Milagros sees she’s awake, that her body moves under his, and it blows his mind.
“Let me hear it,” he groans. “Say it, love; say it! Tell me I fuck as good as God; tell me you love it, love it . . . !”
His breath comes in gasps. He is so close to orgasm, so convulsed with the imminent flood of his passion, that he doesn’t hear the first sound.
The second sound he hears: a low growl, a snarl, half-hissed, half-rumbled from the throat of a beast.
His head jerks up and back, and after a moment’s glaze-eyed paralysis and a startled cry, he pulls away, stumbling frantic to the wall.
The naked Kathy is down on the floor, leaping on all fours; teeth long and gleaming, eyes gold, gaping mouth cornered with bubbling foam. When Milagros trips himself and falls in his frenzy to reach the door, she is instantly upon him, covering him like a great clawed cat, ripping into head and throat, tearing away bloody chunks of hair and flesh.
MARIA
LYDIA LAMOUR (née Alejandrina-Clemencia Luz Vallejo) had her daughter, Maria, tied to the bed. She’d used a long length of wire ripped from a lamp base to fasten her feet, and then her hands behind her back, and the cord from the broken slide that worked the draw-drapery in the living room to secure the bound wrists to the foot end of the brass bedstead.
Maria, in Lydia’s eyes, and indeed those of Alejandrina-Clemencia, was a delinquent, a liar, a vagrant, a thief, a consorter with young criminals and criminal types, and, above all and most disturbingly, a chronic runaway. Perhaps more accurately, she was a “stayaway,” gone from home for days, sometimes weeks at a time, coming back only, which was rare, if she became ill, more often to shower, change her jeans and shirt, and grab whatever money might be lying about.
Today it was by mere accident that Mrs. Vallejo had managed to “capture” her daughter; the girl had sneaked into the six-room, floor-through apartment, showered in the small bathroom in the back, and was about to change into fresh clothes when her mother caught her. If the apartment hadn’t been on the ground floor with all the windows barred, Maria, cornered in her bedroom, would surely have seized her clothes and leaped through the window.
Punishment of virtually every kind had never worked in the past, promised nothing for the future, and consequently Mrs. Vallejo, a widow of some seven years and therefore alone with the problem, kept seeking new and untried means to control and discipline—indeed, the right word seemed to be “tame”—her daughter.
Today, the means consisted of the wire and rope together with a long heart-to-heart talk in Lydia’s bedroom as she dressed to receive her third and last gentleman caller of the evening.
In frilled, see-through bikini underpants and bra, her hair bound back under a satin headband, the healthy, pink-skinned, voluptuously-muscled, and well-fleshed woman sat before an enormous three-mirrored vanity ringed with light bulbs and so densely tiered and massed with the variety of cosmetics and mechanical devices needed to create, or at least preserve and enhance, the illusion of her beauty, that, in complexity at least, it quite resembled the dashboard of an intercontinental plane.
The preparation for this particular gentleman caller, Rafi de los Santos by name, was taking longer than usual because not only was he a fifty-dollar all-night john, but one of the very few “good guys” on her list, one for whom she felt some genuine affection, and who always arrived with a gift and two bottles of expensive whiskey, plus a dazzling repertoire of the latest jokes he had heard in the numerous lower-life bars and clubs which he—as he described it in his slightly broken English—“frequented-for-fun.” —A good guy definitely. One not to lose. Or anger, or upset, or trouble in any way.
And she looked over at Maria, trussed up like a fowl for the oven, with considerable doubt and concern, wondering how Rafi would take it . . . you know: a child tied up like that. It seemed cruel. Though it wasn’t at all. She was a genius to have thought of it. At least now she could talk like the concerned mother she was, and make her thoughts known, even though the wretched girl glowered and sulked, and bit her lips, her eyes filled with daggers and venom, pretending not to listen, not to hear, and making not a single reply. Despite this, it seemed necessary to persist and continue.
