Sarabande, Ch. 8
“It’s just like Uptown. Ain’t it just like Uptown, Tracy?”
“Yeah, man.” Tracy was being quiet, a little withdrawn. What was it she said? What button did she push? Maybe he really did love her. –I believe in love at first sight, really I do–
“Yeah, Silverlake,” Stella said. “Silverlake is the only place where people walk around on the streets, and people sit on their stoops… It’s the only place in L.A. where there are stoops to sit on.”
The limo turned up into the hills, and Tony laughed, sliding back and forth on the seat, like a kid on a roller-coaster. Tracy had been hit by ennui, shortly after breakfast had finally ended. He couldn’t stay cooped up in that damned hotel, he’d announced. He wanted some California sunshine. So they’d elected to meet Tony’s blind date at Stella’s crib. She took him out of his leathers for the visit, and made him take his hair down. Demoting him to just a short little nigger, so they could go safely into her ‘hood. Silverlake seemed to be kind of a ghetto, but how could he tell? Nothing looked as bad as the Southside he and Tony grew up in.
The limo stopped. “Pile out,” Stella said, and they looked up an impossibly long flight of concrete steps, at the little Spanish cottage set at the top of the hill.
“How many? Forty?” Tony laughed. “Dig it, they ain’t a forty step hill in all of Illinois!”
“Plenty forty steps walk-ups, though,” Tracy said, starting up. “Just pretend there’s two landings to go.”
Stella watched the two men climbing ahead of her. She felt blissfully content. Something spoke to her, some remembrance. When she was younger, dreaming of her life to come, surely she’d once seen just this. Good friends, good lovers filling her home…
There was a pretty girl sitting in the steps of the porch, basking in the warm sunlight. Alegra, with her cafe-au-lait skin and freckles, slightly nappy hair and wide-set, Eurasian eyes. Pouting, innocent mouth, that matched Tony’s eyes, she had been right about that. Tony, two steps below her, said; “Aw-w…” as you might on seeing a kitten. Then she stood up, and he found himself staring at her bellybutton. Stella shrieked;
“Alegra, you little bitch!” She had appropriated Stella’s prized, hand-painted Levis. “Get out of my jeans!” she roared, charging up the stairs. Alegra squealed and ran inside. Stella tackled her in the corner of the L-shaped sofa, and unbuttoned them, Alegra laughing and fighting her off. The two men shouldered through the door to watch the show, chortling. Stella hauled the pants down the beautiful, rounded ass. Alegra shrieked and tried to pull them up again, got slapped and de-pantsed. Alegra stood up and walked, with some dignity, out of the living room, wearing a crop-top and a pair of filmy thong panties.
“Oh, man!” Tony groaned blissfully.
“Well, that’s Alegra,” Stella said. “I’ll be right out.” And followed. Behind her, she could hear the men slapping hands.
“Well, that’s one way to break the ice.” Stella pulled off Tony’s loaned jeans. “They sure liked that.”
“Which one do I get, the little guy?”
“The big one’s yours.” Stella felt a foolish grin widening her face. “The little one’s mine, and you keep your hands off him, absolutely, understand?”
“Are you serious?” Alegra stared.
“I am… Wanna know their names?” Alegra lifted an eyebrow. “Well, yours is a guy named Tony Marks, ever hear of him?”
Alegra wrinkled her forehead; “I don’t know… That sounds…”
Stella pulled her own jeans on while the other girl pondered, rummaged for a top, slipped it over her head. “Do I look groovy?” She preened in front of the mirror.
Alegra nodded absently. “Damn it, I just can’t… Where are they from?”
“Chicago.”
“Chicago… Oh!” Her eyes got huge: “Karen! That’s Tracy Bell, out there? Omigod, Karen, I’m so happy for you!” She jumped up and down, hugged her, screaming in a whisper. “Omigod, Tracy Bell and Tony Marks, did you really do it with them both? Omigod, was it good?”
