A Stranger’s Last Kiss
Stumbling for countless blocks away from the bar, he still could not get the peevish taste of the previous night out of his mouth. He spat. But now he longed to repeat it again and again.
He clambered into the giant mouth of the subway station to rebel against the morning light for a few more hours. The soviet marble architecture protruding from this public crypt reminded him of a novel he read about Genghis Khan, and he was now anxious to find his own dragon to conquer as he slept his way down the mile-long escalator, licking his lips at every passing lamppost.
The Pushkin Plaza was empty at this time of night, and not being able to contain the fire in his stomach, he began to laugh short, hysterical coughs of laughter, aimed up at the oval ceiling. Alone, he always had the compulsion to scratch the insides of his gut, though he was not doing so now.
“Hey you!” someone croaked behind him. He turned to find a wet face in a long, red skirt leaning near the open end of the tracks. That country voice was much too serrated for a girl so sad and pretty. He could not stand to hear it again.
“Hey boy!” she slurred once more. “Ya got a light?” Now he could see the ink of her mascara under her eyes. It was this that reflected the light like a running stream of gasoline and made the girl look so friendless. He did not smoke.
Approaching, his knees grew weak when he noticed the small, gold cross stuck against the fabric of her open, blossoming, black blouse. He could not breathe when the same vile taste burned his throat where just minutes before it sat in heaving laughter.
The girl craned her neck in an attempt to appear prettier but hit the crown of her head on the hard, hard marble now leaning against her. Just for a second her lips parted in pain and it was all he could take. He dared not let her speak once more; the sound would have shattered his poor, tired fingers. And it was over before it began, but the moment stretched on for that wicked taste still circulating in his very veins.
His left hand punched her throat against the clean, soviet marble. Her body could only gasp for half a breath, as the cigarette dropped from her lips. Her stomach convulsed in preparation to let out a scream of existential protest. But the thin blade in his right hand broke up through the bottom of her ribcage, as he came so close as to stand on her left shoe. His breath finally freed itself onto her forehead.
Her eyes dashed down but by then his hand had already swerved to her right side and came up, up, almost tickling her throat and forcing her head to snap back in a dry heave. But no. It would not come. And she was left to pucker like a frying fish, convulsing in silent, drowning orgasm.
And when she finally saw his eyes—a violet shade of thunder, she knew that he had penetrated deeper into her than she had ever been herself. She almost reached out to him, as if asking to hold back her tears. She welcomed his hands. He could see it was time. It was the only time that mattered for him. And as his body pushed against her breast, her preceding gasp oozed back out of her darkening lips brushing past his, as he inhaled the vile taste of all that was real in his world.
The kiss may have gone on for hours. Her last breath escalating in potency as he breathed her in and out. But now her eyes were closed, and her lungs bare and deflated. He let her crumple onto the square tile upon which she once stood. He turned and crossed the platform to catch the first center-bound a.m. train. Tomorrow he would taste another stranger’s last kiss. This time, he thought, he would look in a place much more public.
2006
