He wondered where her parents were. Shiner had said they might be upstairs, staying out of the way. But this was Friday, so maybe they’d gone out.
What if they come back and catch us?
Jeremy walked with Tanya down a hallway and entered a room. She flicked a wall switch, and lamps came on. She shut the door.
Jeremy was standing inside the biggest bedroom he’d ever seen. It had an enormous bed with lamps on either side, a bureau, a dressing table with a mirror, a roll-top desk, a television with a VCR, a compact-disk player, a recliner, a sofa, and shelves that were crowded with animal dolls, trophies, framed photographs, and books. It had its own bathroom. From where he stood, he could see the sink.
The bedroom’s thick carpet was pale blue; the bedspread and curtains were pink. There was a faint, sweet aroma that reminded him of suntan oil.
Tanya’s room.
Where she sleeps. Where she changes clothes. Even where she goes to the toilet, showers, and takes her baths.
And I’m here.
And we’re going to
do it.
Right there on her bed.
“You better sit down before you keel over,” Tanya said. She guided him to the side of the bed. He sank onto it, and clutched his knees to hold himself steady.
She went to the roll-top desk. She removed something from a drawer, and kept it hidden behind her back as she walked toward Jeremy.
A rubber?
She stopped in front of him. “Put out your hand,” she said.
He held his hand out. His fingers were fluttering.
Into his palm she dropped a double-edged razor blade.
Confusion and icy prickles of fear moved in with his breathless excitement.
“Just hold it for now,” Tanya said. She knelt on the floor and placed her hands on his thighs. The feel of her hands, so close to his groin, sent waves of heat rushing through him. “Tell me why you joined with us.”
“To…to hunt trolls.”
“Why?”
“Cowboy. He invited me.”
“Is that all?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I guess it was partly to make friends. Specially you,” he added, and felt a drop of sweat trickle down his side.
“Especially me. I know. Everybody’s in it because of me.”
Except Shiner, he thought. But Shiner’s out of it now.
“The trolls hurt me bad,” she said. “We’re after them because of that. That’s why it started. We go after them for revenge. Last night you joined in the revenge. You joined for my sake.”
Jeremy nodded.
She stood up and began to unbutton her big loose shirt.
This can’t be happening, Jeremy thought. I don’t believe it.
He watched her hands move slowly down the front of bright blue and yellow plaid, unfastening each button along the way. When the last was open, she spread the shirt.
The sight seared Jeremy’s mind, slammed his heart, sank his stomach, jammed his penis erect, though his scrotum and anus went cold and tight.
“They did this to me,” Tanya said as the shirt dropped to the floor behind her.
She stood before him, wearing only her white shorts. Her skin had a soft tan. Even her breasts. They were big, firm, wonderful. In the glow of the lamplight they looked polished. As if they’d been buffed to a glossy sheen. Their dark nipples jutted out.
The scar began as a slick pink curve alongside her left nipple. It swept across the underside of the breast and streaked downward. It was as wide as a fingertip, pale pink, shiny, a little puffy. It passed the edge of her navel and vanished at the waistband of her shorts.
Tanya opened her shorts. She pushed them down around her thighs.
She was smooth and hairless.
The stark rip skidded over her mound, and under it, and seemed to miss the soft open flesh below by a fraction of an inch.
“A broken wine bottle,” Tanya said.
Jeremy nodded. Her words seemed to come from a great distance. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He felt dizzy and sick, stunned by her nakedness, pained by the ugly scar, astonished that she was showing herself to him.
“Three of ’em got me in the lifeguard shack,” she said. “Trolls. They’d spent the night there. I tried to kick ’em out, and they jumped me. One of ’em broke a wine bottle on my head. Then they stripped me.”
“God,” Jeremy murmured.
“One of ’em did this.” Her fingertip touched the scar tissue at her groin, and slid slowly higher, tracing the tear up her belly and rib cage and breast. “He slobbered on me while he did it. The other two held me down. Then he raped me. Grunting and slobbering. He smelled like stale wine and sweat and garbage. When he finished, the other two had me. One fucked me in the ass. One came in my mouth. Before they left, they pissed on me. All over me. On my face…”
She stepped out of her shorts. With one foot she flicked them aside. On her knees, she reached beneath the bed. She dragged out a heap of brown bath towels. She spread two of them on the carpet at Jeremy’s feet and left the others wadded nearby. Stepping onto the double thickness of towels, she said, “Cut your hand.”
