Spurred on by this show of approval, Bradley reached into his sack for another yarn.
“Remember the time Sasha shoved a banana down our toilet? It got jammed in there somewhere, and the plumbers had to take the toilet out of the bathroom into the yard and push the banana out with a Roto-Rooter?”
“Bradley, I’m going to ask you not to talk about Sasha anymore, sweetie.”
But the kid was on a hot streak. He tapped Joe’s shoulder. “Did my mom ever tell you about the time Sasha carried my football onto the roof and dropped it down the chimney when we had a fire going in the fireplace? It exploded and blew flames all over the living room. A curtain caught on fire, and our house almost burnt down.”
“That’s what I like,” Joe wheezed between derisively merry gasps. “A real spiritual monkey.”
“Bradley, we really don’t need this kind of talk right now. You’re exaggerating anyway.”
“No I’m not, Mom. Honest. You know that. Remember when Rufus was over at our house once, and we were having peanut-butter sandwiches and Kool-Aid for lunch, and Sasha hopped onto the table and pissed in the Kool-Aid?”
Joe slapped his thighs, banged the dashboard, and nearly swooned, rocked by gales of laughter. “Hey, wow, dig that crazy monkey! Oh Lord, oh Lord! I do hope he survives! That monkey should get a medal! Where do I sign up for the healing group?”
“You’re welcome to participate, if you want.”
“I gotta participate. A whole bunch of people are actually going to meet for the purpose of salvaging the soul of this little monster? Ooo-ee, baby, ooo-ee!”
“First of all, Sasha’s not a monster. Second of all, if you’re going to mock the proceedings, I’m afraid I can’t invite you.”
“I won’t say a word.” Joe sobered quickly. “I’ll keep my mouth shut, I won’t even smirk, nothing. I’ll be so good you won’t even know me.”
“All right. I guess so then. Well, here we are.…”
“Wait a minute.” Joe blinked. “How did we drive from Eloy’s to the parking lot without detouring around twelve thousand construction sites?”
“If you don’t want to be hassled by them, you aren’t. That’s all. It’s simple.”
The bus hadn’t moved since Joe deserted it. A barrage of parking tickets and traffic citations had accumulated underneath the left-hand wiper. Under the right-hand blade, an evilly scrawled note on scented pink paper said:
Your hours are numbered,
Miniver!
“I already searched everywhere for those damn keys,” Joe said dispiritedly. “We’ll never find them. Heidi probably chucked them into the bushes. Or, in her confusion, flushed them down the toilet.”
“The trouble with you, Joe, is that you have a negative mindset. If you really wished to find the keys, and thought about them positively, you could make them materialize.”
“I bet.”
“It works. Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.”
Joe climbed through the bus window, and pawed through all the garbage again, wondering as he did so: Why haven’t I cleaned this car? Why is it always a mess? Why must I always spend twenty minutes searching for a simple tool? What is the matter with me that I can’t maintain order, avoiding all this aggravation? To a T, he resembled that “Peanuts” character, Pigpen, the kid who automatically got dirty even while standing completely still in a sanitized and hermetically sealed room immediately after a bath.
Nancy stubbed her toe against something that jangled. “Oh, here they are.”
“You’re kidding!”
They dangled from her fingertips, glittering like diamonds and rubies. Above them sparkled her eyes: beautiful, serene. She licked her lips. Mercury-vapor light gave them a luster evoking nubile high-school girls from a million years ago.
“You’re weird,” he whispered, accepting them through the window.
“I’m just an ordinary person. You think I’m weird because you don’t understand some crucial truths, that’s all.”
“I’ll follow you home, Missus Ryan.”
“That would be neat.”
Ay, dig that loving warmth pouring from her eyes and her pursed lips! He had a hard-on and wanted to grab her and fling her down roughly onto the macadam or across her Beetle’s hood, letting her know just how grateful he was for the vixen in her that could arouse such vital lusts.
“Mom,” Bradley whined abrasively. “I’m hungry.”
Oh weren’t they all!
