Kissing hurts and he gasps, unable to disguise it, and she goes deliberately for his mouth, surprising him and then exciting him fearfully. It makes him a little sick to his stomach, or else it is the blood in his mouth, and not enough time to digest the take-out but the perversity of it, the sense of flirting with something bad feeds their excitement. The spit they swap is threaded with blood from his mouth.
“Ooo,” she moans and then she makes a choked gagging noise as she batters herself against him.
He barely hears her. It comes to him like the cry of an unseen bird on a foggy day on the coast. Zero visibility, crash of wave on the rocks, the fecund smell of tidal flats, the goosebump cold of the coast, and he’s turning inside out, drowning, in her.
“I think I did it,” she says.
It takes Sam a few seconds to work it out. Wiping a bubble from the corner of his mouth, he blinks at her. “Think?”
“I was real, like, tense and then it let go. Like going over a speedbump in a parking lot. For the work, it wasn’t much.”
Sam closes his eyes. Trust her, when she finally makes it, to have an anti-climax. “Sorry. I don’t know why you didn’t split while I was getting the take-out.”
Reaching down to grasp the ring of the condom, he can’t find it. Withdrawing, he stares in puzzlement at his unsheathed penis.
“Where is it?” he asks stupidly.
“Oh ‘god,” she mutters, “you must have lost it.”
“Oh shit.”
The engorgement of her sex makes him nervous; he’s afraid of hurting her. He locates the rubber by cautious finger and eases it out. He comes up with a greasy deflated rag of a balloon, ruptured at the closed end and leaking semen.
She bursts out laughing, distracting him from his chagrin with the shake of her tits and the quiver of her stomach. The spasm brings on a chill; her nipples stand up and she’s covered with goosebumps. She disappears into the sweatshirt again before flopping down against him.
His drowse is broken by the sudden cessation of her warmth when she leaves the cot to eject the tape. His mouth and nose ache and there is headache knotted between his eyes. He can’t think; his head feels as if some prankster has filled his skull with quick-setting cement. There is whirr of the lead being taken up and then Zep’s “Fool in the Rain,” practically a lullaby after Fishbone, and she’s back in the bag with him. Bare legs and all. They do it again—no rubber, the hell with going through that humiliation again and anyway, it’s too late for it to do any good.
“You come back fast,” she says.
“Live right.” He grins.
The collar of his T-shirt rubs his sore nose as he drags it over his head. The twinge reminds him he’s going to have to explain it. Lie about it. Not the night, it strikes him, to bring Deanie home for supper. Soon as he opens his mouth to fib about how he got his lips bruised and his nose scratched up, his lie-detector skin will give him away. Just having her in the same room—he won’t even have to look at her—will make him blush. He can see them both breaking down in spasms of strangled laughter. And then there was the shitstorm this morning—he should put that right before he brings home a surprise guest.
The light’s yellow and Sam slows. Sergeant Woods steps out of the pharmacy, tucking a new pack of butts into a pocket, headed for the parked cruiser. In his rearview, Sam sees Rick’s old man squinting after him as he stops for the red. He raises a hand and the cop returns the salute.
The old truck scoots through the intersection on the green, headed for the Ridge. Sergeant Woods unlocks the cruiser and slips his pack of Winstons under the seat. Smoked two or three a night, they get stale. He gives the half-packs of old ones to drunks when he tanks them—telling himself it’s almost necessary to have some butts handy to calm folks down. As he chucks a couple of matchbooks into his glovebox, it strikes him Sam’s truck came up from Mill Street. Again. Not the access road to the Playground but the next street over.
With nothing better to do than indulge his curiosity, the cop takes the cruiser down Mill Street. Kids taking shortcuts to the Playground have trampled the snow through the woods skirting the Mill into a snarl of paths. Pulling the cruiser onto the shoulder under the trees, Sergeant Woods gets out and notes the treadmarks in the snow—Sam’s truck if he’s not mistaken—not a great feat of detection as he’s seen the tread plenty of times in his own driveway. The proximity to the Playground where he broke up Sam’s make-out session with the Gauthier girl interests the cop. Having overheard Rick on the phone to Sarah on the subject, he knows Sam is still hanging out with the girl.
The cop follows the path through the woods toward the Playground. A few yards from the Mill itself he spots Deanie Gauthier, messing with the padlock on the door. He freezes in the shadows of the trees.
That she uses the place as a refuge as well as a place to party in better weather he is well aware. He has taken the trouble to check it out, make sure it’s reasonably safe, and also get a sense of the territory in case he ever has to come in and break up anything. So far there’s been
