Inside Sheni Again

Before his life changed, Nakam had half-believed in karma. Or half-hoped in it. No more. His brother the cop reminded him a person born into wealth was as undeserving as a lottery winner. Nakam agreed while feeling he must be the exception. Why him? He hadn't even bought the ticket.

The day the fortune landed in the bank, a platoon of smart people started to move it into a complexity of trust funds, investments, bonds, funds, shelters, and who knows what else. Nakam's experts let him keep seven figures as what they called liquidity. He settled his debts, gave to charity, wheedled old friends into accepting awkward amounts of money, bought a house, dodged con artists and donation-hungry mega-churches, and tipped amounts that baristas and valets talked about years later.

He also started believing in karma again. "I deserved those years of kicks in the balls," Nakam told his brother. "Then a dragon's hoard lands on me for absolutely no reason. Who's to say the dragon won't take it back?"

"Better hurry and throw a few million more my way," Khol replied.

Eventually, Nakam had been rich long enough to fear being anything else. The idea he might lose his money became an obsession. He locked onto a single word: unless. Karma might make his wealth vanish unless he used part of it to compensate certain people for causing them pain.

"It'll dress me in karmic armor," he explained.

His wiser friends pointed out that the people in question never wanted to be around Nakam again, except to stab him in both eyes.

None of Nakam's searches led to violence, but he heard two angry rants and a pitch to invest in a pyramid scheme. In most cases, however, the person declined to reply. It was no different with Sheni.

The woman had loved him and treated him with total generosity. She considered Nakam all she wanted. But an immaturity that had gone on for far too long cost him children, an extended family, calm, adulthood, level-headedness, a mate with a practical mind and passion for sex. And he had thrown it away. Nakam never asked, "What 'd I do to deserve this terrible thing that happened to me?" because for years "Sheni" had been the automatic answer.

His single page letter to her explained he had no interest in forgiveness or understanding or amends. He wanted to obey the laws dating to ancient times, laws that compelled him to compensate people he had wounded. A ten-minute sit-down to work out an amount and, snap, he'd disappear forever.

Weeks passed. Nakam filed Sheni as the last of the non-responses until a greeting card arrived. The sender had written a word in red: ACCEPTED. Underneath, Nakam read a time-date-place in the still-familiar handwriting and followed an arrow to REPLY YES OR NO over an email address.

The tall college student waiting at the restaurant could only be Sheni's daughter. "Mom isn't interested in seeing you," she said. "She asked if you're trying to ease your conscience or if you're dying."

"Neither one. It's not even meant as a gesture. Money can't make up for the pain I caused. But if paying reparations can make life slightly easier for your mother, I want to do what I can."

"You're saying that, if I name a price of a million dollars, you'll hand me a check?"

"Not exactly," Nakam said. "But is there a mortgage? Back taxes? A bill for putting you through college? I'm ready to help. Just show me the documents."

"That's it?" the woman said.

"That's it."

They agreed to discuss a number the next day. Nakam took a hotel room across the street. He spent a long walk wondering about his motives. Did he really want forgiveness? Was he hoping to feel like a great guy? Would writing the check placate karma?

In the end Nakam dismissed ulterior motives because he knew whatever took place wouldn't improve his opinion of himself.

The next day the restaurant host told Nakam his companion was already present. The sight of the graying six-footer in the booth made him want to run away.

Sheni spoke with exaggerated outrage, "It's not fair you stayed thin."

"Genes," Nakam replied.

"Plus, you didn't give birth twice." She looked him over. "My daughter told me you had something to say."

Nakam did and he said it. Though terrified of her response, he fought down an urge to ramble.

"You're the one person I've ever hated," Sheni said with emotion.

"I'm glad there's been only one."

"I don't need money from you."

"Christ, I know that."

"I don't understand why you're doing it."

Nakam had no answer beyond the explanation he'd already given her daughter. The server approached, sensed the charge in the air, and retreated.

"I should kill you," Sheni said.

"Definitely."

"It took years to put the pain behind me. The idea I wasted that time and effort and love--I couldn't get past it." She shook her head. "You're not worth a long explanation."

