into her hands. Then she laughed and offered it to Chaingang, holding out her hand as she said, “Big Boy's nice dessert treat.” She was holding a tiny dead mouse in her hand. He stared at her in disbelief as she dropped it and cackled away into the darkness. Insane and lucky.
He tried to get to his feet but the effort was too much and he sat back down with a splash, realizing then that he was still immersed in his own dried filth.
It was then that intense hatred probably saved his life. A surge of scarlet hate poured through him and the raging tide propelled him to his feet, forcing him up at the thought of the cop who had done this to him, and the momentum carried him forward as he plunged ahead into the wet black stench looking for a way up.
Soon he had forced himself to return through the malodorous sewer tunnel to the place where the old woman was waiting, and he tapped the last of his strength to glean what information she might be capable of dispensing. He learned how she had happened upon him, his body half out of the water, washed into a nearby submain where she sometimes went to seek shelter. He learned how she had found his huge “bag of pretty treasures.” And from what he could gather, nobody besides the crazy sewer lady knew that he was alive.
He sent her scurrying off on his supply errand, the dog limping along beside her, and as soon as they were gone, he gave in to the soporific pull of his total exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep.
It was a good, solid marriage, this crazy, hot thing of theirs. It broke some rules but, hell, a lot of great things break rules—that was what rules are for. She broke some of Eichord's rules about women, and with every misconception shattering, with each new stereotypical cop thought breaking like so much cheap glass, his smile would get a little wider. She was good for him, and the reverse was also true.
She'd saved his butt one time and she was a good-enough lady that she never looked back and said, Way they go, or patted herself on her gorgeous back for it. She was a caring person. She genuinely liked people. There'd been a time when all that had hung precariously in the balance and Eichord had been a part of that case. He'd asked her out and she wasn't having any of him, or men in general, having been at her lowest all-time ebb, and the two of them had pulled each other up.
There were only two things she didn't like about the marriage: she had to leave Dallas, which was so much a part of her she couldn't shake loose from the Big D sunshine, but there was sunshine here too. The people were a little different: closer in, tighter, kept more to themselves, not open like she was used to knowing. But she was a monogamous family-oriented lady and she'd build their own world around her lover.
Their new friends were a problem. She'd left a couple of girlfriends of years’ duration and in trade had inherited a couple of stuck-up, nosy neighbors, and a bunch of “hard-on cops.” The closest thing Eichord could deliver by way of what ordinary folks call friends or close acquaintances.
It had taken the passage of some time and then the constancy of the hot sex had tapered off to something approximating normalcy, whatever that was. All that meant is that they didn't do it every waking hour. They just couldn't get enough of each other. It wasn't like they were snowbound and had nothing else to do, or like they were trying to prove they were still kids. Eichord especially was reaching the point where he couldn't ball four, five times a night nonstop like he could when he was a kid.
Nobody cared. It was the nearness and warmth and love and touching and sweet companionship and trusting and, most of all, the laughs. They just knocked each other out. There was a lot of laughing. And any marriage where there's a lot of laughing and a lot of touching—you don't have much to worry about. Nobody's counting how many times you get it up. You're both too busy laughing. There'd been plenty of sex and a lot of ha-has and as much genuine caring as both of them had hoped for.
After the honeymoon year they'd reached the point where they could get out of bed long enough to have a few of Jack's acquaintances and buddies over and have a party. It was a borderline disaster. To say that Donna hated his friends would be unfair. It would be true, but it would be unfair. Now they'd learned to laugh about that too.
“We about ready for another cop barbecue?” She smiled at him.
“I don't know. I think you and I can handle it but I'm not sure Tuny's up for it yet.” They both laughed. Dana had cornered Donna in the kitchen. It had been ridiculous, offensive, and she couldn't believe it. She had taken Jack aside and whispered, “Who's that big, heavyset dude? What's his name—Tuna?'
“Dana. Dana's drunk. Why'
“He hit on me in the kitchen,” she had whispered to Eichord, who could not hear above the noise of the party crowd and music. There was barbecue in the back yard. A big wet bar going inside. Party time. Very domestic.
Donna was in a sexy black hostess gown. Dana Tuny was plastered and had come onto her in the kitchen.
“He WHAT?” Eichord had thought she'd said Dana had hit her in the kitchen. He couldn't believe it. He was flying pretty high too.
“He propositioned me. Is he supposed to be a friend of yours? Some friend.'
She looked so serious Jack had broken up. And they went in the bedroom amidst jeers and naughty remarks and he told her about Dana. Yeah, believe it or not. He's a kind of friend, he'd said, he's not kind of, he IS a friend. He had told her, “He's a pain in the ass, even when he's not bagged. Tomorrow he'll get up, and if he remembers it, he'll be so contrite he'll fall all over himself apologizing. He gets a little booze in him, he's a lost soul. But he's covered my ass more than once. Come in behind me when the captain was laying for me and made it right, back when I was on the sauce so bad. Went in to cover me against a dope gang one time, him and me with handguns against a couple of wise guys with submachine guns. He was right there. Something like that you don't ever forget. It cuts a lot of slack for somebody.'
So she had gone back to the party and later Dana had cornered her outside and she had smiled in his fat face as he breathed a hundred-proof fumes in her ear and whispered, “Hello, beautiful. Wanna sit on my face?'
She never missed a beat; she had backed off and said loudly, “I'll pass personally, but if you want some oral sex I think I've got you a partner.'
“I'm your man,” he had replied as the people around them chuckled.
“She's right next door. She'd go for you.'
“Huh?” She had gestured toward the fence.
He had said, “Your neighbor lady, you mean?'
“No! Lord, no! The neighbor lady's chow is in heat.'
The cops still ragged Tuny about that one. They'd tell him it was Donna Eichord on Line One, calling to ask Dana if he wanted to go and get some chow. Things like that. She had really put them all away with that one.
“Yeah,” Jack said as they laughed about it, “you zinged him once and for all with that one.'
But the ha-has still took a back seat to the romance.
“You're something, you know that,” he said to her, cupping her long lovely neck and feeling the smoothness of her bare shoulders as they got ready for bed.
“Something is the word. But is it something good? That's the question.'
“Something awfully good.” He stroked the long fine hair that she would comb out, letting it fall nearly to her waist. “Like corn silk.'
“What does a city guy know about corn silk? Bet you never shucked an ear of field corn in your life.'
“Wrong,” he said, making a buzzer sound. “Sorry, ma'am, this means another article of your clothing has to come off for an incorrect answer. Pay up.” He slipped the straps of the nightgown over her beautiful shoulders. She had large, firm breasts. He was always asking her when the silly putty was gonna shift. They were too good to be true. She was built like a Texas hourglass. With plenty of sand in the top.
