4:30 a.m.
Angela seemed to be considering Jack’s proposal, as ludicrous as it was. My contact lenses, he’d explained. They dried up a couple of hours ago; I had to take them out.
“You know, I’m not like most women,” she told him. “I like to look. But then again, I’ve always been a tomboy, so maybe there’s that. Some circuits crossed in my head, you know?” Jack said he knew what she was talking about. He didn’t.
Finally, she agreed to move the table closer, but she warned him: “If you spurt all over me, I’ll beat the hell out of you.” Jack said he could agree to that.
But the few seconds it took her to move the table closer were excruciating.
First the ticking away of the ten seconds, which Jack counted off too fast, and he hit ten and nothing happened and he thought he’d be fine and was relieved to think that maybe the effect had worn off or he hadn’t been infected as badly as he’d thought….
And then the first nauseating twist, deep in his brain.
Do not scream.
Then belt straps, wrapped around his skull and tightening, like someone had slid a steel rod through the buckle and was rotating, squeezing the leather against his hair and scalp and skull.
Scream and it’s over.
And the icy hot needle sticks in his brain, with inflatable black balloons rapidly expanding …
Scream and she’ll run, and the Mary Kates will finish you off….
Then, Angela’s palms were warm against his cheeks. “Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”
Jack was incoherently grateful, and he mumbled something about being tired. She gave him an uneasy smile in return. “You ready?” she asked politely. Of course he was ready. He’d do anything for her now. She’d come back to him; she had saved him from the abyss. He wasn’t thinking of Theresa. Or his daughter, Callie. He was thinking only of the woman who was standing in front of him, wanting to watch him masturbate. How easy the slide into debauchery.
The Sybian hummed to life, and Angela mounted it.
“Take it out,” she ordered.
She was shaved down to her skin, not a single strand of hair in sight. Jack’d been lying, of course. His contact lenses were in and his eyesight was perfect. And he could vividly see the buzzing fat rubber tip press up against the lips of her vagina. Her fingers worked the area for a few seconds, presumably trying to tease out her clitoris. Angela looked up at him.
“Dick?” she asked, nodding to his crotch.
Jack fumbled a moment, and though he could have sworn he felt nothing but white-hot fear from the hips down, as if his legs had completely melted away into the white noise—and buzzing—of the room, he was faintly relieved to find he had a modest erection.
He took his cock out of his pants.
Angela moaned in delight and thrust her hips against the Sybian. Her straining leg muscles made it look as if she could use her heels and knees to snap the saddle in half.
“Rub it,” she said, eyes shut.
Jack was only slightly dismayed to find himself doing what he was told, and his body responding….
Angela bucked as if he were touching her.
“Down to the head.”
The door kicked open behind her.
Someone said, “Step aside, sweetie. We’ve got to ask this man a few questions.”
Jack, with his dick in his hand, looked past Angela and saw two men standing in the doorway. A dark, curly- haired man in a suit, and an Aryan Nations poster boy, also in a suit, which was considerably more wrinkled. Aryan Man was more muscular, but the other guy looked harder, somehow. Leaner.
“We didn’t see your FOP card in your wallet,” said the curly-haired man.
“You’re not on the job, are you, Mr. Eisley?” said his partner.
“We know you’re not, by the way. We ran your license. You’re not a cop.”
The buzzing stopped. Angela quietly dismounted. Brushed strands of hair away from her forehead.
“I came here with someone,” Jack said, trying to find his dick. Where was it? Oh God, oh God. Let’s get it away. Quickly. “The cabdriver. He’s still here, delivering something.”
“What’s his name, then?”
“You like being married, Mr. Eisley?” asked the curly-haired man. “What’s she doing right now, your wife, back in Gurnee, Illinois? Think she knows you’re here?”
Angela, meanwhile, seemed to float backward, gathering up her clothes from the concrete floor. Mostly, she looked disappointed, like she’d had a long day at the office and had been looking forward to that first ice-cold beer, and, wouldn’t you know it, the damn tap was busted again. As she moved away, the two guys in the suits loomed closer.
“Want us to give her a call for you?” Aryan Man asked.
“I just want to leave.”
“Gotta head back to your newspaper convention, right? Is that why you’re here, newsman? Or you planning on writing about this place?”
Looking back, Jack couldn’t have come up with a way to make this night any worse. His plans for Philadelphia had been so simple: meet Donovan Piatt and try to avoid castration. And everything had gone so gloriously wrong, in ways he couldn’t have imagined. Of course, Jack had always suffered from a lack of imagination.
Like this now. The curly-haired guy, holding up the cell phone. “Let’s give her a call now, whaddya think?”
Jack hadn’t figured on that at all.
Zero a.m.
B
