In all fairness, Byron was a star. And he toted around just an immense penis. By chance, I’d booked Sledge Hammer for the job, that gentle muscleman, and Domeniko, too. In a flash, I realized that I’d inadvertently managed to load the plate with the three hugest cocks in my bullpen, guys with penises that didn’t even connote penises, but instead appeared to be veiny, sovereign organisms that God had gremlinized and stuck on men’s bodies. When a man stopped to consider those wangs, alongside the mammoth, swelling, saline-filled fake breasts of the day, well, it gave him pause. Perhaps we were on the edge of some genetic engineering final frontier here. I wanted my grant money.
I was in a bad humor when “Alice” emerged from the bathroom, freshly douched, flushed with rouge and pancake, and it only got worse when I surveyed her more carefully. The fantasy of her body was nothing I cared very much to swim into. The performers, though, gathered around her like predictable, ravenous barracuda, swarming the day’s meal. I watched them, my body slack. The man with the movie camera.
Because I couldn’t bring myself to imagine a scenario, I instructed Sledge to come up with some magic.
Let’s pretend she’s hitchhiking,” said the man-child. Breathlessly, he looked to me, hopeful.
“Solid idea, Sledge,” I said gently. I sent him to go get the keys to Pitts’s Viper.
Alice stood out on the Malibu lawn before us. It wasn’t the warmest day on record. Her hairy blond arms squeezed around her middle and she chewed her lip, nervous.
“Look,” I said, “if anything feels slightly off to you, let me know.” I checked my camera’s lens for dried flecks of ejaculate, and spying one, I spit on the corner of my shirt and attempted to wipe it away. “I’m gonna have to go for a few gapes, but we’ll try to make sure it’s as painless for you as possible.”
Alice just smiled at me.
“Not my idea, you understand—it’s my boss’s. As far as I can see, he’s bowing to the pressures of the marketplace. But I kinda have to fall in line, if I want to preserve my own job. Do you understand?”
She grinned good-naturedly and nodded hesitantly. Alice had a nice smile, I had to admit it.
“You know,” I said, walking more closely to her, “you’re okay. This won’t be so terrible. Listen, I’m sorry if I’m in a bad mood today. You have to understand, I do this all the time. I’m probably approaching some kind of overload, like that pinball machine, right? ‘Tilt.’” I shook my head, frazzled, yet amused in spite of myself. “Seriously, if we start to get on your nerves, do tell me. ‘Hey, white girl,’ that sort of thing. I get annoyed with that crap myself, I’ll be honest. It’s childish, don't you think?
“Yase?” said Alice. She shook her head helplessly and hugged her arms into her belly. “But, okay, can you talk more slow? My English, not so good.”
I stared at her for a few seconds despondently. “You hang in there, kiddo.”
Sledge drove the Viper around the bend in the driveway, careful as could be.
“Hey baby.” He opened the window and attempted a leer, but it was like a first grader leering at his mom; he could not pull this off. “Need a ride?”
“Oh, yase,” responded Alice. And that was our scenario. I dragged out an expensive rug from the living room of the house, and we stripped the miniskirt off Alice and she lay down quietly to take the hits from Byron Long, to suck on Sledge while she was at it. I fiddled around with my camera, my finger on the tele-zoom. I rubbed my elbow against the side of my body, and their bodies went murky before me, as I wished myself somewhere else, someone else. A catcher in a big, quiet ballpark. An astronaut who loved roasted chicken. A chiropractor with a forgotten parking space.
They knocked her deeper into the earth. Domeniko caressed her lumpenproletariat breasts with nicotine-stained fingers. He bent his head to one Slavic nipple and, pursing his lips, he began to nurse. I saw bugs over in the grass jumping: little tiny guys. Byron Long was wearing Tevas and socks. The muscles of his calf twitched. Rag Man snuffled up behind me, lovin’ this job. I backed away and tried to see everything. But I saw too much. I saw Liz answering phones over at DK’s, rolling her pen restlessly on her desk. I saw Luiz’s wife huddled over a sink in their little house, making a cup of weak tea. I saw my dad talking to a patient resting on the cushions of his couch, while another one sat in the waiting room, trolling through a New Yorker for the cartoons. Alice got lifted up into the doggy-style position, her butt high, and the guys all lined up to take a turn. I trudged up near to them. Sledge snuck up behind her and pumped his large hips powerfully. Alice’s eyes went big. Breath escaped out from her mouth and she tried to say something, but her tiny voice was swallowed up in the schoolyard chatter. Go white girl go white girl go! Byron giggled. He did a little dance. Fuckin’ fine-ass white girl. Nobody told you to be that fuckin’ fine. Sledge laughed. He got tapped out by Niko. I’m gonna get up in this motherfucker like a mechanic, Niko said. My foot was falling asleep, so I knocked it against the ground a couple of times.
Niko got kicked out by Byron. She got one of those asses that don’t even move. The late afternoon sun was warming my skin; it felt good on my arms and legs. Don’t rush shit, just give me your best shit. Alice was still trying to say something, but no words came out of her working mouth. Sledge nudged Byron to the side, my turn please huh huh. Alice waved one hand weakly up at the air, and then the top of her head bashed against the ground and then her cheek was against it. Sledge reared back and slammed his hips forward into her like a battering ram. He performed this motion over and over: a power lifter in action. The world’s strongest man.
And then Alice crumpled. She pulled her ruined womb away from Sledge Hammer.
“I cannot... I cannot. . .,” she gasped.
Sledge gazed down at himself remorsefully. “I. . . guess I fucked her a little bit too hard.” .
I watched Alice doubled over with pain for a moment, then turned my camera off. Slowly, I tiptoed over to inspect her, along with the rest of the guys. We huddled around her keeled-over body, trying to figure out the next move.
“Hey, sweetheart, are you okay?” Byron asked, in a concerned tone. “Is she breathing?”
“Alice? You breathing? She doesn’t really speak English,” I explained. '
“Maybe we should think about getting her to a hospital,” Rag Man said.
“I am fine,” Alice said from the ground, grimacing. “I don’t. . . go to hospital.”
We watched as she staggered to her feet. Alice bit her lip, woozy from the effort, then immediately pitched back down on her bottom.
“Let me get you a water,” Rag Man stammered.
“We have one right over here,” Byron said.
We all tripped over ourselves to offer her a water. Sledge reached the bottles first. His outstandingly huge penis, still inflated to maximum capacity, rocketed from the center of his crotch at a rude 45-degree angle, bobbing up and down. “Here,” he said softly, handing the plastic bottle to the woman who sat crumpled in a heap on the carpet before him. “This is water.”
As Alice sipped from the bottle, Rag Man and I retreated a few steps to hide behind the Viper and talk business.
“Ya think we better quit?” Rag Man asked.
“She does look kind of broken,” I admitted.
“Sledge is a huge man,” Rag Man noted. “Big ol’ wang.”
“Yeah. Preternaturally stiff, too. They’re all big guys. She was taking punishment in there. Something got totaled.”
Rag Man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We can’t let her go on. ’Course, at the same time, I don’t see how we can really stop here. We only got like ten minutes in the can. No gapes or nothin’.”