by Unknown
They got in.
“Heard there was some kind of domestic dispute at the Steak and Shake?”
“Your spies must be everywhere,” Kate said, clutching herself for warmth.
“Leslie ditched us,” Fred explained.
“That’s a shame. No grasp of the, what is it, sixth commandment?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Isn’t that ‘Honor thy father and mother’?”
“The sixth commandment is ‘Thou shalt not kill’,” Kate said. “‘Honor thy father and thy mother’ is the fifth.”
“Ah.”
They drove on.
“So, what shall we talk about?”
* * *
“What do you mean he checked out?”
Dan Hamilton looked at Kate and Fred, a touch of fear in his eyes. Fred’s slow burn in the restaurant had cooled on the chilly walk, but the embers were still banked, and playing verbal patty cake with that fat cop hadn’t quenched them at all. He was spoiling for a fight, and Dan—face still bruised from Joe’s beating—was suddenly paying a lot of attention to other peoples’ anger.
“I’m sorry man, he just, you know, took his bags and went.”
“All the bags in the room?” Kate asked, incredulous.
“Uh, no. He asked if he could leave some of the bags here for you. I’ve got them back in the office.”
“Well, that’s something. Can I get the room again?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Fred said. “You can stay with me.”
Here
I Come
CHAPTER NINE
Drifting up from sleep, Fred Mundy felt a tickle in his nose and on his face. He twisted his lip trying to get rid of the itch and rolled over. It still itched, and to scratch it he had to wake up a little more. When enough of his brain was awake he vaguely remembered how familiar the tickle was, that it was Kate’s hair and he hadn’t woken up next to it for a long time.
Realizing the implications of this brought him to full wakefulness. Slowly, he turned. He didn’t want to wake her.
He mouth was open, snoring gently and exuding that terrible, acidic morning breath she developed even if she only napped for a couple hours. Her hair was getting a little salt mixed in with the pepper, and there were crow’s feet around her eyes, and she hadn’t had that soft little second chin when they were married. But he still just stared.
“Shit,” he wondered. “If a dumbshit like me gets a woman this beautiful to marry him, what could ever make him let her go? I should have been grateful to be some sad, sorry, pussywhipped bastard. Damn.”
Thinking back over their break, he shook his head ruefully. Leslie had been the wedge between them—or more accurately, “the Leslie project.” Kate had wanted to quit when Leslie, sixteen, had taken a whole bottle of aspirin and washed it down with Maker’s Mark (Fred’s drink). That had been right after the whole scene in Des Moines with The Fruit, which even Fred was willing to admit, in hindsight, had been a very bad idea. Fred had thought Leslie was on the verge of apotheosis, had even said that maybe the suicide attempt was a good sign, a walk along the boundary between life and death that would cement him more to that penultimate boundary crosser, the Hermaphrodite.
Kate had thought Leslie was on the verge of a full-blown breakdown and had served Fred a salad of divorce papers and restraining orders. She’d withdrawn the orders a year later when she—or they—needed money just at a time he happened to have some. By then he was in with Donna Braunfeld, and not long after that he was in for her.
But basically, Kate had wanted to pull back and he’d wanted push ahead. It was almost funny, given the way her apprenticeship had ended. He’d gone upstairs to kill the Solipsist, but he hadn’t been able to do it. He knew the Solipsist was a bad man, cruel like a sickness, dangerous as a mad dog and getting worse all the time, but seeing him, lying there helpless, he hadn’t been able to do it. Then Kate had gone up and put a pillow over the Solipsist’s face and come down and said “If you’re not going to go all the way, why go?” and Stealin’ Dan McKay had laughed at that and then Kate hadn’t been Fred’s apprentice any more. Word had gotten out, and even once they got married that was a problem, that she had the rep as being the hard one and he was the soft one. Maybe that role reversal had been what put him on the track of the Hermaphrodite concept. They hadn’t been married for even five years before he just lucky-stumbled on the copy of “The Marriage of Venus and Mercury,” which had led the McCallums to him and him to them, and neither he nor Kate was hard enough to deal with those two sick fucks. But at first he’d been the softy, the idealist, and she’d been the rugged, street smart tough-gal. Now he was the hardened criminal who threw curses and sicced dead souls on his enemies and choked women in parking lots. She had become the soft mother who protected her children and was reasonable and didn’t want to go all the way if there was a chance of hurting them.
“How did we get all mixed around?” he whispered out loud.
Her eyes opened, and Fred leaned back a little. He was scared, more scared than he’d have thought, that she would find it creepy, him watching her sleep, but she smiled. She actually smiled.
“Gotta pee,” she said, rolling out of bed. She’d slept on the left side, just like when they were married.
“Didja sleep well?” she asked. She left the bathroom door open—also just like when they were married.
“Like a rock, actually.”
“Yeah, me too.” He heard the toilet flush, the sink run, and Kate gargling. “I had this funny dream about Skylab, do you remember Skylab?”
“Yeah, I think so… what was the dream?”
