by Rex Hurst
Brian Elder jangled the keys.
“Got ‘em. I need it back tomorrow. Also, don’t get pulled over ‘cause there’s no insurance.”
It was a stretch and a haul and a pain, but finally he got the girl and made it to her dream date. He only hoped that it would translate into something more at the night’s end. There was a little hiccup when he first picked her up. Maria wrinkled her nose at the old van smell as she got in.
“Jesus, where did you pull this wreck from?”
Jon didn’t respond. His every impulse kicked him to try and please her, to apologize, and hope she would be placated, but Father’s words floated in his head. It isn’t nice guys who finish last. Weak ones do. You’ve all been brainwashed to assume that being a submissive to a woman’s ever-shifting wants is somehow being a ‘good guy.’ He wasn’t going to fall for that. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to say something back, afraid she would walk. Even with a spell on her, she seemed pretty strong-willed. Silence was his middle ground.
The van needed new shocks and brakes, making it a rocky ride. She “eeked” and “ooped” at every bump and jolt and whined about the ripped leather seats, but Jon kept his mouth shut. Things got better at their destination. He let her order whatever she wanted. That impressed her.
And as she gobbled away, he drunk in her beauty and the anticipation of later made him dizzy. So intoxicated was he that he overlooked all the red flags her personality kept tossing into his face.
Like the fact that she dropped f-bombs as if they were commas,
“I fucking love the fucking scampi here. It slides like fucking butter down my throat. That’s what they’re fucking known for. That and deserts. I’m going to get the fucking crème brûlée.”
Or that she gossiped incessantly.
“She fucked at least half of the school. Margie just can’t keep a cock out of her mouth. I heard that she even did one of the janitors, the one with the lazy eye. I mean, I don’t know, but I believe it. She gets around.”
Or that she didn’t have a nice thing to say about anyone.
“Margie’s my best friend and all, but after lunch her breath always stinks. I can’t fucking stand it. I’d tell the bitch to brush her teeth, but she can be so touchy. I hate people like that.”
Or that she felt she deserved to be taken care of by someone for the rest of her life.
“My father only makes $60,000 a year, so he’s kind of a fucking loser. I don’t know how my mother stays with him. He’s always saying, ‘That’s too expensive’ or ‘We gotta save money for retirement.’ If a man can’t keep you in this year’s fashion, why fucking bother with him? Move on to someone who’s got the goods.”
None of that mattered. None of it registered. Especially as the moment this evening revolved around inched closer and closer. The bill was paid. The generous tip—only slapped down to impress her—was shelled out. As they reclaimed the rickety van from the valet, she rubbed against him and whispered the magic words,
“Let’s go back to your place.”
Bump, bump, roll, shake, and rattle. Pothole. Car crash. Kids playing street hockey. Red light. Red light. Red light. The city itself conspired to slow him down. With that delay came anxiety. Would he be any good? What was good? He didn’t want her running around talking smack about him like she did with everyone else. Could he even get it up? He never had a problem in the past, but doubt lingered now that the crunch was on.
The moment arrived. He lurched to a stop in front of his house. He fumbled with the front door key. Suddenly the mechanism was an intense puzzle. She tackled him as soon as it cracked an inch.
They tumbled across the antique carpet. Lips locked. Ass grabbed. Her hair fell across him. Gorgeous curls, all filled with sweet pheromones. Her breasts, firm melons of perfection, pressed hard against his body. His member pressed hard in return. No problems there.
Thump. Grind. Thump. Kiss. Was anyone home? Could anyone hear? Jon didn’t give two shits. Let them enjoy the show. The moment came. She reached down into his pants and grabbed him. Oh, mama! He almost lost it right there. He rolled her over and slid his hand beneath her jeans. Quivering. Moist. Dripping. Just waiting for it.
Clothes hastily pulled off. Tossed here and there. Bra across the couch. Briefs atop the lamp. Naked bodies in fluid motion. Pulled together hard, as if they were trying to absorb each other. And then—
“We’re home.”
