quite sunk in.
'Hell, no. Tiffany girl. I will give you ONE THOUSAND FIVE hundred dollars
'I don't know,' she said, looking at his outstretched hand suspiciously. He dropped the money hand down in front of him and she went over and started to take the money from him. Looking at him real hard. Feeling how sore her mouth was.
'And you won't touch my mouth again. No kissing, no touching,
'I swear.' He was shaking his head like it was about to fall off his body. 'I jus' wanna git off and go home. Fifteen minutes. Straight ball. Nothin' else.
'You guarantee me no kissing or anything?' Very suspicious.
'Absolutely. I promise. And you got my money up front.' He wore his best contrite look. 'Look, Tiff, I can see I bruised y'r mouth. This will make up for you not being able to work awhile. A paid vacation. Just fifteen minutes inna saddle and you've got twenty-six hundred.' This time she reached over and took the money and he knew he had her.
'And no more of this goddamn
'And no more biting. I'll be a gentle pussycat, I swear.'
'Well, okay,' she said, taking the money and starting to strip. 'Clean that thing off first.' The money looked real.
He had the washcloth even as he was shaking his head in compliance, and was dropping his pants and skivvies and cleaning himself there in front of her. He hobbled into the motel bathroom dragging his pants around his ankles to wash off the warm soapsuds. She had to smile through her bruised mouth as she rubbed her sore face and thought about the money. God. Greg would be so proud of her. Scoring like this her first day out on the set. Um. Wow.
'Now. Daddy's all clean,' he said as he came back out of the bathroom, wearing only a T-shirt and his socks. Carrying his pants and shirt and shoes in his hand like a clod.
'And NO MORE KISSING!' Just stand it for three or four more minutes!
'You got it, sugar. No smoochin' and no bitin'. Promise. Just in and out and easy money for Tiff.'
'Okay,' she said as they crawled into bed, and he dropped his socks by the bedside and reached for her gently, moving forward against her and beginning a soft rocking motion as she felt him stiffen against her body. She was deciding whether or not to moisten him like Greg had said or to let him wet it himself for insertion as he rocked back and forth, and she didn't see him bring the thing out and put it behind them, sliding the metal thing behind and under the pillow beside them, then making the transfer to his other hand, then easing out the other one out and having it all set to go.
'That's the one I washed my little thing with, TIFFANY or whatever the fuck your whorehouse name is, cunt. And here's a couple socks to go in there too.' He stuffed a filthy sock into her mouth. She could feel bile rising in her throat and she was afraid she'd gag. Gag on the gag. Get the gag, she thought inanely as she struggled against the cuffs and tried to kick out again. He pounded her another hard right. This time catching her squarely in the solar plexus and taking all the rest of the fight right out of her. He pulled the gag out of her mouth and let her choke for a little, then wiped off her face and shoved the sock back in. Then changed his mind and pulled the sock out and took her sore face in his hand and made her pucker up for another special kiss.
She was scared now. Real scared for the first time in a long while. She remembered thinking to herself, Well, I guess this is it. And being so scared as he gently took her mouth in his, in those big yellow teeth of his, and then released her mouth and with the greatest tenderness kissed her unyielding lips and forced the rag and sock back in, pushing off her and going over to the television set and turning up the volume quite loud.
'You know how these motel walls are, Tiff. Paper-thin. We don't want all our neighbors eavesdropping on our fun now, do we?' He approached the bed cautiously and grabbed the leg nearest to him and held it against the bed as he caught hold of the other leg and started working his way back to her, easing up her body. He seemed to weigh a ton and she prayed she wouldn't start gagging again and choke to death.
'Tiffany is a nice name, very very pretty. Pretty puss,' he purred in his there-there-now tones. She had a scream all ready but before he even pulled the gag out he let one go across her head and suddenly all she felt was blinding pain and shock and she was seeing a black velvet sky full of blue and red and yellow exploding stars, but she stayed conscious and as she opened her eyes again she felt the gag come out and he took her mouth in his again and this time it was as if she'd bent over a workbench vise and cranked the vise shut on her lips and tongue and had somebody jump up and down on the vise handle to crank it down as far as it would go and in the fierce and screaming unendurable agony she blacked out before he started to work on her with his hands.
An experienced soldier would have taken a look at the battleground and he would have should have could have recognized the thing curled up in the blood-soaked sheets. An experienced soldier would have recognized Spain's daughter perhaps, but from some sixth sense, some intuition, not from the physical appearance because there was no similarity between the swollen, blood-encrusted, battered thing there in the streaked and splattered bed sheets and the lively, lithe young girl who'd walked into this motel room only a few hours earlier, all full of her own nervous energy and undamaged youth.
She awoke in the darkened, strange surroundings, wrapped in a stinking sheet that seemed to be stuck to her, and there was a roaring so loud that she couldn't hear the noise of the traffic right outside the ground-floor motel room barely a stone's throw from the highway. And she was filled with terror as she tried to open her eyes and she couldn't get them open, and in her dis-orientation and panic she opened her mouth to scream and heard nothing and the child who was the daughter of the one who called himself Spain lay in a bloody sheet soaking herself in her own urine and fear sweat and sobbing soundlessly — tears welling up inside bruised lids so puffy they could not should not would not open.
He has gone two days without sleep and he is very tired when he looks up and sees a police car pull into the cul-de-sac that leads to his driveway, and as always he prays, this man who never prays, he prays to God it will not be bad news. And there is also that little catch in the gut and in the chest that he instinctively feels when he sees the law. And for the moment his prayers are answered and it is not bad news, only an officer coming with more of the endless questions and paperwork.
They sit in the spotless, unused living room that Pat kept covered in transparent plastic for some reason he could never fathom, a beautifully designed, interior decorator's 'concept' room, kept pristine and untouched by the inhabitants of 10 Ruffstone Terrace in Ladue. Now they sit there and he answers more routine questions, keeping his concentration because although his work was always compartmentalized, his private life sanitized, these are the police.
The cop sits on plastic, writing with a plastic pen, asking about plastic. They write numbers and more numbers. Expiration dates. Request copies of things. Examine old records. Every question is asked twelve different ways like a movie where the same take is shot in reverse angle, then from above, below, up through the ashtray, in the reflection of somebody's glasses, in the hubcaps of a car. Enough already. The cops hope to unearth a plastic trail. Spain suffers through it and the officer finally leaves, temporarily content with his newly acquired wealth of credit-card numbers. Some other cop is getting the same identical data from the credit-card companies. Why did they bother coming out, then? Because they are cops. Why didn't they just phone? Because they are cops. Why is the sky blue?
