This last, in that frightening cloacal darkness, he did for her—but could not pull the trigger. She screamed, and her high-pitched noise reverberated in his eardrums, it threatened to crack open his skull. His balls swelled, and his penis strained, but still he could bring about no discharge to complement her howls.
“Oh Joey,” she cried, “I adore you!”
“No, Iréné. Please. No love…”
“Let me turn over. I want you in my mouth.”
“You shouldn’t…”
“I want you in my mouth. I’ll do anything you want, if only you’ll take me along.…”
Though small, like an ant she was unbelievably powerful. Iréné contorted herself—twisting—and grasped Joe, actually lifting him King Kong-like, and placing him on her heaving chest. “Ah,” she said, guiding his cock between her teeth again. He smelled shit in the black air. It scared him. If only there were just a pinprick of light somewhere, anything to orient by. This was the most loveless thing he had ever done. And it was transforming his psyche, his heart, even the composition of his blood as surely as if he were committing murder. Her hands reached up, plucking at his lips. Then she forced him to ooze backward and out of her for a moment, whispering up at him with awe:
“My eyes are wide open, Joseph. They’ve been open all this time. I’ve never made it with my eyes wide open before!”
The music stopped with a crash.
* * *
HE WAS GONE—him and the wind and the stars—long before she awoke.
The swashbuckler sun leaped over the mountains like an actor playing the lead role in a Zorro film, unleashed a dazzling “en garde!,” and postured swordlike with its lucid golden rays: “Touché!”
The world, as seen from Joe Miniver’s perspective, recoiled from such an abundance of cloudless joy. The acrylic-blue sky seemed unbelievably corny. And electrified. Invisible archangels flashing trumpet-shaped hair dryers had quartered the valley, fluffing and feathering all tree leaves, which appeared to be etched against a superelegant fourth dimension. Every ridge on every mountain seemed to pop out in a totally false but stunning clarity reminiscent of Edward Weston and Eliot Porter. He could not help but tingle from the effects of such a primal lucidity!
It was six o’clock on a serene spring morning. Joe drove through the vitreous ether of a town not yet aroused. Though he piloted a vehicle, he had the sensation of cruising through a dementedly gossamer atmosphere in a structure no more prepossessing or weighted or technological than a chiffon cloud. All night he had rested unhappily in the arms of a fitfully twitching woman who uttered frightened cries and clung tightly, robbing him of sleep. He had cooed and tried to soothe, afraid to wake her, desperately wanting to atone. His arms, torso, and neck were littered with small yellowish bruises from her anguished pinches. The backs of his thighs burned bitterly from fingernail welts. Fatigue had him worse than light-headed. Not only did he want to withdraw from the world, but hibernation until all his wounds had healed was the only answer. All night he had assured her: “Hush. It’s gonna be okay.”
Oh, for a long time in his life Joe had cultivated an erotic curiosity, but already, only moments after launching the quest, he had burned out, unable to take it. Curses on that sexual drive leading people into these arenas where they paid for their tits and ass in priceless emotional coin!
The sun was an enormous Smilie. The world seemed scrubbed up for visiting Grandma. Joe half expected a few sprites in diaphanous veils to prance across the road. Flurries of cottonwood fluff swirled by. A magpie swoop-swoop-swooped ahead of him like a pilot tugboat leading a liner into the harbor; then it veered leftward. On such a glorious day as this he had never felt worse. His head, his eyes, his entire body throbbed. His brain was damaged—no doubt permanently. His soul was in shreds. He had forged an irrevocable distance between himself and his wife and children. A hundred thousand dollars worth of cocaine lay on the seat beside him … but so what? Why hadn’t they killed him for it last night, ending his misery? “What kind of joke is this anyway, God? Turn me into a pillar of salt, you mother! Drown me! Drive nails through my heart! Fill my car full of man-eating grasshoppers!”
LORD IGNORES MINIVER PLEAS! THUNDEROUS CACKLE, TEN TIMES LOUDER THAN SONIC BOOM, STAGGERS CHAMISA VALLEY!
His penis was raw and sore—had he shoved it into a mammoth electric pencil-sharpener last night? His blue balls, bursting with unrequited semen, cried out in pain. “I’ll never make love again!” Thank God!
Then … eureka! A brainstorm!
