by Rick R. Reed
Besides, she was too far gone with temptation to think of turning back now. Her body hummed with need. There had been too much stress lately; she ached for release; she ached for oblivion. But honey, the stress was brought on by doing just what you’re contemplating.
Beth went to the front hall closet, heels clicking, then pulled out a long, black wool coat. Shut up. Just shut up.
She threw her keys in her purse and headed for the door. The Walgreens on Clark Street was open 24 hours. She needed to pick up condoms. She remembered, in tears and full to the brim with remorse, when she had thrown all of the ones she had secreted away in the trash, in a futile promise to herself that she would never need them again.
Who are you trying to kid?
* * * *
“Abbott? Hey…Abbott!”
He put down the martini glass to face Marcia Wakeman. With an annoyed exhale, she blew a strand of black hair off her forehead. Drink tray in one hand, her face looked sweaty, big pores oozing oil through her make-up. Her black bow tie was askew on her tuxedo shirt. Her black pants bore spots of lint. Dark circles around her eyes. Tired. Probably didn’t get any sleep the night before, up all night snorting cocaine and having group sex.
“Sorry to pull you away from your work…when it’s obvious you’re so busy.”
Abbott set the martini glass, the same one he had been drying for the last two or three minutes, on a shelf underneath the bar.
“I asked you for a gin and tonic, remember?”
He grinned and rolled his eyes. “And that’s just what you got, sweetheart.”
Marcia’s expression stayed flat. “Yeah…except when I ask for a gin and tonic, I expect some gin in it. And so does my customer.” Marcia set the tall glass of bubbling tonic water in front of him. “Extra lime. Bombay sapphire. Get it right this time.” She consulted her pad. “And I also need two cosmos, a seven and seven, and a Dewars, neat.”
“Sure, Marcia.” Abbott resisted the impulse to pick up the glass of tonic and fling it at her retreating figure. If it hit her in the head, she probably wouldn’t feel it through that black rat’s nest.
His own head hurt so badly it felt like his brains were trying to force their way out through his left eye. The pain made his stomach roil, made him blink at the light over the bar.
He wouldn’t be making stupid mistakes if he weren’t distracted. But they were still going at it. A couple, over by the jukebox, thinking they were in the shadows, but actually on display for the whole bar to see. A young guy, blond hair, dungarees, and a leather jacket. A real Romeo. He was smack up against a blonde who had to be at least ten years older. Her hair was frizzy, too big, and she wore glasses. She had forced her corpulent form into a stretchy top that only emphasized the rolls around her waist. Her skirt, short, revealed fat thighs. The pair stayed locked in an embrace though, grinding against each other like they were alone in a motel room, which, Abbott thought, was exactly where they should be, if they had any shame. Didn’t the guy realize Abbott could see every time he squeezed her tits or let his hand crawl up her skirt?
Abbott dumped the tonic into the sink and began making another drink.
Christ, they had the right idea with that Sodom and Gomorrah crap.
* * * *
The shower hissed in the other room. Beth sat on the edge of a disheveled bed, and groped for her sweater in the shadows. The room was dirty, stinking of stale cigarette smoke, littered with clothes, dust, and ash. He had invited her to shower with him. What was his name? Brian? Brent? She’d gotten what she’d come for, she thought with nauseous memory. She could shower at home, in a clean bathroom. She wanted, as Greta Garbo had said, to be alone.
And alone she was. Here in a filthy walk-up in Rogers Park, where she had seen a cockroach skitter across the bathroom sink earlier. Where she wondered if the noises from their frantic couplings earlier had kept the neighbors awake.
More by touch than by sight, she found her sweater on the floor, in a ball. She pulled it on, and let out a quivering breath.
Brian—that was his name—was the son. She had met his father, Rich, earlier that evening in a little corner bar that had attempted, through two colors TVs tuned to ESPN and a few straggly Northwestern and University of Illinois pennants, to transform itself into a sports bar. It was just a pick-up place, a “meat market” as some called it. Quick and easy pickings. What she had been seeking.
