“Shit.” I felt through my pockets. “I don’t have any keys.”
“I know where you keep your spare.”
She walked and I followed and the way she moved her curvaceous hips and amble rump, things were going on inside me. At least there was some sensation returning to the body—but that could work against me: I might feel the pain that should be accompanying my wounds.
We stood at the front entrance of the bungalow.
She bent down and that did it for me—I had to fuck her. She turned and looked at me and her eyes said she wanted to be fucked. This was not wishful thinking, I knew that look if I knew only one thing in the world. “Here is your spare,” she said, reaching under a flowerpot and producing a silver key.
“Yes,” I said, “of course,” but my thoughts were on her ass.
She straightened and opened the door and we went inside. She turned on the light and asked: “Does it look familiar?”
“I’m sure it will.”
“Well, this is home sweet home.”
“And where do you live?”
“Not too far away,” she said, glancing at me with that look again.
“Miss Melfile,” I said, pulling at my tie, “I thank you for the ride and your assistance; I’m going to have to apologize in advance for what I’m about to do.”
“Oh,” she said, touching her chest, “are you going to turn me into a zombie?”
“A what?”
“A zombie. That’s what you are.”
“I don’t know what I am,” I said, “but only vampires and werewolves can turn people into—”
“I think zombies can too,” she said.
“Well, that’s not what I had in.…”
“What were you…?”
I was looking at her knockers and feeling a whole lot of lust.
She said: “Oh.”
“I know I’m an miserly sight—I stink of death and violence and who-knows-what, so I’m telling you now that I’m sorry for what I’m about to do.”
“Please,” she told me, “just get it over with.” She softly smiled. “Just do what you have to do,” she said.
I lunged like a Bengal tiger on its prey and she did not fight me. She kissed me back. She pulled at my clothes. She let me take off her blouse and bra and play with those wonderful tits in my big decaying hands.
“I want your ass,” I said.
“Oh, Mr. Gideon, you can have every part of my body!”
* * * *
“You don’t mind?” I asked.
“Not at all,” she said.
“I thought I was going to have to ravish and rape you,” I said.
“Ravish me all you want, Arty,” she said, “rape me any way you wish. I just want you to take me and…and.…”
* * * *
In bed, she asked: “Does your penis work in this state? I mean, you’re dead, but is your cock dead? Can it get hard?”
“Miss Melfile,” I said, “I happen to be a stiff with a stiff.”
“Oh my! I see that this is true!”
“And it seems to be bigger than it was before.”
“I can attest to that.”
“I don’t know how, but should I complain?”
“I want to suck on it before you fuck me,” she said, “can I suck on it, Arty?”
“I ain’t stopping you,” I said.
* * * *
I came in her mouth and she made a face but she swallowed it like a good secretary.
“How does it taste?” I asked.
“Sour. Like—death.”
“Oh.”
“But I like the taste of death!”
“Really?”
“Oh, indeed. Oh, I see it’s still hard.”
“It’s hard and ready for more.”
“I want you to fuck me now,” she said, and I did.
* * * *
We fucked and my eye kept popping out and small pieces of me flung off when we got especially vigorous. You’d think I’d be embarrassed but if she didn’t care, why the hell should I? Like the song says: we were having a grand old time.
* * * *
“I have a confession to make,” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“I like dead people.”
“I know that.”
“I don’t mean just now,” she said, “always.”
“Oh?”
“Before I worked for you, I had a job at a mortuary. I was fired.”
“Why?”
“I was caught fucking a dead body.”
“I bet he wasn’t as responsive as me.”
“I can’t say that he was,” she winked, “but I’ll never be able to get a job at another mortuary or morgue again.”
“So you’ve always been this way?” I asked.
“My secret desire,” she said, “I’m what you call a necrophile.”
“Yesterday I would have found that perverse,” I said, “but now…I find it very nice.”
“The sex was nice.”
“Nice? It was fucking great.”
“I love fucking a man who is dead; you don’t know how satisfied I feel right now, Arty.”
“I’m feeling pretty good myself, girl.”
“Maybe this is the start of something…special.”
Maybe.
Who knows.
I lived day-to-day like any other goddamn gumshoe, I could do the same as a zombie.
“Tell me,” I said, “how long have you been into screwing the dead?”
“It all began when my high school sweetheart died,” she said, looking sad in the bedroom with me as the sun started to rise outside. “I was fifteen and he was sixteen and oh we were in love so much. We never went all the way but he would put his fingers inside me and I would suck on his penis and I couldn’t wait for the day until we were married and we could have sex like a man and a wife. I came from a good Catholic family, you understand, and while I did certain things, I wasn’t about to have pre-martial intercourse.
