Burial

Nathan tried to laugh, and Bob grinned, resting his big jaw on the headrest.

'So why don't you go ahead and finish what you started ?'

Elise slapped at him again. 'What are you like'

Bob met her eyes and held them.

'If it was possible, I'd go for a walk. But the lane is dark and cold and, I have to say, a bit creepy. And even if I were to go out there, you'd be so tense about me coming back at the wrong time, you wouldn't relax. But you might never see each other again. It seems such a shame. So listen. I'll sit back and close my eyes and I'll turn up the music. And you two can . . . you know.'

She laughed again, loud in the darkness, and said, 'You're sick.'

Elise looked at Nathan. Then she looked at Bob.

'You'd watch!

'I'll try not to.'

'You'll listen!

'Then keep the noise down.'

"I can't.

'Can't? Or won't? Are you having bourgeois reservations?'

She went to speak, but then she guffawed and slapped Bob's shoulder again. She turned to Nathan. 'Do you want to?'

'Do you ?'

'Doyou? Do you have a problem with it?'

'With what?'

'With Bob. Being here.'

'No.'

Suddenly nobody was smiling.

Elise took off her T-shirt.

'Bob, you're looking.'

'I'll stop in a moment.'

'You'd better.'

Nathan leaned forward. Her tongue was slower this time. She seemed very aroused. He knew it was the booze and cocaine and the evening's sense of adventure. She tasted of wine and cigarettes. Her hand tugged at his shirt, found flesh. He kissed her long neck. He struggled from his jacket. She kissed his throat, his chest, helped him from his shirt. In his rush, he lost a couple of buttons. She fumbled at his fly. His cock, when she freed it, was springy as a cosh but cold to the core. She popped it into her mouth. The warmth was so abrupt that he jerked back, as if about to fall. Then he forced himself away from her and fumbled with her skirt. She lifted her arse to help him, wriggling at the waist, and when she muttered 'Bob, you're still watching' there was no real protest left in it.

Nathan was transfixed by the imprint of elastic in her bare flesh, and the shadow cast by her sharp hips, by the movement of her small, white breasts as she prepared herself for him. She bit his shoulder when he entered, and gasped. She pressed her feet, still in Adidas trainers, against the back of the front passenger seat. She was so warm. She wrapped her ankles around him and murmured something in his ear, he didn't know what. Her eyes were open.

It didn't last long. When Nathan tensed in orgasm, teeth gritted and neck corded, she hissed a single word through her teeth.

Bob's gaze, solemn and amused, was heavy on Nathan's back as Elise eased him from inside her. Nathan flopped, gasping, on the seat next to her. He was naked from the waist up and his trousers were gathered round his ankles. He was beginning to detumesce. Naked except for her Adidas, Elise sat laughing and gasping. Beads of Nathan's jism glinted on her pubic hair.

She said 'Oh, God' and brushed at her naked thighs as if they itched.

She and Nathan made eye contact. She squeezed his softening dick with affectionate good humour.

He said, 'I know. I'm sorry. Give me a minute.'

'But first -- more drugs, I think.'

'But what about Bob?' said Bob.

Elise leaned forward and slapped his shoulder again.

'Don't be such an old perv.'

'But I'm very aroused.'

'Bob,' she said.

On her knees, leaning on the front seats, she brushed back her fringe.

'Look, I like you. I really do. But I can't.'

'Can't? Won't?'

'Don't!

'Aha. Don't. Don't implies that class values are struggling with more basic desires. Did you come, just now?'

Elise laughed at Bob's audacity.

'No.'

'Would you like to?'

Quick as a fish, Bob's hand darted between her legs. He slipped two fingers inside her. Elise flinched.

'You cheeky bastard.'

She said it three times. Each time it sounded more like a compliment.

She moved her narrow hips in a figure of eight.

Nathan met Bob's eye. Bob's eyes were blank.

'Nathan won't mind, will you, Nathan?'

Nathan was becoming aroused again. But he pulled up his trousers and said, 'Of course not.'

Bob said, 'Mate. I think we'd better swap places.'

Elise lay back in the seat.

'I'm going to regret this in the morning.'

'I promise you,' said Bob. 'You won't.'

Nathan gathered his clothes, his jacket and shirt. They were damp.

Big and intent, Bob began to climb on to the back seat. Nathan opened the door and edged out, his shirt and jacket bundled in his arms.

Elise reached out for him as he left. She grabbed his wrist and squeezed, as one might at the apex of a rollercoaster. He squeezed back, he hoped encouragingly, and let go.

There was a blast of cold, December air. Nathan hurried into his clothes. His hands fumbled at the buttons.

Inside the car, Elise said, 'Oh my God..'

The Volvo lurched on its springs.

Nathan decided to get in the front seat and watch. But first he needed to piss. He walked behind the car. It was difficult to piss in the freezing cold, especially with a growing erection -- and the noises she made, the grunts and yelps. It took a long time and when it came, the wind whipped at the pale stream and scattered it over the rear windscreen of the Volvo.

Accompanying the car's increasingly violent movement, he could hear muffled, profane voices. Elise's voice rising in pitch and urgency, calling alternately on God and Jesus. A kind of bitten-back scream.

Nathan wanted to make her scream like that. Bob's voice was lower and insistent. Nathan wondered what she looked like, locking her white legs around his broad back. He stopped pissing and zipped himself up, not without difficulty. He opened the front passenger door and got inside. It was warm, and musky like a bedroom, undercut with cigarettes and leather upholstery.

By then, the car must have stopped rocking on its springs. Because when Nathan slammed the door and turned in his seat, Elise was already dead.

Nathan never seen a dead person before, but he knew it immediately.

Something had left her - whatever it was that a few moments before had made this fresh cadaver a girl named Elise.

A flock of starlings erupted in Nathan's chest.

Bob was sitting on the back seat - shirt-tails askew, naked from the waist down. His horse's cock hung thick and wet and glinting. Elise lay naked and almost face down, her feet on his lap.

Nathan stared at her.

There was only the sound of Bob's breathing. Elise's feet twitched.

An old joke, filthy, rose unbidden and popped on the surface of Nathan's mind - Now you're fucked. He shook it away.

He said: 'What the fuck have you done?'

His voice was girlish, and hearing it -- hearing the rise of panic made him still more afraid.

Elise's Adidas quivered at Bob's thigh. Bob stared at it, then shoved her legs from his naked lap. She let out an extended exhalation, like a post-coital sigh.

Nathan's sphincter loosened.

Bob said, 'She cramped. Down there. You know. I couldn't. I couldn't get it out.'

Nathan vomited into his mouth. He threw open the passenger door and let the vomit slap on to the road. He hacked up for a long time.

Then he ran away.

He ran and ran. His arms pumped. He felt no friction or resistance.

His breath came in hot and cold rasps. There were only the slow-shifting trees to the side of him, twisted oak and silvery ash, the twinkling sky above him, the pounding of his feet, a white cloud of breath.

He slowed to a wavering jog and then to a halt. The exertion caught him and he vomited again. He stood holding his knees.