Crossroads

"Ellen, don't."

"Why not?" she whispered. "Everyone else does it. Everyone."

I shook my head, trying to convince myself that she was wrong, that the whole idea was wrong. I didn't know whether it was decency or fear, but I knew it was wrong, and I wanted her to kiss me again and make it so I didn't care.

"If you were younger? Is that it? Because that doesn't matter at all, you know that. I'm all grown up, James. I know what I'm doing."

"No. Of course not. That's not it." I said it as if I knew what I was talking about.

"Then what? You certainly don't owe him any loyalty. He doesn't deserve it."

She was still standing close to me, close enough to kiss, her thighs resting on the edge of the table between my knees. She gently took her wrist from my hand and lowered her hands, laying her warm palms on the tops of my thighs and squeezing softly. I was already semi-erect from her kiss, and now this.

"You're so much better than he'll ever be," she said. "The way you feel things, the things you say. It's not fair that people like him get everything. We deserve something too."

For once I had nothing to tell her. Her hands were on the tops of my thighs, slowly caressing them, her thumbs sliding along the insides. Her full breasts were hanging like ripe fruit behind that exquisite dress, just waiting to be plucked, and her mouth, her face, her whole body was leaning towards me, aching to be kissed.

Like night over day my lips came down on hers. There was a brief moment of electrical contact as we touched, and then I felt as though I left some dark and heavy world behind and I seemed to soar into space with her. She melted into me as we kissed, her mouth going soft and passive, expectant and pleading. It was that melting, that total loss of resistance that did it. In an instant it seemed like she'd become part of me, and then we were kissing hungrily, aware of nothing else.

"The light," I said, breaking away to gasp for breath. "Someone might see."

The windows behind us were covered with burglar bars with boxes stacked in front of them, but still I worried. Ellen reached up and switched off the light, so that only the barest illumination remained, seeping in from the front of the store and from the lighted face of the record player. She took my hand and put it on her breast.

It was soft, and heavy, and the thought struck me that she wasn't wearing a bra. I could feel the weight and the yielding warmth right through the fabric of her dress, and then all rational thought stopped as she raised her arms and put them around my neck, entrusting her breasts to my hands as her lips sought mine out again.

I broke off the kiss. "Get the record," I said. It was still spinning on the turntable, hissing in the groove. It didn't matter, but I was nervous and stalling for time.

She took the needle off, and then came back to me like a bride comes to her husband, and this time I just lost it. She wanted me, and that was more than I could resist, more than I could stand. I grabbed her arms and pulled her to me, shoved my tongue into her welcoming mouth and kissed her deep, tasting the intoxicating trace of the whiskey on her breath. Her nails scratched at my thighs. She bit my lip and pressed her hand against my cock.

"Oh Christ, Ellen! We shouldn't do this! We can't!"

"God, you're so hard!" she gasped, shuddering in my embrace. "You poor man. So hard."

My head spun in a total confusion of emotions. So many times she'd felt like a daughter to me, and I like her father, and now all that was collapsing, being swept away by our need. It felt incestuous and wrong, and that only excited me more.

"Ellen, no..."

"Shhh..." She leaned her forehead against mine and looked down, her fingers searching for the zipper on my jeans. The feel of her hands on me was maddening.

"Open my dress, James. The buttons on top. I want to feel your hands on me."

I moaned, unable to speak. I fumbled with the buttons until Ellen had to help me. Some of the buttons were decorative, and some of them were real, and I was in no shape to figure out which was which. She got me started, watching my eyes as she exposed her chest to me, then letting me take over, enjoying my feverish clumsiness. I had to ignore her hands pulling my zipper down and reaching into my pants, trying to free my aching cock from my shorts.

I knew I had to stop her. I'd just see her breasts, let her grab my dick, and then we'd stop. We'd realize how wrong this was and stop, laugh nervously, and never mention it again. But by now her dress was open enough for me to draw it apart and see her naked breasts, full and erect and aching to be touched, her exquisite nipples already standing up in eagerness for my lips.