Mother and Catherine stood in the door, back from the pageant circuit. Both stared down at the naked teenagers. The younger one was goggle-eyed as she peered at their genitalia. This was something beyond her world view. A defining moment in a young person’s life and not in the way you want it to be.
“That’s my grandmother’s Oriental rug!” Mother screeched. “You lousy little fuck.”
Maria leapt up, snatching up what clothes were in arm’s reach, and bolted into the night. Jon was about to run after her, but—
“Cover yourself up, please.”
By the time Jon pulled his pants on, Maria was long gone. Last he saw, she was hopping down the street, one leg in and one out of her jeans.
“What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?” she yelled at herself all along the way.
He drove around, but she had vanished into the wide labyrinth of side streets. Blue balls assailed him. The pressure was incredible.
Back at the house, Mother yelled that he was going to have to hand scrub the carpet to remove his stink from it. Never mind that her oldest daughter had vomited and drunkenly urinated on it repeatedly over the years. Jon brushed past her. She was a gnat on his windscreen. Catherine leered at him from her doorway.
“I saw your thingy,” she said. “It’s ugly and small.”
“So’s your fucking face,” he snapped.
Catherine’s face registered a satisfyingly shocked expression. He slammed his room door. Manual relief once again tonight. It didn’t take long, though he begrudged the entire world for having to do it.
Jon spotted Maria the next day at school. She was across the hall with her usual guido gaggle, staring at him. The girl just stood with them, not interacting. They asked her something to which she didn’t reply. Then one of her friends, Margie the skank, caught her gaze and saw it led to Jon. All the girls sniggered. Jon was going to approach her, but the bell rang and he had to scamper in a different direction.
The next time he caught up with her was during lunch. They passed close by, Maria still with her cackling foul-mouthed friends. She rubbed a hand clandestinely across his chest. The sensation nearly drove him crazy. He walked funny the rest of the day.
Michael was angrier than ever over the development. He kept repeating, “When’s it gonna be my time?” Then snarled profanities at his friend. They sat at a lunch table across the room from Gabbaducci’s tribe.
The Italian was there laughing and sneering in his regular manner, but he was even paler. Band-Aids covered his forehead and his eyes had a sunken hollow look. A couple of times he nearly doubled over with coughing fits. Michael cheered up a little at the display, but it still wasn’t enough.
“The demon gets the blood and all I get is a case of the sniffles.”
“It wasn’t a very big cat,” joked Jon. A smile snuck over Michael’s face in spite of himself and they both laughed.
They stopped when Kathy seated herself in front of them. Each day she looked a little worse. Her eyes were as red as rust. She was unkempt, hair sticking out every which was. The girl looked as if she’d only been washing her face in tears.
“Jeez, Kathy,” Jon said, worried, “is that stuff at the cemetery still bothering you that bad.”
She tried to choke up a few words, but nothing came out except a low wail. He skirted around the table and gave her his arm to rest on. She sobbed into it for a few minutes. Michael rolled his eyes.
“Hey, it’s over now,” Jon said to her. “You’ll never have to deal with it again “
“It’s not that,�
�� she sputtered. “My parents . . . No one’s seen them in days.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. What a stupid question. The other people they were with said that they went to bed one night and . . . and—They just disappeared. All of their clothes and money were in their room. Only their notes and photos and cameras were missing.”
“Are the police doing anything?”
“Pfft. The Mexican police? Might as well hire Mr. Magoo to find them. Oh, God. Oh, God!”
Jon held her a little bit. He could offer no other comfort except empty clichés on how everything would be all right.
An uproar from the other table startled them. Maria had begun staring at Jon as he comforted Kathy and her friends poked some fun. Gabbaducci had grown jealous, or maybe just angry, and slapped the girl. She spit in his face and he punched her again. The lunchroom attendants jumped in and Gabbaducci was hauled off kicking and swearing.
