by Tim Sandlin
The spaces along the motel wall were filled up so I had to park out in the lot. Nobody talked as we walked through the over-warm night air to my room. The cicadas were kicking in like chain saws. Northwestern Wyoming where I was raised doesn't have cicadas, so they grated on me, like you'd expect chain saws at night would. Locals who live with the bugs don't even notice. You mention the incredible screech peeling your spinal cord and they don't know what you're talking about. There's a lesson in life for you.
I thought I ought to hold hands with one or both girls as we walked to the room. I'd been taught that you're supposed to hold hands with a girl you're fixing to nail. But I didn't know which one, and holding both at the same time felt like campfire songs at church camp.
So I said, "Right here. Room one-fifty-eight."
And Odette said, "I like your number."
I said, "Me, too."
Inside, Giselle sniffed around, checking out the trash can, using the toe of her stiletto boot to lift dirty T-shirts off the floor, looking under them. I don't know what for. She picked up my Saddlerock spurs and spun the rowel, making that clickety sound.
Odette sat on the edge of the bed and gave it a test bounce. She kicked off her tennies. "Motels are nice."
"They're just hotels without hallways," I said.
"Does it have cable? Our hotel has cable but only thirteen stations."
"In America, we call that basic service."
Odette smiled at me and said, "Lovely."
I emptied my keys, billfold, checkbook, bandanna, and cell phone on top of the TV, next to my buckle box. Then, I got worried that these two did this for a living and they'd hit me on the head and steal my winnings, so I picked up my billfold, only I didn't know where to put it. I slid it back into my pants pocket, casually, but not so casually that Giselle didn't notice.
She touched the tip of her thumb to a rowel point. "You use this to inflict pain on the bull?"
"I use them to hang on with."
"By digging this point into the bull's flesh."
"Listen, lady," I said — wrong way to start out if you want a lady to listen — "rodeo stock have the easiest lives on the ranch. I wish I only had to work eight seconds a day."
Odette crossed her legs. "How much do you work a day?"
That brought an awkward silence while I came up with an answer. The girls watched me, waiting.
Giselle said, "Well, bull rider?"
"Depends on who you listen to. Woody Guthrie said, 'A cowboy's life is his occupation.' That would mean I work twenty-four hours a day, even in my sleep. Mica says I don't work any."
Odette said, "Mica?"
"Ex-wife."
Giselle said, "May I please use your toilette?"
French girls can make English words sexy. I tried saying toilet the same way she did. "My toilette is your toilette." But it came out different.
Giselle went into the can, leaving me and Odette alone. We looked at each other a long time, sort of adjusting to the fact that we were here together as strangers and before long we'd be naked and I'd be plugged into her body. At least, I was adjusting. She may have been thinking about clothes.
I opted for the most original line I could think of, considering the codeine, Blue Ribbon, and Yukon Jack. "How'd a French girl like yourself come to Colorado anyway?"
When she recrossed her legs, left over right, the mustard tights made a sexy whisper sound. "Giselle and I are philosophy students. We came to your university in Boulder so that I might deliver a paper on William James."
All right. Something in common. "Will James? I love Will James. Got every book he ever wrote."
"I am impressed." Odette leaned forward, toward me. "I would not think an American would find pragmatism stimulating."
"I'm modeling my life after James. Whenever I'm in big trouble and don't know what to do, I ask myself, what would Will James do if he was here? It always works."
"I once followed Santayana — "
"Carlos Santana?"
"George Santayana. But after reading James, I changed my outlook on religious experience."
"Me, too."
We proceeded to have a lively literary discussion. Odette was informed and opinionated. She cared passionately and a woman who cares passionately about something outside her weight and romantic prospects has always excited me. I kept wishing I had an excuse to move closer to the bed so I could smell her again.
"A Pluralistic Universe is his most mature, focused work," Odette said. "It shows a mind operating at its full capacity."
"My favorite's Smoky the Cow Horse."