She had liked the way Rich looked at her when she sat at the bar and ordered a dirty martini (no bleu cheese-stuffed olives here). Rich sat at a table behind and to her left; she could watch him out of the corner of her eye. He looked mean. She liked that. He was drinking a draft and smoking one Marlboro after another. His salt-and-pepper hair was closely cropped and, even though it wasn’t really fashionable anymore, he had a big gray mustache that hung low on either side of full lips. He was grizzled, swathed in smoke, and unabashedly staring. He wore a white T-shirt that revealed tattoos on both arms; it was too dark to tell what they were. Broad chest, coarse hair sticking out of the top of his T. He could have been forty or fifty-five. He looked like he could crush her. She liked that also. He had a hard little paunch that hung out over his jeans. Engineer boots. He never stopped scowling. And she liked that, too. She imagined his hard, hairy paunch between her thighs as he thrust, her soft quivering thighs splayed across his shoulders.
Beth had crossed her legs, the fantasy shifting into high gear, making the bar around her almost disappear. She had felt herself getting wet. She turned on the stool and stared.
So what if he thinks I’m easy? A whore? It will get us to the point faster.
But Rich took his time, tossing back shots of Jack and washing them down with his draft, meeting her eyes only intermittently. He may have been rough, but he had sense enough to know that he was the quarry.
Beth leaned forward and signaled the bartender. The guy, young, with dark hair and eyes so black Beth couldn’t see the pupils, hurried over. “See that guy over there? I’d like to buy him a drink…and, um, and…a shot. Can you take one of each over to him?”
The bartender smirked. “You mean Rich? What do you wanna mess with him for? He’s too old for you.”
She slid a twenty across the bar, met his eyes pointedly. “Mind your own business.”
The bartender took him the drinks she had bought, then returned.
“What did he say?”
“Nothin’.” He went to serve a couple at the end of the bar.
Beth spun around on her stool. Rich was staring, his gaze almost confrontational. When she smiled, he turned away.
Why did this excite her?
Outline of strong, ripped muscles through the thin, slightly grimy T-shirt. Maybe that was one reason. Something animal that radiated from him was another…the fact that he could bruise her, crush her, use her like a thing, and toss her away.
Oh Lord, Beth had thought, why am I thinking this way? Once upon a time, she had fancied herself a feminist.
He got up to go the men’s room and she watched the way his Levis gripped his ass, watched the rise and fall of his muscles as he walked. She pictured him at the urinal, cock heavy, piss streaming, its golden flow.
Beth ordered another martini. But she didn’t drink it. As she swirled the olives around in the glass, she felt someone standing next to her. She knew it was he. She turned her head, looked up into green eyes, almost golden. They were the softest things in his grizzled face.
“You’ve been staring.”
She blushed. “Couldn’t help it.”
“Shit.” He took a drag off his cigarette and looked around the bar, almost as if he wondered if anyone had heard.
“Would you like to sit down?” She gestured at the vacant stool next to her. Coins clinked into the jukebox behind them. A pause. Patsy Cline’s mournful wail: “Crazy.”
“Nah. Gotta be getting’ home. Just got off a double shift.”
“You must be tired. Did you enjoy the drinks I sent over?”
“Yeah. But I usually prefer to do the buyin’.”
Beth snickered. “This is the twenty-first century, sweetheart.”
“Don’t change nothin’.” He drummed callused fingers on the bar.
“What’s your name?”
“Rich Jenkins.” He didn’t ask for hers.
“I’m Beth.” She extended her hand, but he looked away.
When he turned back, he was direct. “You lookin’ for somethin’?”
Beth tossed her hair over her shoulders. “What do you mean?” She took a sip of the martini, but didn’t really taste it. The blood was beginning to pound in her temples. Her heart beat just a little faster.
“Oh, come on, now. Let’s not start playin’ innocent. There was nothin’ innocent in the way you were starin’ at me.”
“No. I suppose there wasn’t.”
“Let’s go.”
It had been that simple. The more encounters she had, the easier it became. The fewer words. Seduction and romance had lost their meaning. Those two things had nothing to do with this, anyway.