Stella couldn’t speak for a moment. A rush of lust, pure and nearly painful, swept over her.
“It was all three of us at once… We didn’t stop till morning,” she said, in awe. “Tracy gave me a new name, that’s supposed to mean he’s serious. He calls me Stella… He says I’m coming with him on the tour… He … he says… he loves me… It’s like we’ve been in love for years already…”
“Well, of course! That’s what you always said, isn’t it?” Alegra demanded. The whole thing seemed simple to her.
“Yeah, but it’s easy to talk, Alegra…”
“He gave you a new name?”
“Stella.”
“Stella McKayne, that sounds pretty good.” Alegra giggled; “Stella Bell.”
“Oh, shut up, please!” Stella snorted. “You just make Tony love you, girl, he’s just what you need after that lawyer jerk you were seeing. Oh, mother, you can’t believe the kind of happy he can make you… And I better get out there.”
“I gotta sit down a minute.” She plopped down on the bed. “Tracy Bell, and Tony Marks, I can’t believe it!” Stella went out into the living room. Tracy was prowling restlessly, looking at her paintings, and handling everything on her mantelpiece and bookshelves. His back to her, he looked like a tomcat staking his territory. She could all but see his tail-tip twitching. Tony, gazing out the french doors at the back of the dining area, wheeled round at her footsteps.
“Where is she?” he demanded. Stella gestured.
“She’ll be out in a minute. Want anything?”
“What you got to drink?” Tracy asked, and followed her into the little kitchen. Leaning against the wall, he looked around, smiling. “I like your crib.”
“Thanks.” Stella looked around too, proud of her home. “What do you want to drink?” She opened the refrigerator and bent down to look. Tracy came up behind her to put his hands on her ass.
“You,” he said. “I want to drink you, and drink you. I haven’t had any of you today–” He stopped at the sound of a door opening, and they watched Alegra walk over to the sofa and stand smiling down at the dumfounded man sitting there.
“Hi, Tony,” she said; “It’s nice to meet you.”
Tony finally remembered to close his mouth. He stood up, and took her hand in his.
“Alegra,” he said huskily. “Baby, you look just like your name.” He stood there, looking like a kid who didn’t really think he was getting the present he’d asked Santa for, a little smile appearing and disappearing on his face, until the girl began to blush. Since Tracy was looking too, with a covetous eye, Stella led him into the room.
“Alegra, this is Tracy Bell.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.” she said, and giggled.
“Oh, I’m charmed, by you.” he said in his deepest voice, and Tony momentarily relinquished her hand to his cousin. Tracy put his arm around Stella’s waist.
“Show me your California backyard, baby… You got any oranges?” He led her to the French doors. Looking over her shoulder, Stella caught Alegra’s eye, nodded towards the bedroom; She replied with a lifted eyebrow. Through the glass panes they saw Tony run his hands up her arms and down her back. Sinking to his knees, he caressed her hips. Alegra pulled him to his feet and led him out of the room.
“Go, stud,” Tracy whispered. Stella shivered. Tracy glanced at her, and saw the look on her face again; innocent, and predatory. He followed her around the corner of the house to an open window, and, like a pair of kids, they peered in.
Tony was in the act of lifting Alegra’s shirt over her head. Cupping one freckled breast in a hand, he glued himself to her mouth, and her arms went around his neck.
“Moving pretty fast, isn’t he?” Stella whispered. Tracy could feel her smile against his cheek.
“No, I think he’s taking it nice and slow, considering.” Together, they watched the two young bodies in the slow dance of lust. Alegra pulled off his black teeshirt and slid her fingers into his jeans, but he dropped to his knees again and unbuttoned her fly. She stepped out of her jeans as they fell. Tony slipped his fingers under the elastic of her thong and kissed it, eliciting a tiny whimper from Stella; Tracy turned to look at her in surprise. In his experience, women weren’t too interested in peep-shows.
