by Jeff Gelb
That evening, John Pierce and Philip De Scenza went to Le Bellecour on Muzzey Street for dinner. They held hands all the way through the meal.
Dr. Arcolio picked up a few groceries and then drove home in his metallic-blue Rolls-Royce, listening to La Boheme on the stereo. He glanced in the rearview mirror from time to time and though he was looking tired. Traffic was heavy and slow on the turnpike, and he felt thirsty, so he took an apple out of the bag beside him and took a bite.
He thought about Helen; and he thought about John Pierce and Philip De Scenza; and he thought about all of the other men and women whose bodies he had skillfully changed into living incarnations of their own sexual fantasies.
Something that Philip De Scenza had said kept nagging him. You should be ashamed of yourself. Although Philip De Scenza had been joking, Dr. Arcolio suddenly understood that, yes, he should be ashamed of what he had done. In fact, he was ashamed of what he had done. Ashamed that he had used his surgical genius to create such erotic aberrations. Ashamed that he had mutilated so many beautiful bodies.
But as well as being painful, the surge of shame was liberating, too. Because men and women were more than God made them. Men and woman were able to reinvent themselves, and to derive strange new pleasures from pain and humiliation and self-distortion. Who was to say that it was right or that it was wrong? Who could define the perfect human being? If it was wrong to give a woman a second vagina, was it also wrong to repair a baby’s harelip?
He felt chastened; but also uplifted. He finished his apple and tossed the core out onto the highway. Ahead of him he could see nothing but a Walpurgis Night procession of red brakelights.
In her house, along, Helen wept salt tears of grief and sweet tears of sex, which mingled on dropped on her hands, so that they sparkled like diamond engagement rings.
Box 69
Rex Miller
He picked her up in a bar just off one of the big noisy casinos on the strip. Had to be a showgirl. A real killer pony with legs that never stopped and a beautiful face—or so it appeared in the hotel-bar lighting. He’d picked up cocktail waitresses who looked like a million bucks until you got them under some strong light. The Pfeifferesque mouth would turn out to be mostly lipstick and very little lip. Or they’d have bad teeth—whatever.
Her long blond hair was off the forehead. That was the first thing he looked for. He hated those frizzy fucking bangs, and so many women wore their hair in that style now, with a wispy fringe of hairs combed down in their eyes. She had a good, strong face with bold features and the cheekbones of a model or television actress—very fine-looking stuff.
A smoothie about ten years younger than himself, in a brown suede shirt, with hair almost as long as hers, tried to hit on her. She iced him with a couple of words and he moved on. Clean. This was some clean trim.
“WHOOOOOA!” somebody screamed. The two of them made eye contact, laughing.
“Another satisfied customer,” he said, and she nodded.
“Sounds like it.” She had beautiful teeth. Had to be caps. For a moment he wondered if she was a pro, but a pro who looked that good would be working off a phone somewhere, she wouldn’t be sitting in a casino bar. The girl named Barrie who usually worked this station during the early shifts was waitressing, he was pleased to note. She knew what she was supposed to do when a loose chick was around.
He felt Barrie come up behind him and get his old glass, exchanging it for a new drink but making it a Marilyn production, her weight against him the whole time, looking good in the short toga-thing the hotel made the girls wear, rubbing herself up against him, doing it well, selling it, asking him if he wanted anything else in this breathy whisper. Barrie had a nice chest and it was turning him on to get the full treatment—even if he paid for it.
He didn’t even bother to say no—just gave an imperceptible, frosty shake of the head. No smile. Nothing. Chilled the bitch to the bone, so it appeared. He saw the woman observing the encounter, rather speculatively, he thought.
The man was very careful that the looker would not see him push the folded fifty under his cocktail napkin. He was happy to pay for it when someone made him look good. But unless it got him over on somebody he couldn’t groove with it. That was his action. That was why he counted cards instead of making his bucks the old-fashioned way. He liked to scam. It was a buzz.
If he had to straight-up pay for it and didn’t sting some poor schlub in the bargain, it was no deal. You’d not find him up in his room with the Sun, the paper open to the classified PERSONALS:
NATASHA IS A 42-D! Exotic, Sensuous Brunette. I love to party all nite long, and I mean long and hard. I am not a service.