Rich had been no more solicitous of her once he got her home. He was a taker. But in the taking, Beth had found, she was the recipient of certain gifts. The lines between who was using whom became blurred.
He hadn’t even waited to get her to the bedroom. Not the first time, anyway. The only pause he took was to get himself a beer from the refrigerator and to grope in his pocket for a tiny pink plastic bag. He poured a small mound of white powder onto the glass coffee table, chopped it finely with an ATM card, and expertly sorted it into six lines, three of which went up his nose. He held out the sawed-off straw to her. She leaned forward and took two lines of the coke up her nose, trying to pretend she had done this before.
He pushed her back against the couch, kissed her, tongue rammed down her throat, his mouth tasting of cigarettes, beer, and whiskey. Her head started to pound harder. Her face flushed. He grabbed her breasts, rough, but it felt good. She couldn’t wait until they were naked.
It took Rich only a few seconds to shrug out of his jeans and T-shirt. He leaned back, legs splayed, his cock rising up out of a matte of dark pubic hair. “Suck it. It’s what you want.”
She leaned forward; he held out a hand to stop her just before her mouth reached him. “Hang on.” He dipped his forefinger in the coke and smeared it over the top of his cock, coating it with white, then grabbed the back of her neck and forced her down on it. The taste was bitter, but Beth couldn’t stop herself, going after him, starving.
She maneuvered, never taking her mouth from her, as he tugged and yanked her jeans from her. Then he shoved her back on the couch, threw her legs against his shoulders, and slammed into her with one hard thrust.
It didn’t hurt. Silently, she met his pounding thrusts with her hips, the two of them rutting for fifteen, twenty minutes, until suddenly he froze above her, gasping, and emptied himself into her.
Beth thought of the condoms in her purse.
He had taken her into the bedroom after a cigarette and a couple more lines. Beth didn’t want any more; she feared her pounding heart would explode. Again, he forced her down on him, and she didn’t have a chance to balk at the taste of her lubrication and his come. On the bed, he thrust up into her again and again, until his half-hard cock grew steely once more. She had made the right choice with this one.
He forced her face down on the bed. She felt him moving behind her, felt him slap something greasy and cool against the crack of her ass, and then he was inside her again. This time, it did hurt, and Beth bit her lip as he slammed into her, bit until she tasted something metallic: her own blood.
Halfway through, they both paused as they heard the jingle of keys, the front door opening. Footsteps. A male voice: “Looks like somebody’s havin’ a party.”
“That’s Brian, my boy,” Rich whispered into her ear, biting it. He resumed pounding, turning her face into the pillow. Muffled, she heard him, “Don’t worry about it.”
He had gone on for much longer this time, making her grip the pillow—which smelled of sweat and smoke—in squirming discomfort and an odd kind of ecstasy that both turned and warmed her belly. She groaned with pain, gasped with pleasure as she came, again and again. He emptied into her with a shuddering cry, rolled off, lit another Marlboro.
To the air, he said, “My boy, Brian, he’s only twenty. He could use a little of what you got there.”
Beth blinked. This would be a new experience, even for her. She felt raw and sore, but with a steady drumbeat in her chest and temples, a kind of fevered pleasure rushed through her veins. She assumed it was the coke. She didn’t say anything.
She lay silent as she heard the squeak of the box spring and the sudden lifting of weight from Rich’s side of the bed. She heard muffled, deep voices from the other room, their words indistinct, but their intention clear, underscored by dirty, conspiratorial laughter. As the bedroom door squeaked open, she lay silently and heard the shuffling footsteps, the clothes being discarded, the post-snorting sniff, and the squeak of the bedsprings once more. Someone new. She could smell him, different, sweeter.
She turned on her back. The boy was sinewy, naked, with his father’s dark hair, not yet turned to gray, spiky. A jagged scar ran across his forehead. His lips were full, feminine, but his front teeth were crooked. They hurt as he mashed his mouth into hers. She could taste the coke on his gums, bitter.
He ground the rest of himself into her, pressing her down against the damp mattress and thrust hard and rapid into her. It was all over in five minutes, maybe less.