Her face did this thing where the eyes flipped inward. She said, "William James did not write Smoky the Cow Horse."
"It's his most famous book, that or Sand."
"We are discussing William James, the philosopher and psychologist, who lectured at your Harvard at the dawn of the twentieth century, no?"
"You got your years right, and Will James was a philosopher if I ever heard one, but he never went to Harvard that I know of. He was a cowboy."
Her shoulders drooped. "My William James is not your William James."
"I guess we don't have anything in common after all."
Odette looked sadly down at the floor. "I guess not."
I stood and went over by the TV, watching Odette sink into sadness. She must have been thrilled to find an American who understood her passions. You think you have a solid basis for a relationship, then it's whisked out from under you. Same thing happened to me when Mica told me she hated barbecue.
A flush came from the bathroom, and it occurred to me that Giselle could hear every word we were saying. After all, this was a Super Eight. And my war bag was in there. I hoped she wasn't messing with stuff women aren't supposed to mess with.
Odette stood, lifted her skirt, and pulled off the mustard tights. I got one quick look at black bikini panties before the skirt fell back into place. What was more interesting than the panties were the letters tattooed on Odette's toes. One letter per toe, facing out, toward me.
I pretended to drop my cell phone so I could get a better look — AIMEZ ♥ MOI, with the Z and ♥ on the big toes.
"What's it say on your feet?"
She looked down at her toes as if the tattoos were so old she'd forgotten what they meant. "Aimez-moi."
"What's that mean in English?"
"Love me." She sat back on the bed and crossed her feet, LOVE over ME. She leaned back on one arm, what I would call a seductive pose. "You knew the big boy in the salon would back down if you continued in a relentless fashion."
I said, "Yeah."
"He may have hurt you permanently. How did you know he would not do so?"
Several decent stories popped into my head, but I chose the truth. I kind of liked this girl. She had a strong neck, and I enjoyed the way her brown eyes snapped when she saw something that interested her. Lies are for sleeping with girls you don't like.
"He's on a football scholarship."
"How do you know this?"
"I can tell these things. Football players aren't supposed to be in the Gut Shot, much less getting into fights. If the police had been called, he'd lose his scholarship."
She nodded, processing the information. I wondered if she'd been in the States long enough to know football isn't soccer.
"You took a risk," she said.
"He insulted you. Letting that slide goes against the code of the cowboy, like cheating a friend or hitting a woman. There's certain things we don't allow."
"But he admitted his error and he was leaving. Why did you hit him?"
Why indeed? "I wanted to show you what a real bull rider is made of."
Giselle stepped out of the bathroom, wearing my Resistol hat and chaps and her spike shoes with my spurs clamped onto the heel, above the stilettos. Nothing else. Her nipples were big as truck stop coffee cup coasters and the hair around her crotch formed a map of Michigan. A mushroom tattoo grew out of the Upper Peninsula. I noticed that ri
ght off.
She said, "Take everything off, then put your boots back on, cowboy. Let's see what you are made of."
I looked from Giselle to Odette. Odette smiled.
Twenty minutes later I was on my back atop the bedspread with Giselle straddling my crotch and Odette on my sternum, both facing front, toward my head. Giselle had her chapped legs draped over Odette's bare thighs, which put Giselle's heels — and my spurs — under my armpits. For a woman who claimed rodeo ignorance, Giselle knew how to rake a pair of spurs. The pain was unique in my experience. Odette of the nice eyes and beautiful throat leaned forward until her boobs bounced against my cheekbones. Her left breast had a golden hoop through the nipple. She smiled all glittery and warm, and whispered, "Hi, ho, Silver."
Then they switched around with Odette on the stick and Giselle in the front seat. Giselle was a good deal heavier than Odette had been, but Odette was livelier in the saddle. This riding-double-on-a-horse move wasn't a position either the pole benders or Mica and her Pilates teacher had known. Mostly, with them, it had been a mouth-to-genital progression, what the manuals call a "daisy chain." In the pole bender case, the chain was straight; with Mica it had been a triangle. Both times had been almost all oral with no penetration. Down South they wouldn't have even called it sex.
