And that’s when the one guy took my thumb and twisted.
I told myself I wouldn’t scream; then I heard a snap, and screamed anyway.
I looked up, through the bleak pain, and saw Blackie Snyder putting on her shoes. She bent low and grabbed my hair, pulled my face up so I could look at her pretty face, at the way her upper lip curled in contempt.
“Nah,” said Blackie, standing up. “Not even close. What steams me,” she said, her lips a quarter inch from mine, “is that you’re pretty goddamn cute, Brewster. I would have fucked your brains out even if you hadn’t won the game.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I fuckin’ appreciate that.”
Then even through the agony and the sound of my own scream as the guy grabbed my other thumb and twisted that one, I heard Blackie Snyder’s laughter.
The guys let me go. I looked up through bright stars of pain and saw one of them dump the bullets in my Glock into his pocket, then throw the gun down on the floor next to me. I lay there, hurting. They left the motel room door open.
Blackie paused in the doorway, looked down at me.
“It takes the soul of a killer to play dirty pool, Brewster. You should consider another line of work.”
Then she was gone, and I heard a car start outside, heard her high heels click-click-clicking across the asphalt. I crawled, groaning in pain, across the floor to the chair where I’d laid my cue case; I saw and felt and smelled the detritus of her sweat and perfume on her panties and bra, garter belt and stockings, littering the floor between me and the case. I screamed in pain as I flipped the latches, and I had to hold the Colt .380 with both hands as I limped out, naked and blood-caked, into the night. I heard the car door slam, heard the tyres squeal, saw the headlights come on. I stepped in front of them and raised the .380, laughing my ass off.
“How’s this for dirty pool, motherfuckers?” I laughed, and pulled the trigger.
Night on Twelfth Street
Marilyn Jaye Lewis
In the half-light before dawn, the double bed jostles me from sleep, shaking with a distinct rhythm, like riding the double L train from First Avenue into Canarsie. It’s Manny jerking off again. Lately he seems to need this furtive sexual stimulation before dashing off to work at the last minute – strictly solitary sex is what he’s after. Sex that doesn’t involve me, that lands his jism in a T-shirt, the T-shirt winding up in the tangle of sheets for me to discover later when I’m alone. And I’m the one who he says is possessed by demons. Nympho demons, the kind of demons his aunt, the Mother Superior, warned him about when he was a teenaged Catholic boy in Buffalo. He’s only twenty now, six years younger than me.
Manny came into my life almost as an afterthought, like an unwanted conception late in life, and I can’t figure out how to get him to leave. Whenever I suggest it might be time for him to move out of my little hellhole on East Twelfth Street and find a home of his own, he punches me repeatedly and starts smashing dishes that are irreplaceable heirlooms from my favourite dead grandmother.
The one nice thing about this Catholic boy, though, is that he’s so hung up on his Catholic upbringing that he’s psychologically incapable of coming in a girl’s mouth. I can suck him until the proverbial cows come home and never have to swallow so much as a drop of his spunk. The sin of wasting his seed in this specific way weighs heavy on his conscience. But all the other sins have found a home in him.
His soul is blacker than tar, mostly because his mind is so fucked up. Let’s face it, he’s too inquisitive to be Catholic, but he was raised by a father who beat him regularly, who alternated between using a leather belt on his ass and bare fists on his face, and a mother who was a sister to the top nun. It’s left a seemingly permanent schism in his psyche. Four months ago, he was a straight-A student at the university, studying to be an architect. Now he works as a ticket-seller in a gay porno movie house over by the West Side Highway. It’s run by the mob and it’s the only gay porno house left with a backroom for sex in these days of AIDS.
There are a lot of things about Manny that don’t make sense if you weren’t raised Catholic, which I wasn’t. Still, I’ve heard him babble on enough these last couple of months to put the pieces together. He started out a trusting little boy with a good heart, but dogma has doomed him to a destiny of sociopathic perversion. I try to tell him to get over it already, that this isn’t Buffalo anymore, it’s New York City. Here he can be whoever he wants to be. Sometimes he listens to me intently and makes love to me in the dark as if he’s starving for a sanctity he believes he can find in a woman’s body. Other times the black cloud rolls over his face and the fist flies out, connecting with my cheekbone.