Jeremy nodded. He felt as if his mind had collapsed while he’d listened to her story.
He switched the razor blade to the trembling fingers of his left hand. He pressed its edge into the palm of his right. Blood welled up, and he cupped his hand to hold it.
Tanya took the razor from him. She slid it against the skin of her mound, and a crimson thread appeared alongside the scar. She lifted Jeremy’s bleeding hand. She pressed it tightly against her cut. Blood squeezed, spilling around the sides of his hand, trickling down her legs, dripping onto the towel under her spread feet.
She felt hot through the blood. Beneath her skin there seemed to be a curving ridge of bone. Jeremy kept his hand bent back as far as possible, not daring to touch what was below the ridge. But Tanya pressed his fingers upward. Into slippery folds of flesh.
“Your blood is in me,” she whispered. She was breathing hard. She was moving slightly, rubbing herself against his hand. “My blood’s in you. You’re my…lover in blood. Say it.”
Jeremy heard himself repeat the words.
She guided his hand upward, keeping it pressed to the scar. The scar felt like a narrow, puffy ribbon. His hand left a red smear as it slid up her belly, up her rib cage to her breast. Her breast was pushed upward and sideways by his moving hand. The nipple bent like springy rubber as his thumb passed over it. She slid his hand higher, and Jeremy rose to his feet. His hard penis felt trapped inside his pants, squeezed and bent.
She lifted his hand to her mouth. She kissed its cut palm. She licked the blood from it. Gazing into his eyes, she took his thumb into her mouth. She sucked and licked it clean, then did the same with each of his fingers.
“Your blood and mine,” she whispered. Her lips and chin and cheeks were dappled with it. She lowered his hand. She placed the razor blade in his palm. “Keep this with you to remember.”
“I’ll never forget.”
“I know.”
Jeremy took a handkerchief from his pocket, wrapped the blade, and closed his fingers around it, pressing the cloth to his wound.
“Go on home now,” Tanya said in a gentle voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
His throat tightened.
He was supposed to leave?
He was so
turned on!
So was she!
It can’t stop now!
He suddenly blurted, “But aren’t we gonna—?”
She touched a finger to his lips. “You’ll have to prove yourself first.”
“How?”
“With time. And loyalty. And courage.”
“Not tonight?”
“Not tonight. But soon, maybe.”
At the bedroom doorway he stopped and looked back at Tanya. She stood on the towels, facing him, naked and smeared with blood. “I love you,” he said.
“And I love you, Jeremy.”
He left her there.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard faint sounds of music and voices and laughter from the trollers below. He wondered if he should go down and rejoin the party.
He didn’t want to.
And Tanya had told him to go home. She hadn’t told him to go downstairs with the other trollers.
One of them might give him a ride, though.
I can walk, he told himself.
He trotted down the veranda stairs, stepped off the curb, and began to stride along the driveway.
The air smelled of pine trees. The night was not especially cold, but Jeremy shivered as he walked. His throat was tight. He squeezed his arms across his chest. The handkerchief and razor were still in his hand.
He felt so
strange.
Dazed, confused, disappointed, empty, and weak.
Wrecked.
But, at the same time, elated.
He felt like leaping and shouting with joy. He felt like weeping. And somewhere in Jeremy was an odd desire to get home and hide under the covers of his bed and stay away from Fun-land and the beach and Tanya and all the trollers forever.
Gloria woke up in the backseat of her Volkswagen. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep. When she looked out the window, however, she saw that the parking lot was deserted except for three or four other cars.
So Funland was closed for the night.
With a tremor in her stomach that felt like a mixture of excitement and fear, she lifted her grocery bag. She pushed the seat back forward, opened the door, and climbed out. She locked the door. Then she headed for the main entrance of Funland.