Thus ended the entertainment for the period. After school, he drove Brian Elder’s van back home. The old man seemed surprised, as if he’d forgotten that he had a vehicle. Purely out of curiosity, Jon asked how much it would cost for Elder’s psychic assassin services. The rest of the money in Father’s safe gave him ideas. Elder quoted a ridiculously high price.
“You don’t get many to take you up on that offer, do you?” Jon asked, waving at the dingy apartment.
“Only people of quality. Way above your shithole station.”
Jon left the old charmer without a retort. He might need the van again. It was a good thing he held back, for later on that night Jon received a phone call that made him seriously consider taking up the crackpot’s services. It was dark and Jon had dropped off early in his room. He was awoken by a violent shaking from his mother.
“Call for you. Don’t be all night.”
He grabbed the receiver off his desk and gave a greeting.
“Is this fucking Jon?”
It was Gabbaducci. What the hell? Some other weird background noises came through the line. He couldn’t quite make them out.
“Yeah. It is.”
“Oh, yeah, Jon. Heard you’ve been giving my girl a hard time.”
“What? No.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me asshole. Ugh. I know it.”
“Look dude—”
“Don’t fucking dude me you piece of shit. She’s my woman! You understand? You try to talk to her again and I’ll blow your fucking chest out. I got a gun and I know how to use it.”
A squeal in the background and some more grunting, then evil laughter from Gabbaducci.
“You know what else I’m doing while talking to you? I’m showing this bitch who she belongs to.”
“If you hurt her . . . ”
More laughter. Another squeal.
“Lookie at the white knight coming to rescue the fair maid. Forget that shit, pussy. Ugh. I’m not hurting her. I’m fucking her. Fucking her hard. Right, baby.”
Maria’s voice floated in from the background. “He’s fucking me hard.”
“And you love it!”
“I love it.”
She didn’t sound like she was being forced. Just the opposite.
“I’ve got my cock right in her ass as I’m calling you a faggot. The only thing hurting her is how big my dick is. It’s tearing her up. Blood and everything. First time. Anal virgin. But she can’t get enough, right?”
“I can’t get enough,” she moaned. “I want more.”
“So, stay away, or you’re a fucking dead man. I’m hanging up now ‘cause I got to blow my load in this bitch.”
Click. Dead air.
Jon just stood there stupidly holding the phone. The surrealness of the call numbed him. He dropped the receiver back in it cradle and plopped back in bed. The phrase that was weird, kept repeating in his head. Course, what did that mean in the context of the charm? Had it worn off? Maybe Gabbaducci had cast one on her as well. Or maybe the jerk was full of shit and that had been a different girl. Sure had sounded like Maria, though.
However, even if Gabbaducci wanted to back up his threat, he was in no shape to. Next day during gym, he collapsed climbing a rope. He had shimmied a quarter of the way up, then fell unconscious. From what Jon heard, he had hit his head pretty hard. The ambulance took him off with Michael snickering in evil glee. Jon couldn’t really blame him, but he felt his friend might’ve hid it till they were alone. There were still buddies of Gabbaducci lurking about who enjoyed causing fights as much as the bully did.
Later on at home, a minor crisis erupted as Michelle nearly died again. While watching the TV through a haze of various illicit substances, she must’ve snorted one drug too many. One moment she was sitting, unsuccessfully trying to light a cigarette, the flame bobbing back and forth in front of the paper cylinder. The next, she keeled over.
Seems to be the day for that, Jon thought. How long until they attended her funeral? As they all wrestled with her body and ran about trying to revive her, a task so often repeated now that it had become mundane, the doorbell rang.
Catherine joyfully yelled that she would get it and, as they were connecting the IVs into Michelle’s track-laden arms, she called out, “Jon, that naked girl is here.”
Maria was indeed standing at his doorway, though she wasn’t naked. He looked around the porch, checking to see that there wasn’t a violent guido just out of sight. A sleek yellow Chevrolet Corvette was parked in the driveway. He was about to ask whose it was when he noticed the license plate, “MARIA1”. That was her car? Why the hell had she insisted that he drive on their date? More nonsense.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “With Vinnie in the hospital, no one cares what I do . . . or about you.”
