by Ray Garton
“Why do you stay with him?”
“Let’s go back into the living room.”
She sat down in the recliner. Jason put his wineglass on the end table, but did not sit down. He stood in front of her, his hands closed into loose fists at his sides. His lips worked in and out of his mouth, as if he were trying to get the feeling back in them after a shot of Novocain. He slowly shifted his weight back and forth from foot to foot.
“Why do you stay with him, Andrea?” he said again, finally.
“Where would I go? I don’t have any family here anymore. My parents moved to the Bay Area. My brother lives in San Diego. I have a baby, a little girl, and—”
“Where are they?”
“Napping. I’ve got friends who could put me up, but me and the girls? I couldn’t ask them to do that. Besides, Jimmy would ... he’d find me, no matter where I went. And boy, would he be pissed.”
“I ... I heard the shouting this morning. I hate it, Andrea. It kills me to hear ... well, when I think of you over here being hit, being knocked around ... well, it makes me sick. And angry. I don’t like it.”
She wiped tears from her eyes again with the backs of her hands. “That’s very sweet of you, Jason, really, but ... well, I have Marnie and Jenny to think of, and they should have a daddy.”
“But ... him?”
“If I left Jimmy, I’d be alone. I’d never find anyone again.”
“What? What are you talking about? You’re a beautiful woman, Andrea. You’d have no trouble finding someone. I’d ... I would ... “
He stopped, looked at his feet a moment.
“What?” Andrea said, head tilting to one side.
Without lifting his head, he whispered, “I’d marry you in a second.”
Andrea felt more tears coming, but fought them back. She was touched by his words, and she put a hand flat to her chest, tucked her lower lip between her teeth. She stood slowly, went to him, put her hands on his shoulders. His head was still bowed, so she hooked a finger under his chin and lifted it.
“That’s so sweet, Jason. Thank you.” She kissed his cheek, pulled back, and smiled.
Something happened then. The very air between them changed, became suddenly charged with sharp, crackling electricity. Their eyes locked and the tiny pale hairs on Andrea’s arms and at the back of her neck stood up straight.
Jason lifted an arm, put a hand to the left side of her face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but could say nothing. Instead, moving suddenly, clearly determined to do it before he lost his nerve, he leaned forward and put his mouth over hers.
Andrea could not remember how long it had been since Jimmy had kissed her. For a moment, she considered pushing Jason away, but then ... it was such a nice kiss, so warm, so sweet. She let it continue, and it went on for awhile, became more intense. She lost herself in the kiss, fell over backward into it like a big, fat feather bed into which she sank down and down until she disappeared in all its softness.
Finally, Jason pulled back suddenly, as if he’d just become aware of what he was doing, and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, really, I’m—”
“Don’t apologize,” she said, her voice hoarse, her heart pounding. Her hands still on his shoulders, she lifted one and buried the fingers in his hair as she pulled him to her, and they kissed again.
It was something she was doing for herself. Jimmy never kissed her, not even a peck on the cheek now and then, not even during or after sex. He used to at least kiss her before sex—Jimmy’s idea of foreplay used to involve him sticking his tongue down her throat while he stuck his hand between her thighs. But that was back when he made any effort at foreplay whatsoever—that had been before they’d gotten married. After the exchange of vows, sex became little more than an exchange of fluids for her. And kissing had not been a part of it in a long time. Instead of kissing her, when he reached orgasm he liked to spit in her face. He’d just get on top of her, pound away until he came, and as he came, he’d spit in her face, maybe call her a cunt, then roll over and go to sleep. No tenderness, no affection. So this was Andrea taking something she never got from her husband, something she hadn’t had in a long, long time—a little warmth, a little affection, some human contact. Was that asking too much? Andrea did not think so, and she refused to feel guilty about it—she just had to make sure she did not get caught.
After standing there in the living room and kissing for awhile, Andrea took Jason’s hand and led him to the bedroom. She rushed back and grabbed their still-full wine glasses and took them back to the bedroom with her. For afterward.
12
Doris Spots A Romance
Doris enjoyed watching as many of her neighbors as she could see from her window, but this afternoon, it was the Norton house that intrigued her most.
Oprah was on, and Tom Hanks was her guest. Doris liked Hanks. He seemed like such a nice man, so unlike most of today’s movie stars who were sluts and whoremongers and homosexuals and drug addicts. But even Tom Hanks was having difficulty competing against the Norton house for Doris’s attention. Something was up.
On the one hand, Doris could understand the Norton woman straying from her marriage, breaking her vows. After all, the man beat her, and that was never good. Doris often thought that if any of her husbands had beaten her, just once, she would’ve been gone before the next sunrise. There was also a very good chance she would crush her husband’s testicles in his sleep before leaving. For some reason, the Norton woman stayed around for it. She was one of those.
Taking a lover would be understandable, but it was unseemly for the Norton woman to start messing around with the Sutherland boy. She probably wasn’t that much older than Sutherland, but the boy seemed so immature—still living with his parents, still carrying around all that baby fat. What was she doing bedding him, of all people? That was what Doris suspected was going on over there.
