The spider's mandibles spread her open gently, like a careful florist exposing the damp inner folds of some priceless orchid, and she leaned her head back, closing her eyes and trying to stifle a yawn.
Deborah Madsen -- always Deborah and never Deb or Debbie, not even to her friends -- had been married for nine years and the magic, as they said, had gone. Oh, certainly there was something to be said about a lover still willing to bury his head between her legs after all that time, but Deborah knew how it would go: five minutes of "quality time" before a few quick pumps, a roll to the side, and an immediate lapse into sleep. She understood that this act wasn't about her, wasn't about him, and never had been. Either of those would have made it special, but the real reason for his attentiveness did nothing for her.
He did it for the reputation. So that he could say to his buddies, yes, he still went down on the old lady (she already thought of herself as 'the old lady', that was something. Nine years of marriage and she was still on the bright side of thirty. The spider was forty-six). He did it at least once a week. Kept her happy, kept her complacent. And, of course, prevented any refusal when he ordered her to her knees. His buddies would all laugh at that, in that dark way that men do when someone has said something ugly about a woman; the type of thing that they know they should feel bad about, but they don't. Not that Deborah had ever heard the spider say these things, of course, but she had seen it in their eyes at parties, business functions, once even at a church. Seen it in their eyes and the smirk in their grins. Knowledge. Lust. Condescension. Hate.
They wanted her, of course, all of the boys down at the office. The fat brown one with the black dots on his back. The lithe green one with the wicked-looking stinger. The little black one with the stubby legs and white spots who could jump like Michael Jordan. They had coveted her, this eighteen year-old girl with the honey-blonde hair and big hazel eyes, lined with too much makeup, that seemed always to be staring at the spider and promising dirty pleasure. They had coveted her then and coveted her now. Yes, they were jealous of the spider, who had met her when he was giving a lecture during her first semester of junior college, and had wooed her with sweet words, expensive dinners, and the supple leather in his BMW. That she was a trophy was something Deborah had always understood, but in those early times the thrill of money and desperate, guilty sex with a lover twice her age had been enough. More than enough. Plenty.
Of course, it hadn't hurt that the spider was something of a trophy himself. He was short, standing only three feet off the ground, but not fat, and covered in a fine bristly black hair that was always slick and clean. Short, yes, but his legs were very long when extended, and didn't that make her girlfriends jealous. Long legs, they knew, indicated other things and Deborah could confirm that in such areas, at least, the spider was anything but short. She supposed she could tell the twittering little women she spent time with that her own marriage had proven beyond a doubt that technique trumped size, but it wouldn't matter. They would never believe.
Two minutes now, and if she didn't start moaning he would stop, and ask her what was wrong. Deborah would find herself making awkward excuses about headaches and lack of sleep. The spider would look at her with that expression that said he was believing her only because his ego demanded he do so, and she knew he would make her use her mouth, to prove to himself she was still in charge. That mouth felt rough and tacky, like cotton soaked in sugar-water and left out in the sun, and she didn’t relish the idea of having to use it. To save herself the trouble, Deborah opened it and began to pant. The spider, sensing her response, increased the action of the tiny, delicate hairs that served as his mouth. Deborah sighed, knowing it would be mistaken for pleasure, kept her head back, and thought.
She thought of the painter. The one she had seen on the street in SoHo on this fine spring day, his paintings perched on battered easels and against the brick wall of an artist's studio. His hair was brown and unruly, his eyes a little bit wide, and when he had smiled at her as she passed, he had been beautiful. For a brief, bright instant she had felt the twenty-seven that she was, instead of the thirty-seven that her life with the spider made her feel, and had smiled back at him. The painter had eight long legs. Not as long as the spider's but Deborah imagined they were more than long enough.
She thought of running away with the painter, of sweaty sex in his apartment that lasted for hours. It would be a studio, no air conditioning, exposed bricks. The floor would be wooden, bent and warped with age. There would be cracks in the windows. Paintings and art supplies would be strewn about like clutter on the outlying edges of a junk yard. Shoved to the far side of the room there would be a cheap mattress on the floor, the sheets dingy grey, and here would be her cathedral. Here she would hold service for the painter. Here she would worship his body and they would celebrate together in divine rapture. The need for expensive gowns would be gone. Luxury cars, haute cuisine, diamond necklaces, Italian leather shoes. All gone. No longer would she be forced into playing the servile ornament hanging on her husband's arm at meaningless cocktail parties.
Deborah choked back a cynical laugh and instead moaned, pressing her legs together around the spider's head. Yes, sure, none of those things that she had come to depend upon, things that were as much a part of her life as breathing. These things which had once been so electrifyingly new and exciting were now commonplace. Dependable. Required. The spider had provided them for her, had spun them out around her like threads of silk and wrapped her with them into a comfortable, inescapable cocoon. Instead of her blood he had taken her soul, and what of it?
Deborah could see bedding the painter. She had seen it in her mind with many others, over the years. She thought perhaps in another few years that her boredom might grow so great that idle speculation became illicit action. She wondered if by then she would even feel guilt. Certainly the guilt over the fantasies had long since ceased. Yes, Deborah could see sleeping with the painter very well... but living with him?
The spider no longer fanned the flames inside of her, but his web was still so soft and comfortable and familiar. And so instead of running away, she would stay here, and fake her orgasm, and let him take her to bed. Soon he would be asleep, and Deborah would lie between her designer sheets, as artfully woven as the cocoon around her. She would lie in her bed next to her husband and think again of the painter, and of the deceptive softness of spiderwebs.
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