24-YEAR-OLD BLONDE would like to meet you personally. Attractive, liberated, and into YOUR fantasies. I am not an agency.
SIDESADDLE OUTCALL specializes in double-bills. We have classy, well-built escorts who love to get down with you. Adrianna and Lisa are beautiful, dumb, and 21. When’s the last time YOU hit 21?
…Pasadena.
He watched her slide her hands along the sides of her knees. A sort of nervous mannerism. He studied things like that. She noticed him looking at her, his dark eyes fixed on the lovely dancer’s legs in spike heels, the skirt short to being with but really hiked up the way it will when a person sits down.
She tried to pull her skirt down a bit but didn’t succeed. He made sure he was making full eye contact and asked her if she’d permit him to buy her a drink.
“No thanks,” she said, simply. It wasn’t a full turn-down. Or even an “I don’t think so—not today” thing that she wanted to be talked out of. Just a frank, simple answer. No. But thanks anyway.
“Would you like some company while we finish our drinks?” He kept his face smiling and serene.
“Sure.” She smiled and gave a shrug to let him know she didn’t care one way or the other. It was up to him now, he thought. He had one of his size twelves in the door and he could find out whether this one liked his line or not. He got his drink and moved over, sitting with his back to the table where he was and blocking that part of the room off. He was pleased to see Barrie move over to clean the table. Always good to work with a pro.
“Are you here on a visit?” he asked. Everybody in Vegas asked you if you were from someplace else, even some of the locals. If there was a transient spot on the globe, it was Las Vegas, Nevada.
“Yes. I’m here on business. Just be here a couple of nights and back home.” She was “with an advertising concern.”
Home, it developed, was San Francisco. Her name was Robyn Arné, Robyn with a Y. Ar-nay. She had a voice like a call-in hooker service, or maybe he was just hor-nay. (“CALL CANDY FOR SOME HOT CONVERASTION! I LIKE WHAT YOU LIKE!”) She was cultured, sophisticated, a complete turn-on for him.
They talked current affairs. They had a lot in common: Both of them thought all hostages should be released; serial killers were scary; the vice-president was a dork; abortion was a controversial, touchy issue; the cost of medical care in the U.S. was too high; and time passed too quickly.
“Well,” she said, “I enjoyed this.”
“So did I,” he told her.
“I should get to bed early,” she said, and took her right hand and made that move on her knee, sliding it back, touching the short skirt and sliding it—he was sure—way up her thigh. He couldn’t exactly see it, but he sense it. He was convinced this was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen in his life. She was making him crazy.
“Please,” he said. For once in his life he was tongue-tied. He wanted her so badly it had rendered him stupid. Where was that old silver tongue when he needed it? “I don’t want to say goodbye. Is that too dumb?”
“No. It’s very sweet, in fact,” she told him with her eyes as well, which were a deep, remarkable violet. Everything about her was that color—from her high-heeled sandals to the dress she was almost wearing. Ultraviolet all the way. He felt the heat, that much was for certain.
He was cooking. P
erspiration trickled down his back. His mouth was dry as cotton and he felt like a hundred-and-ten-year-old loser instead of the forty-one he was, so fearful he was of blowing it.
“Please. Could we spend some more time together?”
She blinked the violet at him. Let a half-second tick by as she scanned the depressing vista of the casino bar as if to say—why?
“Not here. We could go—anywhere you say?” He shrugged. “My room?” He blurted it out like a kid.
“Okay.” She smiled and his heart melted. Ya-HA! He wanted to shout—like the satisfied screamer at the craps table layout. Oh, baby, don’t screw it up now. Not when you’re this close to some gen-u-wine movie star stuff. Talk about clean. Mercy.
In the elevator they touched hands and it was as if he’d grabbed a hot wire with his feet in a pool of water. The shock waves went up his arm and shot straight for the groin. He’d never wanted a woman so desperately as he wanted Robyn-with-a-hot-Y Ar-nay, as hot as Texas Chile con Car-nay.
The long walk down the hallway to his room took forever. If the key jammed he silently vowed to take her right there in the hall. The maids and room-service people could just wheel around them.
