She touched my hand. 'I did what you and Sheila recommended!' She freed my hand so I could mop off my face with a napkin. 'I imagined it was
'I should be flattered,' I answered when I could speak. 'I suppose.'
Monica's brown eyes smoldered with a memory that included me — but one I could not share. 'And the more I thought of it being you and not Larry, the better it became. We did it
I studied her eyes without knowing what to say. Monica was really excited. What had I started? It seemed very strange to me, just then, not the way it had seemed… before.
'Ron, it's truly wonderful.' She wanted me to understand. Her hand reached for mine once more and I pulled it back. 'We've come up with a terrific new kind of safe sex!'
I looked away, out the window. 'Well, maybe not quite that, not
'It's fun and satisfying, anyway.' Now she was pouting. She put her hands in her lap, crimsoning slightly. She was gorgeous. 'Just like you said, it doesn't hurt anyone.'
I managed a grin. 'I was okay, then?' I asked. 'I was really good?'
'
I felt my frown come back. 'But it was Larry — Macho Man with the goddamned bird on his hand — not me!'
Monica shrugged. 'Maybe. Maybe not. You know what I mean.'
'No, I don't,' I snapped. I suppose I wanted details, wanted to know how I'd made it so great for her. Share
Monica put her head forward across the table to speak with as much confidentiality as humanly possible, there in the tavern. Her dark hair framed her very sexual face (I'd been right about that part); she'd lost most of her lipstick having her sandwich and the beers, and her mouth was moist. 'Thinking it was you,
'I guess.' It sounded peculiar as the devil to me, even dangerous in a way I hadn't imagined. But I couldn't have stood away from our table then without embarrassing myself badly.
Her voice was husky. Her gaze wasn't on my face. It had dropped considerably lower. 'Isn't that how you do it, don't you absolutely
She laughed loudly, irrepressibly. It was the sort of teasing laugh, when a woman's mouth widens in a very distinct, certain way, that makes a man think of things he could do with her lips.
I went on picturing her mouth the rest of the day, even when I was reaching my twenty-page goal. It was that or put my job right on the line. I didn't have any idea whether my boss would approve my copy or not, but I'd done a solid piece of work in passionately putting on paper the way our client's parts rested on other parts and made them turn, slowly, with mechanical and well-oiled precision…
When I made a similarly persuasive approach to red-haired, slender Sheila that night — my thoughts already on where I'd put my latest issue of the adult comic book
She didn't even appear surprised when I was the one who reached up from bed to switch off the light.
She didn't appear to wonder if the children were sound asleep, and neither did I.
For an incredibly long period of time, in fact, neither one of us wondered about anything except the products of human nature and human need.
Sleeve bearings and ball bearings, I rediscovered, weren't the only things that performed as though they were well-oiled and perfect at a level far exceeding anything of which the mechanical was capable.
I stole one of my wife's cigarettes from the headboard — her cigarette lighter, too — and lit up.
She was lying on her side, faced away from me. Her long black hair was asprawl on the pillow and, even that way, the ends of the beautiful hair were tucked in. When I glanced down at the cigarette in my hand, I saw that I was smoking a Vantage Ultra Light.
The hand that held it carelessly and manfully between index and middle fingers had an eagle on the back.
JUICE
Kiel Stuart
Rory Thomas Blaise MacLaren heard the promoter's order. He set his jaw, staring down at the!ocker-room floor. Ah, yes, the smelly little tiled room, the wrestler's home away from home, whether high school or hired hall.
At his side, his partner Sam grew quiet. Rory cocked his head, feigning respect and attentiveness.
The promoter took the cigar out of his face for a moment. 'Juice,' repeated Banks, in his flatlands voice.
Rory hated juicing. He kept his mouth shut about it most of the time, because if you protested (even to peers instead of promoters), you didn't work much.
The marks came to wrestling matches to be taken in by its faked violence. To Rory the real violence was more subtle, more revolting. The real violence was this person who owned you, commanding you to take a sliver of razor blade and slice open your forehead.
Rory took his gaze off the floor, fixed it on Banks's rug. A yellowish stain marred the promoter's greasy old wig, where it was supposed to pass for scalp. 'Anything else we can do for you?'
Banks squinted up into Rory's face. 'Get a haircut.'
As smoke from the cigar assaulted him, Rory shifted his two hundred fifty-odd pounds casually. 'Which is it? Haircut or juice? Gotta know.'
Banks narrowed oysterish eyes. 'Why?'
Rory tossed his Irish Setter mop. ''Cause I don't have enough blade for both.'
It brought some stifled laughs.
On a bench next to them, Sam coughed. Rory exchanged a quick glance with his partner, as Banks bit down on his cigar.
'Juice,' came through it, loud and clear. 'I don't care from who.' He turned his back on them and left.
Rory sighed, lacing up his boots. What the hell. Blading was the easy way; just raise your hand to your head and
Everyone knew it was better than hardway blood — having a ring partner bust open some fragile scar tissue or getting hit over the head with a metal chair. Anyone with an IQ over twenty could tell the difference between a neat razor slash and the mess that resulted from fists or a chair.
For all Rory knew, some wrestlers liked the slice and dice. Enough of them had foreheads resembling the canals of Mars.
Rory wanted to keep his looks intact, not to mention keep away from whatever diseases he could get, wading in blood.
Sammy poked him one in the ribs and smiled. The smile spread out his mustache, the one he'd grown to look older than his twenty years. Rory never had the heart to mention it made Sammy look even younger. 'Ten points, Rory.'
'Yeah,' he said, breathing out. 'What a reach.'
'