Gary gasped, shaking his head yet unable to deny the river of warmth flowing inside, a glow he could label only as maternity.
“Lana looked for someone like you for a long time. I never saw her any happier than after she met you. Someone open-minded … eager for new experiences … who wanted to break with his past.” Gabriel touched a quieting finger to Gary’s lips when he started to speak. “But let your conscience off the hook. She didn’t kill herself over you. She did it for us.”
Once content to observe, the others now started forward.
“It was the one sacrifice she wanted to make, to thank the rest of us for making her feel like she belonged somewhere. It didn’t take long to make up her mind once she decided you were the one. Your leaving just … accelerated the schedule.”
Gabriel kissed him on the lips, then eased his weight back onto Gary’s hips again as the others closed in. Half-men, half-women, walking wonders of endocrines, scalpels, and implants, taking positions at the nipples, joining to him with suckling mouths. They were very gentle, did not bite.
“Lana was carnal … and she was spiritual … and maternal. Like any goddess should be.” Again, Gabriel shushed him, still grinding with muscled hips. “Making children is more than functioning body parts. It’s a thing of the spirit, too. Lana understood that more than anyone I know. And now she’s closer to you than she could ever have gotten with her body. Can’t you
He searched hesitantly, tentatively. Thinking perhaps there was another light, another warmth, pulsing within.
“No matter what, though,” whispered Gabriel, “don’t ever think she didn’t love you. She did. She
Of course she would. How could she ever have done this to someone she hated?
Gary writhed, caught in a hurricane of tears and love, revulsion and desire. Fighting would accomplish nothing. And he was so needed.
So he lay back in this roof-bound Eden, beneath the roiling sky, and let them nurse. Soon, more found their way to the roof to take their place in line. And within, and from within, the juices flowed — testosterone and estrogen, progesterone and androgen — a mother’s milk to nurture and nourish wonders greater still.
Gabriel cupped his cheek. “You are truly honored. You’ll be the madonna of an entirely new gender.”
Gary surrendered fully, pleasure and contentment swamping his last efforts at denial. He stretched his arms wide, satisfied that he and Lana would forever be as one, and reached to embrace their children.
In A Roadhouse Far, Past The Edge Of Town
He stood back, grinning with arms crossed, to watch those hips of hers sway while she threw. Had a wind-up that drove him truly and deliciously insane. This, after she’d kissed the tip of each dart for luck. Oh, she was overflowing with promises of finer things to come later in the night.
Sad about her aim, though. Darts all over the damn place.
“I don’t think this is your game.”
She turned chin over shoulder to stick out her tongue at him. “I got games you never even played.” She danced away to retrieve the darts, came dancing back with all six and handed him his three. Green ones, his lucky color.
“The trick,” he said, “is breath control. You breathe out on the throw, nice smooth exhale. And never,
Down and dirty blues thumped from the jukebox while he sank all three darts in a tight cluster. He raised both arms to receive worldwide acclaim.
“Am I the master, or am I the master?”
“Careful you don’t stick yourself with one of those, or that shit you’re so full of is gonna run right out in the floor.”
He pretended to bristle. “Sure is a lot of sass coming from someone hasn’t even hit herself a bull’s-eye yet.”
“Keep making a big deal out of it” — she licked her finger and pretended to clean the zipper of her jeans — “and I know something
“By what, that music? Sweety-pie, the way you’re shaking your moneymaker, I dare say you’re making it work for you.”
“No, no, it’s not the music. It’s that goddamn barmaid! Never have I heard a voice that inspires more natural annoyance in me.”
She had a point. That voice did tend to carry. The gameroom was separate from the main bar, but still, they’d been listening to the barmaid going on nonstop about one thing and then another for the past hour. He sighed with the truth of it all.
“Sugar, go take care of it.” Turning kiddish on him, trying to wrap him around that sweet little finger of hers. “For me? Pleeease?”
“Where do you think we are, high school or something? Your problem,
She pouted until it was clear he wouldn’t give in. Then her face went hard and she made for the pool table. Rolled the dead shitkicker slumped half across it off onto the floor and snatched that monster ten-millimeter she favored, next to his shotgun, and went stomping behind the bar. Through the doorway he watched her point the pistol down, out of sight.
Two shots. Then, after a long pause, another. Joker. Trying to throw off his aim. She danced back all smiles.
“You know, good thing you’re better with that than you are these darts.” He inspected her three, then set them aside. “Here, why don’t you try mine?”
“Look, green may be your lucky color, but it was never mine. I’ve always been more of a fuchsia girl, myself.”
“Forget color, look at the tips of those things.” He pointed at the rejects. “Look how bent they are. You been smacking fat boy in the forehead too long. Can’t keep hitting bone and expect these to stay pristine. Now, no sass — try mine.”
She gave in. Turned back to the guy lashed to the post near the dartboard, long past caring. Her first two throws went high, while the third drilled home with a sureness she found thrilling.
“Hah! Doesn’t get more bull’s-eye than that!”
He inspected more closely. “I do believe you nailed pupil that time.”
“Can we go now? I was getting bored with this anyway.”
He was about to agree when he stepped over another shotgunned redneck for a peek at the hogtied mess behind the bar. “Can’t say as I’m thrilled with what you done to our plans for later.” A sigh. “Your problem, your solution.”
She cleared his Mossberg twelve-gauge from the pool table. “Then start racking. Stick and balls, that’s more my game anyway.”
He chunked in quarters while she danced to the front window, glanced out at the night. Turned the sign from CLOSED back around to OPEN.
The crack of the break shot beckoned to all comers.
Naked Lunchmeat
The trains don’t run on time anymore. It gives us a sense of gambling, we stand on the platform at the 14th
