I looked at the man for a couple of minutes before I realised it was Rob.
I leaned back on my stool and held up my arm. Rob weaved through the crowd and pushed into the bar beside me. “Large scotch when you’re ready,” he called to the barman.
Rob turned to face me and I saw nothing but darkness, dead eyes. He stepped back from the bar and pulled aside his jacket. Stuffed into the waistband of his jeans was a large black pistol.
“You remember that confession?” he asked, the words spilling out of his mouth.
I nodded slowly, unsure of what was happening.
“I meant every word of it.” His face looked as cold as marble, as if rigor had set in. He swirled the whisky around in his glass. “Every single word.”
I looked at him closely. “You remember Claire Wish?” I said, hesitant.
“Right after this drink...” He threw back the scotch and slammed the glass on the bar, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He pushed himself away from the bar and made to leave. “Claire Wish? Sure I remember her. What about her?”
I heard my heart beat deep inside my chest, once, twice...
“Oh nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”
Martha Grace
Stella Duffy
Martha Grace is what in the old days would have been termed a ‘fine figure of a woman’. Martha Grace is big-boned and strong. Martha Grace could cross a city, climb a mountain range, swim an ocean — and still not break into a sweat. She has wide thighs and heavy breasts and child-bearing hips, though in her fifty-eight years there has been no call for labour-easing width. Martha Grace has a low-slung belly, gently downed, soft as clean brushed cotton. Martha Grace lives alone and grows herbs and flowers and strange foreign vegetables in her marked-out garden. She plants by the light of the full moon. When she walks down the street people move out of her way, children giggle behind nervous hands, adults cast sidelong glances and wonder. When she leaves a room, people whisper ‘dyke’ and ‘witch’, though Martha Grace is neither. Martha Grace loves alone, pleasuring her own sweetly rolling flesh, clean oiled skin soft beneath her wide mouth. Martha Grace could do with getting out more.
Tim Culver is sixteen. He is big for his age and loved. Football star, athlete, and clever too. Tim Culver could have his pick of any girl in the class. And several of their mothers. One or two of their older brothers. If he was that way inclined. Which he isn’t. Certainly not. Tim Culver isn’t that kind of boy. Tim Culver is just too clean. And good. And right. And ripe. Good enough for girls, too clean for boys. Tim Culver, for a bet, turns up at Martha Grace’s house on a quiet Saturday afternoon, friends giggling round the corner, wide smirk on his handsome not-yet-grown face. He offers himself as an odd-job man. And then comes back to her house almost every weekend for the next three years. He says it is to help her out. She’s a single woman, she’s not that bad, a bit strange maybe, but no worse than his Grandma in the years before she died. And she’s not that old really. Or that fat. Just big. Different to the women he’s used to. She talks to him differently. And anyway, Martha Grace pays well. In two hours at her house he can earn twice what he’d make mowing the lawn for his father, painting houses with his big brother. She doesn’t know he’s using her, thinks she’s paying him the going rate. God knows she never talks to anyone to compare it. It’s fine, he knows what he’s doing, Tim Culver is in charge, takes no jokes at his own expense. And after a few false starts, failed attempts at schoolboy mockery, the laughing stops, the other kids wish they’d thought to try the mad old bitch for some cash. Tim Culver earns more than any of them, in half the time. But then, he always has been the golden boy.
For Tim, this was meant to be just a one-off. Visit the crazy fat lady, prove his courage to his friends, and then leave, laughing in her face. He does leave laughing. And comes back hungry the next day, wanting more. It takes no time at all to become routine. The knock at the door, the boy standing there, insolent smile and ready cock, hands held out to offer, “Got any jobs that need doing?”
And Martha did find him work. That first day. No matter how greedy his grin, how firm his young flesh, what else she could see waiting on her doorstep that young Tim Culver couldn’t even guess at. Mow the lawn. Clean out the pond. Mend the broken fence. Then maybe she thought he should come inside, clean up, rest a while, as she fixed him a drink, found her purse, offered a fresh clean note. And herself.
At first, Tim Culver wasn’t sure he understood her correctly.
“So Tim, have you had sex yet?”
Why would the fat woman be asking him that? What did she know about sex? And did she mean ever as in today, or ever as in ever? Tim Culver blustered, he didn’t know how to answer her, of course he’d had sex. The first in his class, and — so the girls said — the best. Tim Culver was not just a shag-merchant like the rest of them. He might fuck a different girl from one Saturday to the next, but he prides himself on knowing a bit about what he’s doing. Every girl remembered Tim Culver. Martha Grace remembered Tim Culver. She’d been watching him. That was the thing about being the mad lady, fat lady, crazy old woman. They watched her all the time, laughed at her. They didn’t notice that she was also watching them.
Tim Culver says yes, he has had sex. Of course he’s had sex. What does she think he is? Does she think he’s a poof? Mad old dyke, what the fuck does she think he is?
Martha Grace explains that she doesn’t yet know what he is. That’s why he’s here. That’s why she asked him into her house. So she could find out. Tim Culver knows a challenge when it’s thrown his way.
When Tim Culver and Martha Grace fuck, it is like no other time with any other woman. Tim Culver has fucked other women, other girls, plenty of them. He is a local hero after all. Not for him all talk and no action. When Tim Culver says he has been there, done that, you know he really means it. But with Martha Grace it is different. For a start there is not fucker and fuckee. And she does talk to him, encourages him, welcomes him, incites him. Martha Grace makes Tim Culver more of the man he would have himself be. Laid out against her undulating flesh, Tim Culver’s young toned body is hero-strong, he is capable of any feat of daring, the gentlest acts of kindness. Tim Culver and Martha Grace are making love. Tim Culver drops deep into her soft skin and wide body and is more than happy to lose himself there, give himself away.
Before he leaves, she feeds him. Fresh bread she baked that morning, kneading the dough beneath her fat hands as she kneaded his flesh just minutes ago. She spreads thick yellow butter on the soft bread and layers creamy honey on top, sweet from her hands to his mouth. Then back to her mouth as they kiss and she wipes the crumbs from his shirt front. She is tidier than he is, does not like to see him make a mess. Would not normally bear the thought of breadcrumbs on her pristine floor. But that Tim Culver is delicious, and the moisture in her mouth at the sight of him drives away thoughts of sweeping and scrubbing and cleaning. At least until he is gone, at least until she is alone again. For now, Martha Grace is all abandon. Fresh and warm in a sluttish kitchen. After another half hour in the heat by the stove, Tim Culver has to go. His friends will wonder what has happened to him. His mother will be expecting him in for dinner. He has to shower, get dressed again, go out. He has young people to meet and a pretty redhead to pick up at eight thirty. Tim Culver leaves with a crisp twenty in his pocket and fingers the note, volunteering to come back next Saturday. Martha Grace thinks, stares at the boy, half smiles with a slow incline of her head, she imagines there will be some task for him to do. Two p.m. Sharp. Don’t be late. Tim Culver nods, he doesn’t usually take orders. But then, this feels more like an offer. One his aching body won’t let him refuse.