Ragged Man

by Ken Douglas

  “ Storm, Sam Storm.” The big man held out his hand and Evan shook it.

  “ I gotta go, I got a girl waiting.”

  “ Maybe I’ll see you around,” Storm said.

  “ Maybe.” Evan turned and left the restroom.

  “ What took so long?” Sherry asked when he returned to the table.

  “ I met a guy in the john that I knew.” He didn’t want to tell her that he’d been sitting in a toilet stall, finishing off the gram of coke that he’d started earlier in the day.

  “ You know I was thinking,” she said, “if I went through your Stones collection, I would know exactly what you had and the next time we got something in, I’d know for sure whether you had it or not.”

  “ What do you want to do that for? You know exactly what I need.”

  “ I know, I’m just looking for an excuse to go to your place.”

  “ Why?”

  “ Evan, you silly, can’t you tell when a girl wants to go to the submarine races?”

  “ I don’t understand.”

  “ That’s what we called making out in high school, the submarine races.”

  His tongue was planted firm against his bottom teeth, temporarily frozen. This was a moment he thought would never happen.

  “ Come on, say something.”

  “ I just never thought-”

  “ Well, don’t think now. Drop some money on the table and let’s get the train to Great Neck. It’s about time I saw your place.”

  She slept with her head on his shoulder during the train ride and was sexually silent as he shepherded her to his BMW, and the only thing she said on the ride to his place was, “I’m really looking forward to this.” Her voice was electrifyingly erotic and he was euphoric.

  “ You take my breath away,” he said.

  “ And you leave me breathless,” she answered.

  He was in heaven, spine-chilling, spine-tingling, spine-thrilling heaven.

  As soon as they were in the door, they were in each other’s arms. Evan scooped her up, carried her to the bedroom, dropped her on the bed.

  “ God, you look great,” he said as he stood back to look at her.

  “ Come here, you,” she said.

  He jumped on the bed and they were instantly entangled, a mass of arms and legs. He ran his hands up and down her back, then with a daring he didn’t know he had, he reached under her blouse and unhooked her bra. He hadn’t done that since high school.

  She moaned in his ear as her breasts sprang free.

  He brought his hands around to them, cupping one in each hand.

  She nibbled in his ear and moaned louder.

  Trembling, he pulled the blouse over her head and gasped when he saw her breasts. “They’re magnificent.” He lowered his head to take a nipple into his mouth.

  She arched her back and moaned still louder.

  Without removing his mouth, he worked her skirt up and put a hand inside her panty hose. She wasn’t wearing panties.

  “ Take them off, quick,” she whispered with her tongue in his ear. He complied, rolling them off of her agreeing form, leaving her clad in nothing but her short checkered skirt.

  “ Do you like me like this, naked and waiting, wanting you?”

  “ I sure do.” And he pulled her toward him. Their lips met, tongues jousting. She tugged at his belt and pulled down the zipper of his jeans.

  Holding fast to her tongue, he pushed his underwear and jeans to his knees, then, kicking off his loafers, he shed the pants. She grabbed between his legs and it was his turn to moan, and to worry.

  “ What’s the matter,” she said, “don’t I excite you?”

  “ It’ll be okay,” he said. He gently pushed her back, knowing that it wouldn’t be. Why of all days did he coke himself up today. And why of all days, did she pick today to finally succumb. Life wasn’t fair.

  All of a sudden Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones started to scream as his stereo jumped to life.

  Evan sat bolt upright.

  “ Somebody’s here,” Sherry said.

  Sam Storm cranked up the volume, and while the couple in the bedroom were still in a state of surprise, he burst into the room, grinning.

  Evan jumped off the bed, determined to make a fight of it, but he was no match for Storm. He interrupted Evan’s lunge with a blow to the face that knocked him out. Then he turned to face the girl.

  “ I’ll do anything you want,” she said.

  “ If you fuck good enough, I might leave you alive.”

  “ I’ll fuck great,” she whimpered.

  He reached into his coat and pulled out a length of rope and said, “Bring that chair over here.”

  She did it.

  He picked up the unconscious man, set him in the chair and tied his hands behind it and his feet to its legs. Then he said, “Suck his cock.”

  She went down on her knees, took him in her mouth and began sucking on his limp member.

  “ If you don’t make it hard, you die.”

  She ran her tongue over the tip and pumped her hand up and down the shaft. After about five minutes Evan came to and ruined Sam’s fun.

  “ Sherry, what are you doing?” he moaned.

  “ If I don’t make it hard he’s going to kill us.”

  “ Stop it, Sherry. He’s going to kill us anyway.”

  She stopped, “But he said.”

  “ He lied.”

  The woman turned to look at Sam. “You said.”

  “ Your boyfriend is right, I’m going to kill you anyway,” he said. Then he grabbed the kneeling woman by the hair and slit her throat with his razor sharp Bowie knife. She twitched, gagged, then slumped to the floor, drowning in her own blood.

  “ Why?” Evan asked.

  “ Because Rick Gordon ruined my life.” Then he swung the knife in a great arc and removed Evan Hatch’s head.

