"If you come in my mouth I'll brain you." Her voice was trembling. Holding it in her hand she gave it a tentative lick. It had no taste. It was just hot. He gasped. She gave it another lick. He gasped again. She felt dizzy. She could smell his crotch. She put half the head of his dick in her mouth and held it there. He started moaning. With the tip in her mouth she began jerking him off with her fist. She rolled her tongue around its head. He started pulling his hair and flailing his arms. She jerked him off faster, moving her mouth up and down over the tip. She felt herself getting wet. She let out an involuntary moan and with her other hand cupped his balls.
"Teeth," he moaned. "Ah... no teeth." She didn't hear him. She kept licking and pumping, squeezing his balls, pressing her thighs together so tight her knees shook. With a shriek he came in her mouth. She pulled away gagging and spluttering, come dripping from her hair and chin. She retched, furiously wiping her face. "Oh, thank you, thank you," he droned, drunk with pleasure.
She spit come in his face and, snarling, slashed him across the cheek with her fingernails. "You filthy disgusting pig! I'll kill you!" She gasped for air, her chest heaving.
The streaks of white on Jack's cheek turned pink, then dark, then crimson. Jack leapt out of bed, stumbled into his pants, threw on his shirt and barefoot ran out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Marie retched some more, then, wiping her chin, collapsed on the bed.
***
Running down the stairs Jack heard sirens in his head. What had happened, he was sure, was just this side of murder. He was crying when he opened his door and almost ran smack into his mother in the vestibule.
She grabbed his arms. "What happened!"
"Nothing, Mom!" He struggled to get past her, but she wouldn't let go.
"Don't tell me nothing!" she screamed. "You're crying, you're bleeding! Don't tell me nothing!"
Jack broke loose and ran to his room, his mother hot on his trail. He couldn't close the door on her. He sat on the corner of his bed, his head in his hands, trying to collect himself.
"Where are your shoes?" she screamed.
"Oh... Gaw-wd!" He let out an anguished cry, jumping up and hugging his mother, shaking and crying. She felt confused, angry and frightened. She sat him back down on his bed, trying to control herself.
"Jackie, what happened, where are your shoes?"
He gingerly touched his cheek. His fingers came away bloody. With a cool damp cloth she wiped away the blood.
"Who did this?" she asked.
Jack told her the whole story in graphic detail. She sat there ashen, horrified, hand over her mouth. When Jack got to the part about Marie blowing him, his mother stood up and in a wrathful and terrible voice said, "What is this woman's name!"
Jack didn't want to say, but he couldn't fight his mother. "Mane."
"Marie what?" she demanded.
"Marie De Coco."
"De Coco." She nodded with terrible knowledge. "De Coco."
She left the room and picked up the phone in the kitchen. "Information, give me a listing for a De Coco in Co-op City, please?"
"One moment. I have a Louis De Coco on—"
"That's it..."
***
Chubby lounged on the couch watching an old Robert Mitchum movie. Phyllis was out. Said she would be back around five.
Four forty-two. Chubby constantly kept checking the time, his guts jumping. Whenever Phyllis was out Chubby now counted the minutes, the seconds, for her return, like a housebroken dog who hadn't been walked all day.
The phone rang.
"'Lo."
"I would like to speak to Mr. De Coco, please."
"You got 'im." Chubby ate a tuna sandwich as he talked.
"Mr. De Coco, I won't give you my name. I'm a neighbor of yours. I'm calling you about your wife."
Chubby frowned. "What about 'er?"
"I think you should know that she's in the habit of seducing young men in the laundry room and bringing them up to your apartment and—"
"Who the fuck is this!" Chubby dropped his sandwich. His face was burning. Mrs. Cutler started to quiver with emotion.
"She brings them to your apartment and makes them do—"
"Who the fuck is this!" Chubby shouted.
"I'm a mother!" Mrs. Cutler bawled back, slamming down the phone.
"Makes them do what!" Chubby screamed at the dial tone.
***
"If he's any kind of man at all, she'll be taken care of," Mrs. Cutler said as she applied first aid cream to Jack's face.
***
Chubby slammed down the phone. "Phyllis!" he bawled in rage. He kicked open the bedroom door. Phyllis wasn't home. "Phyllis!" He stormed through the house. He grabbed his jacket. "Fuckin' hoowah!" He slammed the door.
28
THE SKY was a nightmare of luminous grays. Chubby steamed across the street as the first drops hit the ground in ugly slaps. As he reached his car, the clouds ruptured into a furious jungle-thick sheet of rain. The car door slammed.
