This was more familiar ground and she did as he said. Kneeling in front of him, slowly unbuttoning the blouse from the bottom up, not the top down, doing it the way he liked. She knew her breasts were good and she was proud of them and of their power to excite him. He always wanted to see her breasts and squeeze and bite and suckle them like a baby. She slipped the blouse down off her shoulders.
“Undo me.”
She unfastened his belt. She unzipped his fly and he raised his hips so she could pull down his jeans and his BVDs.
“You want them all the way off?”
“Did I say I wanted them all the way off?”
She knew sometimes he didn’t. She pulled them down to his knees. His cock lay flaccid against his thigh.
“Suck it.”
She put it in her mouth and sucked up and down until it was gleaming wet with her saliva. She could smell his mustiness and taste it. She took the shaft between her thumb and forefinger and stroked halfway upward while her lips moved down tight over his glans to meet them halfway down. Most girls didn’t know how to do this right Ray said, they’d move fingers and lips both in the same direction but Ray had taught her.
She sucked and stroked and licked and nibbled his balls but he wouldn’t get hard. And this had never happened to them before, only when he was blind drunk which he wasn’t now and she started to panic. She sucked harder, cheeks beginning to hurt and neck beginning to ache, slobbering him with her saliva so he’d stay good and wet and her hand wouldn’t hurt him, being careful with her teeth. She put the forefinger of her other hand in her mouth and then moved it down under him and slowly and gently probed his asshole, her fingernails on that hand kept closely clipped for exactly that purpose and this had always worked, always even when he was blind drunk but nothing was happening, not a thing, she was into him up to the knuckle moving in and out, and he was wide enough, but there was no response at all.
“Fuck it. Forget it. Get the fuck out of here.”
“Ray?”
“Just fuck it. Get dressed. Go home.”
He pulled up his BVDs and jeans.
“C’mon, Ray. It happens. You know.”
“It doesn’t happen to me. Not to me it fucking doesn’t. I mean it, Jennifer. Just get the fuck out of here and leave me alone, all right?”
She felt bad for him. It meant a lot to a guy, this kind of thing. But it didn’t make any sense for her to have to leave him just over that.
“Look. I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you let me help you clean the place up? When we’re done, we’ll take another shot at it and you’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
He shot bolt upright and grabbed her neck.
“No we won’t take another shot at it, you hear? All right, Jennifer?”
He was shaking her. The waterbed shifted beneath them like a flimsy rubber raft in a wind-tossed sea.
“All right?”
“Okay, okay! Whatever! Let go, Ray! Jesus, you’re hurting me!”
He let go and fell back to the bed. Silent again, staring at the ceiling.
She watched him for a moment, hurt but mostly bewildered, she really didn’t understand him at all and then she got off the bed and tiptoed to the closet where she’d left her sneakers, mindful of the glass on the floor and put the sneakers on and then returned to the bed for her blouse. She watched him while she was slipping it on and buttoning it but he hadn’t moved, he was still staring up at the ceiling like he was just tired out, like nothing had happened whatsoever between them, like it was just another long and tiring day.
At least he looked calm now.
She got her handbag from the kitchen counter. She walked to the door, glass crunching underfoot.
“’Bye, Ray.”
He said nothing.
She wondered what he was thinking, what in the world was going on in that brain of his that would allow him to let her leave him this way without even so much as a word after all they’d done and been together over all this time. She wanted to cry but she wouldn’t, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, she didn’t want him to see.
She’d save that much for herself, anyway. That much dignity.
That if nothing else.
Chapter Nineteen
Ray
He couldn’t get it up.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
You can’t get it up, you’re nothing.
He should have let her stay and clean the place. Now he’d have to do it himself. But the thought of her sucking his dick and nada, zilch disgusted him. He didn’t want to look at her. Or look at her looking at him. Pitying him, maybe. Trying to make light of things that were not to be taken lightly.
Lying there in bed he kept playing it over and over in his mind; the fucking images and feelings wouldn’t go away. Her head bobbing, tits bobbing, the bed moving beneath him. Her finger up his ass, his dick slimy wet and rubbery. And him feeling nothing, feeling completely empty inside. No excitement. Not even rage. He should have grabbed one of her tits and squeezed it as hard as he could, he should have hurt her and maybe that would have got him hard, it had in the past but tonight he didn’t want to touch her. He just wanted her to suck his fucking dick and she couldn’t even get that right.
Jesus! This entire day was fucked!
First Sally Richmond in that stupid greasy spoon and then the cops and having to flush perfectly good dope some of it expensive and now this shit with Jennifer.
He could have had Dee Dee if the cops hadn’t busted him but he didn’t even really want Dee Dee all that much. She was just another slit basically and an underage slit at that. And when you thought about it, what the fuck kind of name was Dee Dee? Here’s my girlfriend, Dee Dee. The girl I’m poking these days is Dee Dee. Screw that. Dee Dee was just a fat little whim with pimples and that was all she’d ever be.
The one he wanted was Katherine. Kath or Sally Richmond. Either one would have got him hard.
But Sally’d told him to go screw himself.