It was never my intention to save Manny from himself, just to lead him to the vast waters of the variety of human experience and let him drink. But the variety proved to be too much for his conscience. Sometimes, without my knowing it, the things I’d want to do to him in bed would push him over the edge, and instead of succumbing to orgasm I’d end up dodging his fists. Lately I don’t have the strength to wave so much as a white flag. I’m reduced to trying to read his mind and staying the hell out of his way.
I like it when Manny’s at work. I like the fact that the movie house is open around the clock and that his shift in the little ticket-taker’s booth is twelve hours long. It doesn’t matter a bit to me that he’s back to doing blow, either. Even though it makes me spit each time I discover he’s stolen my hard-earned money from my wallet, I’d rather he spent all night in the horseshoe bar on East Seventh Street without me. Then he’s more likely to skulk around the Lower East Side looking for more blow at four o’clock in the morning, increasing the risk of landing himself in the Tombs again. He hates the violence of the Tombs. He’s come out of there sobbing. But having him locked in that mad monkey house is preferable to having his unpredictable rage lying next to me in bed.
I wish I could get him to give me back my key. I wish I could afford a locksmith to change the lock on my door. I’m going to find a way to get him out of here. I’m going to do it soon. Ruby’s band is back from their tour of northern Africa and Marseilles. She’s trying to quit junk again, which means she wants to have sex with me. It’s her pattern, and I’ve come to count on it. I love her so much it’s scary.
I can’t explain why I love Ruby. We have next to nothing in common. We don’t seek the same highs. We don’t like the same music. When we’re lying in bed together we run out of things to say. I don’t hang out in dyke bars like she does. I don’t wear black leather. Even our tricks are from different worlds. I don’t venture into the park after midnight to support a heroin habit. A cheap handjob in the shadows is not for me.
My tricks are uptown men who shoot their spunk in broad daylight. Restaurateurs, or entrepreneurs, wealthy men whose emptiness is too complex for what can be gotten in ten minutes at 20 bucks a pop behind some bushes. Ruby wouldn’t fare well in those uptown luxury apartments. She’s not OK with being handcuffed. She doesn’t own a pair of high heels. Holding onto a man’s dick in the dark is the limit of what she can stomach. Pussy is where her heart lies.
The first time I made out with Ruby, in a toilet stall in CBGB’s, I didn’t know she was on junk. I only knew she was a good kisser, which was why I’d followed her into the stall. We didn’t do anything wild in there; we didn’t unzip our jeans or pull up our T-shirts – we just kissed. But kissing Ruby was enough to make me fall in love. Her face close to mine like that, her brown eyes closing when our lips touched, her dark hair brushing lightly against my face, then the soft groans in her throat as our bodies rubbed against each other in that suggestive rhythm. Only now do I understand why she seemed to be in slow motion. It wasn’t some trance of Eros; it was the gold rushing through her veins.
I didn’t want to compete with the junk. I wanted the whole girl. When I told Ruby that, we didn’t kiss again for a year. I blew my money that year on the gypsies on Avenue C. Mostly on the youngest girl, the 14-year-old with the stray eye. I p
aid her to hold my hand in her lap, palm up, and tell me a pack of lies. I was too in love to leave anything to chance. I wanted my destiny spelled out for me. I wanted Ruby to come to her senses. She did, after three men in the park raped her one night. She called me collect from the pay phone in the emergency room at Beth Israel. She was ready to try it another way.
She moved back in with her mother in Queens. Six weeks later, she showed up on East Twelfth Street, doubtful-seeming, though her veins were clean.
If Ruby could find a way to keep off smack for good, there wouldn’t be cracks in my world, where vermin like Manny could wriggle in when I’m blind on bourbon, crying for myself. It’s not that I kick Ruby out when she’s shooting up, it’s that she stops coming around. So I plug up the holes with whomever I can find. But now I have this dilemma: I want Ruby back in my bed. Nothing compares to her.
The first night Ruby and I made love, it was the height of summer. Salsa music blaring from some Puerto Rican’s boom box clashed with the tin calliope sounds of an ice cream truck parked under my open window. But in my double bed at the back of the flat, the intrusions of the neighbourhood faded. It was finally just Ruby and me – both of us sober.