  Chapter Six

  Rick was the last off the plane. He wasn’t in a hurry. He said his good-byes to the flight crew with a smile he didn’t feel, hoisted his shoulders and walked off like a man with nowhere to go.

  “ Uncle Rick, over here!”

  He looked up, smiled a real smile at the two visions of teenage loveliness that came rushing toward him.

  “ Oh no, the Tees,” he, d been calling the twins that since they were toddlers. T for Torry, the oldest by three minutes, and S for Swell. T amp; S, the Tees. Because the girls were identical, Christina gave them unique names.

  He dropped his carry-bag, took a girl under each arm.

  “ Are you going to stay awhile this time?” Torry asked, “or are you going to pass through without taking us anywhere?” For the last twelve years, every time he came to Los Angeles, he took the twins somewhere big, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, the zoo, or Mexico. The challenge was always to have a better time than the last time.

  “ I thought I might take your mother to dinner and leave you two home to wait up.”

  “ We have to go someplace good,” Torry pouted.

  “ No, we don’t. You take Mom someplace good,” Swell said, shooting her sister a look that said, “Shut up!”

  “ Where is your mother?”

  “ She’s out front, parked in the red,” Torry said, smiling.

  “ That figures.” Rick remembered that Christina had told him once that the reason curbs were painted red was so she could always have a place to park. She paid about five hundred dollars a year in parking fines.

  “ How come she didn’t come in with you guys?”

  “ A cop was hassling her about parking there, so she sent us in,” Torry said.

  “ Did she move the car?”

  “ Don’t bet on it. If I know Mom, she started an argument with the poor cop that won’t end till she sees us walking out the door,” Swell said.

  “ Your mother is one of a kind.” Rick laughed. The last time he’d arrived in L.A. the twins were gangling girls who went careening through the concourse, causing travelers to take
cover to avoid being run down by their rambunctious cascade. Now they were young women.

  Squinting as they left the terminal, he curved his lips into a smile. Swell knew her mother, she was indeed arguing with a pair of police officers.

  Seeing Rick and her daughters approaching, she smiled, said to the officers, “Okay you win, I’ll move it.”

  The policemen, knowing they’d been had, shook their heads as Rick and the girls climbed into the red Toyota convertible.

  “ Pretty blondes always get their way,” one of the officers said with a smile on his face.

  “ But they shouldn’t.” Rick laughed.

  “ But they do,” the other officer said as Christina started the car.

  Sitting in the shotgun position with the twins in back, Rick thought about Christina. When they first met she was pregnant and married to one of his best customers, and when her husband died two years later, he was pleased to let her continue buying his product. She paid on time and he had grown to love the twins as if they were his own.

  “ Time truly does heal all wounds,” she said, as if reading his mind.

  “ That’s what I hear.”

  “ You know,” she added, “I’ve been trying to get a hold of Evan all night and kept getting his machine.”

  “ When I left he was on his way to have lunch with you know who. Maybe he finally got lucky.”

  “ Maybe.” She put a CD into the player. Christina was a devoted Beatle fan and collector, so, for the remainder of the ride to her house in Long Beach, he was treated to forty-five minutes of alternate versions of famous Beatle songs. Like most collectors, she preferred the bootleg versions to the originals.

  Three hours later, after they had deposited his things and the twins at her house, they were sitting in a quiet restaurant.

  “ How long have you been a vegetarian?” he asked her after the waiter had taken their order.

  “ I didn’t say I was.”

  “ You ordered the stir fry. I seem to remember you as a hamburger with lots of onions kind of person.”

  “ When you get older you begin to confront your own mortality. If giving up meat can give me a few more healthy years, plus help me keep the pounds off, well, it’s a small sacrifice.”

  He took in her figure. “You’ve lost quite a bit, haven’t you?”

  “ Fifteen pounds.”

  “ You look great and may I say you’ve lost it in all the right places,” he said.

  “ Why, Rick, I believe you’re flattering me.”

  “ I guess I am.”

  “ They say that flattery will get you anywhere.”

  “ Will it?”

  “ Not with the twins at home.”

  “ Yeah, the twins,” he said and they both laughed.

  For the next three hours they talked about everything from rock and roll to the state of the economy, staying well away from any more talk of a sexual or flirtatious nature, but as they were leaving the restaurant, he wrapped his arm around her waist and she answered back by wrapping her arm around his.

  They made small talk on the short ride back to her place, each noticing a new kind of tension building a gap between them, and each wondering if it could ever be closed. Their years of friendship-instead of making their new-found awareness of each other’s sexual identity an easy, natural thing-made them kind of awkward with each other.

  Rick pulled her into his arms as they were mounting the porch steps, his lips on hers before she had time to react. She responded by opening her mouth and receiving his tongue. The kiss was passionate and long.

  “ Whoa,” she said, stepping back, “I need air.”

  “ I don’t know what came over me,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “ Don’t be, I’m not complaining. I’m just trying to get used to the idea.”

  “ Well, what do you think?”

  “ I think I like it, but I need a little time.”

  “ I understand.” He also needed time and was thankful for her level head. “The girls left the lights off,” he said.