“Which one of you knows more moves?” she breathed in his ear.
“Me,” he whispered back. “You already know that.”
Tony slid the panties away, and lifted Alegra’s leg over his shoulder, pushing his face into her crotch. She spread for him, crouching, her hands buried in his hair.
“Let’s get away from here,” Tracy said. “It’s just too demoralizing.”
They wandered out to the little patch of lawn. Tracy stretched out luxuriously. “You dig to watch?” he asked, lazily.
She grinned, sheepishly.
“Them your paintings?”
“Uh, yeah” she admitted. “See, I was supposed to be a great artist, like my mom and my sister, I just never got my degree… Got sidetracked into modeling– I mean, ‘cause I can travel…”
“Your mom’s an artist?”
“Yeah, she’s pretty well known, Maggie Doman. And my sister paints, too, but I can’t stand her stuff. She over-works everything… Well, I really need to get it together… At least she shows her work…”
“Hmmn,” Tracy said. “Let’s neck, and kiss and not take our clothes off, you ever do that? Fight about getting to second base, drive ourselves crazy.”
“I’ll try to get to your tits,” she said promptly. He rolled his eyes. “I have no willpower,” she explained. “I hope you do…” and she crept her hand across his chest.
–Okay, if that’s the way she wanted it– “Don’t do that!”Tracy grabbed at her wrist.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” Stella said. “Um… You just look so good in that white tank top, I can’t help it.. I love you” –Uh-oh, that was easy to say– “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, don’t you believe me?”
“Oh, I do, I do,” he sighed. “I love you, too.”
She slid her hand across his pectorals; “Come on, honey” she urged.
“Well… but only on the outside, okay?” She felt him choke back a laugh. Solemnly, she stroked his nipples, feeling them harden through the thin cloth. She bent down to kiss them.
“Stop!” he pushed at her.
“What’s wrong?”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he whined.
Sweat suddenly prickled her body. “Oh, baby, please? I’m staying outside, just like you said–” She lunged, mouthing at the nipple through the tank. He moaned in falsetto, when she moved to his neck, and clutched at her.
“Feels good, doesn’t it,” she panted.
“Oh, yeah… ooh…”
She slid her hand under the strap. “No, don’t,” he breathed. “Oh, don’t, you said you wouldn’t–”
“I’m burning inside for you,” Stella said, exultantly. –Truth, it’s the easy truth, Tracy Bell–
“Stop it!” They tussled, laughing. Stella abandoned his pectorals, and went after his beltline with gusto.
“Get away!” He laughed, slapping at her hands. Remembering the night before, she reached up and stroked his latissimus, the long muscle down the side of the chest. He moaned, inflaming her, and tried to trap her hands; “Oh, now that ain’t fair,” he gasped. “That’s rape.”
“Oh, yeah– so, relax and enjoy it–” and she rolled him over and used her mouth and hands, working as if it were his breasts, until he writhed under her in abandon. She undid his top button; he pushed her back feebly.
“If you loved me,” she growled; “You’d let me.”
“Oh, that’s what they all say,” he said in his ordinary voice. They sat up.
Stella glared at him.“I thought I was the first one, Tracy… Have you done this before?”
“Well, a little bit… But I never went this far before.” His eyes laughed at her, through his tousled hair.
“Don’t you want to go just a little bit further?” Stella crooned and guided him down. The battle was on again. She threw her leg over his hips, the feel of his hardon maddening her with its heat. His back arched, pushing his hips high into the air, and he cried out; “Stop!”– leaving her in a quandary.
“Don’t you love me?” she asked urgently.
“I do, really… I just can’t…”
Stella rolled off, to lay next to him in the sun-warmed grass.
“You don’t really love me,” she said, grinning.
“I do so.”
“Prove it.” She looked over, exulting in the sweetness of his jaw and neck, his chest moving with his breath, the glistening skin on his arms, his finely modeled hands. His eyes met hers.
