“Having a goddamned catheter jammed up your dick is the worst!” he said. “And all because I was fool enough to pick up a slut from Odessa and then marry her.”
“I’m looking at some catheter time myself,” Duane said. “Right now I’m just a heart attack waiting to happen. Both of us ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”
“Ashamed of ourselves? Why?”
“What have either one of us done but make bad choices?” Duane asked. “In your case it’s mostly been bad choices about women. In my case it’s been bad choices about food.”
“The way I see it the worst choice either of us made was to stay in Thalia,” Bobby Lee said. “It don’t take many smarts to figure out that Thalia’s no place to spend your whole fuckin’ life.”
“True, but where would we have moved, if we had moved?”
Bobby Lee considered the question for a moment.
“Some place where the fishing was better,” he concluded. “Maybe Possum Kingdom—or maybe Runaway Bay.”
“Too close and not different enough,” Duane said. “Why not the Florida Keys? Or Venezuela?”
“Venezuela’s gone commie, from what I hear.”
“Well, there’s South Padre, if you’re determined not to leave the country,” Duane said. “There’s places you can fish for flounder, and flounder is mighty good eating.”
“Too close to the death squads,” Bobby Lee reasoned.
“There’s no death squads anywhere near South Padre,” Duane insisted. “Karla and I used to go there. If there’d been a death squad she’d have death-squaded it right back.”
“I once dreamed of living in Colorado,” Bobby said. “Snowcapped mountains and pretty girls who could teach me to ski.”
“That’s more like it—Steamboat Springs is nice.”
But Bobby Lee’s mood took a sudden turn for the worse.
“Seeing Jesse in that porn movie just made me want her even more than I was already wanting her,” Bobby Lee said. “That’s crazy, isn’t it? To want a slut like that?”
“I don’t know about crazy,” Duane told him. “You’ve always had a weakness for long-legged girls with big tits. But I do think you need to consider cutting Jesse loose. Next time she might aim higher.”
Bobby Lee considered.
“Girls have threatened me with guns before but they never quite had the guts to pull the trigger,” he said. “Old Jessica, she pulled the trigger. It’s her Odessa background, I expect.”
“Yes, and I’m glad you didn’t die,” Duane said. “I’ll be by tomorrow.”
“What about you, Mr. Walking Heart Attack? Can we expect wedding bells anytime soon?”
“No, I’m expecting bypass surgery,” Duane said.
When he got home Annie was grilling the fish.
34
“IF WE EVER actually do the deed please remember not to stick your tongue in my mouth,” Annie said.
It was late in the night—at first Duane wasn’t sure whether he had heard her remark, or dreamed her remark. As usual Annie had gone to bed in three layers of clothes and then became too hot, so she sat up and shed the clothes. Soon she was topless again but not bottomless. She gave him a little kiss, no tongue involved.
“My father liked to French-kiss me and my sisters,” she said. “I’ve hated tongues ever since and every stupid boyfriend I’ve had has immediately tried to stick a big slobbery tongue in my mouth. It’s like having an eel in your mouth, when all you were hoping for was a nice little kiss—like this.”
She gave him a nice little kiss, very soft, very tentative.
“So what did you do about your father? Did your mother know?”
“She didn’t know and she wouldn’t have been interested in knowing,” Annie said. “I suppose she felt she owed Daddy children, so she must have let him do it once in a while—but I doubt she would have allowed him to stick his tongue in her mouth. Mom’s fastidious—real fastidious. So am I. We’re not easy women.”
“If you were to go see your father tomorrow would he try to stick his tongue in your mouth?”
“You bet he would—but he won’t get the chance. None of us will go near him unless there’s a crowd around—like at a wedding or something.”
Duane felt drowsy—he would just as soon have gone back to sleep and thought about Annie and her tongue-kissing father another time. But she was looking at him intently. Her eyes seemed to grow larger at night—she looked both seductive and childlike. He had never put his tongue in either of his daughters’ mouths, but it seemed to him that if he had been drunk enough that kind of overstepping might have happened.
“Was that where it stopped?”
“Yep—no incest—I don’t have that much excuse to be fucked up,” she said. “My shrink says a zillion fathers do that. You’d think I’d get over it—but I still don’t want you to put your tongue in my mouth if we should happen to be doing the wild thing some night.”
“I won’t,” Duane promised. He yawned—he couldn’t keep awake. He saw Annie raise her legs and slip off her panties and wondered if he was going to be expected to perform. He hoped not—he felt too weary, but a girl who had had her hymen perforated just for him might not want to wait.
But Annie merely snuggled close beside him. Then she sat up and fiddled with her Walkman—she needed to be taking in music day and night. It was not something he understood but it didn’t bother him. His own children had the same need, though for mostly very different music. When he saw that Annie was more interested in the music than in him he relaxed and was soon dreaming of the ocean.
35
“I GOT NAKED last night—is that okay?” Annie asked.
Far from being naked at the moment, she was dressed for work.
“I think I remember that,” he said. “Where are you going so early?”
“To Abilene, with Dickie—there’s a little oil company for sale and we’re going to look into it.