* * *
EVER THE RELENTLESS sleuth, on his way out Joe stopped by the hospital’s north wing. Only a bed of bedraggled tulips, through which he tiptoed, stood between him and the window of Ephraim Bonatelli’s room. Though dropped, the Venetian blinds had not been entirely closed: slits of yellow light fell across his face like inverse jail-bar stripes. Straining for one more inch of height, Joe peeped inside.…
And gulped.
“Holy sh-titsky!”
Joe’s nose, pressed against the cool glass, tingled at such a sight. His blood ran icy in veins that had had their fill of nerve-shattering trauma for one day. Beads of chilly sweat sprouted across his forehead. Muscles in his buttocks contracted uncomfortably, as if a sadistic phantom were probing at his anus with a peacock feather. His testicles said, “Ouch!”
“Son of a bitch,” Joe muttered huskily, and he backed off, instinctively hunched.
Time to change his name, grow a beard, scour the tips of his fingers with acid to destroy the prints, locate a skilled engraver to falsify his passport, and purchase a one-way ticket to Rio!
Instead, and more in keeping with his current resources, Joe practically duck-waddled back to his bus, slithered around to the driverside door making sure that his body provided no targetable silhouette, and eased up behind the wheel. But when he reached for the ignition key, a voice said, “You start this thing, dingbat, and they’ll hear you, they’ll come barreling out of that room like bloodthirsty gangbusters!”
So he wrenched it into neutral, descended, and, grunting inaudibly, heaved with all his might, pushing the bus another thirty yards along the flat pavement before entering, turning it over, and racing uptown to the La Tortuga Bar for something to quiet his nerves and, hopefully, to blot out the latest atrocity molesting his overloaded, ingenuous little brain before he sought further solace in Nancy Ryan’s everlovin’ arms.
* * *
BUT FATE PROMOTES strange tricks on her chosen provocateurs.
Bound for Nancy Ryan and, he had thought, for yet one more round of sexual hijinks before calling it quits and retreating to the safe haven of hearth and home, Joe detoured into the plaza for that quick belt of alcoholic stimulant to calm his fraying innards.
Clogged from his ass to his tonsils with qualms, Joe nevertheless tried to hide his blossoming panic by blithely tripping the light fantastic into the La Tortuga. He settled gaily at the deserted bar and ordered a triple daiquiri, straight up, with an extra glass of neat tequila on the side.
And then, in line with the script guiding recent events (and leading, no doubt, to ultimate censure, exile, deprivation, disease, and total humiliation), Joe felt a presence at his elbow, a perfumed breath behind his ear. Expecting eternity, he heard instead a thickly accented voice say, “Hello there. What is a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”
Iréné Papadraxis.
Talk about the fickle and convoluted motives behind destiny’s incomprehensible rationale!
But to then coherently dissect the mysterious logic that could lead a fellow from that apocalyptic near-orgasm with Diana, through those powerful juicy cravings for Nancy, to finding himself in the buff only tantalizing inches away from the rosy nipples of a Hungarian Greek in Skipper Nuzum’s heated swimming pool, was beyond Joe’s powers of analytical mumbo jumbo.
Iréné said, “Well, here we are.”
Joe nodded, thunderstruck. The exquisitely tiled pool they had to themselves. Underwater lights accented the sensual emerald undulations. The imposs
ibly fluffy grass of a thick green lawn had only recently been mowed; the scent of fresh cuttings was intoxicating. Weeping-willow branches languorously brushed against the manicured carpet. Thirty feet away, a dim row of grottoesque lights glowed through the sliding glass doors of the ballroom area of the otherwise darkened mansion. Sleepy jazz music tinkled through the air: vibes, a husky sax, bass notes that advanced like lion paws carefully traversing the greensward. Naturally, in the obscenely clear and bright heavens, a billion stars laughed silently. The orange moon was so big and pregnant it seemed to have been huffed into being by a mysterious oboe.
There you go again, Heidi said. What in hell does that mean?