“Anyway, one day we were walking home from school, holding hands, and then he was trying to be—he wanted—I don’t know what he was doing, he was playing around, but he let go of my hand and he said, ‘Watch how fast I can run!’ He was on the track team, you understand. Anyway, he ran into the street and the garbage truck was coming down the way really fast and the truck hit my sweetheart and killed him right there on the spot. His twisted, broken body was on the street—neck, legs and arms completely broken…and he had this silly grin on his face, like he was smiling at me. I went to him,
“I went to his dead body, I held him in my arms, I was prepared to cry and scream like any girl who has just lost her love would, like Juliet, but I didn’t. What I felt was…excitement. My body was on fire with strange pleasure and my crotch was so very wet and I kept having orgasm after orgasm until the ambulance arrived and they had to pry me away from his body. But it was not grief that made me want to be with his body—it was delight.
“Did I think this odd, you ask? Yes. Yes, it was quite odd and—wicked. But every time I thought of him—that way: dead—my vagina started to spasm. Oh, you should have seen me at the funeral, I had to pretend I was crying and horrified, but I was secretly having many orgasms, just looking at his pale and still form in the casket. Then I would masturbate in bed, late at night in the dark, thinking about him. I still do.”
Silence.
“Arty?”
Her breathing was hard, her breath rancid from having the taste of my cock on her tongue.
“Mr. Gideon,” she said, “what do you make of my life story?”
“That,” I said, “is a weird tale, Miss Melfile.”
“Oh, Arty,” she said, kissing me, “shut up and let’s make love one more time and then we can sleep in each other’s arms.”
* * * *
She slept, but I could not. I wasn’t tired in the least. I had no idea if the dead were capable of sleeping—do they need it? She lightly snored as she snuggled against me
and this was all right, this was nice.
I closed my eyes and tried to rest or sleep—
But like a car slamming into me, it all came back—
A flood of images—
The dead—so many of them—
The dead like me—
And naked young people fucking—
They were all laughing—
At me—
Laughing and hurting—
—me.
Me.
I screamed.
I sat up and screamed.
“Arty,” Lissa Melfile said, her hand on my back, “Arty, what is it?”
I was shaking.
“I remember everything now,” I said.
IV. “NOW I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME”
It went like this:
A tall leggy blonde in an expensive pale blue woman’s suit and matching pill box hat waltzed into my office one day and asked if I was available for hire.
Don’t these things always start with such a leggy blonde?
Nevertheless, I said: “What’s the job?”
“Someone’s missing.”
“Isn’t somebody always missing?”
“Do you want the job or not?” she asked with a huff.
“Sure,” I said, “tell me about it.”
“You need to come with me then.”
“Why can’t you tell me about it here?”
“I’m not the one who has anything to tell,” she said, “it’s my employer.”
“Who is?”
“Sam Rush.”
“As in—?”
“Senator Rush.”
“Ah, that Senator Rush.”
“So you know him.”
“I know of him. Who doesn’t around here? Hasn’t he done enough to fuck up the south Florida economy?”
“His daughter is missing.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He’ll tell you more, if you take the job.”
“I’m willing to listen to what he has to say,” I said, my feelings going out for a worried father but not for a rich politician, “and I’m willing to help if I can.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
There was a car and driver waiting outside.
“Nice,” I said.
“Yes, isn’t it.”
I scrutinized her legs and ass as she got into the car.
I said: “Nice.”
She gave me a look.
“Help yourself to the wet bar,” she said with a sigh.
I did.
“You?” I said.
“I don’t drink during working hours,” she said.
As we drove, I asked her name. We were sitting across from each other.
“Jill,” she said. “Listen, Mr. Gideon, let me give you three points of advice before you meet the Senator: (1) don’t have a smart mouth with him, (2) don’t say anything about the economy to him, and (3) don’t ogle my body parts in front of him—it’ll piss him off and he’s a man you do not want to piss off.”
“Why, Jill? You his girlfriend?”
“I’m one of his top aides.”
“One?”
“The,” she said.
“But you’re screwing the man,” I said.
“That’s none of your business.”
“And what does his wife do? She heads the local chapter of the Red Cross, right?”
“Mr. Gideon,” she said, “in this matter, I expect you to be a civilized, discreet professional.”
I said: “My sincere hope, Jill, is that I do not disappoint you.”
“Believe me,” she said, “if it was my decision and choice, you wouldn’t be riding with me anywhere.”
The car went to the land of the wealthy, to the one hundred and fifty acre Rush Estate and its twenty-room mansion.
I whistled.
“Nice, yes?” Jill said.
“I’ll never know, baby.”
* * * *
The Senator was waiting for me in his study. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a few days. He appeared worried and I felt for the weight the man must have been carrying.
He was staring out one of the big windows, holding a stiff drink in his hand.
“Please, sir, sit down,” he said.
I sat.
