Black Opium

I smell Black Opium every time I think of her. Black Opium – and other things too. Sun. Heat. Summer. Things I will always associate with her. The sultry smell of her perfume. The sun beating down on us both as we lay in the grass. The heat between us flaring into a conflagration of desire. The summer when I (almost) loved – and lost.

I still remember the first time I saw her. She was one of those cool, collected types: an ice maiden. Beneath the sultry fragrance of her perfume, her clothes were crisp and clean and smelled of money: not new money, with all its vulgarity and tackiness, but wealth, background, breeding. She was one of the untouchable ones, walled behind a protective barrier of class and conduct: the kind of girl who had never done anything wrong – until she met me.

I knew she didn’t like me at first. I could tell by the way her lip curled slightly when she saw the lit cigarette in my hand, the rips in my jeans. Her eyebrows arched haughtily when her friend introduced us: I could hear her thinking, “Why on earth would Francesca want to associate with something like that?”

I could have told her the answer: because her friend thought I was hot. “You’re danger and defiance,” Francesca used to tell me, stroking my face with a gentleness of touch that belied the polished fingernails that had, only moments before, raked across my back in ecstasy. “If my parents could see the two of us now...”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence: I knew I was ‘rough trade’, the guilty secret that so many of these well-to-do, outwardly virginal, clean-cut freshmen shared. Screwing me was like giving Daddy the finger. Besides, I was good at what I did: I’d been practising since Junior High.

I never let my heart get involved, though. If these rich girls wanted to fool around, I was quite happy to go along with it. Then, after a while, I found myself getting bored: it was all too easy, somehow. When you find yourself on the fifteenth or the twentieth girl in a sorority, and you know she’s desperate to give herself to you because she doesn’t want to be the only one not to know what it’s like, the challenge sort of disappears.

That’s what I liked about this one: her utter indifference drew me to her. And, even though she had that cool exterior, I somehow sensed that, underneath, she was just as flammable as the others. I knew that if I could just ignite a spark in her, she would burst into flames of passion as hot and fierce as any of her predecessors.

*

I started watching her in the one class we took together. I was subtle, controlled: I contrived always to be looking the other way when she glanced up, giving off the impression that I was the one ignoring her. Pretty soon, she started watching me herself. I could feel her eyes burning into me; knew there was a flicker of curiosity, maybe even desire.

I fanned the flames by keeping my distance. I knew she had started to thaw, that her icy reserve was melting. I would pass her a pencil, making sure our fingers touched just briefly, then turn away as if nothing had happened. I needed her to run after me, you see: to want me so badly that she was prepared to sacrifice anything to have me.

When it finally happened, she was everything I had anticipated. Her entire body was suffused with heat as I kissed her slowly and languorously, taking time to stoke the fire of her passion. Desire flamed within me too as I slid my fingers under her virginal white dress, peeling the layers from her one by one until I had exposed a quivering core of simmering sexuality that took me by surprise.

Afterwards, she was so grateful. It made me feel somewhat ashamed. Maybe that’s what made me fall in love, just a little: I needed something to assuage my guilt; to convince me that I wouldn’t burn in hell for the way I’d deflowered her.

She didn’t tell anyone about the two of us, and I was glad. I wanted this to be different to what I’d had with the others. She was so pure that she made me long to be just like her: to lose myself in her idea of me; to stop being the person I really was. I even told her things I’d never told any other woman: words like ‘I love you’ and ‘I need you’. I thought that with her I could be a whole new person, but I didn’t realise then that we were playing with fire.

*

It must have been three months after the first time when she thought she might be pregnant. At first, I didn’t believe her: I’d always been so careful. Then, as she insisted she was late, that she’d never been late before, suspicion grew. If there was a baby, was it really mine?

The test she took was positive. Anger flamed within me as I accused her of cheating, of sleeping with someone else and trying to pin the result on me. Her cheeks burned at the accusation; a single tear rolled down her face. I was instantly contrite, holding her close, whispering apologies, begging forgiveness. The tears we cried together effectively dampened our desire for the next few hours. “My father will kill me,” she kept saying, almost as if the repetition might render the words null and void. Then, as we both settled into acceptance, “We’ll have to get married. At least then his grandchild won’t be a bastard.”

I guess that summed up the difference between us: her money and breeding wouldn’t countenance a child born out of wedlock.

I thought of suggesting that she had a termination – after all, we were both young, still in school; then I looked at her eyes, still wet with tears, and realised that she was already thinking of baby names, picturing the two of us together in some suburban domestic hell, and I knew I had to find a better solution for the two of us.

*

She wanted to tell her parents, but I persuaded her not to – not yet. It wasn’t difficult to convince her that the news would come more easily if we delivered it in person, that she should tell her parents she would visit for the weekend, not mentioning me or the baby, and turn up with a fait accompli.

She didn’t tell any of her friends, either. We’d managed to keep our clandestine affair to ourselves: I was ‘choir practice’; and none of my acquaintances cared where I was or what I was doing. If the sorority girls wondered why I was no longer working my way through their sisterhood, no one said anything. Rich girls know the destructive power of scandal.

We made our plans. Exam Week was coming up: she would drive us both to her parents’ place once exams were over. She seemed so excited by it all and I just played along with it, listening whilst she droned on about bridesmaids and buttonholes, table settings and swing bands. She’d have to drop out of school to have the baby, but perhaps she could go back later to finish her degree? Her eyes were bright and her tone animated as she worked on the details: we would need to rent a house together while I completed my own studies, and she would have all the fun of being the homemaker whilst I continued with Psych 201 and Art History 255. “Or,” she said suddenly, her face lighting up as the idea came to her, “Daddy could give you a job in his company, and then we could both live closer to my parents.”

