Kiss of Noir (17 page)

“You want your jungle cowboy to service you? Well, he needs you to grab your ankles before you get his prick.”

Julia nodded, mute. She struggled to slide her arms along her legs toward her feet. She gasped and grunted.

I stepped close, grabbed the delicious meringue-mountain hips, and slammed my dildo in to the hilt. Julia raised her head and bellowed. I slid in and out, varying the speed and depth, drawing out our pleasure. Several times, Julia was on the brink and I stopped completely. The first time, she was pleased and played along. Then I spooned her and stroked her throbbing clit as I thrust into her dripping pussy. The second time, she got snarly and tried to force me to continue. When I wouldn’t, she rubbed her own clit, trying to come. I stopped that by spanking her hard until she lay still. Then I was gentle and slow, building, building, building until I felt her ass riding my cock hard and her breath quickening. I stopped.

“Oh!” Julia whimpered. “Please? Please let me come. Please, please, please. I need it so bad. I need to come on you. Please.”

“Shut up.”

Julia was quiet, her head down, her breathing muffled by pillows of hair, her ass naked, red and wet, high in the breeze. Her hands lay helplessly next to her calves. She was a delicious triangle.

“Turn over.”

Julia scrambled to obey. My mouth twisted. I wondered if she had ever moved that fast for anybody in her life.

“Spread your legs for me. Open up your pussy.”

She did as she was told, panting in eagerness. I retrieved the abandoned dental dam and dropped it on my shoe so I wouldn’t forget to throw it away. I put the penis tip to Julia’s hungry slit.

“What’s my name?” I asked.

“Killer!” she cried.

“No, wrong. What’s my name?”

Julia looked at me standing there, ready. “Nora. Nora Delaney,” she answered rapidly.

“Good girl!” I said, sliding all the way in.

She trembled and shrieked. I held her ankles and stroked her long and sweet. My hips swiveled and dipped. Julia twitched and groaned. I was close too. I let go of one leg and picked up the knife and sliced open her blouse. The cloth cut cleanly.

“Show me,” I barked. Julia jerked her bra up to her neck, her heavy breasts plopping out. I fell on them, licking and biting greedily. Overwhelmed, Julia just lay there, being fucked and sucked, her arms akimbo. “Oh, yes,” I moaned, quickening my pace.

“Oh, yes, oh, God,” she cried.

“Yes, yes, yes!” I said as I came, plunging fiercely into Julia, who finally exploded into screams so loud I had to smother her voice with my rubber-gloved hand. “Shut up, shut up!” I growled as I held Julia’s mouth but continued to fuck her. Oblivious, she shook and bucked, her eyes screwed shut. Her hands clawed the air, scraped the concrete, and finally scratched my arms, bringing threads of blood.

At last, when Julia was calm, I looked into her face to make sure she was all there and okay. Her crossed eyes were soft and bright. Satisfied, I withdrew very slowly, removed the condom and glove, and stuffed them with the dam into my pocket. Then I helped Julia sit up and straighten her clothes.

“Goddamn,” she whispered.

“Get me a cigarette, baby,” I said, sitting close. Julia fumbled in her bag, lit one, and with shaking hands, passed it. I pulled the smoke into every crevice of my brain as if it would knock me out.

“That was phenomenal.” Julia’s voice was small and meek. “I’ve never—”

“Shut up,” I said. “Just all in a day’s work. Don’t talk about it.” I looked at this voluptuous virago so forceful and intimidating in life, willing to lick my boots for a good fuck. Same old story. I blew the smoke out with a sigh. “And don’t start following me around and thinking this means something, you got it? Your money’s on the dresser, cunt.”

Julia smiled, her face naked and radiant. She nodded happily as if my stern words were a flirty marriage proposal instead of a rejection.

“No, I mean it. I don’t hook up. Ever.” Flashes of The Redhead. I shook my head to dispel the vision. “So you need to know this.”

“Yes, sir.” Julia grinned, clutching my arm. I pulled away, dragging deep on my cigarette.