He’d get her for that one of these days. She hadn’t even given him a chance the stuck-up college-bound bitch.
Realistically speaking that left Katherine.
Which when you came right down to it was the one he wanted most anyway. Kath would have got him off. No question.
Tomorrow was Thursday. Maybe he could get her to move up their date a night but he kind of doubted it. He had a feeling she was hard to push. In a way it was something that he liked about her. It was different. It made her a challenge. And maybe it was best anyway that he wait a day. He had to get the place in shape, for chrissake. Get his father to fix the chairs he’d busted and he was probably going to have to take the Magnavox in for repairs or maybe even replace it altogether. He regretted heaving the Magnavox but that goddamn Schilling had got to him.
Schilling. Another one on his list.
He didn’t know how you got to a cop but he’d find a way sooner or later, and then it was fuck you, Detective Schilling, fuck you for getting in my face all the time and fuck you for busting up my party. You remember my party, Charlie? I flushed maybe an ounce of dope at that party you cocksucker.
Sally. Schilling. Jennifer. They’d all managed to screw him. All in one day.
She’d had her finger up his ass and still he couldn’t get hard.
Jesus wept.
Whatever was happening to him Katherine could fix it. He knew that. He only had to wait. He’d never been real good at waiting but Kath was going to be worth it. Sweep the place up. Have yourself a beer. Get some sleep. You can do this, no problem.
You’re Ray.
He swung off the bed and crunched a broken shard of beer bottle beneath his boot and that made him think that first he wanted a beer or two, maybe watch a little TV. At least he hadn’t trashed the television.
Then he’d get around to sweeping.
First he had to clear his brain of all this crap, blot it out, but there wasn’t any dope god knows and besides, dope had a tendency to make him paranoid so
metimes and this was no time for paranoia. Not when there were people who really were in his way out there and people who really were out to get him. You wanted to keep things clear and calm and reasonable.
Take stock. Fix your apartment. Check your wardrobe.
Weekend’s coming.
Chapter Twenty
Thursday, August 7
Tim/Jennifer
He couldn’t believe this was happening.
He and Jennifer were in bed together.
It was like a dream.
He didn’t ask any questions, no way, he didn’t ask why him and why now, he just took off his clothes when she told him to, she’d said it just like that, Take off your clothes, Tim and he did.
It was the middle of the afternoon. He’d taken the day off, called in sick, when really all he was was a little hung over and depressed about the party. Ray was going to be hell on wheels for a couple of days, that was for sure, and it depressed him that when the cops had ordered them out Ray hadn’t let him stay. Tim wasn’t like the rest of those goddamn kids. Most of them just bought Ray’s dope and drank his beer. He wasn’t even close to the band members for godsakes, they hardly ever practiced anymore.
But he and Ray were supposed to be tight. They’d been tight since Tim was in the seventh grade and Ray took pity on the skinny pimpled wuss he was then and decked Joey Spagnoli with a single punch to the face during recess one day for pushing him around, no reason, it was just because he could, because he was big and fat and strong, a nasty ignorant wop bastard up from the slums of Newark. To Ray it was nothing. A gesture. To Tim it was everything. He never got pushed around by Spagnoli or anybody else again. It marked the end of his long sad penance. The penance of the weak.
It was the beginning of the Tim he was today.
He and Ray were supposed to be buddies. They were special.
So he couldn’t help it. He brooded.
Then around two-thirty the doorbell rings and he goes down to answer it and it’s Jennifer and his whole day changes just like that, like magic.
Take off your clothes.
She’d been drinking some. A couple of beers probably. He could smell them on her breath. But she wasn’t really drunk or anything.
So he did what she said, did it gladly and without hesitation and now he was lying on the bed naked and a little embarrassed by his growing erection, watching her peel away her panties, her breasts beautiful and thick-nippled and softly swaying. She had a bit of a belly and her hips were a little thick but he’d seen her in a bathing suit and he already knew that and didn’t mind. Not a bit.
She seemed very solemn as she crawled toward him from the foot of the bed and kissed him, she didn’t smile, her thigh brushing over his cock which was fully erect by now and he thought, there’s something weird about this, this is more than just sex for her. Just look at her. She’s so serious. What’s she want from me?
Whatever she’s offering, take it, he thought. So he did.
Tim was very tender, not like Ray. She knew him better than almost anybody and felt sure it would be that way. It was part of the reason she was with him.
She’d felt so sad and lonely last night. As she’d figured the Griffiths were asleep when she got home but it wouldn’t have helped even if they’d been wide awake. The Griffiths were nice people, they’d been good to her all the years she’d known them, not like the previous set of foster parents and it was nice of them to let her stay, a twenty-year-old now, no teenager anymore and running with a crowd they weren’t particularly happy with. They treated her almost like a daughter. But even if she had been their daughter she doubted she could talk to them. Not about Ray. How could you tell anybody who didn’t know him about Ray and make them understand why she stayed with him? Especially when half the time she didn’t know herself.