That Norton woman had better be careful. If her husband ever found out, he just might kill her, even unintentionally—he might even kill them both. If not, he would no doubt beat her to within an inch of her life, and he’d probably do the same to the Sutherland boy.
That was Andrea’s problem, of course, not Doris’s. That made it no less interesting to Doris, though. Almost as interesting as Oprah’s guest.
She turned her attention back to the television. ...
13
Chicken Casserole
Hurley entered his house with a heavy sigh. Something from the kitchen smelled good. He found Ella loading the dishwasher. He got a glimpse of that beautiful profile in the grey glow of the window. His eyes wandered down her body and he smiled. Hurley loved her no less than the day he’d married her twenty-eight years ago, and found her to be no less beautiful. How he loved coming home to those warm curves that were so pleasing beneath his hands.
“What’s cookin’, lover?” he said as he wrapped his arms around her from behind.
“Chicken casserole,” she said.
“Ah, your chicken casserole, my favorite.”
“You’re actually home in time to eat it this evening. How was your day?”
“I’ve had better.”
“Any sign of your naked man?”
“No. None at all.”
“What about the animal?”
“Lenny from Fish and Game went over to the hospital and looked around through that patch of woods today for prints, droppings, fur, something to tell him what had been there last night, what had killed Garrett.” Hurley sighed. “He found nothing.”
“Nothing at all? Isn’t that odd?”
“It’s downright strange, is what it is. Lenny said if there’d been something there, there’d be some sign of it. I told him what George had said, that Garrett had been killed by a large animal with fangs and claws. But Lenny found no sign of anything but squirrels and ‘coons. Plenty of human prints, though, especially around where Garretty’s body was, footprints everywhere, a totally useless mess—some barefoot, which would be our naked guy, I�
��m guessing. Anyway, Lenny said as far as he could tell, the biggest thing hanging around in that patch of woods was a fox.”
“What are you going to do now?” Ella asked.
“I don’t know, honey, I just don’t know. As for right now, I’m gonna sit down and have some of that chicken casserole.”
“It’ll be ready soon. Go change and wash up, and I’ll make you a drink.”
“Aaah, good,” Hurley said. He left the kitchen smiling and feeling pleasantly hungry, looking forward to that drink. It was the best he’d felt since leaving the house that morning, and he hoped it would last.
14
The Laramie House 1
Irving Taggart awoke suddenly, feeling cold. When he’d found this empty, rotting old house early that morning, just before sunrise, he’d gone up the stairs and found a bed and a blanket. His foot had gone through one of the stairs on the way up—he’d nearly broken his leg and badly scratched and scraped his shin and calf. The wounds had healed up within minutes.
Downstairs, he’d found the remains of a body. It was little more than a pile of bones. It had been there so long, it no longer smelled. The odor of death had simply become one of the layers of the whole rotting smell of the house—layers that Irving Taggart could smell individually, vividly. The corpse on the couch had been there a good long time. Patches of blackened, mummified skin covered the bones in places, but not enough to hold them together.
In the bedroom upstairs, Irving Taggart had found some smelly, dusty old clothes in an open suitcase. He poked through them until he found something that looked like it might fit him. As well as being old and smelly, they were as ugly as golf clothes, but they were clothes. He also found a pair of broken, mud-caked deck shoes.
Irving put on tan plaid pants, an orange shirt which was a tad snug and missing a button, and the deck shoes. He found a mattress on the floor, and a ratty old blanket. The mattress was a mess—stuffing coming out, covered with stains and rat turds and piss. The blanket was moth-eaten and thin, as smelly as the bed. But he had not cared about that, he’d just wanted, needed, to sleep after feeding. He was always tired after feeding, and it had taken him quite some time to find the old house. He’d slept all day long once he’d settled down on the mattress.
He had no idea it was the Laramie house, of course, nor would he have cared had he known. All he wanted was shelter ... and privacy.
Now, in his new clothes and under the ratty, smelly blanket, on the rotting, stinking old mattress, he shivered with cold. Night had arrived again—the house was dark, all the shadows of the daytime gone, swallowed up by the blackness. The smells of nighttime were seeping into the house. Soon, Irving Taggart would go out into the night to satisfy his pounding desires, his gnawing appetites.
He could not decide which he wanted to do first—fuck or eat. Maybe he would do both at the same time.
15
After Dinner
Jason lay on his bed with the radio on. He’d just finished eating a spaghetti dinner with his parents and his stomach was full, although he had not been able to eat much. He’d been too preoccupied to have an appetite. All he could think about was, of course, Andrea.
He had finally lost his virginity that afternoon.
“I hope you don’t mind if I ask this,” Andrea had said after the first time, “but was this, um ... was it your ... first time?”
Jason had been unable to lie. He never wanted to lie to her. He’d nodded. “It was that obvious? I-I’m sorry if I wasn’t any good, I’ll—”
“No, and stop that—berating yourself like that, it’s not good.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her face had opened up into a big smile and she’d said, “I’m so glad I was your first, Jason. You never forget your first. Decades from now, when you’re an old man, one of the memories that will comfort you the most will be of your first time with me.”