Another deaf femme. I gave them the true word and they didn’t hear it even as I said it. I gave thanks again that I couldn’t knock boots and become a baby daddy. I stared at the stars and then at my feet, wondering at the situation I had gotten myself into again. I needed Julia only long enough to walk me back to the graveyard gate. I fell back on the tomb. Maybe I was too old for this dogging around, breaking hearts. Here was Julia, married and in her forties and ready to tattoo me as hers, for good. I was determined to break that dream right now. I touched Julia’s back. “Listen.”

Julia fell back with me. “Shh, don’t talk.”

I rolled my eyes but gave up. Why can’t sex be clean and simple? Why can’t they all be like me and see lust and fucking as just that and have a great time? I flicked my cigarette butt away in an arc where it landed in a tiny explosion of sparks on the sidewalk.

“Why do you come here?” I asked.

“I go where I won’t see anyone I know,” she answered, her voice husky. Then she was seized by a fit of laughter. I watched her, suddenly chilled. Her voice rang out like a voodoo priestess, a ghoul, chapping my ears and skin. When she settled, I pulled her up.

“Let’s book,” I said.

Julia hugged me, clinging too long. I pushed her away and held her chin in my fingers and stared into her cat’s eyes.

“Can you remember what I just told you?”

“Yes, but you don’t seem to take me into account at all, and that won’t do.”

I gestured to the tomb. “I just
took
you into account. There’s nothing more.”

Julia snaked herself around me again, grinning. “There’s so much more. I am dangerous to mess with. Best you come along and do as I say.”

It was my turn to burst into laughter. I doubled over, resting my elbows on my knees. As Julia stared at me, her mouth shrank to thin and hard. As soon as I stood up to my full majestic height, Julia pasted on a smile.

“Yeah, baby, I saw how dangerous you are. Mmm-hmm.” I sniffed.

Julia blinked like a lizard in the sun. “Slow eyes, fast mind,” she said as she took my arm and guided me to the cemetery entrance.

I stood at the pawn window, bored. I was used to having an all-consuming sports career and living an urban pace, not having slow days of leisure handing money for objects to hard luckers and being hidden away in a small backwater town.

“Take it easy,” Cleo rasped from the card table. It was an admonishment he commanded of me several times a day.

“I don’t want to,” I answered. “I want something to be difficult.” I watched the traffic at Tassie Pie’s. A car pulled in among the crowded lot. It had a bumper sticker that read SUPERVISE THIS! I smiled. Then I saw a woman come out of the restaurant wearing painfully short denim cutoffs. Her ample thighs jiggled. My mouth watered. I looked at the woman’s crotch where her vulva was clearly split wide by the tight seam of her shorts.

“Mmm, nice camel toe, baby,” I muttered to the glass and grinned.

“My man needs some new panties!” Drew exclaimed.

I sighed and turned from the window. I glanced, irritated, at the pawn’s browsers, men who were always on the hunt for an amazing bargain but never bought much. They spent hours curled over guns or stereos or tools, murmuring approval but really just using the pawn to congregate and escape wives.

“You got that right, Drew.” I punched him on the shoulder, hoping to jostle some action out of him.

“Say, say, man, siddown.” Drew brushed me away. He had a bag at his feet that he kept checking. Cleo was doing a crossword and smoking. He looked just right with his silver hair and dark freckles on his walnut skin.

“Anybody ever tell you how much you look like Ellis?” I asked, trying to provoke Cleo.

He looked up and squinted at me. “Anybody ever say the same thing to you?” He returned to his crossword. I glanced at the words he had filled in: tappan, re, gnu, pettifog.

“Drew, what do you say we go cruising?” I asked.

“My man, you’re on the job.”

“Well, what do you do when you’re bored stiff?”

“Knit.”

“What?” I waited for the joke.

Cleo smiled at his puzzle, unconcerned.

“Yeah, man, I knit. You got a problem?” Drew bent down and finally removed the contents of his bag and it was indeed a ball of yarn, needles, and a square of knitting. I was too shocked to ridicule and just watched as Drew arranged his supplies and began. “I’m from Haiti,” Drew said softly as if that explained it. “I was raised by my grandmother. I was the only child and she knitted and I had to help her. So I picked it up. You should try it.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“Knitted a whole blanket for me last Christmas,” Cleo said. “Wasn’t that felted merino you used?”