I got the rest of the buttons open. I peeled the top of her dress down over her shoulders and dove at her breasts, kissing, sucking, on fire for her. Ellen let her head roll back and hissed with pleasure, shocking me with her wantonness. I was hers now and she knew it, without the strength to resist her. The gift of herself had done it. Her hand left what it was doing at my cock and came up to press my head against her yielding tits, basking in her victory.

"Oh God, yes!" she moaned, shuddering deliciously as I squeezed and sucked. "It has been a long time for you, hasn't it, baby? You're on fire. You shouldn't have to suffer like this, James. You deserve better. You deserve so much more."

I couldn't answer. I slid off the table in order to get my head lower so I could suck her tits into my mouth, and that eased the tension on my pants enough so that Ellen was at last able to pull my naked cock out through my fly, free of my shorts, painfully erect. I felt the weird and salacious sensation of the cool air hitting my naked shaft, and then she took me in her hand and started to stroke me.

"Oh Christ, Ellen!" I gasped. "We shouldn't be doing this. We shouldn't. But, God, I can't help myself. I just can't!"

I smothered whatever else I was going to say with her naked flesh, sucking her nipple into my mouth and lashing it with my tongue as she gasped and groaned and pressed herself against my lips. Her hand started to work on me now, and then her other hand, both hands holding my prick and pumping it up and down.

"God you're so hard!" she gasped. "Do you always get so hard? It's for me, isn't it, baby? Tell me it's for me. You feel the same way I do, don't you James?"

It had been a long, long time since I'd done anything like this, masturbation being my only release, and the feel of Ellen's soft, sweet hands on my swollen prick was almost too much to endure. Her touch made me frantic, and the sight of that exquisite face suffused with lust was more than I could stand. I pulled her against me and kissed her feverishly, and all the time her hands never stopped pumping.

"Let me get my clothes off," she gasped. "I want you to fuck me, baby. I want to feel your cock in me, James."

"No!" I said, gritting my teeth. "No! We can't, Ellen. That's too much. We just can't."

She could tell I was serious, and she didn't argue. In truth I was almost panicked. I was totally losing control of myself and I was afraid of what I might do.

"All right. All right, baby," she said breathlessly as she kissed my face. "Let me bring you off this way, okay? Just with my hand? Is that okay?"

"Yes," I gasped. "Just like that. Just do what you're doing."

Ellen moaned with pleasure and reached up and bit my lip, teasing it with her teeth, then let me go and said. "Suck my tits, James. My nipples. That drives me wild. Please, baby."

I lowered my head while she frigged my cock, and we stood there in the shadowy room like that, our moans and gasps mingling in the darkness. She had gorgeous tits, big and firm and alive, with exquisitely sensitive nipples set way up high, and she was right: it did drive her wild when I sucked and bit down on them. She would gasp, grip my cock hard and pump me faster.

It was obscene. It would have been degrading if we both hadn't been so oblivious. I was so much older than she, a big, powerful man, standing there and nursing at her tits and groaning like a child while she beat me off—the most basic and juvenile act of sex there is—as if I were no more than a love-sick adolescent in the back seat of a car.

Maybe it was the role reversal that made it seem so perverse and forbidden, but I loved the way I was so helpless in her hands. It drove me wild, and I started sucking and even biting her breasts as she hissed with savage pleasure.

"Careful! Careful! No marks!" she cried. She was panting with excitement, but her hand never stopped.

I backed off. I was losing control. Her hands were pumping at me, working at me, and the end of my dick was streaming with juice, the pressure in my cock was unbearable. My balls had worked their way out of my fly and swung back and forth as she beat me off, potent and heavy.

"Give it to me, baby!" she whispered in my ear. "Come for me, James. Just let it go. Don't fight it. You know you want it. I want it too. I want this for you. Please, baby, please!"

I couldn't stand up any longer. I had to lean against the table, my hands on her shoulders for support. I pulled her close, buried my face in her neck like a child as she reached up and caressed the back of my neck, as of comforting me in my anguish And still her other hand never stopped, sliding the skin up and down my steely shaft as if she were some sort of milking machine.

I felt the spasms start, the ineluctable slide towards orgasm. I cried out, a cry for mercy, a cry of alarm at my body's own betrayal.

"Oh fuck, Ellen! I'm going to come! You're going to make me come!"