“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said. “How can I prove that?”
“I guess,” she breathed; “I’ll just have to trust you.”
Tracy rolled to her, to place his lips gently over hers, laid his head on her chest. She stroked the blue-black hair back from his forehead, her fingertips tingling when they traced the long lines of his face.
“Oh, I can’t believe it’s really you. In my arms after all this time…” He smiled at that, his eyes closed against the sun. “When you start throwing your body around like that, I’d do anything for you, anything.”
Tracy grinned. “You mean like this?” He pushed himself up over her, hips thrusting at empty air. The slow twist of his shoulders extended to his torso, and then he threw himself up, and over, to land thudding onto his back in the grass. He kicked out and arched into a quivering bow on his heels and shoulders, head rolling, blind-eyed, mouth snarling. He rolled onto his side, arms thrust back, fists clenched tight. His body jerked, violently, once, twice… and relaxed abruptly. Stella started to breath again as he crawled back to her. “You mean that stuff?” he said, and laughed; He’d been doing the choreography from his song, “Tease me”.
She was speechless. She rolled away from him, onto her stomach, hiding her face in her arms. “Yeah,” she said, muffled. “That stuff.”
“Hey.”
She turned back to him; “Anything, Tracy Bell,” she said, and gave him a little show of her own, sliding her hand down into her jeans while she caressed her neck and mouth with the other. She dropped the pose, and fell back.
“I was doing ten days on location when that album came out,” she told him. “That’s a lot like being on tour, you know? Do you remember the makeup artist? Humphrey? Bald head?”
“Yeah, I do!”Tracy said in surprise. “He was the one did us for them Rolling Stone pictures.”
“That’s why he had the CD. Before it came out. He knew how much I dig you, so he stuck it in my player for a surprise… When I heard “Debutante” and “Rip Me Up”, Oh, Mother… And then “Tease Me”, and I went to lock myself in the bathroom.”
“No lie?” Tracy grinned smugly.
“And then you had to go and do that video, and I got a copy of that– I can’t believe you’d do that live, Tracy, it– You know I wasn’t wearing panties last night?” She laughed, a little hysterically; “I had to throw them in the trash, they were so gone.”
“That right?” He thought about it for a moment. “Damn,” he said softly. “A lot of women said it was disgusting… My girlfriend stopped seeing me… My band almost busted up, over that one stupid song.”
“Gina?”
“Well, she’s kinda weird, she ain’t no kind of freak, but she always takes the freaky position, you know what I mean? She dug all the engineering problems we had on that song. There’s all kinds of shit hidden in the subsonics, it kept her real happy. But Bobby, my old drummer… he’s turned into some kind of Baptist… Everything I do is another step on the road to hell. So I lost him, but Karl is working out good… And then Prince did his movie, before we got the album out, even, and then I was okay, ‘cause he was the disgusting egotist of the moment… I got called a copycat, but I kept my goddamn band–” He stopped. “Sorry,” he said. “You probably ain’t too interested in that tired old shit.”
“Yes, I am,” she said; “I’m interested.” She plucked grass, smiling to herself. Tracy watched her, curiously. “You wanna know what my sister said?” she said at last. “She totally freaked. She said; ‘If men learn to talk like that, we’ll be lost for good’… But men didn’t seem to learn how to talk like that.”
“So, you’re safe.”
“Well… Not any more.” And she began to laugh, softly, and richly, and helplessly, and as she pulled him into her embrace, triumphantly. “Oh, Mother!” she gasped. “What am I gonna do?”
“Mother” Tracy asked; “You really love your momma that much?”
“Uh… The great Mother, The Goddess.”
“Hey, you one of them witch bitches?” he said gleefully.
“Not a witch– Pagan,” Stella corrected him. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Sort of, but I never–” He stopped suddenly, head cocked. “Listen.”