She lay awake in bed a long time and when the tears were finished the loneliness was still there and she found herself thinking about Tim. Not about confiding in Tim though she knew he’d listen. But just once lying naked with Tim, having a warm pair of arms around her and knowing he’d be gentle. That his hands would be gentle, not ball up into fists and grab and squeeze and even strike her on a whim. She fell asleep thinking about that and in the morning when she woke the thought was still there.
She called Ray again and again but he wouldn’t answer the phone. It made her mad and hurt so she had a beer or two and then thought, fuck this, there’s got to be some better way than this to spend your day. She recalled what she’d been thinking the night before.
So here she was. Seducing Tim.
He hadn’t taken much seducing.
She’d figured that too.
His body was so different from Ray’s, almost hairless except for the light brown pubic hair and he was thin, wiry and not very muscular. He had freckles across his chest and thighs. This close to him his eyes were startlingly blue, the lashes almost transparent. She liked the almost scentless scent of him. Ray was musk and leather. Tim was summer air. The wild erotic charge she felt with Ray was missing but she was getting what she came for, something warm and comforting. He was almost shy with her, his hands moving so softly over her ass and breasts and belly it was as though he were stroking a kitten, not a woman. She felt his cock jump against her thigh but he wouldn’t move it up inside her, she had to do that for him and when she did he moaned deep and low in his throat and she almost laughed because that was almost the way she sounded when Ray would enter her, as though she’d stepped inside a looking glass.
His strokes were deep and soft and slow. It didn’t take long but by the time he came his body was shiny with sweat. He gasped and cried out, a sound that was almost a whimper. Her own orgasm was still way out of reach but that didn’t matter. Because then he rolled to the side and the pale thin arms came round her and held her sweetly in the dim light of his room and the silence.
And now he did want to ask her why him and why now but he knew that asking would spoil it. If there was some reason she was lying here today and not yesterday and probably there was one and probably it had to do with Ray and the party he thought he didn’t really need to know it. He was holding the old Jennifer—not Ray’s Jennifer or the drunk, stoned-out Jennifer, but the Jennifer he’d fallen for long ago way back in the ninth grade.
For the first time in months or maybe even in years, he thought, he was really happy.
He knew he’d come too quickly and that chances were she hadn’t and wondered what she thought of that, if she was disappointed in him. But he didn’t wonder too long. If she was disappointed she didn’t show it. She seemed just as content as he was lying there.
He was aware of the sweat drying on his body, of the softness of the flesh of her arms and the tight skin over her back, of the smell of her hair mingling with the scent of the pillow and—thank god—clean sheets. He heard birds calling to one another outside the open window. He felt her moist warm breath ebb and flow across his chest.
“That was nice, Timmy,” she said.
He didn’t need to answer. He held her and somehow knew that was what she wanted.
He felt he could stay just like this the whole rest of the day, stay like this practically forever and they did lay there a good long while, but at last she pushed gently away from him, smiling a little, turned her back to him and reached for his pack on the night table. The proverbial cigarette. She lit one and took a drag and snuggled her ass back into his crotch. Making spoons with him, settling in. After a while she passed the cigarette over and he took a drag and passed it back and they stayed that way until the cigarette was gone and she’d snubbed it out into the ashtray.
“I’m a little thirsty,” she said. “Got anything to drink? A Pepsi or anything?”
“Sure. Stay there. I’ll get it.”
He pulled on a pair of jeans and went downstairs to the kitchen. The stairs, even the kitchen looked somehow subtly different. It was as though she’d brought something with her to the place, his own place and his parents’ place,
that hadn’t been there before. At least he’d never seen it. As though she’d scrubbed it clean. The sun streaming in through the window almost dazzled him.
He opened two cold Pepsis and took them back upstairs, hoping she hadn’t gotten dressed, hoping she was still in bed. She was. Smoking another Marlboro. The sheets still bunched around her feet.
She smiled at him again, a slightly embarrassed smile this time he thought. He didn’t want her to feel that way. Tim smiled back, not at all sure what his own smile was doing. He sat down next to her on the bed and handed her the Pepsi. She took it from him and he could see her nipples pucker, whether it was the cold soda in her hand or a breeze through the window or him looking at her body he couldn’t say.
They sipped the soda in silence, neither one of them sure what to say. It occurred to him that most of what they had in common centered on Ray and he sure didn’t want to start talking about Ray now, not after this and he thought that probably neither did she. When her bottle was half empty she reached down for the sheet and pulled it up and tucked it under her arms. She was frowning a little.
“Anything wrong?”
She seemed to consider this a moment, like maybe there was and maybe there wasn’t and she wasn’t sure.
“Nah. You know me. In one mood and out the other.” She laughed. “I’m just a great big pain in the ass, y’know?”
“No you’re not.”
“No?”
“No.”
They were on the verge of talking about Ray right now like it or not. It was Ray who had gotten to calling her a pain in the ass lately. The moment passed and he took a slug of his soda.
“You think we, uh . . . I mean, you think we might be able to do this again sometime?”
He had to ask. Just couldn’t help it.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I just needed to see, you know? I just wanted to see . . . something. I dunno.”
“Sure. It was nice though, Jennifer. Real nice.”
“Mmmm.” She nodded. A breeze wafted through the room and tossed her hair. She pushed it back off her forehead.