He stared at her, almost in a new light. The lust-tinted goggles had slipped after the other night and all of her flaws shined through. He saw how she slouched on one leg in her skinny knee-bearing skirt with bulky pink sweater. He finally saw the dull stare in her eyes that looked on everything with disinterest. Even the way she popped her gum smacked of self-indulgence. The world was there to serve her.
Something changed in Maria, however, whenever her gaze alighted on his face. It became hungry, fanatical even, then it darted away and returned to its bored and detached view of the world. She seemed to be trying to keep from looking straight at him.
“Some phone call last night.”
“Yeah, that’s like what I wanted to talk about. I feel kinda bad.”
“Oh, do you? I thought you were done with him.”
“Why do you think that?”
“We went out on a date and almost . . . you know?”
“So?”
He honestly didn’t know how to respond to that. Mark the sign of the whore, boys. You deal with one, you should know what to expect.
“I don’t—”
“Look,” she interrupted, unsure how to continue. She wasn’t used to dealing with things. Didn’t like it. She’d always had Daddy or some loud idiot to handle the hard parts of her life. Now, she was on foreign territory. “I don’t know what’s going on with me. I mean, you’re not the kind of guy I go for. You’re not really good looking and you don’t work out so your arms are ropey and you don’t have any real money, though you pretend you do, and your van’s a joke and you don’t like any cool stuff or listen to cool music. I mean, do you even know who Madonna is? Or the Bangles?”
Jon did and couldn’t have cared less.
“Their music speaks to me. It defines what’s going on in my life. You have no idea how important it is to me. It’s like everything. You don’t know.”
No, he didn’t, but he knew enough womancraft by now to pretend he did.
“I like it too.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. Jon, you have nothing that appeals to me. I mean Vinnie’s got a way bigger dick and he knows how to use it good. But somehow, I can’t stop thinking about you. Every time I see you, something pulls at me. It tells me to have sex and that I should be in
love with you, even though I don’t want to and never really could.”
This wasn’t what Jon had bargained for. He assumed that she would believe her feelings to be real, but this artificial insertion into her soul was grotesque. She was repulsed by him and never would be otherwise.
“So, I think we can just do it,” she concluded. “We’re never gonna be boyfriend and girlfriend, but we can bang and like get it out of our systems. Okay?”
Well, that sounded reasonable. A perfect equitable arrangement they could both live with. He knew it was sleazy, might even be considered rape on some level, but the goggles slipped back on and the only thought bouncing in his brain was how much he wanted to have this woman.
The door creaked open and Mother stuck her head out. Catherine crept behind her legs, giggling at the teens.
“Oh, good,” Mother said. “You’ve both got your clothes on. There’s a phone call for you, Jon.”
“I’m in the middle of something here.”
“Go ahead,” Maria said. “I’ve got to think some more anyway.”
“Can’t blame her for needing a break from you,” Mother snipped as he passed.
He pulled the receiver from the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen. Michelle was flopped over the table. Lines of fluid nourishment crisscrossed over her. Michael was on the other end, practically frothing at the mouth.
“Did you hear?” he laughed. “Today is the most beautiful of days.”
“Hear what?”
“So, you didn’t hear?”
“I’m real busy, man. Let me—”
“Gabbaducci’s got AIDS! That’s what he was hospitalized from. He’s isolated so he can’t infect other people. The family tried to keep it quiet cause of the shame, but it got out. His pals couldn’t keep their mouths shut. It worked! It worked!”
Jon hung up without saying goodbye. AIDS. That was the big one. They’d given that asshole a death sentence. There was no coming back. Unlike Michael, he couldn’t revel in Gabbaducci’s downfall. They’d killed a man, as surely as if they’d shot him in the face. Even though the guy deserved it, even if he was the biggest asshole in the world, the gravity of it made Jon sick to his stomach. It was so much better when it was just a dream, a dark wish. Now that the dream was reality . . . part of his soul withered and dropped off.