Mean? Who cared. Here I am, thirty-eight-year-old Joseph Whosa-midig Miniver, snatched from the craw of deadly dangers to suddenly and finally encounter myself at the culminating moment of every Playboy-reading pud pounder’s macho dreams. Like magic, this wishy-washy Marxist garbage man and roué manqué—in One Fell Swoop—had landed himself at the apex of capitalist erotic expectations. For such an experience as this Sammy Glick had slit throats, Scrooge McDuck had pinched pennies, Citizen Kane had accumulated empire. For such an experience as this a Possum Trot shoe salesman bought a Georgia lottery ticket, a Polish immigrant mortgaged his future to buy a tenement, a big-nosed little boy from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, spent eighteen hours a day spiraling a football through a swinging tire. And yet he, Joe Miniver, after only four days on the prod, had simply taken a desperate turn into the plaza, and toppled down a rabbit hole into a fantasy where the sum total of all his sexual longings collided, delivering up that for which he had often plaintively murmured he would have sold his soul to Satan to obtain. And wonder of all wonderful wonders, apparently it wasn’t going to cost him a nickel!
Hard-ons?
Don’t make him laugh. What was that thing twanging straight out from his groin down there in the undulating emerald if not something comparable to the best baseball hickory that North Carolina could supply, and pointed with the unerring instinct of a blue-chip field retriever at the holy grail waiting there behind her tangled bush?
Oh no, not to worry. Now that he was miraculously here, this boy was not about to blow it, not on your life, not for all the tea in China, no sirree!
This one was as good as signed, sealed, delivered, cashed, receipted, stuffed, and hung on the wall. Oh my God, Joe, you’re incredible!
You better believe it!
It was so corny, he laughed. Peals of his happy tune scattered like doves with whistling wings into the fragrant night.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I can’t help it. This is a fairy tale. I feel ten years old.”
Her hand, a hungry cruising trout, glided through the water.
“This doesn’t feel like you’re ten years old.”
Joe wished to savor it as long as possible. He needed to absorb this most perfect body he had ever seen. He wanted the mere sight of her to caress him until he could stand it no longer. He wanted it to be like abstaining hungrily from attacking a marvelous dessert. A fine mist rose off the warm water. Joe remained immobile, but for the hands at his sides that lazily paddled the tepid water, just as a fish laconically moves its fins while balancing in one place.
When her fingers closed over his enormous war club, Joe didn’t budge.
“Nice,” she said.
“Mmmm.”
“How come you’re grinning so wildly? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I can’t help it, Iréné. This is incredible.”
HUMBLE CAMEL DRIVER RECEIVES AUDIENCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE! KING DESERTS HIS THRONE FOR COMMONER! IMPOVERISHED SHEPHERD DISCOVERS BABY JESUS IN BETHLEHEM MANGER!
For how long—call it forever?—did they stall, her fingers softly clutching his dork as the mollifying waters of this dream lapped against her ripest bosom?
She cocked her head. “Are you all right?”
“Am I all right?”
“You seem strange.”
“I’m happy. I’m euphoric.”
“I’m so glad.” Her voice lacked a little something, though her eyes seemed friendly enough. Faintly, Joe suspected that the intensity he felt for the moment was not totally mutual. She’d been here before. She was accustomed to the setting, and to that mammoth thing in her hand. Quite possibly the experience was old hat.
Such thoughts dissipated with the mists. After a ten-minute eternity, Joe ceremoniously lifted one hand and cupped one breast as if it were a sacred chalice. Her nipple nibbled at his fingertip. And Joe feared that all the hunger and anticipation of pleasure accumulating inside his humble salt-of-the-earth body might cause him to burst.
Or else lightning, inadvertently released from his penis before they reached dry land, might electrocute them both!
“My God,” he murmured.
Speaking inaudibly, Iréné dropped her eyelids and began to rhythmically squeeze his prick. They drifted together, embracing. Eyes wide open, Joe tilted his head, scanning the heavens. He expected comets, shooting stars, a rare silver night bird, the explosion of a leftover firework that had been hanging in weightless ether for a year anticipating this moment.
Urgently, she clasped him tightly and rubbed his erection between her straddling legs. He tried to crush her against him so that she couldn’t move. “Wait, Iréné… just a few more seconds … we’ve got plenty of time.”
“I need you.” Her hips were grinding. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
Inside? People had been shot for lesser heresies!
“It’s okay. Just a little bit longer. I want you out here.”
She nipped and slurped at his neck, his collarbone. When her teeth sank into his shoulder he winced and almost cried “ouch!” When she spoke, her voice had changed. Huskily, a trifle humorously, she demanded: “I want you. I can’t wait any longer.”