Like that was ever going to happen! I could picture it now: her rolling up with me in tow and Daddy taking me aside and pushing a cheque for several hundred thousand dollars into my hand as an unspoken agreement that I would disappear out of his daughter’s life forever. And that was a best-case scenario!

Uneasily, I contemplated the far more likely possibility that Mr Marty Levenstein the Third would just arrange for me to ‘disappear’, then claim I’d run out on his precious little girl. Clearly, there was no positive outcome in going through with this visit – not one that ended well for me, at any rate.

That was when the idea that had been germinating at the back of my mind finally came to fruition: what if we never arrived at her parents’ place? We could take off and start a new life somewhere far away, where no one knew us, and Daddy wouldn’t be able to find us. There was still the baby to consider though: I didn’t want to be saddled with a responsibility like that at my age.

I let her voice drone over me as she sketched out her plans, all the while busily formulating ideas of my own. She was the closest I’d ever come to being in love, but even I could tell this wasn’t going to work out.

*

I waited until we were both in the car – an open-top Mazda MX5 that had been her graduation present (Summa Cum Laude, Class of 2024). I was amused that she’d gone for such a typical ‘girly’ car – apparently it was the number two bestseller for women in recent polls – but she certainly knew how to make it shift. “Let’s burn rubber,” she said, winking at me as she put her foot down and floored the gas.

For a while we drove in silence, the wind generated by the speed of the car in healthy competition with the blazing heat of the sun. She looked so enticing, sitting there all prim and proper with all that fiery passion hidden beneath cool pastel shades, that I almost relented – almost, but not quite.

“We should stop for a coffee,” I said at length. “I don’t like the idea of you driving so far on the interstate without a rest.” (She’d already told me how long she expected it to take to reach her parents’.)

She pulled a face. “Can you see me in a Dairy Queen?”

I pretended to consult my cell phone. “There’s a little place in another ten miles or so,” I told her. “It’s not a rest area – we’d have to pull off the interstate at the next junction and take a bit of a detour, but it’s described as “a small, family-run coffee house” and it sounds quite charming.”

I knew that last bit would pull her in. She was always a sucker for anything old or retro.

*

About seven minutes later, we pulled off the interstate and headed for the imaginary coffee shop. I let her drive for quite a way before I professed to be lost. “I can’t understand it,” I said, staring at the expanse of deserted fields that surrounded us. “It should be right here.”

By now, the sun was high in the sky, golden sunlight glinting off a mass of ox-eye daisies that stretched out in front of us as far as the eye could see.

“Just pull over,” I told her, trying to sound impulsive. Then, as she slowed to a halt, “Isn’t that beautiful?”

I could tell she was impressed: she was the sort of girl who loved flowers and nature – as long as they behaved themselves. Undoing my seatbelt, I turned to her. “Let’s get out, stretch our legs. It would do you good.”

Hand-in-hand, we strolled through the field of flowers. “Wasn’t that worth stopping for?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“I can think of something else we could be doing too,” I continued, whispering in her ear.

Her cheeks flamed momentarily, then she nodded her head again. “Okay.”

Leading her a little further into the long grass, we sank down and I began to kiss her, feeling her come alive to my touch as I lit the fire that I knew would consume her. It was only as she was about to erupt in a volcano of ecstasy that my fingers moved round her throat. Paralysed with passion, she did not fight back. It was all over very quickly.

*

My heart beating fast, I regarded her lifeless body. Try as I might, I could not rid myself of the delicious thrill I had felt when I squeezed the life out of her. I could not leave her there, however: isolated though the spot was, someone was bound to discover her at some point in the future.

I contemplated dumping her body in the trunk and leaving the car somewhere, but that was no good. She needed to disappear completely; that way, no connections could be made.

I was lucky that she had thought of carrying spare gas in case of emergencies. It was enough to cover her body, to soak into her hair and face and limbs. I lit a cigarette and tossed the match deliberately onto my lost love. It was good to burn: the sweet smell of roasting flesh filled the air. After two or three hours, all that remained was a pile of ash and memories. I would let the wind scatter them where it willed.

*

Walking back to her car once more, I considered my next move. I would have to drive the Mazda to the next city and then abandon it somewhere. Her parents would probably not worry until night fell. By the time they called the police, I would have left both car and crime far behind.

*

I’m back in the present, thanking a god I’ve never believed in, when I see her. She looks like ripe strawberries, fresh and innocent: someone who has never known love – or death.

“What’s the matter?” I ask her, pulling over.

The poor child actually looks pleased to see me. “Can I use your cell phone?” she wants to know. “My car’s died on me, and my phone battery’s dead too.”

“I don’t have a phone,” I lie, observing the shortness of her skirt, the tightness of her sweater, and the long, lean legs. Briefly, I wonder how it will feel to have them wrapped around me. “I can give you a lift to the nearest city though.”

She hesitates, then nods. “Okay.”

Sidling into the passenger seat beside me, she adds, “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”

I say nothing in reply as I put the car into Drive. About fifteen minutes later, as her hand moves to my lap, I look at her sharply. Not so innocent after all, then.

“Don’t play with fire,” I warn her, “unless you want to get burned.”

A smile plays on her lips. “Is that a threat or a promise?”

“I’ll let you know,” I say. “When we reach the city.”

And as I inhale her, I smell Black Opium.