“It isn’t as if I expected . . . gratitude”— leaning close to the mirror to paint the swell of flesh beneath each eyebrow a silvery, metallic green. “That would be too much, wouldn’t it!— what mother can expect gratitude from her child nowadays?—but cooperation, surely. I don’t think you ever stop to really consider and appreciate what you have, and how lucky you are.” Pause, as the delicate, artistic work on her eyes absorbed her—“You have so much more than most girls your age; I mean, a room of your own, and very nice too . . . and all those clothes in your closet—” darting Maria a hurt look “— beautiful clothes; not cheap, not cheap at all. —Do you understand what I’m trying to say? Why . . . you should want to go around in a pair of ragged boy’s dungarees and a T-shirt is absolutely beyond my comprehension. Jeans with a buttoned fly no less!—when you’ve not a damned thing to take out. What is it?—you’d like to pee standing up! Honey, you’ve got to sit down—just like the rest of us. Don’t—for God’s sake, tell me you’re going to turn out queer—one of those awful dykes or lesbos; God, I couldn’t stand that. Not my daughter; no daughter of mine! Really— They give me the creeps.”
She stopped everything for a moment, musing, a thoughtful expression on her face. “You know—every once in a while one of them makes a pass at me, a dyke I mean, if I happen, you know, to be at a bar, or a party, where one of them happens to be. God, they turn up everywhere! You can’t take a simple walk down the street nowadays without at least one or two ogling your ass. And sometimes you really can’t tell . . . do you understand what I’m trying to say? They look normal, like everyone else! One of them one time—” with a laugh “—offered me money. Money! God knows for what—probably to do some of those disgusting things women do with each other. Not that I blame them, of course— I mean for wanting me for whatever it is they do. I suppose they find me attractive.” She turned back to the mirror for an appraising, gratified look. “—Which I am, of course. Isn’t it so, Maria? I really am. God knows I deserve it. I’m half starved all the time. But I found out long ago, that if I drink—and I must in my work—then I simply can’t eat. And if I spend three hours a day before this goddamn mirror, it’s worth it. It pays off. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? Look at this apartment, six beautiful rooms, every one furnished like Buckingham Palace. And clothes!—two walk-in closets full! That’s a lesson for you right there, right before your eyes. But you never seem to learn.” She turned, facing her daughter squarely. “Look at me, Maria. Come now, this is serious. As I told you before, and so often . . . you’re really . . . you’re really not bad-looking—” with faint surprise “—I mean, considering your age and all. It will be six months or a year I suppose before you’re really—” looking at the small pouting swell of the girl’s breasts “—really developed, but believe me you could get by . . . if you wanted to . . . if you’d listen to a little good advice, and do as I say. There are all kinds of men in the world, sweet, and there are many men who like young girls; I mean like young girls; really young, your age. They are queer for young girls. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? And after all, what difference does it make? It’s straight. It’s normal. It’s not some—perversion like I was just telling you about. And it’s better than jacking-off, believe me.” With a sly, knowing look and a burst of laughter—“Oh now! Let’s not pretend that we don’t. All girls do—at your age—even nuns shut up in monastaries—or whatever they’re shut up in. Why do you think they carry such big crucifixes? I remember myself—God, everything from bananas to broom handles—if the wood was, you know, smooth, and not apt to give me a splinter. I remember I kept a beauty of a cucumber until the damn thing rotted and part of it broke off inside of me. I was scared stiff, you know—trying to get all of it out and half imagining—” a l
oud guffaw “—half imagining that in nine months I’d surely give birth to a giant cucumber with no arms or legs but tiny green hands and feet—like one of those freaks in a sideshow—a human torso. I could see myself putting a lace bonnet on it and wheeling it around in a carriage! God, what imaginations kids have! Anyway—Baby . . . ! What do you say? Think of the money. Honey, think of what two incomes would mean. Why, we could move! Certainly this apartment is okay, but the neighborhood!—that’s really bad news. You know how it is now. God, I have to step over the drunks and junkies in the hall. Last night some punk grabbed my foot and had his head under my skirt and halfway up my thigh before I could manage to kick his teeth in.”
Her face now painted to her satisfaction, she removed the satin headband and looked over the six varicolored wigs lined up on their faceless plastic heads like soldiers waiting for squad drill.