“You wanna take a shower with me?” It was the same voice as Rich’s, unscarred as of yet by cigarettes and excess.
“No. It’s okay.” She had just wanted, then, to get out.
Now, she knew it would take a few breaths to get herself together, to quell the throbbing soreness in her loins and backside. She forced herself to rise, looked back at the bed, and tried not to wonder what had made the dark circular stain on the sheet.
In the living room, she found her boots and jeans in a heap near the door. She wondered if they had been tossed there during the sex, or if Rich had left them thoughtfully there for convenience’s sake. He sat in a recliner, sipping a beer, a fresh cigarette in one hand. There was a football game on TV.
Beth was sure he didn’t look up as she exited, the door clicking softly behind her. Already, remorse and guilt were making her queasy.
She took Clark Street home. Rain had started, and the wash of her windshield wipers revealed empty streets, lit by sodium vapor, closed stores and darkened restaurants. Only the bars’ neon still glowed in the slick darkness. She had tried to find something to listen to on the radio, but even the voices on NPR sounded annoying. Best was the rhythmic wash of the wiper blades, hypnotic, a fitting score for the depression creeping up, making her want to jerk the wheel to the left, into a pair of oncoming headlights.
She felt this way after all of her encounters. Alone. Ashamed. Often, she promised herself this was the last time. After all, what did she gain from this? Was it worth it? The encounters left her only worrisome, empty, racked by guilt. She supposed this was how an addict felt after a binge. Is that what she was? Controlled by need and desire instead of the other way around…She knew, by this point, that making a promise to herself that she wouldn’t do this again was silly, the impetus for a rueful laugh.
She needed help.
When would she meet the man who would give her what she needed? Was there one out there? What was she looking for? She had nearly lost count of the number of men she had slept with (she supposed her journal would reveal the shameful total). She was certain if she passed many of that particular army on the street, she might not even recognize all of them.
So what drove her?
A Kharmann Ghia. Beth closed down the self-analysis and tried to concentrate instead on the details around her as she headed south on Clark: the furniture stores, the pizza joints, Blockbusters, Borders
, Starbucks, empty lots waiting to be gentrified, choked by dying weeds, rubble, and surrounded by chain link.
The green neon of Bennie’s caused her to slow, glancing over at the bar on the east side of the street. She couldn’t see inside because of the tinted windows.
Was Abbott in there now?
Impulsively, she pulled to the curb, tires scraping against concrete. Maybe it’s time to turn the tables. What have I got to lose? See how he likes having his turf invaded.
Inside the bar, she found what she expected: a crowded environment, loud with the music of drunkenness and seduction, underscored by the rhythmic pound of some techno band. Beth didn’t keep up anymore.
From where she stood, she couldn’t see over the crowd to make out who was tending bar. She could just see the bar’s brighter glow and the rows of bottles behind it. Racks of glasses hung above it.
Beth shouldered her way through the people, alert for the stares of men. Even now I’m resorting to it. Even now. Several stopped talking long enough to stare as she went by. A couple even spoke. She didn’t have time. Her adrenaline was pumping. Even before she saw him, she knew he was here.
Premonition confirmed as a tall guy in a pea coat, holding a Sam Adams, moved aside for her. Seeing Abbott behind the bar made her suck in a breath, made her want to turn and flee. In spite of all that had gone before, this evening and with Abbott himself, Beth couldn’t help but feel a small lurch inside of her at what a stunning man he was. Jesus, what are you thinking? Do you never stop? But the perfect bone structure, the black hair, the cleft in his chin, the ice of his blue eyes were almost breathtaking, regardless of what rotted beneath the pretty surface. He could have traded much more profitably on those looks. His beauty was rare, even in a world where the fading beauty of youth was a bought-and-sold commodity every day.
But when those eyes looked and locked with hers, and his lips curled into a sneer, Beth couldn’t help but tremble. She wanted to shrink back into the crowd, run out of the heat and clinking glasses…back outside to where the rain-washed air was breathable, where the chill might quiet the rat gnawing at the lining of her stomach.