“There I was naked—it was your big chance to feel me up,” she said, looking at him solemnly.
“The flight wore me out, I guess—I hope you’re not mad at me.”
“No, I didn’t want you to feel me up,” she said. “But there I was with my pussy exposed. It makes me wonder whether you’re really attracted to me.”
“I am,” Duane assured her. “But sometimes at my age even when you’re wildly attracted to someone who’s willing to be naked with you, sleep just gets there first.”
“Maybe you knew I didn’t really want you to feel me up,” she told him. “I get ambivalent. One minute I think I really want sex to happen and the next minute I don’t.
“Maybe I don’t really want the sex to happen but I’m hoping you can manage to change my mind—does that make sense?”
“Annie, I’m going to try to change your mind,” Duane said. “I think I might be able to—I just don’t know when.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “Maybe we can both have a nice surprise to look forward to.
“There’ll be some fish arriving—halibut. I’ll be home in time to cook it.”
36
DUANE STAYED on the couch and tried to sleep but couldn’t. He turned on the news but found he couldn’t absorb it. He got up, shaved, and scrambled some eggs, which he ate with a peppery sausage he had bought from a Hispanic butcher on the north side of town. He ate the sausage but mainly just pushed the eggs around. He put a little bourbon in his coffee and was sipping it when Honor Carmichael called.
“I’ve been thinking of you too much and not in a good way,” she said. “Last night I dreamed I read your obituary. Have you had sex with the little Cameron girl yet?”
“I had a fine opportunity just last night but I fell asleep,” he said.
“You need to have the operation, Duane,” she said. “It might do wonders for your sex life.”
“I don’t know that I care that much, anymore,” he said.
“I don’t think you ever cared that much—I’m speaking as your ex-shrink now,”
Honor said. “You’re reluctant to come too close, even on the physical plane. I had my way with you and had it several times but you never managed a full erection the whole time.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t care.”
“I didn’t care and in fact I made it work pretty well,” Honor said. “But then I’m fifty-two and I know what I’m doing. Probably Annie Cameron knows no more about sex than you do.”
“I don’t think she knows anything about it—maybe we’ll be starting kind of even.”
There was a silence on the line.
“When you came to me as a patient you were desperate—do you agree?”
“I was desperate—I just didn’t realize it at first.”
“That’s because you were used to being the problem-solver, not the problem,” she said.
“I know you saved me—nobody else could have,” he said.
“No, I didn’t save you—you aren’t saved,” she said. “Angie died just as you were beginning to let me in. Instead of saving you I fucked you, violating all my professional codes and rules. And now, even if I were still your doctor, I doubt you’d let me in.”
He heard her blow into a Kleenex. She was silent for a bit.
“I wonder if you let Karla in—your wife of forty years.”
Duane began to feel tired, very tired. He was so tired that he could barely hold the phone. The great fatigue he had felt when he first tried to reveal himself to Honor fell on him again, like a weight on his limbs, his brain, even his tongue.
“I’m real tired,” he said.
Honor sighed.
“Okay, Duane . . . rest. I’ve no right to suddenly start trying to be your doctor again—I know that. And yet I feel like I had better make the attempt.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Unless you have that operation you’ll die pretty soon, and I don’t think you mean to have it. You’ll just stay there and play sweethearts with your Annie until she leaves for Asia. If she leaves for Asia.”
Even in his deepening fatigue, Duane felt surprised at how smart Honor was. He had already decided for himself that he wasn’t going to be operated on while Annie Cameron was still in Texas. He knew the operation might kill him, or at least leave him weak for a while, and he didn’t want to lose the time with Annie. Honor had immediately figured that out—perhaps the detection of such strategies was child’s play for a good psychiatrist. Anyway, there it was—he had to gamble on not dying in order to enjoy a few months with the young woman he was in love with.
“Annie hasn’t really begun to want you—if she’s capable of it,” Honor said. “She’s probably never been really aroused. Real sexual passion is probably ahead of her. If you’re going to be the one to awaken her then you’ll need to be able to get a real hard-on, one of these days.”
To his surprise Duane realized that he was just then getting a real hard-on. His penis was swelling despite his fatigue. It was the thought of Annie in the throes of real arousal that caused the stiffening in his loins.
“I want you to think about your wife, Duane,” Honor said. “I think you may have loved her and I’ve no doubt that you were good to her, in your way. But that’s not the same as letting her in. I don’t think you ever let her in.”
37
DUANE BEGAN TO SLEEP for long stretches, day and night, no matter what was going on around him. Annie came whistling in after work and grilled the fish of the day—it was usually fish—and then she played on her computer while he rested and dozed.
“I don’t really have to go off to Asia, honey,” she said, one night. It was the first time she had called him “honey.”
His spirits, low all day, lifted when she said it.
“I thought you wanted to go.”
“I did—or I suppose I still kinda do—but I’m not the only geological analyst in the world. The Indonesians can easily replace me.”
Duane felt that he was being offered something—and it was something he really wanted. But Honor Carmichael had put a troubling notion in his mind: the notion that he was, emotionally, a closed door. She even suggested that he had never opened that door even for Karla, his wife. The implication was that he had never let anyone in. What did it even mean, letting someone in? He wanted to think about it some more but first he helped Annie wash up their few dishes. Then she plopped down in his lap, kittenish, giving him little kisses, and commenting on the baseball game they were half watching.
