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I had forgotten to turn the volume down on the ringer and the
telephone was sitting on the coffee table, next to my ear.
When it rang, I catapulted myself off the couch onto the coffee
table and bounced onto the floor, pulling the phone with me,
by the cord. I picked it up off the floor and growled into the
receiver,
“Yeah?”
“Well...”
No answer.
“What is it?”
“It’s closing time.” His voice rose in irritation. “When I get off
work, remember?”
“Huh?”
“Party pooper?”
“Three.”
Silence.
“Aw shit, Brad.” He held the phone away from his mouth and
wheezed. He brought the phone back to his mouth and said,
“They don’t care. It’s just the mother and the aunt.” He
pronounced “aunt” like “taunt.” “Their mothers are both
whores man. They don’t give a damn.”
“I’m parked above the College parking lot, about a mile from
their house. You know, where the pay phone is, on the corner
of Highland and Copeland.”
He pulled the 1958, brown and white Chevy into a long gravel
driveway that cut away from the road, about 200 yards up the
road from my girlfriend’s cottage. The driveway climbed
towards a large, white, two-story wood-frame house. There
was a large white barn off to the side, and a long, white,
wooden railing in front of the house. All of the lights were out.
Lyle got out of the car. He was wearing his guard uniform and
his .38 service revolver was still strapped around his waist. I
rolled down the window as he walked towards my car. A dark-
haired girl pressed her face against the passenger window and
grinned a toothy smile into the darkness. She turned and said
something to the two girls in the back seat.
He turned around, put his left palm on the roof of his car, bent
down and peered in at the girls in the back seat. The one
nearest the window waved past him, to me. I waved and got
out of my car. My rib cage shook from the cold.
There were two girls in the back seat and I sat between them.
The girl in the front seat turned around to get a good look at
me. Her long, straight black hair fell onto her bare shoulders.
She was wearing a red tank top covered with sequins. Her
bangs fell down over her eyebrows, and her eyes were dark
with large, false eyelashes and too much mascara. She was
about 17.
“I’m Francine,” she said, and turned to look at Lyle who was
sitting behind the steering wheel, staring out of the
windshield. She said to Lyle's profile, “I like him. He’s cute.”
He said, “You can look at him but that’s all. I’m not sharing you
with no one tonight.” He looked at me menacingly, from the
rear view mirror. The light of a single, uncovered electric bulb
lit up his face so that I could see the whites of his eyes.
She had short blonde hair, which was full of recalcitrant curls,
and her skin was the color of Muscat wine. She was wearing a
black mini skirt and a beige tank top. She didn’t need to wear
makeup, and she wasn’t wearing any. I turned to the girl on my
right, and she smiled up at me. Her hair was thick and light
brown and her skin was very white. I turned back to the blonde
and she smiled and looked at Lyle.
I said with my eyes, glancing first to the right and then to the
left, “This is jail bait my friend.”
I said, “You’re cute.” She smiled. Her lipstick was shiny and it
stained her teeth. Lyle caught my eyes in the rearview mirror
and he asked, without turning around, “Are you going to pull
yourself together?”
I said, “You don’t look like twins to me.” Her hair was dark
brown and her skin was very light.
“What?” She shook her thick brown locks as if she were trying
to shake out the definition of the word "Fraternal."
Roxanne looked across at Betty and said, “I came out first. I’m
the oldest.” She smiled a superior smile and I leaned over and
gave her a congratulatory kiss on the lips. Her large breasts
pressed against me and seemed incongruous with her childlike
face. I turned towards her golden haired sister and was
startled by her bold and yet defenseless child-woman eyes. I
leaned towards her and kissed her again, and her breathing
came faster. I looked up to see Lyle and Francine staring at us
silently, with open mouths. I whispered loudly, “I can tell you
one thing, I’m not going to do anything with you in the car.”
He let her hair fall from his hand. He said in a loud voice,
“Keep your voice down, man.”