Giselle placed her palms against my shoulders and pressed down, pinning me like a wrestler. I'm not so good at interpreting looks, but from the firmness of her lower lip and the crease of her eyes, I'd have to say she gave me a look of pure loathing.
I said, "Did anybody ever tell you you have a nice smile?"
Giselle growled. Odette came.
After that, they tried a number of tag-team positions, all of which entailed me lying flat on my back stiff as a two-by-four with a protruding spike, not the most comfortable posture for a person who's recently been bull-kicked in the behind. I wasn't allowed to move. Once, with Odette on the nail and Giselle on my nose, facing back toward Odette, I got into it a bit and gave a squirmy little thrust.
Giselle snarled. "Be still."
I suppose they were necking up there above me. I don't know. My view was blocked by Michigan. After a while, Giselle giggled — a sound more frightening than her snarl.
Later, while Giselle rolled a cigarette, Odette did some hand work and I squirted on my belly. This got both girls laughing hysterically, like I'd done something vastly entertaining. Odette jumped out of the bed, ran off, and came back with a hand towel from the bathroom.
She said, "The cowboy has a premature gun."
"Hell, I lasted an hour. What do you want?"
Odette held my penis with what I took as tenderness, or, at the very least, curiosity. Her thumb was aligned along the top, as if grasping a fly-fishing rod. If I'd had my way, we'd have called off the rest of the party and I would have gone to sleep with her holding me. She said, "How long does le pistolet take to reload?"
I said, "I'm not sure. My girls are generally satisfied the first go."
Giselle bent down to remove her stirrups. "We're not. Why don't you move over to the chair and play with yourself."
I crawled from the bed, dug a pint of Jim Beam out of my saddlebag, and washed down a couple more codeine. An hour later, it felt silly sitting with my sweaty, blue-black ass stuck to the vinyl Super Eight chair, so I pulled off my boots and put on yesterday's jockey shorts. Then I slumped back into the chair, idly watching Giselle work on Odette while I nursed the Beam. It was interesting without being poignant, like watching reality television. Fingers and tongue here. Fingers and tongue there. Odette came again, louder this time than she had with me in her. As I drifted off to sleep, Giselle finally had an orgasm. The shriek came at me from far off, like a mountain lion celebrating her kill.
7.
Banging. At the door — banging. Would not go away. My head hung off to the side so my neck cricked weirdly when I opened what I could of my eyes. A fist banged on the door.
Yancy Hollister: "Hey, peckerhead."
I spit a disgusting clot and tried to rise but my back had sealed to the vinyl. Took two grunts to make it upright. Standing hurt my bruised butt. Breathing cracked open spur sores along my ribs. What the heaven's name had I done last night?
Yancy was not willing to walk away. "I know you're in there."
As I veered across the room, stepping over the Beam bottle and a pair of chaps, some of yesterday came back, then some more. By the time I opened the door to Yancy and sunlight that cut like a skinning knife, I had a pretty good idea what I'd done to feel this bad.
"What took you so long?"
"God, Yancy, what time is it?"
"Almost nine, peckerhead." He barged into the room. I turned to watch him case the place. My spurs hung from the overhead light fixture. The Tony Lamas were toe down in the trash. There was a tampon on the floor, which brought a couple questions to mind.
"Did they put out?" Yancy asked.
One thing about drinking yourself to sleep is you wake up with a tremendous need to pee. As I broke for the bathroom, Yancy said, "I'll bet a bundle they were teasers. Got you over here and made you bark like a cow dog, then didn't come through."
I pulled down the band on my shorts. Didn't bother with the toilet lid. "French girls don't tease, Yancy." The piss was wonderful. Good enough to write a poem about.
Yancy followed me into the can. "So were they into kinky positions and sadism or what? Sadism is named after a French guy. Bet you didn't know that."
