Sex

by Francine Pascal

  He and his friends shared a huge laugh, slapping hands before he stepped back in her face. “We’ve been looking for you,” he said, his words nearly drowning in his Brooklyn accent. Gaia noticed for the first time that his rather large nose swerved over to the right side. “’Cause that shit you pulled last night… I mean, those self-defense classes definitely paid off, and you should be real proud—‘grrl power’ and all that shit”—he laughed, making air quotes with his fingers—“but you know, you really hurt my friend.” He pointed back to the thug on his right, who’d apparently recovered from his run-in with his friend’s knife.

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” Gaia said. “I was so busy trying not to get stabbed, I wasn’t thinking enough about your friend”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t have to worry about anyone getting cut again.” Casper smiled, stepping far too close to Gaia. “Psst,” he whispered to her, motioning down toward his waist. Gaia looked down as he pulled a .38-caliber gun out of his pants and jabbed it into her stomach. “There… how’s that feel?” he asked with a disgusting, lascivious moan. And then, as though performing a well-choreographed dance routine, his friends both pulled out their .38s in perfect unison.

  Amazingly, Gaia’s fearlike symptoms hadn’t kicked in yet. She hoped perhaps that the remnants of her uncle’s injection had finally left her system, but she did have an alternate theory. It was also quite possible that any fearful feelings she might have had were being over-powered completely by the swirling, rocking, thunderous tropical storm of rage that had just kicked up inside her chest as she looked in Casper’s eyes.

  Because at this point, Casper’s face had all but disappeared, along with his voice. All that Gaia could see now was Skizz. All she could hear now was Skizz. Skizz’s voice, Skizz’s face, Skizz’s gun pressed to the very spot where he’d shot Mary Moss and left her for dead.

  “Cas, leave her alone,” Gen insisted.

  He whipped up the gun and placed it right between Gen’s eyes. “You, I will deal with in a second. Because you’re the one that sicced this bitch on me in the first place. But first things first.”

  He jabbed the gun back into Gaia’s stomach, leaning his disgusting Guido face even closer to hers. “So what do you think, bitch?” he whispered. “That is your name, right? Bitch? What do you think you could do to convince me not to pull this trigger right now?”

  With the gun digging straight into her gut, there was still no room to maneuver. And he was going to shoot. A misogynist asshole like him who’d swung his knife at her with no hesitation? Who’d just gotten beaten up by a girl and was looking for payback? Yeah. He was going to shoot. No question about it. Think, Gaia. You’ve got to remove the guns from the scenario, and you’ve got to do it fast.

  “Casper, come on,” Gen said, her voice losing its usual confidence. “Don’t do this, okay?”

  “I told you,” he shouted, “we talk after this is done.”

  Don’t get involved, Gen, let me deal with this. I just need time to think.

  “Whatever,” Gen argued nervously. “She’s scared, all right? You scared her. Congratulations, tough guy.”

  Casper shoved Gaia out of the way, dug his fingers into Gen’s tattered sweater, and pulled her up to his face, cramming the gun into her stomach with a repulsive sneer.

  No. Back to me. Get away from Gen and come back to me.

  One of his thugs stepped next to Gaia, poking his gun to her right temple to hold her still.

  “You want to start with the attitude again?” Casper shouted in Gen’s ear. “You want to start that screaming shit you pulled last night when we were supposed to be having a good time?”

  “A good time?” Gen squawked. “Is that what you call it when you put your greasy hands all over me? A ‘good time?’”

  “Oh, now you don’t like the way I do it? Is that what you want this bitch to believe?”

  “Gen, just leave it alone—” Gaia warned. But as per usual, Gen wasn’t listening.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it a good time, that’s for sure.” She laughed in his face.

  “Oh, is that right? What would you call it?”

  “I’d call it ‘scoring drugs for free,’ that’s what I’d call it.”

  Gaia caught a glimpse of Casper’s vicious glance before he brought his left arm back and slapped Gen so hard across the face that her entire body collapsed to the floor.