When I saw her naked for the first time, I felt elation, the way an exulting mother must feel as her eyes first take in the body of her newborn, that unshakeable faith in the existence of God. That’s what it felt like to see Ruby without her clothes on. How else can one’s mind account for something so perfect, so entrancing, so long-desired? Her firm, upturned breasts with their tiny eager nipples. Her narrow waist, slim hips. The dot of her navel and the swirl of black hair that hinted at the mystery hiding under it all – at first, it made touching her a little daunting. But she lay down next to me and fervently wanted to kiss. The force of passion coming from her slender body made the rest of it easy. I didn’t worry about how to please her; I knew intuitively what her body wanted. I could smell it coming off her.
Her nipple stiffening in my mouth needed more pressure. I twisted it lightly with my fingers instead. Tugging it, rolling it, pulling it insistently, while my mouth returned to her kisses. She moaned and her long legs parted. That’s how simple it was.
I knew she would be wet between her legs. My fingers slid into her snug pussy, and her whole body responded. An invisible wave of arousal rolled over her that I could feel in the pressure of her kiss. The muscular walls of her slick hole clamped around my two probing fingers, hugging them tightly, making it too plain that the thick, intrusive pricks of the pigs who’d raped her could only have succeeded in finding a way into her through sheer masculine determination. I knew how she had suffered.
Struggling, succumbing, three times successively. It was hard to believe her body had withstood the repeated violation. I shoved the pictures from my head. I centred my thoughts instead on the rhythm of her mound, how it urged my fingers to push in deeper. They did. Feeling my way, my fingers found the spot inside her that opened her completely, causing her thighs to spread wider, then she held herself spread, bearing down on my fingers as her slippery hole swelled around them.
I kissed my way down her ribs, down the flat expanse of her belly. Following the wispy trail of hairs that led to the world between her legs. I wanted my mouth all over her down there. It was what I had dreamed of, ached for. At last, she was offering it to me, wide open and engorged.
Sometimes I think about how easy it was to make her come. Two fingers up her hole and my tongue on her clit, then the river of shooting sparks gushed through her. And because I loved her it made me happy to make her come, even though afterward we lay together entwined with nothing left to talk about. Ruby and I were always silent when we finished making love. With those wealthy tricks uptown, it’s more complicated. They need to discuss each detail. They practically draw you a map: the tit clamps here, the enema bag there, the length of rope tied like this, the gag last. The timing must be meticulous, the monologue rehearsed.
And with an uptight, paranoid guy like Manny it’s even worse. There is no plan, no map, no discernible guideposts. Each gesture, each word is a toss of the dice: will it lead to a kiss, or a bruised lip? I try not to lose sleep over it. If worse comes to worst, when Ruby arrives we’ll shove the heavy bureau in front of the locked door. We’ll go to my bed in the back of the flat, strip out of our clothes, and make love. Then I’ll call the cops on Manny at last, when he’s shouting obscenities out in the hall and slamming uselessly against the barricade.
The Hill
J. D. Sampson
The locals call it “The Hill”, a dry dusty piece of God’s country that was never meant to sustain human life. The map calls it Los Alamos and the government calls it Project Y, one of three parts of the Manhattan project. I just call it hell. The secret military compound was a virtual prison camp. Barbed wire topped the fences, guard dogs patrolled the perimeter and you couldn’t take a crap without some pistol jockey checking the colour of your badge.
We all had to wear them, small round badges with a number instead of a name. Numbers were anonymous but it was the colours that kept us in our place. I was given a white badge the day I arrived. White was top of the line, an all access pass, the chosen colour of the eggheads. But women don’t talk to whites, not the women I was interested in anyway. Soon as I figured out that fact I traded my white button in for a yellow; tech access but not top of the line.
Oksana didn’t notice me when I was a white. Her husband was a white. A physicist from Poland, Bronislawa had a good fifteen years on his charming wife and he wore her like a brand new watch. She was a pretty girl, not beautiful and Los Alamos was ageing her. Rumour had it that her father was Russian royalty and was ousted by the current regime. Oksana was used to the good life. This wasn’t it.