Nakam emphatically agreed. But Sheni gave him one anyway--the years alone post-breakup--her parents' anger at the betrayal--her stupidity at ignoring the red flags--people never changed--his inadequacies as a human being, an adult, a boyfriend, a man--his massive, toxic immaturity--bad people never got what they deserved. Nakam took the medicine, not only in the form of her words, but by letting what she said resonate inside him.

"Did you love me at all?" she said.

"Yes, I loved you."

"But not enough."

"You have to be grown up for enough," he said.

"I found a better person."

"It'd be hard not to."

Sheni had held onto her hard-headed way of saying her piece, listening to the response, and moving on. Psychology had always bored her. Worst, it frustrated her, because it never offered clear answers. For his part, Nakam avoided excuses and descriptions of his own feelings.

"If you hadn't received this windfall," Sheni asked, "would you be here?"

"With nothing to offer?"

"I hope you're more mature."

"Opinions differ," he said.

Sheni fished in her purse. "Before my dad died, he ran up a ton of medical debt and now the bill collectors are after Mom. The documentation's like The Iliad."

"I'm happy to go straight to the amounts owed."

A little sorting, a little carrying of twos and threes, fifteen minutes of double-checking, and Nakam slid across a check. He also bought Sheni drinks and dinner. A handful of funny memories interrupted the atmosphere of mutual discomfort, but silence always returned. Neither discussed their personal lives. An unspoken agreement--they'd always connected that way--raised a barbed wire fence around the last twenty-five years.

Nakam pronounced Sheni the last loose end from his past. Whatever regret remained around his treatment of her, he had to live with it.

Four or five months later, a blue envelope with the greeting card inside slid through his mail slot. A fine-point pen had crossed out Sheni's first message and written a second time and place, with a date two weeks in the future. Nothing else. Nakam had no way to contact her--the burner email account was dead. He mailed back the card with "I'll be there" written beneath her words.

Prior to their first meeting, Nakam had made jokes about marching to his death. He made them again.

"Why do it?" Khol asked. "You think she wants to give you change for the money?"

"Bad idea, then?" Nakam said.

"Dude, people forgive murder before they forgive infidelity. There're cultures that used to cut off your nose for fooling around. How you gonna wear glasses without a nose?"

"If she wants to talk, the least I can do is listen."

"You've already gone above and beyond, Nake. Leave it be. You're rich. Score yourself a Portuguese swimsuit model who's jonesing for a green card."

This time Sheni asked to meet for coffee in a city thirty miles from where she lived.

In her sweater and knee length skirt she looked like she had come from work. Nakam supposed that was the case. At any rate, he had never seen Sheni dressed insensibly. High heels were out of the question because her height made them egregious and because she considered them anti-woman torture devices. The only times Nakam had seen her in pumps was when she wore nothing else.

Sheni said, "Have you ever looked me up on the Internet?"

"It seemed like an invasion of privacy."

"Am I different?"

"Not to see you or hear you. We're grayer and a little more substantial." Nakam patted his stomach. "No one beats the system."

"I invited you here for a reason."

"To make me uncomfortable?"

Both smiled.

"It took a long time to get back to any good memories of our time together," Sheni said. "If you crossed my mind, this stabbing pain shut me down. Then the last half of my marriage--it was more like a friendly partnership. Raleigh never wanted more, as far as I can tell. I relied on my imagination whenever I felt, you know, that way. And I feel that way often. You were most of my sexual experience and one hundred percent of the best experience. Even our breakup sex was intense. Who else were you fucking then?"

Nakam looked around but none of the patrons seemed to hear. "I was done with infidelity by that point," he said. "Whatever happened... outside of us... happened in the middle. No cheating early, no cheating late. I realized I didn't have the guts to deal with the worry and guilt."

"Have you ever thought about me?" Sheni's instantly familiar expression--raised eyebrows and biting the side of her lip and bright-eyed good humor--had not crossed Nakam's mind in years. "In that way?"

"At times."

"Like what? Give me a graphic example."

"There's a lot of memories to choose from."

"I bet imagining me leads to the most intense, um, events." Sheni was joking but she obviously enjoyed the tease. He guessed she hadn't taken flirting out of the garage for a long time. "When I play with myself," she said, as Nakam held in a spit take, "I like to remember the weekend we watched my sister's house while she was in Europe. That was out of control."