Joe braked so abruptly he would have erased the windshield had not the steering wheel slammed his chest. Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier? “I’ll commit suicide by gobbling that whole box of cocaine!” A teaspoon of pure garbage could kill him—right? Sure. Hot dog! Eager fingers scrabbled to open the carton. Dream powder winked at him in all its unadulterated malevolent whiteness.
MINIVER AUTO, PLASTERED IN TINY PIECES OF FLESH, FOUND PARKED ON SHOULDER! CORONER RULES DEATH FROM HUMONGOUS COKE OD! LEGEND IS BORN! LOCAL GANGSTERS—AWED—ATTEND FUNERAL!
Two fingers scooped out a heap and slapped it onto his tongue. “So long, world!” Giggling, Joe dug in again and sucked hungrily, chewed voraciously, swallowed. How sweet, how sugary—he hadn’t noticed that last night. Frenetically, Joe gouged up another half-ounce and tossed it away. He must rapidly ingest enough to do the job before the effects blew his mind into gaga incapacity. Any second now, a horrible rainbow would shatter his cerebellum, a psychedelic burst of jungle erotica would crunch free of his dull skull, blooming with beautiful brutality into the blood-soaked air while naked leering chorus girls crowed Handel’s Messiah.…
Joe gulped one, two, three more crunchy fistfuls, gagged, chewed, and feverishly swallowed.
But nothing happened. What’s this—you had to snort the dope to make it work? Not in a year could he inhale all that dry, grating goop! All the sweet granules had produced so far was nausea. Sugary crystals had sponged up his saliva; swallowing was difficult. The coke tasted more like powdered doughnuts than dope.
“Sugar…?”
Joe enticed several sensory faculties back into his mouth, activating taste buds, and ran a quick chemical analysis. Concentrating, he soon realized that only a real moron would fail to reach the conclusion he finally stumbled upon.
It was sugar.
MINIVER DOUBLE-CROSSED AGAIN!
Burned by his Philadelphia pal! Twelve thousand dollars for a two-bit mix of granulated and confectioners’ sugar!
Joe spat out some crud against the dashboard, and wondered what to do now except sputter hysterically at the horrendous humor of it all.
“Curses, foiled again!”
At which point Joe glanced up: and here they all came, girded for an epic battle. While he’d been busily catering to a sweet tooth, their cars had quietly glided in, surrounding him. Ray Verboten and Angel Guts, Jeff Orbison and the Chicken River Funky Pie van chauffeur, Tom Yard from the First State People’s Jug, and a tall, rawboned geek, probably Algernon from the Joe Bonatelli Phalange of Lisping Freaks. Guns drawn purposefully, they had him surrounded.
“Give it here,” Ray said quietly, sighting along the glistening blue barrel of his elephant pistol. “That coke belongs to the people now, Joe. No more fun and games.”
Meekly, Joe passed his carton through the open driverside window. “It’s all yours, Ray. I give up. But it ain’t worth much, believe me.”
“That’s a good boy.” Gently, Ray relieved Joe of his burden. Instantly. the carton’s weight, the look and texture and smell of its contents, tipped off the pusher. Tucking his mammoth betsy into an armpit, Ray licked a finger, dapped up a touch of powder, and tasted it. His wry face said it all. In unison with Joe, he cried:
“It’s sugar!”
“Jinx, touch blue!” Joe lightly slapped Ray’s shirt. “You owe me a Coke.”
Lips contorted in a puzzled snarl, Ray glowered at Joe, then frowned into the tea box, then lifted a confoun
ded countenance to question Joe again.
Face drenched in a wimpy smile, Joe shrugged. “I’m sorry. My East Coast buddy burned me in the deal. I just found out myself. What can I say?”
Ray dug into the box, scooping sugar off the top, splashing it onto the roadway. Every few seconds he ventured another taste, spitting it out disgustedly, and kept on digging. Fascinated, Joe watched the pusher analyze his way swiftly to the bottom—but no dice. Two thousand miles away, Peter Roth must have been yukking up a real storm. Twelve free Gs he had prestidigitated on a $2.98 box of Shurfine concoction!
Well, well, life sure had its little ups and downs.
Ray locked into Joe’s bloodshot eyes, searching for telltale quivers, a glint of mendacity. Joe had nothing but the truth to give him, and, practiced in such arts, Ray could tell. All of them had taken a flying douche.
“You dumb motherfucker, Joe Miniver.”