“Oh, I’ll never forget you,” he’d whispered. “I wouldn’t forget you if you were my hundredth, or my thousandth—although by then I suppose I’d be pretty, um, tired. I wouldn’t forget you even if we never made love, Andrea. I’ll never forget you. Ever.”
Lips closed, smiling, she said, “Mmm.”
“What?”
“I like the way you say it,” she whispered. “Instead of ‘having sex’, or ‘fucking’. Making love. That’s nice.”
He couldn’t wait till tomorrow, to get off work and come home. He would go see her again, and they would be together again.
He could. Not. Wait.
16
Sex in the Night
Hugh got the kids’ baths over with and got them all in bed, Donald in his room, the girls in theirs.
Jeannie was worried about monsters in her closet.
“They come out while I’m dreamin’, Daddy,” she whispered as he pulled the covers up to her chin.
“Honey, there are no monsters, okay?” He sat on the edge of her bed. “They’re only in books, or TV, or the movies. There are no real monsters, sweetheart.”
“You sure? ‘Cause I’ve seen ‘em.”
“I’m positive, baby, there are no monsters, sweetheart. Bad dreams only take place inside our heads.”
“Sometimes she wakes up screaming,” Annie said quietly in her bed across the room. “She has bad dreams a lot.”
Hugh frowned. “She does? Wake up screaming, I mean?”
“Sometimes,” Jeannie whispered. “When that happens, Mommy comes in and tells me a story, or sings me a song, so I can go back to sleep.”
“Baby, honey, I promise there are no monsters,” Hugh said, brushing her hair from her face. “Just in your dreams. And you know what?”
“What?”
“Dreams can’t hurt us. They can be really scary sometimes, and they can seem very real, and we can wake up scared from a bad dream, but there’s nothing a dream can ever do to hurt you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” He drew an X over his chest. “Cross my heart.”
“Since Mommy’s feelin’ bad, will you come tell me a story if I have a bad dream?”
“You can bet on it. I’ll be here.” He hoped he would be there—he’d never heard Jeannie screaming in the night before. Apparently, Emily always got to her and quieted her down before Jeannie’s screams had a chance to wake him up.
“Okay. G’night, Daddy.”
He bent down and kissed her on the lips. “Goodnight, sweetums.” He got up and went over to Annie’s bed and kissed her, too. “Goodnight, honey.”
“‘Night, Dad,” Annie said.
He left the room and went across the hall to Donald’s room. It was dark, but music played quietly on the radio.
“Time to go to sleep, tiger,” Hugh said.
“Mom lets me listen to the radio at night,” Donald said. “Helps me get to sleep.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s my clock radio, and I set it to turn off after an hour.”
“Okay. Sounds good to me.” He went to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Donald was frowning. “What’s the matter?”
The boy said nothing for awhile, then: “It’s Mom. Is she gonna be okay?”
Donald was a worrier. Sometimes it concerned Hugh—the boy seemed to take everything so seriously. “She’s going to be fine. It’s just going to take a little while.”
“Oh. Okay.” But the frown did not relax.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
As if he sensed his expression’s effect on his dad, Donald relaxed his frown and smiled a little. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Okay.” Hugh bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
“Night, Dad.”
“Goodnight, tiger.”
By the time he went downstairs to enjoy the silence, he was exhausted, ready for bed. He turned on the television and tried to watch, but he could not focus his eyes on the screen. Hugh turned off the television, all the lights, then
went upstairs.
The bed was empty and the bathroom door was closed. As far as Hugh knew, it was the first time Emily had left the bed all day. She hadn’t eaten, other than a couple bites of the tuna sandwich he’d fixed her for lunch. Hugh was worried about her—but he was too tired to worry right now. All he wanted was to stretch out in the bed. He had a new respect for the work Emily did while he was out showing houses all day.
He took off his clothes and got into bed, sat up against the headboard, and turned the TV on with the remote. He turned on Letterman and locked his hands together behind his head, elbows out.
The toilet flushed in the bathroom, then the faucet turned on. A moment later, Emily came out. He was surprised that she was naked—Emily had become quite modest since her weight gain. She stood in the doorway and looked at him. There was something odd about her eyes, about her whole expression. She pulled her lips back over her teeth and it took him a moment to realize that she was smiling.
“Hugh,” she said, her voice breathy. “Hugh.” She rushed to the bed and tore the covers off of him. She fell onto the bed and got on top of him.
“Emily, what are you doing?” he said.
She breathed heavily as she straddled him. She smelled of an unbathed muskiness. Her breasts jiggled above the rolls of fat that went around her middle.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she whispered raspily.
“But, but today, you didn’t even want me to touch you.”
“That was today. I want you now, Hugh.” She clenched her teeth and spoke through them. “I have to have you, I have to, I want you inside me, you hear? Right now. Right now. Fuck me, Hugh, fuck me.”
He laughed with wide eyes, his eyebrows high. “Well, what’s, what’re you—”
She reached down and grabbed his limp penis, then took it in her mouth.