"I don't think we wore clothes except to go out for food."

"Our slow fuck on the kitchen table, when you told me your filthy fantasies."

"You said 'ew' twice," Nakam said.

Sheni ran her finger around the rim of her glass. "What you said made me hot, though. When we were out on the deck the next night was the first time you spanked my, ah, special place. They must've heard my screaming across the river." Again the look. "I didn't use the phrase 'special place.' It was way more filthy," she laughed. "When we first started having sex, and I told you I wasn't into being spanked, you would give me a gentle pat on the ass whenever you were behind me. You really liked being behind me."

Nakam's expression said, No denying that.

"Until I learned you should've been spanking my, uh, my pussy. After some research on the Internet."

"That's how you found out? We watched a video together one time and your face looked as red as it does right now."

Blush or no, she murmured, "When you get off, do you watch that stuff?"

"For me imagination is better."

"Imagining me."

"It happens."

"But not the current me."

"Oh, the current you would be better," Nakam said, with total sincerity. "It's easier to get a mental image of a three-dimensional person I can hear and see and, at the moment, feel under the table."

Sheni scooted her chair around the corner and leaned closer to him. "I last had sex three years ago. Good sex, far longer. Raleigh became weird about it--weirder--when he turned religious. You want to hear something 'ew'? This preacher he follows told Raleigh he shouldn't have intercourse with a woman who'd given birth. At first, Raleigh tried to substitute other activities but--" she rolled her eyes "--you could tell it took an effort."

"There's no faking it with you," Nakam agreed.

Now he could feel her breath on his cheek. "Three years."

"You can't trust me, Shen."

"I don't trust you to stay faithful. I trust you to go to bed with me."

"But I'd hate to wake up without a penis, you know?"

"Have I invited you to stay over? No."

Nakam laughed, until the greeting card slid from Sheni's side of the table to him. "No waffling. An answer, right this minute."

A pause. "Yes."

"The address in the card is my house. Use the kitchen door on the side."

Throughout the week, Nakam ping-ponged between fantasies of what might take place and an unshakable decision to stay home. He only made up his mind when he tossed his overnight bag onto the back seat of the car. "I'll send the authorities when you vanish," Khol said.

Nakam parked in the driveway of a brick house. He had texted from the road and expected Sheni to meet him outside. Instead, a note on the side door instructed him to enter.

Sheni was leaning against the kitchen counter with her bare feet crossed. She had dyed her hair the reddish brown she had favored during their time together. Her bare breasts, far larger than in Nakam's day, bulged inside denim overalls.

"A perfect re-creation," he said.

"Did you think about me the entire week?" Sheni asked as he neared.

"Nonstop."

The look again. "What'd you do about it?"

"No comment."

"Tell me what you were thinking."

Nakam did all he ever managed to do when at a disadvantage. He told the truth.

"I don't always think of the real past," he said.

"Oooh. You make up kinky stuff about me? Like what?"

The honest answer would hurt. Making love with her in the wedding gown she never got to wear for him? Celebrating an anniversary with ropes and belts along with every other kink they could never admit they wanted?

"I think about what might've happened," Nakam said. "If we'd stayed together. I know it sounds pathetic, like I can't move on. It never crossed my mind when I was married. Only since."

Sheni clenched the counter. Nakam put his hands across hers. Their kissing went straight to open mouths. The whopping recall of how Sheni kissed and tasted, the sounds she made--Nakam had to blink away vertigo. Sheni loved to kiss. Nakam indulged her with far more generosity than he had in the old days. They rediscovered the rhythm that allowed the other to take a breath without breaking contact for more than an instant. Along the way Sheni pushed off the counter and their hands roamed.

"You're sweaty from the drive here," she said as she fingered the zipper of his slacks. "I have a great shower."

When Nakam had undressed her, and himself as Sheni watched, they walked together onto a tiled square walled in glass and on the same level as the rest of the room. The shower head was copper-colored and as wide as a dinner plate.

Sheni chose a wide spray and steered him under the water. Steam softened their skin and lips. As they caressed, Sheni stroked him with soapy hands while Nakam stared at her breasts. His memory of specifics hit him as hard as the reintroduction to her mouth. Motherhood and age had changed the size and shape, but not the constellation of bumps around her nipples, the roadmap of blue veins, the placement of two moles low in the cleavage.