Ray pitched the empty box through Joe’s window. Then, with a toss of his head, he summoned the troops: they retreated dispiritedly and, angrily spitting blue exhaust, departed for once and for all.
Sunshine cuddled Joe’s ears, playfully tousled his hair, warmed the tip of his nose. Dazedly, he started the bus. Most desperately, he desired a drink of water.
* * *
JOE YAWNED, though not from fatigue. Something was happening to the incredible tension inside his body. Molecules hummed and a crazy sensation attacked his blood. Light and floaty muscles seemed to have lost their tethers. Had he miraculously received an injection of zero gravity? His foot wanted to levitate off the gas pedal. If he released the steering wheel, he might float like an astronaut in a space capsule, weightless, euphoric. Squeezed sensations in his bowels felt like tentative orgasm embryos. An alien electricity, not exactly unpleasant, coursed through his nerves. Maybe, like a sky diver, he had been launched into a free fall, twenty thousand psychic feet above his own nebulous insanity. Plummeting at a disquieting rate, with no markers to measure by, Joe could enjoy a brief, extravagant freedom beyond the pale of rational restrictions. Entranced in a soporific calm, he did seem—in short—to be losing his marbles.
A lone jogger up ahead, in a powder-pink warm-up suit with a Day-Glo monkey on the back, caught his attention. From the rear, she looked provocative. Her buttocks jounced enticingly against the tight material of her pants. Blond hair fluttered youthfully at each step. Joe snarled, whimpered, and accelerated a little to catch up and ogle her no-doubt-pretty face, tormented by a lustful twinge—in him whom he had just thought might never lust again!
But as he drew ahead, eyes prepared to feast, he gasped. In place of that blue-eyed, luscious-lipped face he had counted on for yet another decadent pop in his twisted guts was an apparition of polished bone surrounding blank black eyeholes, and the grinning jagged teeth of a sardonic skull.
“Oh no!”
Joe swerved across the median line, then frantically swung the wheel in the other direction as a horn-tooting pickup narrowly swept by him inches from a head-on collision.
And when he dared glance back via the rearview mirror, the shoulder of the road, curiously hazy in the bright, early morning light, was deserted.
“You’re hallucinating, bro,” he told his trembling self. “It’s time for a little shut-eye.”
But where now? Who would have this scatological wreck? A powerful, sweet, deathlike sexual numbness gripped his brain and his loins. And so, as if connected to an automatic homing device, he turned into the Perry Kahn Subdivision #4.
Bradley sat on the front stoop in his pajamas, mainlining malnutrition and brain damage from a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. He waved. Joe cranked a handle, banging open the door. Emerging from the bus like a parachute unfolding, he cantered lopsidedly toward the house. Bradley barely looked up as Joe sailed past, a giddy grin pinned to his puffed and rosy features.
Cute and cool in a lime-green shorty nightgown, Nancy rounded a corner as he danced tipsily into her home. But Joe hardly noticed her outfit. He swished by, barely aware of fingers fluttering off one shoulder. Down the short, narrow hallway he plunged, bouncing softly off cardboard walls—and hung a left at Sasha’s room.
The hospital-bound monkey was no doubt occupied elsewhere in tawdry deviltries, buggering nurses. Joe left his feet, crumpling luxuriously toward the glistening Daring Debbie. Her prominent pneumatic bosom rose in prolific greeting: he sank between tanned latex thighs. Her arms enclosed him in erotic chub as he shoved his penis into the ample, foam-rubber vagina. Joe gasped gratefully, running his tongue over slick rubber cheeks as soft as angel-pussy. And pumped, slipping greedy hands beneath her to squeeze plump buttocks. A sexy whoosh! escaped her perfectly pouted mouth as he frenched her. Thighs rolled and bounced against his jagged hips in airy delight. Joe groaned, and whispered, “I love you,” as he repeatedly stabbed the carefully contoured recess between her legs. Oh how pornographically she joggled in his arms!
“I love you, I love you.…” he murmured as the semen reared from his balls with stallionesque enthusiasm. “I love you, god dammit,” he croaked in erotic rage. “I want us to marry and live together forever!”
Thus released, jism galloped through his shaft, ignoring emotional Stop signs along the way, and burst from the tip of his cock with a real éclat!, splashing wonderful gobs of frustrated goo every whichway, filling up in a wink her cavernous hole, and overflowing against her swollen, perfectly textured belly. “Oh thank you!” Joe cried, knocked for a loop by such ecstasy and relief. “Oh my God you’re wonderful!”