Her day hadn’t gone as well as she’d hoped. She had succeeded in carrying out interviews, of sorts, with only three subjects: Mosby, Dink, and a woman who refused to reveal her name. She’d taped the conversations on the Sony micro-cassette recorder under her sweatshirt. Maybe she’d gotten something she could use, but she doubted it.
She must’ve spent an hour talking with Mosby on the steps in front of Funland, and heard about nothing except dogs. Dogs were the reincarnations of dead Nazis, carrying out a plot to destroy mankind by dumping radioactive feces in populated areas. Mosby, a crusader, fought the peril at every turn by treating dogs to meals of broken glass concealed in hamburger.
Dink, a scruffy bearded man in his early twenties, claimed to be a researcher from a planet called Zanthion. The population of Zanthion was entirely male. Faced with certain extinction, they’d sent Dink to investigate the reproductive system of the female Earthling. The “travel gate” would be closing in two hours, so he had almost run out of time. If he failed to learn the mysteries of the “secret source,” his species was doomed. Gloria was his only hope. She’d asked how she could help. “You gotta let me probe yer source wit’ my ’vestigation rod.” At that, Gloria told him to stick his ’vestigation rod up his ’testinal terminus. Then she hurried away.
Gloria had met the third indigent in an alley after dark. This woman seemed rational, though she refused to tell her name. “Don’ tell nobody my name,” she’d said. “They know yer name, they can tag ya.” Gloria decided not to press the issue. Instead, she walked with her, listening to a lecture on how people “trow out perfeckly good stuff,” while the woman stopped her shopping cart at each trash bin and dug for treasures. Mostly she collected newspapers, cans, and bottles to redeem for cash at the recycling center. But she also collected scraps of food—the litter of half-eaten meals—and stuffed them into her mouth with grunting relish. Frequently Gloria gagged and turned away.
So far, things hadn’t gone at all the way she’d hoped. But she was sure to find some fresh subjects on the boardwalk this time of night. Or on the beach. A homeless person with
appeal,
please. Someone who would capture the hearts of her readers.
At this hour, she might even run into the trollers. She had a stun gun in her grocery bag in case they tried to get rough. But once she identified herself, they might be eager to give their side of the story. That’d certainly be a scoop.
You’ve got to come up with something, she told herself as she trotted up the stairs to Funland’s main entrance. You write it the way it’s gone so far today, and you’ll sound like a propagandist for Great Big Billy Goat Gruff.
And wouldn’t Dave like
that?
Rotten, two-timing bastard.
Fuck him, she told herself.
She wished she’d had the courage to show herself to Dave. All day she toyed with the idea of going onto the boardwalk and confronting him. He would’ve been shocked. “Have you lost your mind? Don’t you know how dangerous this is?” She would’ve smirked and said, “I’m sure you care. You’ve got your golden Amazon bitch pig.”
But the golden Amazon bitch pig would’ve been there with him. Gloria knew it would’ve hurt too much, seeing them together. So she’d stayed away.
They’re probably rutting right now, she thought, and sank onto a bench.
To hell with him.
He’d never had it so good, and he’d thrown it away for that golden-haired slut.
He’ll regret it someday. He’ll be sorry.
“I give him two weeks,” she muttered. “Two weeks, and he’ll come to a rude awakening. He’ll see just how good he had it, and he’ll come begging. And I’ll laugh in his face.”
Bullshit. I’ll throw my arms around him and…
“Where’re the goddamn trolls?” she asked, raising her head and looking both ways. The boardwalk, moon-washed and splashed with black shadows, looked deserted.
“Let’s have some action here!” she yelled. “Bring on the bums! Bring on Great Big Billy Goat Gruff! Bring on
something,
Goddammit! Let’s stop wasting my fucking time here!”
A huge patch of blackness broke away from the shadows across the boardwalk.
And ran at her.
Jesus!
she thought.
I didn’t mean it!
She sprang to her feet, grocery bag flying from her lap. Her blanket spilled out of it. So did the stun gun. It clattered and skittered across the planking, and she knew she couldn’t get to it in time.
The blackness had a white face, a big flapping coat. Its arms were stretched toward her like the arms of some kind of horror-movie geek.
“Leave me alone!” Gloria shrieked. She flung herself to the right, out of its path, and ran as hard as she could. Footfalls pounded behind her.