Francesca Lia Block
Mer, from Nymph

She rises up from the water, the drops slicking her breasts, beading tremulous at her nipples. The curve of her hips sheathed tight in something sheer and silver, glimmering beneath the narrow swoon of her waist. She tosses her head and smiles at him; her mouth is like the shadowy place nestled under the fabric that he knows he can never reach. He lumbers across the grasping sand toward the water, his cock leading him, plunging him into the wet salt swell.

When Tom Mac wakes he can still taste the waves and feel his limbs rocking; there is a silver-green light in his head and he has a massive hard-on. He knows there was more to the dream but he can't remember, and after a few minutes his erection is gone.

Maybe I'll go out today, he thinks but he knows he won't. It has been too long already. It will only remind him of how it had been before.

He gets out of bed to take a piss and sees his reflection in the mirror-sandy-blond longish hair and tan bristly skin, the lines around his blue-green eyes. His body has grown thick and slow, the once taut bulging muscles losing their tone. What would Tawny say if she saw him now? That she was right. Right for leaving. That she could have predicted this-the ex-pro living in the house now overgrown with wisteria vines, drinking too much, hanging out on the boardwalk, never touching his board.

Instead of going back to bed he tugs on the shirt that smells the least-a hooded woven one from Mexico, a pair of shorts and huaraches. His heart is thumping as if he really is going back to the water-he knows he isn't. But he also knows he has to get to the pier before the sun and the crowds. He has to get out there.

It is still early and gray and damp. A mist hangs in the air, clings to his hair and skin, tasting of the ocean. Sometimes it is like fucking, he finds himself thinking for the first time in so long, when you ride the swell, feeling it folding around you glistening and wet and briney. And he can hardly remember either of them.

The boardwalk is almost empty. Later the vendors will arrive with their crystals and T-shirts and cheap sunglasses; the fortune-tellers and clowns and acrobats will come, the bodybuilders and Rollerbladers and tourists. But now it is just Sage and Whitman and a few of the other homeless whose names no one seems to know, huddled on graffiti-scrawled wooden benches. Even the surfers haven't shown up; the sea looks flat and steely. The cans are brimming with junk food remnants, pigeons are scavenging; there is a slightly toxic smell. Tom thinks, And this is paradise, this is my paradise. Remembering Tawny dancing to the drums right here that night with her breasts straining the bikini top and the tie-dyed sarong hanging low under her flat brown stomach. Her hair still crusted with salt and the way she always smelled like summer.

Tom buys five cups of coffee and distributes four to the men on the bench, keeps one, sips it even though it is still scalding, liking the feel of the burn on his tongue. Whitman says, "You up early, Mac," and Tom nods. Had a dream, he wants to say. They would probably understand. They aren't that much different than he is. Dreams, mostly forgotten, that keep you going when otherwise you might decide not to wake up again. And he is the lucky one, isn't he? Has the house to keep away the cold.

The house he'd bought at the height of things when he and Tawny first met, when he wanted a base in Southern California to return to between exotic wave-chasings. It is a small white Craftsman bungalow with a glassed-in porch, big windows; the wisteria vine with its purple blossoms has grown so thick that not much light got in anymore. Tawny liked the wood floors bare and cool, the rooms mostly empty except for bed and pillows and boards. Now it is cluttered with shit and he keeps promising himself that he is going to do something about that.

Instead of going back he walks down the boardwalk with his cup of coffee. He draws up his hood because the mist is forming drops now, but he doesn't want to go home. The dream is still whirling in the pit of his stomach, making his muscles twitch, scratching at his balls.

The girl in the wheelchair rides toward him out of the gray-ness. When he sees her Tom MacDougal feels as if he has swallowed a mouthful of salt water and it is caught in his throat. There are beautiful babes all the time, everywhere at the beach, but rarely this. So beautiful that he hardly notices the wheelchair or that her legs and feet are wrapped in tight silvery fabric covered with half-moon shaped spangles.

As she approaches him, she smiles as if she knows him. Her teeth are white and sharp and her lips are stung, wet. He just keeps staring. Her eyes are crystal-green and wide-spaced. Her breasts show through her soaking T-shirt, every curve and swell and the tender dark nipples so he feels as if he is touching them. Then she runs her long slender fingers over her collarbone, the slope of breasts, lingering beneath them and pulls the T-shirt off. Rain spills in rivulets over her perfect brown body. Perfect, he thinks, she is perfect.

Crazy perfect, like him, alone in the rain, pulling off her shirt for a stranger.

He approaches her slowly, the way you would a startled animal, although she doesn't seem afraid. His voice is hoarse and soft. "You okay?"

She nods, still smiling at him. He tries not to stare at her breasts. They seem too big for her delicate frame, her waist so small and her ribs showing. "You'll get cold, sweetheart."

She shakes her head, swinging the matted blond dreadlocks that hang down to her waist.

"Do you need some help?" he asks her.

She gestures for him to come close. He can feel his cock stirring in his shorts. Smelling her, she is clean, salty. He wants to dive. Her nipples are erect; he wants to feel them against his lips. Everything tingling.

She reaches up and touches the side of his unshaven face with her finger, letting it slide down over his adam's apple. "Take me home with you," she says softly.