“So what do you say?”—touching the feathery curls of a ‘French-cut” ash-blond semi-Afro. But Maria had nothing to say and, for the most part, hadn’t even listened, her thoughts and her heart somehow seeking, and finding it seemed, “places” —states of mind and feeling that were silent and cool and damp and thickly leaf-shadowed.
Lydia chewed on a nail. “You discourage me; really you do”—suddenly deciding on the dark monkey-cut wig and putting it on. “How is this? Do you think it will go? I’m wearing my blue corepe—the one with the flowers. God knows it won’t be on me long—” a chuckle “—but I do like to make an attractive initial impression. A man likes to see you pretty and dressed up like a doll, for that first view—do you understand what I’m trying to say?—even if he’s tearing the dress off you in the next ten seconds. And Rafi likes blue; I found that out.” A moment’s confusion and inner fright—“It is Rafi, isn’t it? Today is Wednesday; it must be”—and she looked up at a large calendar on the wall that was covered with crayoned appointments and notations, breathing relief.
“Wednesday the twenty-fourth; yes.” Glancing at her watch—“Good heavens!—any minute now.” She pulled the blue crepe from her closet and quickly threw it over her head. “I’m glad it’s Rafi; because tonight I planned to talk to him about you.” She fastened on a pair of ornate blue earrings, the while looking intently at Maria through the vanity mirror. “My, we look surprised!” Her voice hardening—“You didn’t think I was going to put up with your shit forever, did you? I’m your mother, honey, and if you know me at all, you know that my middle name is No-Shit. —Do you understand what I’m trying to say? We’re cutting off the pigtails and putting on the bra—” chuckling “—or maybe taking it off. Sweetie, zip me up.” Remembering that Maria is tied—“Oh, I forgot! Well, I’ll manage myself.”
The door buzzer rang impatient and loud. “How do I look? Goodness, that man is on time! Do I look all right?” The buzzer again; and again. Bellowing—“All right; all right!” The flat of her hands moved across each buttock. “Am I smooth in the back? Whenever I wear this goddamn dress—” halfway out the room in a rush for the door “—my fuckin’ underwear keeps riding my ass!”
Rafi’s toenails need cutting and his hair is over greasy: long, thick, straight, and slicked back in two old-fashioned ducktails, as black as shoe polish and shiny as patent leather. Otherwise he is pleasant enough: portly, round-faced, with an eyebrow-thin mustache and eyes that appear kind. He is ostensibly a salesman of automobile parts, but he is part owner of two discotheques and conducts a number of underground activities, including the making and distribution of pornographic films; he is unmarried and so constituted sexually that he is physically uncomfortable, generally with gastrointestinal symptoms and complaint, if he does not have at least four orgasms a week, of which Lydia Lamour (given name pronounced Leed-yah, accent on the second syllable) provides two, or, if he’s up to it and so inclined, three—though all count as one, if they occur the same evening.
The festivities have begun in the living room where half of one bottle of whiskey has been consumed, together with a fifth of imported champagne—tonight’s extra gift—and now move to the bedroom, Rafi already down to his paisley boxer shorts, having divested himself piecemeal of his clothes on the way.
He has unzipped Leed-yah who, entering the bedroom, quickly steps out of her blue crepe, and, having forgotten, is surprised to see the bound Maria sitting on the bed, her face tear-streaked and wet.
Rafi is more than surprised; indeed, momentarily desexed as he stares, a bit sobered, at the child; so there is a delay as the situation is explained in detail, including subtle hints that Leed-yah would appreciate Rafi’s help in planning the girl’s future. He clearly understands, nodding his head sagely in agreement; that done, he quickly returns to his former drunken, horny self, grabbing Lydia in a bear hug for a long, wet, smacking kiss from which both emerge with rollicking laughter, as if sharing a marvelous joke.
Then, as Lydia carefully removes her wig—it’s too expensive to have it ruined in the melee of passion that will soon follow—Rafi sits and stares at Maria, pouring himself another four fingers of whiskey.
“She’s a pretty little thing. Funny—I din’ know yuh even had a kid. Y’ never tol’ me.”
“That’s because I wasn’t sure; she’s never around. I mean, I thought maybe I had dreamed her.”