“I love winners and hate losers,” she said. “So naturally I love the Yankees, although most people hate them. And I love the Lakers—my family used to have seats just a few seats over from Jack Nicholson.”
“Goodness me,” Duane said.
“You want to get a bed? If we ever do the deed it might be good to have a bed to do it in. I’m getting too old for the futon life.”
“Beds usually creak, when you’re doing the deed on them,” he pointed out.
“I suppose that’s a point to consider.”
They left the question of a bed unsettled and, when the ball game ended, turned off the light and slept on the couch. As usual Annie waited until Duane was sound asleep to get undressed. This time she left her panties on. She liked sliding in beside him, once he slept—it was like having a captive male to examine and explore.
Her nipples hardened and, just as they did, Duane opened his eyes. Annie felt as though she had been caught peeking. She got up and put a shirt on, but Duane had not really been awake, he had merely opened his eyes briefly and shifted his weight a little.
“What?” he asked.
Annie didn’t say anything. She wanted Duane to stay asleep while she explored his body at her leisure. She felt naughty and a little shy. The first words she had spoken to Duane Moore had been about her nipples—yet now, even though they were living together, she felt too shy to want him to see her nipples stiffen. What was that about? She was beginning to feel aroused, and yet the last thing she wanted was for Duane to wake up and attempt to have sex with her. She was pretty sure she was going to want that someday, but she didn’t want it yet.
When Duane was snoring steadily again Annie let her hand slide down his stomach—she left it there for a bit and then slipped her hand under his underpants. She bypassed his penis and cupped his scrotum in her hand. There was a bulge in his underpants—his penis was thrusting against them. Annie watched. She couldn’t quite see his dick but she liked holding his balls. She wanted to take his underpants off and watch his dick harden, but she didn’t quite dare.
Duane, in slumber, sensed that his bedmate, Annie, was doing something pleasant, but it was a light awareness, not as deep as the slumber that held him in passivity.
As his stiffening penis began to strain harder against his underpants Annie touched his penis and tried to guide it through the slit he would use if he were trying to relieve himself. Somehow she could not manage this. His cock was bent in the wrong direction; she would need to take his underpants off, or pull them way down, and she didn’t have the nerve. She had been told that once men were aroused beyond a certain point there was no stopping them: they had to have relief. Although she had begun to doubt the truth of this, she didn’t want to test it with Duane—not just yet. She wanted him to teach her everything there was to know about sex, but she didn’t want him to teach her just then, or maybe not even anytime soon. The design of his underpants irritated her—it ought to be possible to ease his dick through the slit but it wasn’t working.
Annie gave up, and so did Duane’s penis. It was half erect—she held it gently, hoping there was no harm in that. She lay very still. She didn’t jiggle his cock—she just held it. She wondered if Duane would ever want her to give him a BJ, the act several of her boyfriends had been more or less obsessed with. She didn’t oblige them though sometimes she wondered what cum tasted like. She also wondered if she would ever be close though to Duane to want him to put his mouth on her—the thought excited her, but her very excitement seemed to make her
even more shy. She kept three fingers cupped around Duane’s penis, which had become soft again. She let her cheek rest on his belly, and soon went to sleep.
In sleep Duane dreamed of a woman with hair under her arms. He dreamed he was poking himself into a slippery cunt—but before he could get fully in, the dream faded.
38
“UH-OH, did I make that happen?” Annie asked, in her sleepy-child voice. Semen had oozed over her fingers. Duane turned on the light. His penis was not erect, but it was oozing semen.
“I didn’t know it was so gooey,” Annie said. “Did I make it happen or what? I was just kind of holding you.”
“I had a wet dream—maybe you helped bring it on. I was sound asleep. I don’t know.”
“Yuk, it’s all over the couch—it’s even in my hair! I thought when men came it was just a little squirt, but, man! You came like a gusher.”
“It’s what happens when you don’t get regular sex,” he said.
“Uh-oh, now I feel responsible,” Annie said. She was blushing. “I haven’t been giving you regular sex, or any sex, so you had to have an old messy wet dream.”
“I’m not your responsibility, Annie,” he told her. “And a wet dream is nothing to feel sorry about—wet dreams are real pleasant.”
“I wish I could have one then—to reassure me,” she said. “I never expected to wake up with cum in my hair. You’re still oozing too.”
“We could take a shower together,” Duane suggested. “That way we’d be clean and could finish off the night on the futon. Tomorrow we can get the couch cleaned up.”
In the shower Annie soaped Duane’s dick two or three times, but still, now and then, a dribble of semen oozed out.
“How could you hold that much semen?” she asked. “I know I sound like a dope. Here I come on like a sophisticated California girl and I don’t even know where semen comes from.
“I hope I’m not going to be too fastidious, like my mother,” she added. “I never paid much attention to The Joy of Sex or manuals or stuff, and of course my parents never said a word about sex to any of us. You must think I’m just a big fraud.”
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