Banion's was deserted when Chubby tramped in trailing water like a dog climbing out of a lake. He collapsed onto a barstool, slammed his forearms on the counter and violently shook his head, spattering the area with rainwater.
"Banion, gimme a towel." Chubby furiously rubbed his hair dry. He shivered as the wetness of his shirt seeped under his skin. His teeth chattered. Banion sat behind the bar watching him. "Banion, you got a extra shirt?"
Banion wheeled down the bar, pulled out a heavily starched white busboy shirt from under the counter. He hadn't seen Chubby since he was in the hospital. Banion was nervous. Chubby seemed totally bent out of shape.
Chubby sat nude from the waist up, drying his back and his armpits. He took the shirt from Banion.
"It's freezin' in here!" Chubby's teeth sounded like castanets. "Don't you got no heat?" He pulled on the shirt. It was so small that it pinched the hair in his armpits, the front of the shirt not even making it around his ribs. He leaned over the bar for a tall glass and a bottle of Scotch.
"Hey... Chub. How you been feelin' since las' week?" Chubby ignored him, poured the glass three-quarters full, drank it down like Coke. "I gave Tommy some Haig to bring to you." Chubby poured five fingers, took a fistful of ice, dropped it in his drink and slugged it down. Banion automatically reached under the seat of his wheelchair and felt the police .38 held there. "I was gonna call you, but I kept gettin' hung up."
Chubby rubbed his mouth, frowning at something invisible to Banion's left. "Banion, what does seduced mean? Fucked, right?"
Banion brought his hand up from under the seat, empty.
"What?" He was sweating, fanned himself with a rolled-up crossword puzzle magazine.
"Seduced, seduced. He seduced her, means he fucked her, right?"
"Who did?"
Chubby sighed, rubbed his eyes, his arm flapped down on the bar, palm up. "Banion, take the fuckin' cotton outta your ears. Seduced means fuck, right?"
"Yeah." Banion pouted. "Sure."
"Yeah, yeah. I thought so." Chubby shook his head in affirmation. He slapped both palms down on the bar again and grimly stared at the row of spout-capped liquor bottles along the mirror. "FUCK!" He hurled his empty glass at the bottles. Banion ducked, loosened the .38 in one motion, but when he brought it up and pointed it with two shaking hands, the bar was deserted except for the wet mound of Chubby's discarded shirt.
Chubby drove at ninety miles an hour on the rain-blind highway. From the back of his throat emerged a whiny high-pitched singsong note, which he repeated over and over as the car swerved and skidded. He was calm, but his eyes were glassy, his foot frozen on the accelerator.
He didn't slow down until he hit the Bronx. He ran stop signs and red lights on the empty streets, pulled the car to a screaming rocking stop half up on the sidewalk in front of his building. He sprinted to the entrance, the busboy shirt pulling away in the back like water wings, his naked gut bouncing and rolling with every step. He hit the elevator button, cur
sed, punched the door and ran up the stairs. On the fifth floor he collapsed, panting and wheezing, resting his head on the banister. He staggered into the elevator and rode up to eleven.
***
Phyllis paced the empty house, muttering, shaking her hands and pointing her finger in emphatic gestures. As she did this, her face took on a rapid range of expressions, like a street schizo.
"Now, Chubby"—she pointed at Allen Funt, chortling on television—"I want you to tell me straight and don't bullshit me." She glared at the screen. "Who is she?" The elevator door creaked open, and she scooted into the kitchen, heart pounding in her ears, frantically pulling out pots and pans without rhyme or reason. She dropped a griddle, the clatter making her flinch. She crouched to pick it up. Chubby stood wheezing and steaming, dripping wet in the kitchen doorway. His eyes were wide-open crazy and his teeth were clenched. His asthma-stuffed chest, naked and slick, labored with every breath. From her crouch Chubby's head looked like it almost touched the ceiling.
"Chub...
"Hoowah!" His backhand slap knocked her rolling, sprayed the white glossy enamel of the stove with a riddle of blood from her split lip. She sat up on the floor, staring at him in wild-eyed disbelief, lightly touching her wounded mouth.
Chubby aimed a kick at her face, but Phyllis deflected the tip of his shoe with her arms. A sickening crack. She screamed in pain, staring at the limp hand hanging from her broken wrist. The kick threw Chubby off balance, and he flopped backward on his ass with a grunt.