“Would you like some gin? Bourbon? Whiskey? Vodka?”
“I had two drinks on the ride here. My limit is two during working hours,” I lied.
He smiled, but it was a sad smile.
“Mr. Rush,” I said, “I understand you have a problem and maybe I can help.”
“I hope you can help. I asked around: who’s the best P.I. to hire? Your name came up several times.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“You tell me.”
“Let’s say it’s good.”
“Good,” he said, and sat down at his desk. “My daughter is missing.”
“So I was told.”
“Were you told anything else?”
“That’s all Jill said.”
“Jill is a good woman.”
“So I gather.”
“You ‘gather’?”
“She seems good,” I said, “a top aide.”
“The top aide.”
“So she said.”
“And great in the sack.” He grinned.
“I imagine.”
“You don’t have to imagine. I can arrange a meeting, in a hotel room. Would you like to fuck her? She’s a good fuck.”
“Well,” I said, not knowing what to say to that.
“I tell you what,” said the Senator, “you find my little girl, Jill’s pussy will be a bonus.”
“Tell me about your daughter.”
“Her name is Jenna—Jennifer, but she goes by Jenna. Named after her sacred grandmother, my saintly mother. Jenna is thirteen and she has run away from home.”
“How long has she—?”
“Two and a half weeks now.”
“You call the cops?”
“Informally,” he said. “I don’t want this to leak to the press. It wouldn’t be good.”
“It might help find her.”
“It would only look bad. Jenna was hanging out—with a bad crowd. You know this stuff with the kids now—all this hippie nonsense.”
“I’ve heard about it,” I said. “I’ve been seeing the hippies around.”
“Drugs and free love and radical politics,” he said with distaste. “Long hair and unwashed bodies and—free love.”
“Free love.”
“Do you know what that is?”
“Not really.”
“Indiscriminate sex,” he said. “And sex with children. Jenna is only thirteen.”
“Didn’t you tell her to stay away from that riffraff?” I asked him.
“I tried, oh I tried. I lectured, I grounded her. This is what drove her to run away. The classic western culture parent-child situation of misunderstanding: she leaves home. Leaves a note: ‘It’s time for me to split, Daddy-o.’ Can you believe that? What does ‘split’ mean? Where does she come off referring to me as ‘Daddy-o’?”
“Kids these days,” and I rolled my eyes for effect.
“Tell me about it,” he said. “So you can understand my delicate problem, sir. Not only am I a member of the sacred body of the American Senate, there is the family name that goes back many generations in these parts.”
“Yes.”
“And if this were to get into the press—Rush Family daughter running around with unwashed hippies and taking that LSD stuff and engaging in ‘free love’.…”
“I understand.”
“I believe you do.” He opened the drawer in front of his desk and brought out some Polaroid pictures. “This is Jenna.”
I looked at them.
“Pretty girl,” I said.
I wanted to say sexy, for a thirteen-year-old, but that’s not the sort of comment a grown man makes in front of a teenage girl’s father.
“Will you find her for me?” asked
the Senator. “Will you take the case?”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “But where do I start?”
“That’s your job, sir, not mine.”
* * * *
Rush gave me a handsome retainer, five times what I normally charge. I was feeling happy and wanted to celebrate. Miss Melfile was at the office when I was taken back in the car (without Jill, and I had two more drinks). I reached behind my secretary and squeezed her big tits and whispered into her ears: “I got some good dough, baby, and I think we should go out and have a night.”
“Arty,” she said, pushing me away, “don’t.”
“What is it?”
“You know.…”
“Know what?”
“Like I said last night, we can’t do this anymore. I can’t. It’s just not in me, and it’s not right.”
“Right,” I said with a heavy, overdramatic sigh, moving away from her, giving her space. “Well, guess who I’m looking for?”
“Who?”
“A lost little rich girl.”
“Another one?”
“She’s very young.”
“They keep getting younger. I don’t even remember being a young girl.” At first I thought Miss Melfile was being facetious, but I noticed how sad her face looked.
“She ran off with hippies,” I said.
“Hippies?”
“Yeah.”
“She is lost.”
* * * *
…and so I went to South Beach and did the footwork: showing the Rush girl’s photo around to every hippie-looking person I spotted and could uncover, either alone or in groups, high and sober, coherent or, as they said, “spaced-out.”
Most of them said they’d never seen her, but I knew they were lying; they just didn’t trust me.
“You a cop, man?”
I said: “No.”
“You look like a cop, man.”
“I’m a private eye, man.”
“Far out, man.”
“So you haven’t seen this girl?”
“No, man, never seen her.”
Right.
“You a cop, man?” a girl who was fifteen and half-naked on the beach asked me, shading the sun from her eyes with a little hand.
The Chronotope and Other Speculative Fictions Page 10