  No. The moment his palm collided with her cheek, Gaia felt her entire body ignite. It was as though she could feel the slap herself. She could feel Casper’s pathetic little hand lashing out across her cheek, stinging her eye, sending her down to the floor in a heap.

  Gaia bit down on her tongue, replaying the slap again and again in her head as her blood started burning. Each time she replayed it, there was less and less Gen and Casper, and more and more Mary and Skizz, until they were all she could see. Just Skizz standing there again with a satisfied grin, while Mary lay dead in a heap on the floor.

  Gen jumped up and made a break for the window. “Gaia, run!” she screamed, launching her body through the window. “He won’t shoot, just run!”

  One of Casper’s thugs made a move toward Gen, but Casper called him off. “Let her go,” he ordered. “Where the hell is she gonna go? She lives in this freakin’ park, junkie bitch.” Gen made it through the window and ran as Casper turned back to Gaia. “We’ve still got what we came for.” He smiled at Gaia, inching closer and closer, waving his gun, while his pathetic henchmen stood on either side of her, holding a gun to either side of her face.

  They obviously had no idea how stupidly they’d arranged themselves. One of the first rules of gunplay: Never sandwich a target. Gaia had already forgotten about them. It was Casper she was focusing on. Or more specifically, Casper’s body and Skizz’s face.

  She could taste her own blood leaking from her bitten tongue, and she couldn’t help noticing how appropriate that was. Because once she’d witnessed that slap, the majority of her civility had melted away. It was as if her pupils had dilated and her claws had extended. She was out for blood now. She could literally taste it. Casper probably thought he was stalking her as he took each menacing step toward her, waving his little gun. But in actuality… Gaia was now stalking him. Just waiting for the right moment…

  Just move a little closer… A little closer, you disgusting rapist misogynist asshole.

  “Now, I can’t decide,” Casper said, leaning closer to her. “What should we start with? I mean, should we start with a kiss? Or should I just shove this gun in your mouth?”

  She should have been supremely repulsed by his suggestion, but she was too busy reveling in the familiar fizz of prebattle concentration. If there was any fear or paranoia still running through her system, it had taken a much needed hiatus at this moment.

  A kiss. What a perfect suggestion. That would bring him close enough for sure. “Kiss,” Gaia uttered, drawing a mental x on the center of his forehead.

  “Yeah, I thought you might say that.” He smiled. He jabbed the gun in her stomach again and leaned forward.

  As Casper leaned closer, Gaia leaned her head back.

  “What are you doing?” he complained. “Don’t you get scared on me, now.”

  Perfect. Don’t move. Stay right there. “Actually, I’m not scared,” she said, leaning her head back just a tad farther. “I just like precision.”

  Gaia launched her head forward like a slingshot, connecting dead center with the front of Casper’s head. His head snapped back like a crash test dummy’s as his whole body flew back about three feet, landing with an ear-shattering collision in the pile of old wooden oars. A split second after the vicious head butt, she immediately ducked low to the ground as the two meatheads fired off their guns in a panic, shooting bullets into each other’s shoulders at practically point-blank range, sending them both flailing back and to the ground. Maybe now they’d learn never to sandwich a target.

  With all three completely out of commission, Gaia leaped forwa
rd, snagging Casper’s gun from the floor and rolling toward him, popping up right over his sprawled-out body. She reached down and grabbed his collar, making sure to snag as much chest hair as possible as she lodged the barrel of the gun deep into his mouth.

  “Auugh!” he whimpered, flailing his arms with a look of absolute terror in his eyes. “Auugh.” That was what the word no sounded like with a gun in your mouth.

  Gaia could feel every ounce of predatory aggression coursing through her veins. She had never in her life killed a man in anything other than pure self-defense. Certainly not in cold blood. It went against every lesson in the Go Rin No Sho. It went against every ounce of her inherent morality. But this absolute waste of human tissue, this platinum-streaked, leather-clad troglodyte… he wasn’t really a man per se. He was more of a species. A species of Skizzes and CJs.