"Yes!" she said joyously. "Yes, baby! Do it for me. Come for me, James!" She tightened her grip and increased her speed, baring her teeth as she felt my cock trembling in her hand, twitching with the first few, priming spasms.

"Aghhh!" I threw my head back and roared, punched my hips forward and exploded in a stream of scalding semen, jerking helplessly in her hand. Ellen held my cock up and moved aside so she could see the great gouts of come arc from my cock and shoot through the air, landing on the floor some feet away, their distance a measure of the force of my release, and each spurt accompanied by a savage spasm and a harsh groan from deep in my chest.

My body shook and shuddered as Ellen milked me insistently for all I had, humming and sighing to herself with approval.

At last I had to make her stop. I couldn't stand it anymore. She let go of me and backed away, just looking at me with her breasts heaving, then went into the other room and came back with some tissues, and cleaned us off, taking special care to wipe my come off the floor.

I stood there holding her for a long time, neither of us speaking. I felt like I had so much to say, but I didn't know where to start, and at last I just said, "I'd better go."

Ellen nodded, eyes down. I knew she had things to say too, but the whole situation was too shocking, too fragile for words. She buttoned up her dress and saw me to the back door, unlocked the locks and opened it.

Maybe I should have kissed her, but I was afraid now. What if she refused, or—worse— what if she threw herself at me? I said goodnight and she said goodnight. I didn't even take the bag of records with me.

I went back to the shop, of course. To stay away would have been too suspicious; an admission that we'd done something wrong. By tacit agreement we didn't speak of it, not aloud, but it was there. I saw it in her eyes, in the way her touch lingered, in the silly awkwardness when we were alone, like two embarrassed adolescents. I avoided going back there at night after closing, though, and Ellen seemed to accept that. We both needed time to think.

I didn't know what to do. I wanted her desperately at this point, but I could hardly ask her to leave her husband for me, nor could I even suggest some sort of clandestine affair, which would have been even worse. I had to leave it in her hands. Hers and Eric's.

I don't think Eric knew, but maybe he did. Maybe she told him what had happened, using me as a weapon in one of their spats, because who knows what goes on between two people locked in a troubled relationship? It seemed to me that his attitude towards me changed, but not in the way I'd expected. If anything, he seemed friendlier and more indulgent, intentionally throwing Ellen and me together and referring to us as "you two". Maybe he knew and was just as capable of using me against Ellen as she was in using me against him.

All I knew is how it affected me, and that was totally unexpected. Suddenly I was seized by the urge to get to work, to throw myself into my collecting and trading, to start wheeling and dealing as ruthlessly as Eric and resume the hunt for rare discs, a search I'd given up years ago as no longer worthwhile. I didn't really think I could somehow buy her from Eric, but I instinctively knew I needed something with which to deal. I needed to find something he wanted.

I began hitting the garage sales, the flea markets, getting up at three or four in the morning to get there at first light. I started canvassing the old, black middle class neighborhoods where I'd had success some years before in finding old 78's, going door to door and handing out cards, offering top dollar for old records.

On a bright Sunday October afternoon I came into their shop at a casually late hour and took a black-labeled Vocalian record from my briefcase and slid it under Eric's nose.

"What's this?"

"A lost recording of Robert Johnson doing 'Hell-bound Train'."

Eric slid the record from its sleeve and held it to the light to see how badly it was scratched.

"The only one in existence," I added.

That got him. He eased the record back into its jacket and looked at me to see if I was serious. Ellen came over and looked down at the record in shock. Unlike Eric, she knew what it meant.

"Oh, James!" she said breathlessly. "Are you serious? Oh my God!"

Eric looked at her, then at me. "What's it worth?"

"There's no telling." I said. "Ten thousand, maybe twenty, maybe more."

"Jesus! Where'd you get it?"

That last question was always meant to be rhetorical amongst collectors. No one ever told.

Eric looked up at me, a bit nervously now. "You shouldn't be carrying this thing around. You want me to put it in the safe?"

"I'm giving it to you," I said. "I mean, I'm splitting it with you. Same deal as always. A third for each of us."

He put the record down and looked at me. He didn't think much of my business sense, but even this was hard to accept. He knew damned well I didn't have to cut him in on anything. There was nothing in our agreement to keep me from selling the record myself and keeping it all. I didn't owe him a thing.

