

I licked my bottom lip. He didn't judge me. I felt both exposed and free.

Otto Rank. Henry Miller. Rupert Pole. Edmund Wilson. June Miller. Artists and psychologists. Taxi dancers. Those were only a few of my literary idol's lovers. Anais Nin had many lovers. She had seduced and been seduced, every experience adding to the totality of her being. To her humanness. I shouldn't remain timid when it came to mentioning my lovers, shouldn't be afraid to mention the ones who had been unpretty, ended without kindness and understanding, ended with friends becoming enemies.

I'd almost told Karl the truth, about how one of the men was, at the time, the love of my life. How he had betrayed me for a freshman, a cheerleader, and, in the end, I had gone to his friend in need of revenge. The revenge had been sweet. It had been wrong, but the sweetness was indescribable.

Once revealed, the pain my Belizean lover had experienced, it had driven him mad.

As the pain and heartache he had given me had driven me into the bowels of madness. Madness that had started at Ogden Circle during a pep rally. Madness that had escalated at the Student Union, burgers being thrown like weapons. Madness that continued and had me confronting a cheerleader at freshman talent night, then again confronting her while she was on the football field. A freshman who lived in Davidson Hall, the dorm across from mine. I'd lost the plot. Madness had inspired violence. My final shame had happened during halftime, a girl fight, right on the field in the middle of the marching band. Not one of my finer moments. It had been ugly in the end. When he found out I had betrayed him with his best friend as he had betrayed me, it was so ugly it was Shakespearian. I was surprised one if not all of us didn't end up with our bodies being found floating in the James River, our inconsolable spirits added to those that had haunted Virginia Cleveland Hall since the nineteenth century.

And it had been rewritten in my mind. All history was rewritten in favor of the writer.

Karl kissed me. "What are you thinking about?"

I cleared my mind, lied, and said, "That girl Frankie. The double-penetration you told me about."

"Fascinates you, huh?"

"She's a bad bitch."

"Not as bad as you."

I imagined Frankie cringing, the exotic expression of a sweet suffering all over her dank face.

I licked my lips. "Taking two men at once like that...sounds...painful."

"She enjoyed it. Frankie came hard. Was shaking for a long time. She started crying."

My yoni moaned a singsong moan.

Karl's hand eased between my legs and my thighs separated, opened like they were waiting for his return, then his fingers moved inside my heat and I was being finger-loved again. My glazed-over eyes and soft moans went to the Carolina blue skies, then to a man in a blue shirt pumping gas as fingers pumped in and out of me.

Karl said, "Don't come."

I was about to come. So close to the point of no return. That edge almost within reach.

He said, "My client's here."

"Don't stop...Karl...don't."

He took his hand away with quickness.

"Don't come. Don't you come."

"I hate you."

"Don't come."

"I hate you so much right now."

He was gone, leaving me frustrated, leaving me in a horrible state.

I whimpered at his cruelness, again cursing him in Spanish and French.

I swallowed a scream, looked up and saw a black Yukon Ram 3500, its rims shining as it pulled into the parking lot. A horn blew. With the hand that had been between my legs, Karl waved at his client.

I lowered my head and trembled, my ears filled with Eddie Murphy's voice and laughter, my need to orgasm being violated and ridiculed by him doing a routine about Buckwheat, Stymie, and Farina.

My almost-orgasm clawed at me, moved up my spine, forced me to hold my breath. I shuddered, wiped my eyes with the back of my hands. Legs tight, I squirmed in my own dampness. Refused to die a thousand little deaths underneath the heat of this Carolina sun. Sweat running down my head, dripping to my chest, dampness building up in the small of my back, teeth tight, I inhaled through my nose, looked to the skies, and shifted on my passion. I dug my nails in my arms, created pain to control plea sure.

For a moment, as it died down, I sucked air, gurgled like I was drowning.

Now I could breathe again, my breaths remained asthmatic, but I could breathe.

Sweaty and shaking, I could see again, the world fogged over, clouds lifting.

I could speak again. My words as intelligible as a newborn's, but my voice had returned.

Oh God.

It was ethereal, dreamlike, seeing Karl standing at the driver's side of his client's truck.

His client's truck was only a few feet away, parked with her door facing mine.

He was standing between us, off to the side, her view of me unobstructed.

My vision became clearer, my breathing smoothing out, sweat raining from my flesh, everything about me felt so tropical, as if I was back in the islands, standing at the top of Lady Chancellor Road, the sun resting on top of my head as Humidity held me in her loving arms.

Karl was grinning. His client was wide-eyed, frozen, staring at me, her mouth partly open, her expression a combination of fascination and horror, as if she was witnessing a crime, as if my throat had been cut, or I was naked and bleeding to death in the cab of this Jeep.

She stared at me, her eyes never moving away, her mouth never closing.

My embarrassment moved with agonizing slowness.

My mind took her photo, processed it with the speed of a digital camera.

