'You play too hard too. I see it on your face.'
Aris wrote his room number on the check. She noticed the sun line on his ring finger as he scratched out his signature. At his age, he probably had a child as well. She guessed he had been married for seven years or so. 'Seven Year Ache.' She loved that song.
'Something funny?' said Aris.
'Was I smiling? I guess I'm happy, is what it is.'
'So,' said Aris, 'you gonna make me beg you for your name?'
'Rachel Lopez,' she said. 'I'm a mutt, just like you.'
'Rachel, like in the Old Testament.'
'My mother was Jewish.'
'But Lopez isn't Jewish. Your father was what?'
'Latino, born in west Texas.'
'Your folks still around?'
'Deceased.'
'Sorry.'
Both had passed within months of each other. If there was a blessing, it was that her father had gone first. He could not have handled seeing her mother, a husk of bones and loose gray flesh, in her last days.
'So you're half Jewish and half Spanish,' said Aris.
'Latina.'
Aris smiled rakishly. 'Which half is Latina?'
Rachel dragged on her cigarette. 'You stop acting so fresh, you'll find out.'
'Okay,' said Aris, squaring his shoulders, cocky, knowing he was in. 'But listen, I need to use the head.'
'Pass the front desk and go down the stairs.'
'Don't go anywhere,' said Aris, pointing at her before getting off his stool.
Don't tell me what to do. I'm in charge, not you.
Rachel killed her drink and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She walked through the bar and out into the circular lobby, nodding and smiling at the two Middle Easterners behind the reception desk, and went down a stairway to the carpeted lower level. It was empty of people and, as in all the times she'd been here, virtually soundless. She passed by the women's bathroom, pushed on the door of the men's bathroom, and stepped inside.
Aris was facing the urinal, shaking himself off. He glanced over his shoulder as he heard her heels slapping on the tiled floor. His face pinkened with embarrassment. Also, he looked scared.
'What, you lost?'
'Ladies' bathroom's too crowded,' she said, walking quickly toward him.
'No it isn't.' He chuckled nervously. 'It's quiet as a church down here.'
Rachel came to him and pressed her breasts against his back and kissed him behind his ear. She reached around him, pushed his arm away, and wrapped her hand around his meat. It was warm and thick and already hard. She ran her thumb and forefinger down his shaft like she was squeezing toothpaste from a tube, and it grew harder still.
'Holy… shit.'
'Shut up,' she said very softly.
She stroked him and talked to him. His breath got short. Her touch was expert, and he came with a shudder and voluminously against the porcelain.
'Now you're ready,' she said.
Docile and relaxed.
Up in his room, he offered her a drink from the minibar. She refused. She found the local country station on the clock radio while Aris took off his shoes as she had instructed him to do. The station was playing George Strait. She went to Aris, standing motionless as a statue in his socks, still off-balance from her bold act in the restroom, and further undressed him. She took off his button-down and pulled his T-shirt over his head as a mother would her little boy's, then unzipped his pants and eased him back onto the edge of the bed so that she could pull the pants free. He was there on his elbows, watching her as she unhooked her skirt and unbuttoned her blouse and let both drop to the floor. She came to him in her bra and thong, and she pulled his boxers off and leaned in and kissed him deep.
As her tongue slid over his, she took his hand and guided it inside the cup of her bra. He found her nipple, and as it began to swell she put her hand over his fingers and squeezed.
'Like that, Aris,' she said.
He moved back to the pillows, in a heap at the headboard, and she followed him on all fours. She let him remove her panties and she let him stroke her. He tried to turn her over, but she would not allow it. She took his bull cock and rubbed its helmet on her thighs and clit and then between her breasts and full on her breasts until she was wet. She straddled him, impaled herself upon him, and fucked him, her hips jacked and moving fluidly. She listened to the music from the radio, thinking of the raw sensation, remembering her father and how he sang Tejano and Texas country in their house when she was a child, and her mother in her blue print dress and how she hummed along. The blood welled up inside her and rushed forward. It felt like childhood, uncluttered, when they were all under one roof, alive. She could bring them back like this, only like this, when she was in control.
Rachel's body stiffened; she came furiously, saliva dripping from her open mouth.
She washed herself in the bathroom. When she returned, the man from Saint Joseph, Michigan, was asleep on his stomach and snoring into the sheets. Rachel got dressed.
CHAPTER 14
'You want another?' said Joe Carver, reaching for the small red cooler at his feet.
'Sure,' said Lorenzo Brown. 'Long as you're buyin'.'
Joe withdrew two Miller Genuines from the cooler and handed one to Lorenzo. Lorenzo ran his hand over the bottle to remove the water and bits of ice. He and Joe hand-turned the caps, tapped bottles, and drank. Both had worked full days in the summer heat. The beer was cold and went down straight.
The porch was unlit and absent of moonlight beneath the cover of its roof. Joe and Lorenzo sat on cushioned chairs that faced the street, Joe's feet up on the rail. Jasmine lay on her belly, also watching the street, blinking her eyes slowly, her snout hanging over the porch's first step.
Joe liked to sit out here most nights, from spring well into the autumn. He had fallen before Lorenzo and done longer time. Ten years in Kentucky after his third conviction, a federal rap. He had refused to testify against Nigel or anyone else, and suspected that because he'd stood tall, he had been penalized with a harsher sentence. It was a story as old as history: The soldiers fell on their swords and the kings survived.
In prison, Joe hadn't boasted on plans or unattainable goals like some of the talkers he knew. He had dreamed of getting a job, breathing fresh air, and, when the workday was done, finding a comfortable place to sit where there were no walls. Now he was doing just that.
'So you gonna date this woman?' said Joe. He meant Rayne. Lorenzo had described her and their encounter.
'I don't know about date,' said Lorenzo. 'I plan to do something with her and her little girl, like a daytime thing. See how we all get along.'
'She know about you?'
'Yeah. She fine with it. Least she claims to be.'
'Be careful.'
'She don't look all that dangerous to me.'
'I'm sayin', you got your own little girl to think of.'
'Shay doin' fine,' said Lorenzo. 'I saw her this evening. Her mama wouldn't let me talk to her or nothin' like that, but she looked great. Happy. Looks like Sherelle got herself a good man this time.'
'You met him?'
'In a way. He seems all right.'
'My boy's got a man looking after him too. He stay in the same place with my boy's mama. He ain't the father, but… long as they loved, right?'
'Yeah.'
'You and me, we fucked up. But that don't mean our kids got to be fucked up because of it.'
'For real.'
Joe looked out at the night, picturing his son. 'Whole lot of ways to make a family.'
They drank some more and listened to the crickets, the dogs barking in the alleys, and the swish of tires on asphalt from down on Georgia Avenue. The sounds were familiar and comforting. Jasmine sighed and closed her eyes.
'Your truck running all right?' said Lorenzo, looking at it, a '95 Ford, the pre-jelly bean body style, parked under a street lamp.