Inside he swallowed, wondering if he should pour them a drink or what—but she was no tease, and she initiated it herself, stripping for him.
Had to be a dancer, this Robyn. You couldn’t move that gracefully without training, and the lady had the moves. She took it off slowly, in stages, humming a soft little tune as she slid out of the clinging thing. She was violet underneath, too—what else? Damn! She was something to see—standing there posing in high-heeled nothing, just a lacy G-string-type deal and half-cups, the underbra whatchamacallits pushing those nice breasts up. She was fucking gorgeous.
He didn’t remember shedding his clothes, he was so wrapped up in her—completely engrossed by this performance. When she bent over, keeping her legs real straight, to remove her shoes, it was such a fabulously sexy move he had to concentrate not go off in his jockey shorts.
Still she wouldn’t touch him—teasing him with peach fuzz of tanned arm, deep hollow of throat, soft, and long as a Modigliani, hand slowly reaching down and caressing herself, getting hot and wet for herself, cocktease-type parody in sideview, having fun with it, turning and giving him her calendar-girl—class ass, long, shapely Hollywood legs, turn of the curvaceous upper bod and erect nipples, back around with high half-moons of cheeky derriere stuck into his face, flirtatious bodacious wiggle of silky hip, and he was gone, at her, on her, kissing, gobbling, pawing, touching, eating, squeezing, going after her like a big dog in heat.
The first time it was over he thought he was done for good, but she played on him and revived the dead man.
“I’m out of it. I’m dead.” He tried to beg off. He felt as if he’d been hit by a truck.
“Think so, darling?” she whispered. “Think again.” She moved away from him and he watched her stand still, bend over the table beside the bed, slowly, those legs back in the high heels now, and with her ass nude and shoes on, her legs were about ten feet long. She had almost no tummy, and she was sort of posing with her back and ass up and out, her butt in the air, and it was too much for him again. He was wetting her in back and ramming it in the back door. He had to get some fudge, judge, that’s all there was to that.
This time, when he was through, he…was…through. End of story. Don’t slam the door on your way out. It’s been real but I gotta catch an early jet. Huh-uh. She wanted her fun. She started kissing him, and if there was anything that could make him hot it was a kissing bandito, and this honey was a clean smoocher make no mistake. What a talented tongue. Again with the erection. He felt twenty.
She stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Hey! Tell me. I must have done something. What did I do?”
“It’s me, doll. I’m weird.”
“How so?”
“I can’t get off like—you know—a guy can. I’m kinda kinky. I have to have things a certain way,” she purred.
“What way? Hell, I’m kinky too, baby. Tell me what makes your sub dive—I’ll do my best to please.”
“Nah.”
“Come on.”
“I have little fantasies.” She colored. She was either a hell of an actress or she felt ashamed.
“What kind of fantasies?”
“Rape—you know. I like to play like I rape the guy—you know?”
“So play. I’ll play.”
“I have to tie you up. Most guys don’t get off when they’re tied.”
“What would you tie me with?”
“I don’t know. I never get to do it. It’s just a fantasy.” She laughed.
“Let’s do it. Use my tie. We’ll find something. Wait a minute.” He was so into pleasing her he took his pocket knife and cut the telephone cord. So he’d pay for a new phone tomorrow. He wanted this honey happy. “Tie me up. I’ll play your kinky game.”
“Really?” She seemed shy about it.
“Do it. Tie me. Rape me. If that’s what you want.” She was so fucking beautiful.
“I get hot thinking about it, but then I feel so ashamed. Women don’t rape men.”
“Do it. Fantasies are good. It’s therapeutic.” He convinced her and she bound him, rather tenderly, to the bed.
“Tighter,” he told her. “The way you’re doing it I’m not even tied. Tie me up, baby. Rape my cock.”
“Yeah! Okay.” It was turning her on, too. He could tell. He watched the lovely woman secure him spread-eagled to the bed.
“You want me, baby?”
“Yeah.” She was ready.
“Do it.”