What I could see, her round face in the window of her truck, was tanned, her left hand hanging out and revealing her short fingernails, her face being youthful and mature all at once. She was beautiful. The T-shirt she wore was fluorescent yellow. Her hair was long and red, wavy. Her brows were dark, as black as tar. No makeup on her face, a face that was dank, another victim of the Carolina sun.

She looked like a confident, quiet, easygoing person.

She smiled.

I was angry. Too livid to construct anything that resembled a face of faux happiness.

Karl had his Nikon in his hands, its eye on me, clicking away in rapid succession. My personal moments were being stolen, documented. I didn't want to be photographed struggling with an orgasm as I became drenched with sweat. Words would not come but I shook my head, tried to make a motion with my hand for him to stop. Karl was relentless, continued photographing my struggle to maintain control.

With an audience of one, an audience who refused to stop evaluating me.

He had captured my truth, held it captive inside his camera.

She waved at me.

Karl smiled his beautiful smile, the same smile his brother owned.

I nodded at them, then turned my head away.

I wondered if he had made her come.

Karl's Nikon clicked away, now capturing and documenting anger and jealousy.

His client called out and asked, "You okay?"

I struggled, then yelled back, "Allergies."

"You have bad allergies too?"

I nodded again, realizing my eyes must look puffy, face flushed, skin dank.

"Pollen is real bad," she called out. "Worse up in Yadkinville and Mocksville."

I wiped my face, the smell of my vagina on my hand, now that aroma on my face.

Her white smile flashed out as she went on, "Claritin-D. Try that."

I lowered my head like I was about to sneeze. No longer fighting the desire to come.

I was laughing a shameful laugh, laughing and holding my swollen breasts, my nipples so firm.

With a look of victory in his eyes, Karl called out, "You okay?"

Sonofabitch.

I said, "Eddie Murphy...he cracks me up."

I turned down the volume, left Eddie Murphy at whisper level, and looked back at them.

She was staring at me. Intelligent eyes filled with fascination. The sunlight revealed my darkness. She could see as much of me as I could of her. My skin sweaty, my pinned-back hair, now loose, had fallen in disarray. She saw I had a post-fuck face even though I hadn't been fucked properly. Sweat on her skin, a soft glow in her eyes. I imagined that was her post-orgasm face. For a moment it seemed like she looked at me the same desirous way I regarded Karl. The same lustful way I stared at Mark. The way I gazed at men I desired, if only in my fantasies. That look of evaluation and consideration coupled with contemplation.

She called out, "I'm Kiki Sunshine."

"Nice to meet you...Kiki Sunshine."

If I wasn't in agony I would've laughed. She had a Bond-girl name. Kiki Sunshine sounded like Pussy Galore. And Pussy Galore was a slick way of saying Glorious Pussy.

Kiki Sunshine called out to me again. "Karl said you can help me a little bit with my makeup."

I paused. "Sure. I can help you a little bit."

"Sorry I was late. Just told Karl my beautician gave me the directions and I made a wrong turn, ended up on Randleman Road. I don't usually come to this side of town."

Her voice was sweet and Southern, like an instrument with many strings.

Little Miss Kiki Sunshine eased out of her good-old-boy truck, her movements feminine. Jeans rolled up at the ankles. Yellow flip-flops on her feet. Her frame surprised me. She was a lot taller than she had looked. She had to be five-eleven. That Amazon was close enough for me to see the fullness of her lips, the greenness of her eyes. Hoop earrings and a single coral snail ring on her right hand.

With the fog lifted from my eyes, at last I could see her. Kiki Sunshine was stunning.

I didn't like her. I didn't like the way she stared at me. I didn't like the way she flirted with Karl.

Another truck pulled up on the other side of me, gave me reason to look away, and since that interruption gave me reason to break my gaze, I found another way to occupy myself.

I picked up my cellular, turned it back on. It rang as soon as I did. The number blocked.

I answered, "Hello?"

"Hey, Nia."

"Logan, please."

"I'm just calling to apologize."

"Apology accepted."

I turned the phone off.

I picked up a magazine, People, opened it to page thirty, pretended I was more interested in reading about 50 Cent's fifty-three-room house being on sale for eighteen million than anything else.

I raised my eyes from the pages and they were laughing with each other, grinning at me. Kiki Sunshine waved, sashayed her beauty inside the station before I could respond, my eyes trapped on her.

Karl came back to the Jeep, opened the door, and eased in the driver's seat.

His hand rubbed mine, moved across my legs, settled in my lap, rested on my sex.

I asked, "What are you doing?"

"Keeping my dinner warm."

For a woman, the need for love moved us into the realms of sex, took us where we felt good, where we felt special, where we bared ourselves and each moan was a moan of trust, each moan asking that we not be betrayed. My song was soft, yet lyrical and astounding. It wasn't the moans but the space between those moans that told what was truly in my heart, those spaces were my soul.

Kiki Sunshine came back out with bottled water, went to her Yukon Ram 3500, her sashay self-confident and hot, a flame that could create wildfires, each step made for a red carpet.