“No one is going to come out. Just keep quiet and don’t turn on
any lights.”
“All right.”
They got out of the car and disappeared into the fog.
I turned to Betty. Her head was turned away into the darkness.
Her satin skin reeked of cheap perfume. I kissed her neck. She
turned around and looked up at me with parted lips and
dancing blue eyes. I kissed her on the lips. Immediately, I
turned and kissed Roxanne. Betty’s warm hand tugged at my
shoulder and I turned and gave her another long kiss.
She was silent. I leaned over and kissed her smooth, pudgy
cheek affectionately. She looked down at my erection.
“Thirteen.” Her bones sagged and her fingers fidgeted with
something in her lap.
The liquid eyes met mine again. I helped pull her tank top over
her head. Her pretty breasts were small and firm, and the
purple-brown nipples were erect. I sucked them until her
breath came fast, rhythmic and shallow and her heart thumped
loudly against her ribs.
She pulled her mini skirt up over wide hips and bunched it
around a tiny waist, revealing a thick bush and a fine line of
hair that mounted to her belly button. I pulled my sport shirt
over my head and pushed my pants down until they were
against my shoes.
“Yes.”
Her hair was damp, and her body glistened in the moonlight.
She looked up at me with innocent pride. I said, “You look like
one of those angels in the paintings of Botticelli.”
I was silent.
She took a short breath that was like a sigh. “The other guys
just went in and out…"
I kissed her cheek again. After a long silence I said, “I love you
too.”
“Nothin.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was stickin out with the last one.” She held her
hand out in front of her stomach, “It just dropped out. I
couldn’t hold neither one of em.”
I looked down at her doll face. I said, “It was the strongest one
I’ve ever had. I thought I would wake the dead. Or at least,
your mother.”
She smiled to herself and seemed pleased. But she didn’t look
up, and her eyebrows knit themselves together again. Still
staring at her lap she said, “My body just kinda pushed me
outa the way, and swallowed it.” She paused, again, and
looked into herself and her face was tense and serious. After a
few moments she said, again without looking at me, as if she
were talking to herself and I just happened to be there,
eavesdropping, “You only get a few babies, two or three. Oh
sure, Niggers and Mexicans and those, like people, they get
hundreds of babies. But we,” and she looked up at me for the
first time, “we get only a few. Everyone knows that.” Her eyes
looked for confirmation and there was a hopeful look on her
face.
“Who?”
I said, “OK.”
I turned to her and whispered into her ear, “If she was 18, I
would take her to Nevada and marry her.”
She was staring into her lap and I didn’t see her tears at first. I
heard Lyle’s voice coming through the window, from behind my
head, “Did he satisfy you?”
Her voice rose from the silence and a polite “Yes” wavered in
the air.
I looked up at him and he was smiling and looking into himself.
He said, unseeing, “I was beginning to worry about you,
Bradford.”
“Like Margaret. You couldn’t come for two months with that
bitch, and she made your finger sore, fingerfucking her so
much.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
I got out of the car. She said the numbers slowly. Lyle said, “I’ll
meet you down at Mel’s.”
“OK.”
“They can send you away for a long time for fucking 13 year
olds, Lyle. That wasn’t very smart either.”
“I fuck an underage girl every night, man. If ten was gonna get
me twenty I’d be in jail until the year 2020.”
He put his hand on his gun. He said, “Fuck Luisa. What she
don’t know won’t hurt her.”
“Valerie?”
He looked puzzled.
“That was nine years ago. I can’t remember what she looked
like.”
I said, “You set me up, didn’t you? She wanted to get pregnant
and you thought I would make a good stud.”
“And if she finds I’m Rhonda Bradford’s son, what do you think
will happen?”
“Would you please take your hand off that goddamned gun?
We aren’t kids anymore.”
He moved his hand back to the counter top again. “The only
thing women need us for is to fuck em, and to make babies.”
He looked out the window into the darkness again.