"Chubby! Oh God!" Phyllis tried to drag herself to the corner of the kitchen. Chubby was all business. He crawled after her and dragged her to him by the ankle. On his knees now he held her by the front of her blouse, reared back and punched her square in the nose. A flash of pain like lightning branched out over her face. The linoleum was splattered with rain and blood. The momentum of the punch toppled Chubby over her as if they were in the kitchen for a quickie. From the back of his throat rose that high-pitched whining singsong again. She tried to scream, but the pressure from her broken nose sent shock waves across her face. Chubby heard laughing. He struggled to his knees again, straddling her chest.
"Laughin', hah? Funny?" He lifted her slightly off the ground by the hair, caught her with a murderous slap along the jaw. Her head bounced hard against the floor. Chubby still heard the laughing. Pulled her unconscious to her feet, her head bobbing backward as if her neck were a broken hinge. Laughing. Chubby bellowed as he punched her in the chest. She sank to the floor, knocking over a dinette chair. Chubby lunged after her but his feet got tangled in the legs of the upended chair. He sailed into the living room wall, smacking his head. He sat up in front of the TV like a six-year-old, watched Lassie for thirty seconds, holding his forehead and rocking in a circular motion. Far away he heard fists pounding on the door. Squinting, his eyes focused on Phyllis' impossibly twisted body. He reached forward to straighten her out, decided to turn off the television first and dropped on his face out cold.
***
Early Sunday morning Tommy and Marie sat in Cresthaven Hospital staring in shock at the centerfold of the Sunday Daily News.
VIOLENCE IN CO-OP CITY
Louis V. De Coco (49) (c) is being led handcuffed from 100-12 Kennedy Place, Co-op City by Ptl. Lucius Packard (r) and Ptl. Frank McConnachie (1) after severely beating his wife Phyllis De Coco (45).
De Coco sees wife on stretcher emerging from building entrance, begins to break loose from Packard and McConnachie.
De Coco on knees, crying in front of stretcher as Packard and McConnachie take him back into custody.
Responding to complaints of screams from apartment 11 A, Patrolmen McConnachie and Packard broke into the De Coco residence at 9:15 p.m. yesterday evening, found the apartment in shambles. Both Louis and Phyllis De Coco were unconscious on the living room floor. Phyllis De Coco is in fair condition at Cresthaven Hospital suffering from a broken nose, a broken jaw, a fractured wrist, a cracked sternum and numerous contusions and lacerations. Louis De Coco suffered a mild concussion, was treated, booked and is being held for psychiatric observation at Jacobi Hospital. The cause of the fight is unknown.
Tommy and Marie sat pale and numb like battered refugees on a long wooden bench in the waiting area outside of surgery.
"Mr. De Coco?" A black cop knelt in front of them, supporting his weight on the balls of his feet. "I'm Officer Packard." He glanced down at the newspaper. "Do you have any idea what that whole thing was all about?" He produced a thick, black, paper-stuffed worn leather notebook from his rear pocket.
"You tell me." Tommy was impassive.
"Mrs. De Coco?"
Marie nodded dumbly.
"Has your brother ever had any history of any kind of... ah, disorder? Has he ever been hospitalized?"
Tommy thought of last week at Roosevelt Hospital. "No way."
"How's Phyllis?" Marie asked.
"She's pretty busted up. But she'll be O.K. She's not pressing charges."
"What's that mean?"
"That means we can't hold him. He's over at Jacobi. He'll probably be out in a day or two. They got him out on sedatives. He had a concussion."
"Yeah, I read it in the papers." Tommy smirked.
"Why don't you people go home?"
"Can we see Phyllis?"
Packard turned to Marie. "No visitors tonight. Maybe tomorrow or Tuesday."
"Well, what's the story with my brother?" Tommy asked.
"I don't think so." Packard shook his head. "He'll be home soon."
The double doors in the hallway swung open. Stony strode in in a T-shirt and wrinkled chinos, a copy of the newspaper rolled in his fist. His eyes were red, and his hair flew in six directions. When he saw his parents he started crying. Packard glanced down, noticing Stony was barefoot. Tommy grabbed Stony's hand and sat him down. "This is my kid." Stony leaned against his father's chest, rubbing his eyes.
"You have any idea what happened?" Packard asked Stony.
"He don't know nothin'. Hey, you sure it wasn't burglary?"
Packard nodded. "No way." He stood up, hissing, as he stretched his legs. "You folks want anything? Some coffee?"