“I don’t remember much. Just that Skylab was in it.” She came back to bed and he got up to take his turn in the can. Looking in the mirror, he was shocked at how old and bald and saggy he looked. It had crept up on him, but being with Kate had apparently tricked his time sense into thinking he was still in his forties, like the last time they’d slept side by side. He couldn’t deny it. She’d held up a lot better than he had. Of course, she was ten years younger.
He spotted her bottle of Scope and helped himself. When he came out, she was back under the covers, but had propped two pillows behind her back and was sitting up.
“What did you dream?” she asked.
“I dreamed I woke up next to a beautiful woman. Oh wait, that was no dream…” He gave her a smirk with his head cocked to the side, making it ironic, making it mean less.
“Fresh,” she said, but she smiled.
“What were you muttering when I woke up?” she asked.
“You heard that?”
“I heard something, but I didn’t catch it.”
“It was nothing.”
“Oh.” That was all she said, but her face shifted, subtly, and it was like a door that had been opening was starting to close, and Fred realized he didn’t want it to.
“Okay, what I was muttering was ‘how did we get all mixed up?’”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not even sure what I meant, just… I guess we’re not really the people we used to be, right?”
“Thank God,” Kate said. “Remember me in my stupid, outdated Black Panthers getup and that huge Afro?”
“Hey, I always thought you looked sexy in that getup.”
She rolled her eyes. “I said ‘Black Panthers,’ not ‘black panties’.”
“I heard what you said.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m glad you changed for the better.” Suddenly, he felt ashamed, and he turned so that he wasn’t quite facing her. She put a hand on his back.
“Well, now we know people change. If you don’t like what you are, you can change too.”
“You think?”
“We have proof, don’t we?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “About the parking lot. I’m really, really sorry. I lost it, and that’s no excuse, so I’m just sorry.”
“Well, I hit you pretty hard. I m
ean, as hard as I could.”
“That’s no excuse. You had reason. I’m a mean drunk. But again, I’m making excuses.”
“Here,” Kate scooted closer to him on the bed and shrugged around so her back was facing him. “You can make it up to me. Rub my neck?”
“If you like.” He put his hands on her shoulders and gently started to rub his thumbs in circles, up and down the spine.
“Ah, that’s good. Harder there… yeah, my neck’s been killing me ever since I drove down here. And my back. Actually, wait a minute.” She turned again and stretched out, on her stomach, her head dangling over the edge of the bed.
Fred found his heart starting to pound as he moved his hands down her spine, still on the outside of her Amnesty International t-shirt. He found a knot, where the muscles were tight and tender.
“Ah!”
“Right there?”
“Uh huh.” She winced.
“You want me to stop?”
“No go on. It hurts, but it’s good.” He kept rubbing. “You know what else hurts? My right leg. That Honda doesn’t have cruise control, and the calf is really sore.”
Fred could feel his hands trembling as he massaged her leg through her sweat pants. He wondered if she could feel it too.
“Ahhhh, perfect,” she moaned.
Fred wondered what the hell was going on. Sure she didn’t want…?
He stopped.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You know, Kate, if you really want me to go at your neck, you should roll faceup and let me lift it from underneath.”
“Okay!” She eagerly rolled and scooted back up the bed, bending her knees and leaving her hair spread out behind her.
“Hm,” he said, running his fingers through her hair and shifting to the edge of the bed. “How about if I sit like here, with your head in my lap?”
“Long as I get a neck rub out of it, I’m game.”
They changed positions, Fred being careful not to pinch her hair.
She had her eyes closed as he reached underneath her, bending his body forward over her face, and pushed up into the muscles between the tops of her shoulder blades. She smiled and turned a little this way and that, then opened her eyes halfway.
She could see him getting hard through his boxer shorts, and she grinned. “Still the dirty old man, eh Fred?”
He let out his breath in a gust. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it.
“Kate,” he said. “Uh… You probably don’t…”
“Don’t what, Fred?”
“Look, I’m… you were always the best for me. You know that, right? No one, no one even came close.”
“Not even Donna Braunfeld?”
“Donna Braunfeld wouldn’t let me lay a finger on her,” Fred said irritably. “Look, I made a mistake, I lost my head over a woman, I’m sorry, but shit… I lost my head over you too. I respect you, totally. You know that. I have no right to even touch you, look at you. I’m shocked you even agreed to come to my room last night, but I was glad ‘cause I’m still… I still want to…”
“Why don’t you?”
He leaned in and kissed her, and felt as tender a mix of sweet pain as he ever had in his life.
“I don’t deserve to.”
“Oh hell with that!” she said, glaring up at him from his lap. “Jesus, you’re right about one thing. We are mixed up. We both want to do this and we won’t let ourselves? Is that what’s going on here?”
“I don’t know.”
A sly grin creased her face. “Maybe,” she said wickedly, “It’s too risky for you.”
Suddenly he grinned too.
“You think so, huh?” He kissed her again, deeper this time, longer. His hands slid down beneath her, under her back, outside the t-shirt, feeling for the edge of it.
“You’re such an old man,” she said. “You could have a heart attack, or a stroke.”
“I’ll give you a stroke, little girl,” he replied, and he did it, he slid his hands along her sides, across her round little belly and then up, peeling back the shirt, cupping her breasts, feeling a little dried sweat underneath them and then running his fingers over her nipples. He felt them start to perk up. She closed her eyes and her smile got less sly and more sensuous.
