“So take a shower with me,” she said.
The cigarette burned my finger and I squashed it out under my heel. It left a black smudge on the old wide pine planks. “Sorry, doll, I’m just a natural bastard, not the kind that makes himself into one.”
“Don’t fight with me, Dogeron. I told you I have been thinking. I don’t want any more of those dreams.”
“I’m not a doctor, either.”
“They haven’t been any help. Take your clothes off.”
“No.”
But there she was with me in the shower, slickery slick like Earle used to say, all soapy and turning around so I could swab her down a little better and when I was skiing all over her body with foam-filled fingers she laughed through the suds and said, “Could you really kiss me now, Dog?”
I kissed her, all right. A long, lovely, naked, tight-together kiss.
“You haven’t got a hard-on,” she accused me.
“I didn’t think I needed one,” I said.
“Really, you don’t.”
“Oh?”
“I bet you could do it soft.”
“The hell I could. Look, kill that water and let’s get dried off.”
“Coward.”
“Old,” I said, nice and flat. “Men aren’t padded with fat like you broads.”
Her hands fluttered around me and age stopped being years and started being a long time ago. I said, “At ease, young lady.”
“Pretty,” she said. She turned the faucet off and stepped back to look at me. “You’re larger than the ones in the British Museum.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” I threw a towel at her and stepped out of the shower. But I couldn’t stop her. She ran her fingernails down my back and pushed me around while I was trying to swab myself off and there was her face looking up at me with delicious, wet lips and wild exuberant titties all poked out with hard round nipples asking to be eaten and something crazy in her eyes. This time when her hand touched me there was a tremor in her whole arm that made me want to explode right there. But I knew I had to play doctor or she’d never get the chance again.
Her fingers squeezed. “I try hard,” I said.
“Try harder.”
The timing had to be just right. “Where will I put it, kid?”
It was like somebody dropped ice water all over her, then that look came back again, some inner determination forcing it on.
I said, “Didn’t you ever take a shower with a guy before.”
“Only Cross. Three times.”
“What happened?” I tossed the towel aside and reached for the economy-sized can of deodorant. I sprayed it under my arms and under the crack of my ass until it got too cold to stand, then recapped it and sprayed myself with something that smelled pretty damned good. At least they never had it in Europe where the girls wore spinach under their arms. And never thought to bleach their pussies.
“You’re nasty,” she said.
Now I knew where I was going. “How long have you been married?”
“Too long.”
“That’s no answer.” I had one pair of shorts left and was about to step into them.
“Don’t put them on,” Sheila asked me.
“Kid ...”
“I
“What do you know?”
“That
“I’m trying to be professional about this, sugar.”
“Uh-huh.” And the smile was really real.
She let the towel drop and there was that beautiful naked body you read about with big, pushy breasts and a wildly triangular brunette snatch that hid the entrance to the root of evil with the slidy part skidding the way right into destruction’s hollow.
“Am I nice?” she asked me.
“Tantalizing,” I said.
“Get more descriptive.”
I covered up my stupid hard-on with my shorts and pulled on a T-shirt. “Fuck you,” I said.
“Why not?”
I looked at her then, and her entire body was a tingling, vibrating mass of muscular contortions and small undulations along the sides of her belly, but what she was telling me with her eyes was something entirely different and I took hold of her arm, led her into the bleak, dark bedroom where there was a big bed from a long time ago and whipped off my two pieces of clothing so only skin could touch skin and rolled across her so she could feel the initial slithery feel of bodies and held her close until her own mental anaesthesia could take hold and show in her eyes.
She didn’t have to tell me. She was right when she said I knew. I let the hours become minutes and minutes become microseconds, and compacted everything she had taken away a long time ago and lived with so long into a beautiful night of nearly total exhaustion. I listened to the words and the details of her being raped again and again, felt the pain with her and hated the act with her and tasted her desire for the thing she held repugnant and when she called her husband’s name at the height of orgasm without knowing what she was doing I knew she’d never have the dreams anymore.
Sheila looked at me, the moonlight crossing her face, emphasizing the wide, sleepy eyes. “Thank you, Dog,” she said.
I had to grin at her. “You’re not supposed to thank me, doll.”
“May I offer you money?”
“If you want a kick in the ass.”
“No, I wouldn’t like that, but since all this was for me, I’d really like to give you something too.”
“What’s to give?”
“Make me a three-way woman, Dog.”
“Hey, honey.”
“Please? We’ve done everything else. One more ... injection?”
“You’re a hell of a patient,” I said.
“You’re a hell of a doctor,” she told me. Then she assumed the classic, pornographic position and said, “Deep, Dog. This should be your favorite way if you live up to your name.”
The sky burbled and burped and spit up a gentle shower of rain. Black clouds roiled overhead, deliberately holding back the sickness until they found the right ones to shower the contents of their entrails on. Waiting.
Waiting.
Everything was waiting. Somewhere.
Arnold bell was waiting. The Guido brothers were waiting. Chet Linden was waiting. The movie company was waiting. Cross McMillan was waiting. Ferris 655 was waiting.
The seed that became a stalk that bore leaves that showed a flower became fruitful and I remembered Ferris. Six fifty-five was the drop number and only once did I meet the courier who had set it all up and that was