It happened too fast. All of it. The tape was over his mouth and done professionally, as a nurse might do it. Carefully. She wasn’t trying to hurt him—whatever else she was into—so at least it wasn’t that. No pain. Surgical tape. Adhesive tape—whatever. ZZZIP over his mouth, gently tearing it off, trying not to get it in his hair. He of course trying to get loose now, wanting to tell the great-looking cunt to GET THE FUCKING TAPE OFF HIS MOUTH and saying it through the tape, the mean juices filling up behind his eyes.
“No—no, honey.” She soothed him. “Your lover doesn’t want you to scream. I’m not going to hurt you but you said to do the rape thing, and let me have my fun. You’re bound and gagged—get it?” Okay. He calmed down. All right. But she should have warned him about the tape over his mouth and GOOD GODDAMN SHE HAD A FUCKING RAZOR BLADE OH, NO! He knew now he’d been scammed. He’d been set up. A fucking sadist. She was going to do a j-o-b with the damn blade. Oh, God. No. He begged her with his eyes.
“Really, sugar. You said fantasize. I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. This isn’t for you,” she said. Naked and glistening with a sheen of perspiration. “This is for me.” What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—it was stuck like a broken disk caught on a stylus. Get out of this somehow—think!
She didn’t make a big deal about it. She just made the cut, a long incision across her beautiful belly. Blood welled up in a line, surprisingly little blood for the length of the cut, then it started dripping. “See, baby?” she said. And she got on him like a freaky pony, mounted his cock, soft, it mooshed out and she didn’t care, she was on top and made a little funny face and ZZZIP again, another horizontal slash with the razor and this guy who hadn’t prayed for thirty years you had best believe was doing some big-time Heavenly Father action now, begging to keep his masculinity down there, but that wasn’t where she cut him. She gave him a cut to match hers, a line across the belly, and he was almost relieved. Then she worked the two cuts open a bit with her fingers, mashing the two of their bods together. Kissing him once on the mouth, leaving a big red kiss on the white tape.
Off him now and all business. A different Robyn, this. Dressing hurriedly after she zipped a big piece of tape across her tummy and his, blotted off on the hotel towels, made sure no blood was showing on her dress
or shoes. Checked her hair and makeup. He was trying to groan through the tape.
“Sure, I know, baby. You’ve got a few questions. Let me hip you to the scene, as they used to say back in your day. My name’s not Robyn Arné, although it is a pretty name. She gave me the name—it’s her name.” Her name? Whose name?
“Remember Nora? Nora Byrne?” Nora—fuck. Some cunt he’d know a zillion years ago. She watched his shoulders sag in recognition. “This is Nora’s present. She said you dumped on her real bad once—I didn’t need details. Said you were a total prick with women—a real asshole who needed some punishing. So.” She turned and checked herself in the mirror. Gave the hair a few pats and got a list out of her purse. Read it over, as if it were a checklist. Okay—what? What’s the fucking schtick, chick?
“Robyn Arné—pretty cool—that’s Nora Byrne jumbled up. Her little joke, I guess. You must have really fucked this lady over, eh? Well—whatever. I’ve had a couple of guys do it to me real good, too, in my day. That’s why I was willing. That and the big bucks. She said not to take a dime from you—that you’d be loaded with dough, but to leave it. That was important. All she wanted was”—the gorgeous woman looked at her list—“saliva, sperm, and blood.” She looked at him with her violet contacts. “The body juices—right? So you’d have my particular slow poison. She said it was a perfect way for you to go, slooow and touch toward the end—so you’d have lots of time to worry and think about the pain that was coming. She said it would bother you to know you were dying the same death as any gay or any junkie. You thought you were so fucking special—such hot shit.”
He pulled at the phone cord. But he’d picked her up, made her tie him. She read his thoughts, it seemed.
“I’m an actress and a damned good one. Case you’re wondering. She flipped out when she saw my picture.” He could see why. She still looked so good—even now—the sleekly edible thighs under the violet mini, the gentle convexity of the flat, sexy tummy, and that mouth. If only nasty things would stop spilling from it. “I’m not really from San Francisco, but that was one of the three cities where she had these ads and cards distributed among the counterculture. She wanted anybody who’d have the Bad News to see it. So…you’ve got a lot to think about, sport. Time to repent…and who knows? Any day they could come up with something. Oh—last thing—here’s my report.”