For long minutes afterward he ground his stomach against her slippery swells, and mooshed his tingle-happy skin against the gratifying wholeness of this abominably heavenly whore.
Until finally, as if coldcocked by a mallet, he blacked out.
6
THURSDAY
Shock comes—oh, oh!
Then follow laughing words—ha, ha!
Gently, but persistently, she shook his shoulder. Joe opened one eye, somewhat disappointed to be still alive. Sunlight glorified her bedroom. How had he arrived here?
“You walked,” Nancy said. “Of course, I helped you a little.”
“I walked in my sleep?” He remembered nothing: it was eerie.
“Let’s just say I helped. Gosh, you look adorable when you sleep.” Her hand ruffled his hair; goosebumps sprung up on his neck. He could picture it; telepathically she had lifted him from Sasha’s mattress. Like a sleeping pasha on a bewitched Persian carpet, he had floated out the door, down the hallway, and into this room. The carpet had tilted slightly, dumping him onto the bed. Then her psychic powers snapped back into her head like a carpenter’s metal tape measure: brrrrrrrrrrrap!
“What time is it?”
“Time to drive out for the Hanuman unveiling.”
“I don’t wanna go. They’ll stone me to death.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I need a bath. I stink.”
“Whatever you wish. Though I think you smell wonderful.”
Like shit? Or Iréné Papadraxis? Imitating Rocky Marciano, guilt landed a combination to his conscience that rocked Joe back on his heels. Wearing black hats and cowboy boots, walking grim-lipped through Chamisaville streets fingering six-guns in leather holsters tied against their thighs, they were eager to gun him down: Heidi, Diana, Iréné.
Joe said, “How come you don’t hate me?”
“Hate isn’t my thing.”
“What is?”
“Love.”
He hated her for that!
“Remind me,” Joe called from the bathtub a few minutes later, “to nominate the inventor of hot water for the Nobel Peace Prize, would you?” Then he slouched down: water sloshed over his aching skin. Cut adrift, he was now a man without a country. His right-hand knuckles had swelled to double their size. An image of Heidi, swathed in blood on her knees at the telephone, gave his heart an uncomfortable moment. Quickly, he blocked out the scene before it could trigger the specter of horror-struck Michael, ha
nds clasping his ears. Heather’s bite marks on his arm pulsed angrily: Joe kissed the spot, trying to make it better. The skin flinched from his poison lips.
Bozo appeared, growled halfheartedly, stuck his head into the toilet, and thirstily lapped up water. Lathering himself good, Joe tried to hum a few bars of a Willie Nelson song—but the sounds were croaks and desultory gurgles. When next he glanced up, Joe almost shit a brick. Resembling a war veteran in his pink eyepatch and plaster-cast arm, Sasha stood in the doorway, morosely regarding Joe. Where the vet had shaved him to remove BBs, gobs of fur were missing.
“Oh no, the monkey’s back!”
From the kitchen she called, “Yes, isn’t it wonderful? I fetched him last night.”
Sasha’s malicious face lit up. He clicked his teeth at Joe, then about-faced and bent over, throwing a moon. A bright-orange carrot emerged from halfway up his rectum.
The Incredible Hulk versus Mighty Monsterito!—Joe hurled a wet sponge at the gross little creature. Sasha snagged it in midair with his good hand and proceeded to insolently devour it, tearing off large chunks with his yellow chiseling teeth. Then he burped and scampered off. Joe closed his eyes—they deserved each other.
Nancy arrived, wearing only panties, and stood before the medicine-cabinet mirror putting on eye shadow and lipgloss. Joe enjoyed the tranquil domesticity of the scene until Nancy said: “Whoever she was sure gave you a good butchering last night.”
“Come again?”
“Your body looks like it really went through a sexual meat grinder.”
“Well, uh, you know, I mean…”
“How was the party?”
“What party?” Why couldn’t he stop himself? When they broke through the line and came running at him full tilt, his linebacker’s instinct was to rush forward and tackle them with lies.
“Come on, Joe. You know what party.”
“Oh, that party.”
“Well, how was it?”
“I dunno. Okay I guess.” He didn’t want to remember. “Pretty boring, actually. You know, all the typical stuff: disco music, nude bathing, lots of dope, good eats, asinine conversation.”