The whole impact of the night before is back, his penis throbbing. He takes off the woven shirt and gives it to her. "Put this on. You'll get sick."

She pouts slightly like a little girl but does it, getting caught so that he has to help her, trying to avoid touching her breasts. Her head emerges through the neck hole of the shirt, those eyes and that sly sweet mouth so close to him, that wild hair. "Take me home, Mac."

He figures one of the guys at the beach has told her his name. But still it startles him. And he wants to know.

Tom wheels the girl back up the boardwalk across the street to the house. He leaves the wheelchair at the foot of the porch and takes her in his arms. She is very light but also longer than she looks in the chair. Her lower body feels much more muscular than he would have thought, the tight weight of her ass against his forearms and wrists. Her long slender arms circle his neck the way a child holds on. He feels something like power returning to him, like right before he used to take a wave.

"This is a pretty house," she says, staring at the purple blossoms that have grown over everything. "It's like being underwater."

Sometimes I wish it was, he feels like saying. He puts her down gently on the torn couch, then goes to get her chair.

"Do you want to take a bath? I can give you a pair of pants." She laughs and shakes her head. "What about coffee? Or I think there's a can of soup somewhere."

She makes a little face and laughs again. "You look different," she says.

He squints at her.

"We've met? I think I'd have remembered you, sweetheart."

"It was a long time ago, Mac." She adds matter-of-factly, "You were unconscious."

Tom sits beside her on the sprung sofa. She plays with her hair, pulling the heavy knotty strands up off her face. She has very high cheekbones and a small firm chin, which makes her lips look even fuller. "What's your name?" Tom asks.

"Mer."

He shakes his head.

"Do you want to fill me in here, darling?"

Instead she smiles again and pulls his shirt off of her. She lifts her hands to her hair again so her breasts rise. The areoles are big and dark. He wants to hide his hard cock. She takes his tense hands in hers and presses them against her breasts. An electric shock goes through him at their breadth and smooth fullness. They feel soft and heavy and almost buzzing with sensation. She throws her head back and moans roughly as he fingers her nipples. Her whole body shudders, and she takes his head and gently draws him to her left breast; his tongue circles the nipple and her body is shaking more now. She leans closer to him, pressing her big succulent mouth to his neck. His breath comes in gasps and his heart pounds as if he is drowning. She moves over his rough, bare, sun-darkened chest with her lips. His cock feels huge, full of ocean.

"Who are you?"

She keeps going, looking up at him sometimes, smiling with those sharp white teeth that could tear; he gently touches the back of her head, the tender nape of her neck, stroking her. Her spine looks fluid and fragile. She undoes his shorts slowly, softly, her nimble fingers sliding the zipper down carefully to avoid his erection. Then he's out, big in her hand. Holding him she slithers back up and runs her tongue over his mouth, parting his lips with hers, sliding her tongue into him. The salt taste of his dream. He jolts up feeling her fingers move on his cock. She goes down again, this time her mouth on him, taking him in all in one slide so that he feels the back of her throat.

While she licks and sucks, her lips cupping the tender head of his penis and then swallowing him to the balls, Tom is remembering the dream. That time when he had the accident. What really happened. The waves pulling him down. No air. Just this endless shining blue that he didn't really want to leave. He could have stayed there. He could have stayed. But then something was holding him; he knew he was safe. Rocking him like a baby. And her strong slender body carrying him back to the light, to the air. Because you belong here, she told him. I can't keep you. Even though you are the most beautiful of all of them. And you know my ocean more than any of them will ever know it. Tom moves with her, his groin spasming, his cock driving farther into her wetness. Suddenly there is that feeling in his balls. He doesn't want it yet but it is too much; he feels his whole body waking from some long sleep, as if he has been underwater this whole time and only now has she rescued him. He gasps for air as he breaks through the surface, his semen spurting out in milky bursts that she swallows, his cock still hard for a long time after, still coming into her lush mouth.

Mer stays with Tom MacDougal in the little beach house with the wisteria vine and the glass porch. No one knows what goes on in there, only that Mac has started surfing again, every day, up at dawn with the kids, taking the big waves, ferocious and fearless as he had been ten years ago. And that his mysterious young girlfriend in the wheelchair sits on the sand and watches him, that when he returns from the sea he plunges to his knees before her and kisses her as if she contains the breath he had lost that time he almost drowned. Maybe she does. People speculate as to how they fuck, what is under the narrow spangled sheath she always wears over her lower body. Some think she is crazy, playing out a fantasy so he can't get inside her. Maybe she'd been molested as a child or raped as a teenager traveling along the coast and that is why she invented the wheelchair thing and the costume. Others think it is real. But Mac and Mer don't care. His mouth on her tender, swollen, glossy breasts making her come when he caresses her nipples; her mouth sliding down the shaft of his thick cock, they rescue each other from land and from the sea again and again.

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Francesca Lia Block is the author of numerous books, including three Los Angeles Times bestsellers: Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Boohs, Violet and Claire, and The Rose and The Beast. "Mer" is from Nymph, her collection of erotica. Her work has been translated into many languages and published around the world. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

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"Mer," by Francesca Lia Block, © 2000 by Francesca Lia Block, first appeared in Nymph, by Francesca Lia Block (Circlet Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Circlet Press.