“Oh please.” Joe fought off something that was happening to him—the unthinkable: a tiny bit of disintegration around the fringes of his Perfect Moment. “Let’s not rush it.”
“I want that big cock inside of me.” Ay, spare me such crudity! The words, her tone of voice, hurt his ears. And here came more of the same: “I want you to fuck me with that iron dick until I scream. Do you think you can do that?”
“Oh don’t talk right now. Let’s just be quiet.…”
Her teeth again—“Ouch!” And fingernails—“Hey!” Joe had always mistrusted women who let their nails grow that long. Obviously, they rarely used their hands to a useful purpose.
“I want to consume you,” she gasped theatrically. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
“I want to screw you here.” Joe had difficulty keeping his voice seductive, cool, macho, unblemished by the first gust of panic goosepimpling his inner flesh. “Let’s fuck in the water.”
“I’ve got some amyl nitrate back in my room. I want to cop it while you ream me. You’re so strong. God, it’s so big I’m afraid you’ll butcher me. There’ll be blood all over the sheets.”
Yuuucch!
“No it’s not. It’s only normal. I measured it once. It’s just six and a half inches exactly. The American average.”
She raised her mouth and began slobbering all over his lips, cheeks, chin. Her tongue-tip twirled into one nostril. “You’re wrong, Joe. It’s much bigger than that. I can tell. It’s almost eight inches. It’s a real peter. When we get inside I’m going to do everything to you. I can deep-throat it. I’m going to shove three fingers at once up your asshole.…”
Ouch again!
Joe drew back his head, trying to avoid her anaconda tongue. Her thighs churned around his erection … although it wasn’t as hard as before. Incredibly, it was dying. “Don’t talk dirty,” he whispered. “You don’t need to arouse me like that.”
Too late. She had entered a whacked-out trance. “I want you to come in my mouth, Joe. I want that fantastic shlong in my mouth right now, I want to drown in your sticky come.…”
“I don’t think I ej
aculate all that much semen.…”
“Ooooohhhhh those balls,” she crooned ecstatically, wrenching them painfully. “They are so swollen with jism. I want you to smear it all over my tits. I want you to shoot it up my ass. I want you to shit on my stomach and rub it all over me.…”
Joe said, “Let’s go into shallower water.” He led her from the four-foot to the three-foot area. While she kept up her obscene patter, he guided her to the pool edge and got between her legs. But the thing was half-limp now, pathetically rubbery. And all the joyful and sexually urgent sensations had evaporated. In fact, if she kept it up, he knew that for certain—egads!—the thing would die completely, and he’d be staring down the terrifying barrel of impotency.
Impotency!
“Not here.” Iréné shook her head. “In my room. I’ve got some poppers.…”
Joe fiddled with himself. He pressed it into her thick pubic hair, felt for a hole with his fingers, but couldn’t pry it open because it was dry and chalky—underwater? Yup, believe it or not, even underwater. Yet all his life he had thought.…
This was getting clumsy.
“Turn around.” She obeyed, letting his hands manipulate her, even as she repeated: “Not here, Joe. It isn’t comfortable.” She shivered. “And besides, I’m cold.”
“It’s okay. Just let me…” Oh how had the romance and sensuality fled so abruptly? Desperately, he wanted to make love in the heated pool, under the stars, soothed by the weeping willow, enveloped in the redolence of freshly barbered Kentucky blue. Instead, frantically, Joe shoved his pathetic nub between her perfectly shaped buttocks, and humped away, attempting to revive it. His shame expanded. As the clumsy seconds ticked away, he felt increasingly like a man sweating in a glass booth on television, struggling to answer a sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Teeth gritted, he silently begged God to take a break from such cruel pranks, allowing his humble servant on earth, Joseph Miniver, to reclaim that potent hard-on so that he could stab this gorgeous garbage-mouth before she ordered him, with November ice in her voice and eyes, to get lost.
But no such luck.
Sinking against her, Joe gave up. Reaching around, he apologetically enveloped her breasts. Attempting to sound at least lamely humorous, he admitted, “I lost it.”