Three mute no's.
"Well, look, if anything comes up, call me at this number." He tore a piece of paper from his notebook and handed it to Tommy. He smiled briefly, walked away, then turned around. "Mr. De Coco?" He nodded for Tommy to come to him. They walked down the corridor out of earshot. "Lissen ... ah ... did your brother have anything goin' on the side?"
"No." Flat and formal.
"How about her?"
"Phyllis? You gotta be kiddin'."
"Hmph." Packard placed his hands on his hips. "You got the key to his place?"
"Yeah." Tommy dug into his pocket. Packard stopped him. "Look, I seen a dozen of these things before. Guys flippin' out like that, tearin' up the place, beatin' on their wives. You been up there yet?"
"Whadya mean?"
"The apartment."
"No." Tommy shrugged, confused.
"That place is a mess, lotta blood and busted-up furniture. Now, your brother will probably be home Monday. If I were you I would go up there sometime today and clean it up. Your brother comes home, sees it like he left it, he might go nuts again, you know what I mean?"
***
That afternoon it poured worse than Saturday. The four De Cocos walked around the house like zombies. Nobody talked, turned on the TV or the lights. When the phone rang, everybody jumped out of their skins.
"Tommy?"
"Chub!" Tommy's stomach flipped. "Howya doin'? What happened? Where are ya?"
"I'm fuckin' sick to my heart, Tom. I'm so goddamn ashamed. I'm still in Jacobi. I can't ever look her in the face again."
"Hey, the doctor says she'll be O.K."
"I know."
"What the fuck happened?"
"I can't talk about it. How the fuck am I gonna make it up, Tom? How many fuckin' flowers do I gotta buy? Oh God, I just wanna fuckin' crawl i
nto a hole somewheres an' die. When I heard she didn't press charges I broke down an' cried like a baby. How's Stony takin' it?"
"Stony? He's O.K. He's a little blown out. So am I. Were you drunk?"
"A little. Tom, look, I can't talk. I want you to do me a solid. I'm comin' home tomorrow. Please, you an' Stony, go up there tonight and clean the place, O.K.?"
"You wanna live with us until Phyllis gets out? Stony'll sleep on the couch."
"No... no, just clean it up."
"It's no hassle, if you wanna..."
"No, no, babe, just clean up my place."
"Sure. You want me to get you anything?"
"No thanks. Look, I'll be home tomorrow morning. I'll talk to you then, O.K.?"
"Sure, babe."
"Tom? I love you."
"I love you too, Chub."
***
Stony lay on his bed in the rainy darkness. The shades were drawn. He lay with his hands behind his head staring at the skyline of books. Thinking about Monday. Back to the hospital. Derek. Tyrone. Spit brothers. Construction work. Doctor Harris. Butler's Hosiery Palace. Anything but Chubby.
A knock on the door. "Yeah."
"Can I come in?" Tommy sounded almost apologetic.
"Yeah."
Tommy sat on the bed next to Stony's legs, putting a hand on his stomach. "We got a job, kiddo."
As father and son approached the door to Chubby's apartment, Stony was shaking. He had walked to this door a million times before, but now it seemed unfamiliar—sinister. Murderous. Tommy carried a mop and a red plastic bucket filled with sponges, dustcloths and Comet. Stony also held a mop. They were silent as Tommy dug into his pocket for the keys. He fumbled at the lock. Cursed. Dropped the keys. Dropped the bucket. The Comet rolled down the hallway. Stony chased after it. When he stooped to pick it up he felt dizzy and almost keeled over.
"Pop?"
Tommy didn't answer. He kept fouling up opening the double locks. Locked one, unlocked the other. Unlocked one, locked the other. Finally the door swung open. Tommy and Stony stepped back then. Tommy strode in; Stony hesitated, then followed. The apartment was like a haunted house. Cautiously they walked down the long foyer, holding their mops like carbines. Everything was immaculate but it felt like someone might jump out any second and dismember them both. They heard laughter from the living room. Music. The television was still on. Stony was relieved that everything was in order. They walked into the kitchen. Stony gasped. Cold enamel blazing white under the fluorescent overhead light splashed with brown blood. Splattered linoleum. A smashed blender on the floor. A bloody handprint blurred on the washing machine. Tommy whistled long and low. The light chain swung lazily over their heads like a noose. Stony felt nauseated, dropped his mop. Bent down to pick it up and fell backward on his ass. Automatically he reached for a cigarette.
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