It was easy to catch her. I told her she looked like Jean Harlow and that I would know because I lived next door to Harlow back in Hollywood. Like most of the foreign women, she was entranced by the glamour of movie stars and that made her keen to talk to me. It was just talk at the beginning. That’s the only way to start. You have to take it slow or you scare them away. It’s like breaking a horse, only a lot more fun. After a few short conversations I graduated to a hand on her arm, always an innocent gesture. Let me help you step over that puddle. Oh, wait, I think it’s over this way. From there it was a hand on her back, then a whisper in her ear and finally she was mine for the taking.
We agreed to meet in town at the La Fonda hotel. It was a regular watering hole for residents of the hill so no one would pay attention to her or me, not that anyone ever paid attention to me, I was invisible.
Oksana was shaking like a wet poodle when she slipped into the room. “We shouldn’t — ” I didn’t let her finish. I grabbed her then and kissed her, hard. She stiffened in my arms and I worried that she might nix the whole thing. “So beautiful,” I said, with the cream in my voice. “So elegant.” I ran my hand through her pin-curled hair, then drew my fingers along the side of her face. “Now that I really see you, I know I was wrong. It’s not Harlow, it’s Lombard.”
“Carole Lombard?” Oksana sighed. “No, you lie.” She ducked her chin and blushed a pleasant shade of red.
“If Clark Gable were here he’d slug me for making time with his girl.” I slipped my finger under her chin and lifted, raising her eyes to mine. There were tears there and for a second I felt like a first-class heel. She was just a child.
“I’ve never been with a man.” Then she corrected herself. “Another man. Not Danez. I’ve never been unfaithful.”
She was thinking again. That wasn’t good. I crushed her mouth like a ripe tomato as I cupped my hand around her breast. She gasped at that and I knew I had her back. That was the trick. Pleasure. No time to think. I slipped my arm beneath her thin legs and scooped her off the floor. “You deserve the best,” I said, planting the seed. “You deserve to have all you desire.” I laid her on the bed then knelt beside her. She was panting with a mixture of excitement and fear. “Take your blo
use off.”
“I can’t. My hands.” She held them up and I could see that they were shaking.
“Allow me.” I stretched out beside her then began to free her one button at a time. She tried to contain herself but four buttons down her hips began to grind against the bed. Two more buttons and I could see bare skin peeking out around a sturdy and serviceable undergarment. “You deserve better,” I said as I undid the fasteners. “You deserve silk and satin, nothing else against your tender skin.” Two white mounds of flesh presented themselves for the taking. I took. My mouth latched on to the nearest breast while my thumb and forefinger twisted the nipple of the other. The combination of pleasure and pain soon had her mooing like a happy cow. I blew a warm breath on the hardened nub forcing it to stand at attention. Then I worked the other, fingers first, blow – pop. So sweet.
Her skirt was the next thing to go, then her panties. I left her stockings in place. There’s nothing like the sight of a woman naked except for stockings and a garter belt. My dick agreed with my mind but I wasn’t ready to let him out to play just yet. I took off my shirt and tossed it to the floor to mingle with her clothes. Then, crawling on my knees, I settled myself between Oksana’s legs. I kneaded her thighs with my strong fingers, relishing the way she twitched and moaned beneath my touch.
“You deserve to be pampered,” I said, reinforcing the thought. “Like a princess.” I slipped my hands under her knees and lifted, forcing her legs open and back. She lifted her head, her eyes wide with wonder. I still had my pants on and that confused her.
“First you, then me,” I said. She had no idea what she was in for until she felt the warmth of my breath on her pussy.
“No!” Her small body jerked, her hands reaching out as if to stop me. “Please. I can’t.”
“Can’t? There is nothing for you to do but enjoy.” I covered her soft folds with my mouth. She moaned louder and longer. There were words in there but they were too garbled to understand. I sent my tongue searching for the jewel in the crown and I knew I had found it when she screamed. I sucked and teased, biting tender flesh, then soothing it with my tongue, over and over rocking her body with wave after wave of ecstasy. My dick was not amused. It banged against my zipper demanding to be let out. Frustrated by my own lack of control, I sat back on my heels and worked loose my belt.
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