“What’s ‘er name?”
Kidding—“Uh . . . Let me see. It’s uh . . . Oh! Maria. That’s her name.”
Smiling warmly at the girl—“That right, sweetie?” No reply. “What’s a matter; she don’t talk?”
Lydia is now entirely nude except for her plastic mauve shoes with their five-inch heels, her voluptuous body filling every square inch that God allows it, and perhaps a little bit more, the magnificent breasts hanging like sun-ripened honey-dews on a vine.
“Of course she talks! What d’you think, I got a dumb kid?”
“She ain’t said nothing since I been here.”
“Well—” Looking at Maria—“Talk to the man, honey. He wants to hear.”
Not a sound. Lowered eyes, clenched teeth; the mouth a line, the neck and cheeks pink with blood.
Rafi is sympathetic. “She ain’t in the mood, I guess. She’s mad you got her tied up that way.”
“That’s tough.” Lydia bends to the vanity mirror to remove an errant eyelash that has fallen loose. “I caught her; and this time she stays caught. For good.” To Maria—“She’s got a few—lessons to learn; and I’m the one handin’ out the homework. Do yo understand what I’m trying to say?” To Rafi—“You can untie her; I’m going to lock her in her room.” Guzzling her drink and joking—“Or . . . do you by any chance want an audience?”
Rafi, considering—“Nah. Not her age.” He looks up at Lydia innocently. “That would be ‘Seventy’?”
Lydia bites, swallowing it all. “What’s . . . ‘Seventy’?”
Rafi—”Sixty-nine with your kid watchin’.”
Lydia is so broken up and strangled with laughter she must spit up a bit of mucus which she deposits demurely in a pink facial tissue. Then her laughter resumes, mixing with Rafi’s.
Before they remove Maria to her bedroom next door, there are more jokes and spasms of laughter, both of them beginning to paw and clutch at each other, Rafi kneading Lydia’s beautiful, more-than-ample behind with the loving touch of a devoted baker’s at the first batch of the morning’s risen dough.
It is, all of it, impossible to watch, to listen to, and Maria squeezes her eyes shut, tightening her body into a knot. Her throat begins to vibrate between a hum and a moan, filling her head with sound, as she tries impossibly to shut out everything in her mother’s strange and terrifying world.
The wall is so thin, their voices so loud and uncaring, Maria must hear every word, every laugh, even whispers—and ice tinkling in glasses, the rustle of sheets.
The talk, the jokes at first, as they grow more and more drunk, and before they reach all the groans and sighs and murmurs of their serious and strenuous lovemaking is general and laced with teasing and frivol
ity.
In this mood the subject turns to Maria—for Lydia would persist in her plans, and she goads and prods Rafi into offering suggestions and options, of which he has many.
To start off with—part joke, part genuine possibility—why not put her in one of the cages at his East Side place?—she din’ hafta know how to dance—who dances?—“All she hasta do is wave her arms artistically and shake her ass, but is she—uh, you know, suitable—I mean, come on Leed-yah!—I forgot to look.”
“Do you mean breasts?—is that what you’re trying to say? Honey, she’s twelve and a half. What she’s got I’d call pimples.”
Huge, tripping-over-chairs, falling down laughter.
“No, no. I’m kidding, love. She’s okay—really. Maybe not watermelons, but at least a couple of nice small pun’kins in the briar patch.”
More screaming laughter.
“But a cage!”
“Whadayahmean? It’s gold, ain’t it? And strung up twelve feet above the floor; so no fuckin’ son-of-a-bitch is gonna lay a greasy finger on her.”
“But what I had in mind was something more—dignified; perhaps a few really nice steady men; not shaking her ass in some goddamn cage.”
Silence.
“Well— I jus’ don’t know about men. How about the flicks? We’re doin’ one with chicken soon. Money’d be great.”
“What’d she hafta do?”
“Honey, what does anyone do in a porno? There’s only two things yuh can possibly do: suckin’ and fuckin’; that’s all. —Oh, maybe sometimes someone gets it up the ass, but that’s unusual; mostly the homo flicks go in for that. I’m straight, y’understand; I don’t fuck around with no queer stuff.”
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