Tickled, Drew said, “Sho ’nuff. See, this here is chunky wool. I like it. It’s got heft but it’s so warm, you’ll feel like you’re sitting on the sun.” Drew rummaged in his bag. “My favorite is, oh, I can’t pick. I love to work with slub and vrille, but angora is so soft. Silk is très élégant, no?”

“I wouldn’t have any idea.” I was charmed and baffled.

“What stitch you doing there? Quaker ridge?” Cleo asked.

“Ha, good guess, my man. It’s knit two, purl two ribbing. On my next thing, maybe a sweater for little brother here, I’ll use garter or stockinette.”

“A sweater for me?” I was strangely touched.

“Made a sweater for Ellis and a baby blanket for Sayan,” Drew added.

The crowd of browsing men finally approached the counter. One of them held a Craftsman screwdriver. “What’s your best price on this?”

I rolled my eyes. “Listen here, boys.”

“Ten percent off, that’s the lowest we’ll go,” Cleo said, concentrating on his crossword.

“Oh, come on. You can do twenty-five,” the man said. The rest agreed.

“Not on a small item like that,” Cleo countered.

“Buy more and we’ll see what we can do,” I said.

The man shrugged and put his money down. I gave change and started to sit at the table.

“I’d like a receipt,” the man said.

I complied, glaring at the crowd of utterly useless and pleasant men. I headed for the table again.

“I’d like a sack,” the man said.

I began muttering to myself and slammed a paper sack on the counter and then sat at the table, willing the man to ask for something else. He didn’t. One of the others was observing Drew knit.

“Sure appreciate that scarf and hat you gave me, Drew. Came in handy when we went to Chicago last year,” the man said.

Drew smiled and nodded. “Mighty fine, mighty fine.”

After the men left, wandering across to Tassie’s to re-hash the purchase, I stood at the window again.

I wished I were hungry, thirsty, or in need of a smoke. Anything to lift this numbing inertia. I saw an old beater truck park at Tassie’s. N
OT
F
OR
H
IRE
it said on the back window. The truck was rusty and dented with piles of miscellaneous metal equipment in the truck bed. I couldn’t tell if it was a winch, a tow truck, lawn maintenance, or what. Definitely some kind of difficult labor vehicle. The man that got out was tall, even taller than me, and heavy like a former football player. He wore no shirt, stained threadbare overalls, and a battered baseball cap, dark with sweat. He was a rough, hulking brute. He had a long silver beard and gnarled horny hands. He limped like he was used to arthritis every day of his life. He went to the order window and got two soft-serve vanilla ice cream cones. My eyes sharpened. The man lumbered back to his truck and leaned against the bed. A dog leaped up, propping his front legs on the truck side, wagging his tail and behind in a fury of happiness and laughing into the man’s face. The man held one cone out to the dog while he ate the other one, the dainty cones almost disappearing in his huge hands. The dog lapped, the man ate, companions in silence. When the dog was through with the ice cream part, the man gave the cone to the dog. The dog disappeared into the truck bed with it in his mouth. The man continued eating, his eyes smooth. They finished their cones at the same time. When the dog jumped up again, the man held the dog’s head close to his own for a moment, then ruffled his neck and lurched back into the driver’s seat. The dog sat obediently as the truck jerked and shuddered and popped. The dog’s eyes were closed, his face turned to the sun and his pink tongue rolling from side to side. The truck disappeared with a cloud of smoke. My throat was tight so I said nothing to Cleo or Drew. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, there was a horse parked at Tassie’s.

“Hey!” I said, clearing my throat, “Look!”

The men looked and nodded. “That’s ole Sol,” Cleo said. “He comes in to Tassie’s every once in a while. Refuses to drive. His land is not too far.”

I turned to watch as a slim, wiry man in jeans and cowboy boots and hat carrying several white paper sacks mounted the large chestnut and gently eased him out into traffic, oblivious to the cars. As they walked, the horse’s rump undulated, the tail swished, the man sat erect and stiff, and the vehicles kept a respectful distance.