"I know four collectors who'll be willing to bid against each other for this. Plus there are the reissue rights. I haven't contacted any record labels yet about that. I'll leave that all to you, and in return we split it three ways, just like we've always done. Partners, right?"

All that stuff was just busy work designed to make Eric feel like he was doing something to earn his money. He knew as well as I did that I was just giving him several thousand dollars.

Ellen knew it too.

There was a moment when we all three stood there, Eric and I looking at each other, and Ellen looking at the both of us, each of us calculating the terms of the deal in our heads.

"Who is this guy, Robert Johnson?" Eric asked.

I couldn't believe he didn't know. I thought everyone knew.

Ellen spoke up. "He's a great legendary blues guy. Maybe the greatest ever, but no one knows much about him but legends. He's the one who supposedly made a deal with the devil at a crossroads one night—his soul in return for the ability to play the guitar like no one else."

Eric smiled. He understood deals.

"He made 29 recordings in the thirties, and that's all," I said, "There've always been rumors that he made one or two more that were lost, but no one could ever track them down. Not until now."

"And this is it?" Eric's eyes got that gleam in them. "Jesus!"

Ellen didn't tell him the rest of the story, how Johnson died. A hard-core womanizer, he was murdered one night by a jealous husband who put poison in his whiskey. Strychnine, that was the rumor. He died in agony, and they said it was because he could see the devil standing at the foot of his bed, waiting to collect.

Eric laughed. He picked up the record and shook his head and laughed again. "I'll be damned," he said. "I'll be God damned. And you're splitting it? Jesus. Let me go get a Mylar bag for this. You shouldn't be carrying it around like this."

When he left, Ellen gave me a look that asked me if I knew what I was doing, and for the first time since that night I looked back at her and met her eyes. I wasn't being decent James anymore. I looked at her in a way that told her what I expected in return.

Eric walked back into the room and his smile had taken on that predatory edge again.

"Come on, you two. Let's close up early. I want to put this in the safe at home, and then we're going out. We're going to celebrate. Ten thousand dollars! God damn!"

We all went home and changed, and I broke out the suit I hadn't worn in almost a year. We met at La Tour, a beautiful and expensive French restaurant on the Near North Side where we were lucky to get reservations. Ellen was gorgeous in her little black dress and for the first time in as long as I could remember, there was no friction between them. It was as if something important had been decided to both of their satisfaction, and the mood was expansive, even joyous. Eric fought me for the check, but considering what I'd just given him, I had no scruples about letting him pay.

We had coffee. We had brandy and cigars, and when I finally rose to say goodnight, Eric stopped me.

"You can't go now," he said "You're coming over to our place. Don't you want to hear it?"

"You're going to play it? Tonight"

He nodded. "Why not. I'm dying to hear it. Besides, it's too early for us to break up. This is a very special night."

I sat up. Ellen was looking at me expectantly, but there was something else in her eyes too, a kind of openly seductive look that surprised me. I'd never seen anything like that.

"This is probably the biggest find you'll ever make," Eric went on, and he was right. He picked up his wine glass and said, "To us!"

We all drank to that.

I should have known something was up. Ellen took both our arms as we walked to the car, holding us close, and when we got to their apartment and Eric went off to get drinks, she told me where to sit. She sat down on the sofa, right across from me, knees together, looking at me with that knowing look, not saying a word.

"Are we ready?" Eric came back in and handed out the drinks, then put the record on.

He turned off the lights so that the only illumination was from the bridge lamp at the end of the sofa. The needle scratched in the groove, and sounds that hadn't been heard in 80 years filled the room.

Johnson's playing was primitive and haunted as usual, his voice a plaintive wail at the very top of his register. His slide work was dark and rough on the old lacquer disk, but sounded as modern as anything you might hear today; not a note wasted, as if he'd paid for every one with his own blood. The music carried me away and wrapped me in its own world, and the only light I saw was the loght in Ellen's eyes, which were looking straight into mine across the gulf in time, across the steamy loneliness of that West Texas night in 1937.

The song ended abruptly, as so many early recordings did, and then there was just the hiss of the needle in the groove and Ellen's eyes locked on mine.