She turned her head and warm breath eased through his shorts, and he felt a thud as the blood pumped into his cock. His hands crept up and caressed her cheeks and ears, combing through the tight coils of her tangled hair. She kept nuzzling at him as he leaned down, gently, and put his mouth around her right nipple.
They did that for maybe twenty seconds, not saying a word but communicating with their deep and ragged breath. Then Kate slowly sat up, raising her arms and pulling the shirt over her head. Fred did the same—momentarily ashamed by his white chest hair and the pallor of his belly, but Kate didn’t seem to mind, she climbed his lap and then they were sitting up, facing one another, her legs coiling around him and her mouth on his. Her fingertips were scraping lightly up and down his back and the back of his neck, and her hips rolled back and forth, shifting her weight from one thigh to the other as she rubbed against him.
He put both hands on her buttocks and pulled her tight to him, kissing her neck and working his mouth down to the little hollow as the base of her throat. She squeezed him close with legs and arms.
“Your sweat pants have got to go,” he said.
“But then I’ll be naked,” she said, feigning shock, but already climbing off him and jerking the pants to her ankles, stepping out of them, revealing her heavy thighs. Fred moved to the edge of the bed, reached out and pulled her to him again. His face was to her belly this time and his hands roamed along the back of her legs, from the hollow behind her knees up the muscles of her thighs, then between them, feeling for that musky slickness. He found it, and she rolled her hips forward to push against him.
Then she pulled away and bent down, delicately brushing her hair back. The gesture made Fred’s nipples hard just to see. Gently she lifted the waistband of his boxers, and he moved up on the bed, reaching down to help her. He hoped he wasn’t too sweaty as she ran her tongue up and down his penis, which was now rock hard. Looking down, he could see the slope and curve of her back, and just the tops of her buttocks, and he was amazed. He couldn’t believe he was doing this, with this woman.
Fred’s member was thick, just like Kate remembered it. She’d had sex with three men in her life, and while one of them had been longer, Fred’s was by far the thickest, almost as thick as three of her fingers. That had made for some problems early on: If one of them got impatient and tried to put it in too soon, it was terribly painful. But once she’d given birth they hadn’t had that problem any more.
Kate pushed Fred back on the bed and climbed up on top of him. His cock was lying back against his stomach, and she brushed her opening forward and back on it a little, teasing him and herself. He groaned. She leaned forward and scraped his chest with her nipples, she knew that made him crazy. She could actually feel his body shaking.
“C’mon,” he muttered, and she nodded, reaching down to guide him in.
They both made inarticulate sounds as he slid inside, his hands reaching up for her breasts, her toying with his nipples, then leaning back with her hands on his legs. Her hip joint popped ominously, but didn’t really hurt.
(Fred wouldn’t let himself think about how much he liked seeing his pale hands on her dark skin, liked seeing the whiter pale of his belly matching up with her dark pubic hair. He liked what it meant about him, even as he wouldn’t acknowledge what it meant about him that he was aware what it meant. For Kate, it was even more complicated. The politics of being a light-skinned black woman fucking on top of a white man, mixed with shame, and the longing to defy that shame and underneath it, the desire to understand and be the same alongside the desire to stay different and be mysterious. But neither one of them could speak of this, or consciously think it. They put it out of their minds, so it remained in their hearts and
souls.)
(Both of them were very good at dealing with contradictions.)
“Mm, mm, mmh,” Kate went, grinding down on Fred, and it felt really good inside her but she wasn’t quite getting what she needed in the front, on the outside, on that swollen little bud that was aching to be crushed against him hard, that little trigger of tissue that would fix everything. She bounced up and down, and Fred shifted his hands to her hips to hold her, to keep her from flying off him entirely. He arched his hips up a little to thrust into her deeper, but the pain in his back told him that wasn’t something he could do again, so he sat up, holding her close to him, kissing her neck and sucking on her earlobe.
She was almost there, but not quite, not quite, and then the rhythm got a little off and she felt the fire cooling down a bit—still hot, still very hot, but not as close to the combustion she wanted. “Fred,” she panted. “Hold on a moment.”
He slowed his thrusts, though not stopping them completely. “Yes?”
“I need you on top of me.”
“Your wish is my command. Uh, hm…” He glanced around. “How you want to do this?”
“You could just pull out,” Kate said, but neither of them really wanted to break the connection.
“How about I lay back, and you lay on top of me, and we roll?”
“Roll to the right? My right, I mean?”
“Okay.” With some rustling of sheets and creaking of limbs, they made it so. He almost slipped out, but not quite, and then they were in the missionary position, him flat on top of her, her hands on his skinny white ass while he reached behind her shoulders so he could pull himself harder into her.
“Ah,” she said, and he wasn’t scraping across the roof of her like she liked, but that didn’t matter because her trigger was getting pressed, hard, and it was very very good.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear, his voice tight with different feelings.
“Mmmm,” she replied, wrapping her legs around the back of his, rubbing her feet along his calves to encourage him on.
“Nearly there?”