She made a joke about breast fixations and asked Nakam to turn. Sheni washed him, every nook and cranny, and whenever his penis drooped for lack of interest, she rubbed it between her legs, or lathered her breasts until he became firm again. Taking care of the slippery floor, he went to his knees to kiss the swollen area between her legs. After enjoying his tongue inside her, Sheni turned off the shower.

As in the old days, they only toweled off each other's backs. Beyond that they dried themselves, to get to the bed as quickly as possible. Excitement substituted for atmosphere. Sheni had never asked for candlelight and never provided it, and she had as little use for lingerie as she did for high heels. Whatever her self-consciousness about her appearance out in the world, inside the bedroom Sheni presented her body without shyness, and both gave and expected pleasure free of drama or games.

Nakam rubbed the muscles of her shoulders and neck. "You still swim," he said.

"Try running with these breasts." Sheni worked her head left and right. "It's more fun at the shore but fortunately there's a gym with a pool about a mile away. In this town everything is near everything else. You're better at massage now, Nake."

"I can do it properly if you want."

"I don't know if I have much patience for foreplay. And if I give you a heart attack, I at least want to be able to say I've had a man inside me within the last three years."

Their weak attempt to make the sex last ended in a giggling struggle to agree on a position. Finally, Sheni guided Nakam onto his back and straddled him.

"Do we need protection?" she asked as he spread his hands across her breasts.

"The doctor gave me a clean bill of health, but I brought condoms."

She slid onto him. "Well, no need to stop now."

Nakam moved his hands to her hips. Sheni would lock fingers as an intimate gesture, but as before she remained strong enough to cowgirl without being braced.

"You were the first guy I let come inside me," Sheni said. "It was so great I started on the pill." She bent forward to increase the friction on her clitoris. "Do you remember how we waited for me to get on a new cycle?"

"We had to find alternatives," he said.

"You mean you always ejaculated on my breasts."

"Not always."

Sheni closed her eyes as she increased her pace. "True. I'd never let a guy do that, either. Do I feel different?"

"Not at all," Nakam said through a grateful sigh.

Nakam later admitted he provided nothing in terms of technique unless you counted staying hard. During his daydreams, he had wondered if either of them would find the moment too weird. Just the opposite. Sheni's manic thrusts banged the headboard against the wall until the bed bumped across the floor. Her orgasm broke in a series of cries.

Driven crazy by her demonstrative passion, Nakam had to lose his load or lose his mind. But he had done neither by the time she swung off him.

"Keep going," she gasped as she waited on all-fours. Nakam entered her, grunting as he thrusted, patting her buttocks with a free hand, and becoming more excited when she cried out into a pillow.

In his experience Sheni had never come with him behind her. Nakam pulled out and guided her over. She arched her back, offering everything, and put her hands under her thighs to keep her legs high in the air.

"I can't believe I'm inside you again," Nakam said.

"I admit you reliably make me come." When he resumed, this time with firm thrusts, Sheni gave a little high-pitched cry as his cock penetrated deep. "I swear, you're the one guy I've been with who knows how to properly screw me. Like that. Ah, ah, just glide through my wetness, yes, that way, you remember--"

"I still think about it," he gasped.

Sheni rested the heels of her feet on his shoulders and Nakam, following this old cue, placed his arms behind her knees, elevating her legs but also her hips to such a degree he could almost hammer straight up and down. Now their bodies smacked together. Sheni put out her arms to either side, unable to speak except to grunt "yes" over and over. The repeated contact with her clitoris ignited the beginnings of another climax. Nakam was out of breath. His arms and back hurt. But when Sheni locked eyes with him and nodded in time with his hips, he worked even harder. His attention fell to her bouncing breasts.

"I'm close," she panted. "Do you still like it when women play with their tits?"

"Don't do it yet," and Nakam slowed the pace to lick around the nipple. But when he pushed away to begin again Sheni took her breasts in her hands. Her fingertips had barely worked over the peaks when Nakam let out a moan that lasted through his powerful orgasm, and hers. As she came down, Sheni covered her face with her hands and gave a laugh that was part shyness and part joy at such a total release.