  Human impediments. That was their sole purpose in life. To make it impossible for people to move forward in their lives—to recover lives they might have lost along the way or lives they didn’t even know they were entitled to living. It was really no different than what Loki had done to her. As long as Loki was alive, Gaia would be forced to continue her life sentence without the possibility for contentment or normalcy. And that was precisely the case with all the Skizzes and Caspers of the world. As long as they existed, the Marys and Gens of the world never really stood a chance. It was a most convincing argument for the complete extinction of this particular species.

  With these thoughts coursing so strongly and definitely in her head, she found her thumb pulling back on the hammer of the gun and driving the barrel that much deeper down his throat.

  “Auugh,” he cried again much more urgently, pushing his hands uselessly against her shoulders as she held him to the ground. “Auugh” She wondered how many women had pushed against his shoulders crying “no” with utter futility. Certainly enough to justify ending his pathetic life. He shouldn’t be living. There was no reason for him to live. Her index finger caressed the trigger and began to squeeze….

  But she wasn’t going to kill him. Because unfortunately, she wasn’t a murderer. She just wanted to be sure he was listening.

  “Listen to me now,” she ordered, “because we are going to make an agreement.”

  “Ehggh,” he replied with a desperate nod. That was “yes” with a gun in your mouth.

  “You will never, I repeat, never go near Gen again, do you understand? You will leave this park, and you will leave this city, and you will never again put your freaking hands on a woman. And you will never again sell drugs to another human being. Do you understand my conditions?”

  “Ehggh,” he uttered, nodding emphatically.

  “If you break any of these conditions,” she said, “I will not hesitate to kill you. I made that mistake once before, and believe me, I will not make it again. And keep in mind…” She turned behind her and fired off two quick shots, severing each braided rope from about fifteen feet away, sending the sailboat that had been hanging from the ceiling falling to the ground. It landed directly on top of his two wounded buddies as she turned back to him. “I have very good aim.”

  She popped the barrel of the gun and let the bullets spill out, stepping over Casper’s body as she crammed the gun in the back of her jeans. One quick step on the life jackets and she was through the window, back in the deceptively idyllic fields of Central Park. She called out for Gen a few times, but she was obviously long gone. Which was a real shame. Gaia was very anxious to tell her the news: that she’d just been given the very thing that Mary Moss would never have. A second chance.

  Gaia didn’t want to know what kind of crap her freaky fake mom was up to every night-strip clubs? Late night bingo?

  * * *

  adrenaline button

  * * *

  HEATHER HAD BEEN INSECURE ABOUT almost every aspect of her life at one point or another. With the exception of her appearance. Her beauty was the one thing that had seemed almost universally irrefutable. Whether at school, at camp, on a bike trip through Europe, even a day of community service, it was always clear within the first three minutes that she would be ranked, if not number one, then at least in the top three of any female population. Even the people who hated her most had never suggested that she wasn’t attractive.

  * * *

  Fishnet Stockings

  * * *

  This rare bit of unshakable security also carried over to her taste—her ability to pick the outfit that simply worked, that couldn’t be faulted even by insecure competitive women or fashion-concious gay men.

  But tonight… God help her, she just wasn’t sure. That was the awe-inspiring power of Josh Brown.

  She’d e-mailed him that she had already picked out her dress, when of course that wasn’t true. How could it be true? Only in preparing for this date had she realized how many variations on a black dress she had amassed in just the last two seasons. And with the exception of the two totally unrevealing ones (for funerals and one-on-one dinners with her father) she had tried on every single one.

  Ultimately, after much very serious consideration, she had decided that this very important evening called for something just a little more than sexy. Tonight Heather had decided to go just a wee bit… trashy. A risky choice, yes. It wouldn’t be right for just any occasion, but her instincts had never failed her before.

  A full-force minidress. That was the decision. Low-cut top, formfitting middle, hanging just below the butt. And for sex kitten flavor… fishnet stockings. Classic, yet bold. But was she sure? This was what she’d been debating for the last five minutes after ducking into the ladies’ room at Guernica before she’d even sat down to dinner. Was she absolutely sure it was the right choice? Would it turn him on without losing her an ounce of his respect?