"Marquis de Sade."
"Yeah. Him. Were they contortionists? The little fox looked like a contortionist."
"It's all geometry." I shook and tucked without Yancy seeing me. "You figure it out." I went past him back into the bedroom. "Where's my pants?"
Yancy said, "Don't be a douche bag, for Chrissake. I gave up my fun to let you have them — "
"Yeah, right."
"Least you can do is tell me what they did."
I tried putting on my Wranglers standing up — the hop-on-one-foot method — but wasn't up to the task. I said, "They were enthusiastic," thus confirming Yancy's worst fears.
"I knew it."
I sat on the bed, pulled the jeans over my feet and knees, then stood back up to finish the job. "It's every girl's dream to sleep with a bull rider. Last night, Odette and Giselle had their dreams come true."
"One at a time, or both together?"
"Both together, then one at a time, then both together again."
So sue me. He wouldn't have believed the truth.
Yancy said, "It could have been me."
"I doubt it."
I checked my billfold. The money was still there. "I wonder if they gave me AIDS," I said. "Those girls were experienced. They could have been professionals."
Yancy paced, like a coyote on a choke chain. "Did you anal them? You can't get AIDS from a female unless you anal her."
"Who told you that?" I headed for the TV to collect my pocket change, keys, phone, and checkbook.
"I read it on the Internet."
"And you believed what you read?"
"They don't let people put stuff on the Internet that isn't true. Whole thing would be worthless if they did."
"Whole thing is worthless." I yanked the TV stand out away from the wall. "Jesus."
Yancy stopped pacing. "What?"
"It's gone."
"What's gone?"
Nothing behind the television but a Book of Mormon. "My Crockett County Champion Bull Rider belt buckle. I won it yesterday and it's gone."
Yancy peered at the floor, under the window unit air conditioner. "Maybe you lost it."
I dropped and searched under the bed. "I didn't lose it." Dust bunnies galore. Super Eight doesn't necessarily vacuum under their beds.
"The French sluts stole my buckle."
"That's no way to talk about girls you just nailed."
"I was asleep and they took it." I pulled my boots out of the trash can to find an empty SpaghettiOs tin and a plastic spoon from
the Burger King in Laramie.
Yancy said, "They didn't take your money or your hat. Why steal your buckle?"
"'Cause they're French sluts." I found a plastic packet tucked in my day planner in my saddlebag, under a sheaf of poetry.
"What's that?" Yancy asked.
"Passport. I picked it up before the Calgary Stampede in case I finished in the money. They won't pay out in Canada without a passport."
"If you thought you might finish in the money at the Stampede, your fantasy life is more insane than the sluts."
There were two fairly clean shirts in the bureau drawers. I stuffed them into the saddlebag, on top of the passport and my poetry, along with two pairs of undershorts and socks and the dregs of the Beam. He who travels light comes back.
"I'll meet you in Dalhart Friday, before the Grand Entry. Don't let them turn my bull out."
"Where you going?"
I flipped the saddlebag flap shut and tied it down. "To get my damn buckle back."
8.
I once got into a fight over Will James. This idiot calf roper from Medford, Oregon, said Louis L'Amour knew more about horses than Will James, which was such a stupid statement I almost let it go by. There's no glory in a rough stock rider punching out a timed event cowboy, you might as well beat up your granny. But then he said Will James couldn't shoe a mule and that was the end of the rope. I'll bet nobody's ever gotten in a fight over William James. Two professors, maybe, exchanging rapier wit.
The thing is, I didn't fly out of that Super Eight like a bat flies out of Texas. The impulse was to haul ass for Denver International in hopes of catching the girls at the gate, but that came across as too unlikely to act on. They'd be long gone by now. Besides, I'd have to purchase a ticket to get through security, and the tampon on the floor made me wonder what had been sitting on my face last night, so I stripped down again and showered. Put on clean underwear this time. After all, I was going to Europe.