  “ I think they wanted us to have a little time alone in the dark.”

  “ Really?”

  “ Yeah and seeing that they’re out, I think we should take advantage of it.” She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him to her. This time she initiated the kiss.

  When they broke away after the long kiss he said, “I think it’s time to go in, the girls are probably waiting up.”

  “ Sitting on the other side of the door laughing, if I know them,” she said.

  She turned, inserted her key and opened the door.

  The living room was lit by a soft bulb, casting soft shadows from an amber shaded Tiffany lamp.

  “ I read by that lamp, those imps changed the bulb.”

  “ There’s a note.” Rick laughed, pointing to a sheet of lined paper taped to the glass lamp shade. He crossed the room and removed the message. “Listen to this,” he chuckled. “Mom, we’re spending the night at Donna’s. You guys have fun.”

  “ Those brats.” She tried to hide her laughter.

  “ What do we do now?” he asked.

  “ How about we go out to the kitchen and have a drink, like two friends?”

  “ Okay.” He followed her through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  “ What’ll it be?” she asked, “more cabernet or Bailey’s and coffee?”

  “ Bailey’s and coffee.”

  “ It’ll have to be instant.”

  “ That’s fine.”

  She filled two cups with water and added a teaspoon of instant coffee to each and stirred. Then she put both cups in the microwave and set the timer for two minutes.

  “ I’ll be right back,” she said. “I’m going to let my hair down.”

  Rick watched as she left the room. He tried to imagine what she would be wearing when she returned. Would it be a sexy negligee or a simple tee shirt with nothing on underneath. His anticipation was high, but was soon dashed when she returned, wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she’d left. She had, however, let her hair down.

  She took the coffee out of the microwave and added a generous portion of Bailey’s Irish Cream, then handed a cup over to Rick.

  “ Have a seat,” he said.

  She drew a chair out from the table and sat down across from him.

  “ I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately,” she said.

  “ And I you.” He sipped the hot liquid.

  “ You wanna smoke a joint?” she asked.

  “ I didn’t know you still did that.”

  “ I don’t, not in over fifteen years.”

  “ Then why the question?”

  “ One of the girls left it on their dresser. I confiscated it.”

  “ What did you say to them?”

  “ Nothing, I don’t think they’re smoking, I think they were just curious. Besides, even if they do smoke a little grass occasionally, I did when I was their age. It won’t kill them.”

  “ They didn’t say anything about it being gone?”

  “ No, they know I found it and I know they know.” She smiled and pulled the rolled marijuana cigarette out of her blouse pocket.

  “ So you didn’t just let your hair down?” Surprisingly Rick found himself eager.

  He watched in anticipation as she struck a match, then lit and inhaled the sweet tasting smoke. Holding her breath, she handed the joint across the table to him. He took a long drag and passed it back. After three hits he was as stoned as he’d ever been.

  “ This stuff is a lot stronger than what we used to get,” he said.

  “ Yeah.” She got up from the table. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” She pulled her blouse over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra. “Let’s go to the bedroom.” She held out her hand.

  He followed her up the stairs and into her bedroom. He watched as she crossed over to the nightstand. She picked up a Zippo, lit it. The lighter fluid smell wafted over and zapped him, reminding h
im of the time when he used to smoke and of how intense your senses are when you’re stoned.

  She bent to light a candle and the combined effect of the lighter’s and candle’s light, both flickering, turned her breasts into twin nippled, bewitching yellow moons, casting a spell that shot straight through to his loins. Still leaning forward with her breasts dangling, she lit an incense stick and then she straightened, clicking the Zippo shut.

  The pungent smell of the incense overpowered the sharp smell of lighter fluid and reminded him of his hippie days in the ’60s. Civil rights workers marched and fought in the South. John, Bobby and Martin were shot. The North Vietnamese were fighting America to a standstill. He grew his hair long, smoked dope and demonstrated in front of draft boards. Then his older brother was killed in Vietnam and he joined the Army and it all changed.

  “ Brings you back,” he said.

  “ To a happier time?” she questioned.

  “ To a different time.”

  She came over to him and started to unbutton his shirt. He was speechless. He felt so good and Christina looked so right, topless in the flickering candlelight. When she reached the final button, she crossed around behind him and pulled his shirt off.

  Then she pressed her body into his, rubbing her breasts into his back as she lowered her hands to undo his button fly Levi’s. The sound of the buttons popping open echoed throughout the room.

  “ Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “ Hush.” She went down on her knees dragging her breasts down his back and buttocks as she pulled his Levi’s and boxer shorts down.

  “ I’m hung up on the shoes.” She laughed as she untied them. “Raise your foot.”

  He raised his right leg and she pulled off the shoe and the right pant’s leg.

  “ Raise the other one.”

  He complied and she repeated the procedure, leaving him standing naked with her behind him on her knees. She put a hand on each leg and spun him around. Then she surprised him by taking his stiff penis into her mouth and before he had time to think, he was spurting and she was swallowing.

  “ I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t hold it.”

  “ That’s okay.” She smiled. “We have all night.”