  Only his reaction could answer that question. That was how bad it had gotten. That was her degree of security when it came to Josh.

  She applied one last lipstick touch-up, flipped around for one quick visible panty-line check, and that was that. She’d made her choices. She’d done all she could do. The rest was in the hands of fate… and Josh Brown. She finally tore herself away from the mirror and headed out to receive her score.

  Guernica was small, but it was chock-full of undeniably cool people creating a din of hyperanimated urban cultural conversation. All the waiters’ trays were overloaded with cosmopolitans and various martinis, and there was a general rumble of funk and soul music coming from the bar/dance floor downstairs. Heather’s heart had begun racing halfway down Third Street, but by now she could almost hear it pounding as she searched between the thick crowd of shoulders and hairstyles for signs of Josh—as in spiky black hair, a pair of neon blue eyes, or a smile that seemed to have a life of its own.

  And three tables in, sitting at a table for two against the wall that led to the kitchen, he finally appeared to her, his perfectly sculpted face lit up by warm golden candlelight as he sipped a glass of amber beer.

  She wondered for a moment if he had maybe felt it necessary to take a little extra time in the mirror tonight. Maybe a little extra gel on the sides or perhaps the testing out of several shirts. But just observing the way he sipped his beer and the way he leaned his elbow on the table, she had a feeling that just the opposite was true. She had a feeling that the gorgeously tailored shirt he was wearing was simply the first shirt he’d seen in his closet. And that the touch of gel in his hair that seemed to make him shine that much more had simply been thrown on as an afterthought when he got out of the shower. There seemed to be not the slightest bit of effort involved. He was, without an ounce of awareness, perfect.

  She walked a few steps closer, heart now pulsing somewhere in her throat, and waited patiently for him to notice her. And when his face drifted up from his glass of beer… he noticed. He noticed in such a way as to leave her with no other choice but to fall in love with him permanently.

  His eyes froze over with that certain Spielbergian childlike wonder, as if some heavenly wh
ite alien light had just shone in his eyes for the first time. “Oh my God,” he uttered. “Oh, my sweet, sweet Lord.”

  Yes. Thank you. Thank you all. I knew this was the right choice. I knew it. She matched his childlike wonderment with a shy smile of her own and took her seat.

  “You look…” Josh gave up on words and just slowly shook his head.

  “My party dress,” she offered humbly, turning out her hands ever so slightly to officially present herself.

  “Yes,” he declared with a nod. “Yes. That is your party dress. That is just…” He returned to the shaking of his head. “I’m just… I’m so glad we didn’t go to Starbucks.”

  Heather laughed a too loud laugh, quickly realizing just how overwhelmingly nervous she was. Every time his eyes swept over her, it was like he was pressing some kind of adrenaline button on the back of her neck that made her whole body just want to spin and spin until she’d worked out all the excess energy.

  It was another minute or so before she even realized there was a pink drink sitting right in front of her. “What’s this?” she asked excitedly.

  “I ordered you a drink,” he said, still staring at her with hypnotic awe. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “What is it?” She smiled.

  “It’s the specialty of the house,” he said. “The Pink Poodle.”

  “Well that was very sweet,” she cooed. “But I should warn you. After about two sips of alcohol… I can’t be held accountable for my actions. You’ll have to take care of me, okay?”

  Josh locked his overpowering blue gaze on her, sending a flush of heat through her face. “I would be honored to take care of you,” he said, bringing Heather’s pounding heart flying up to somewhere around her chin. “But if you don’t want this drink, that’s totally—”

  “No, I trust you.” She giggled, grabbing the cocktail off the table quickly. She hadn’t meant to appear quite so desperate, but she was absolutely dying for something to calm the volcanic jitters in her stomach. She took a careful sip of the drink and found it to be quite possibly the most delicious thing she had ever tasted—she couldn’t even taste the slightest hint of alcohol. “Mmm,” she said with a smile. “Excellent choice.”