"And you don't even know who you're talking to," Aural said. "I ain't one of them starry-eyed little things who comes up to you after a show, her little mind all whirly with the thought of sin, 'Oh, save me, Reverend Tommy, save me,' and you slip 'em salvation standing up against the back of the trailer."
"You ain't, huh? The way I heard it, you been boasting about how you can wear a man out."
"I told Rae that in private," she said, her face suddenly hot with betrayal.
"And that's how she told me," he said. "In private."
Tommy read the emotions on her face and realized he had found a weakness.
"She oughtn't a done you like that," he continued.
"That was a mean thing to do. You didn't deserve that."
"I guess I'll survive it."
"You could get right back at her, you know."
"With you?"
"No better revenge, honey. And I promise you, I know a whole lot more than that teenager with the funny hair.
I can please you good and at the same time you'll be having your revenge."
Aural smiled. For just a second it seemed almost inviting. She looked into his face, where the eyebrow rode across his forehead like a fuzzy black caterpillar. When he squinted his eyes with his seductive look, the caterpillar appeared to crawl.
She wasn't that hard-up, Aural thought, not nearly that hard-up. But the fact that she'd even considered it indicated that she had better find herself a man, quick, while she still was calm enough to do the choosing herself. If it turned out that the man picked you, God knows what you'd end up with.
Tommy put a hand on her cheek. His palm was already sweaty.
"Come on, sweet thing," he said, his voice husky again. "You know you want it."
"But what do I want?" Aural asked, still smiling sweetly.
"Well, suppose we experiment till we get it right?"
Tommy put his other hand on her breast and watched her eyelids quiver.
He knew it. Some of them just had to say no first, that was all. There was nothing like persistence, it beat charm all to hell.
She put one of her hands atop his hand that was on her breast and he felt her fingers delicately intertwining with his own. Her other hand slid down to his zipper and Tommy smiled as she pulled it slowly open.
He liked the languid approach, nothing hurried, she knew what she was doing. He tried to knead her breast but she held that hand firmly so he just relaxed as he felt her fingers groping into his pants. If she wanted to do all the work, that was fine with him.
Her fingers snaked into his shorts and tickled his scrotum. They slipped smoothly around his testicles and squeezed.
Tommy moaned with pleasure.
"Oh, yeah," he said, his eyes closed.
She squeezed. And squeezed. And squeezed.
"Hey." His eyes shot open to see her smiling up at him.
Tommy tried to pull her hand away, but she held on firmly and the pain was worse. Her other hand still gripped his fingers and would not release him. He had no leverage and nothing to work with. Meanwhile, she just kept squeezing harder.
"You're hurting me!"
"Well, sure," she said matter-of-factly. "Funny how something can feel so nice, and then so bad, ain't it? Just too much of a good thing sometimes."
"You're breaking my balls!"
"You can heal them, sugar," she said. She was still smiling. That was the oddest thing to the Reverend Tommy, that she just kept smiling, not maliciously, but with the suggestion of real pleasure.
When he thought sure he'd end up a eunuch if she didn't stop, he hit her.
She reeled back, shaking her head from the force of the blow that had struck her on the forehead. But she released his balls. Tommy cradled his crotch with both hands, keeping an eye on Aural all the time as if he expected her to grab at him again.
But she didn't look aggressive anymore. She didn't look particularly injured, either. What she looked more than anything was gratified. As if she had known all along that he was going to hit her, had expected it, and was glad that he had finally gotten around to it.
The manager told him to wait a minute and Cooper moved off to one side of the counter, eyeing the customers as they got their hamburgers and chicken bits and french fries. Cooper didn't like most of them, he didn't like what he saw in their faces when they glanced at him then looked hurriedly away as if they had just seen something that polite people didn't stare at. He preferred the open gawking of the little kids, the ones too young to care about manners. They usually got their arms jerked for looking at him too long, and sometimes their parents would kneel down beside them and explain things in urgent but instructive tones. Cooper wanted to squash those parents, wanted to step on them right where they knelt and jump up and down.
The manager was a shifty-eyed bastard himself. Cooper had told him he wanted a job and was not afraid of hard work, just the way he had been coached in the class on readjustment to society that they gave in Springville. He had been polite, said please, called the man sir even though he was a scrawny bastard that Cooper could have snapped into pieces with one hand. He had been told to wait and he was waiting but that didn't mean he wasn't aware of what the manager was up to. Cooper saw him say something to one of the employees in the back of the kitchen, saw the employee laugh. How some pimple-faced kid wearing a paper hat thought he could afford to laugh at Cooper was a mystery the big man would like to solve by squeezing pimple-face's head until it popped open.
After making Cooper stand there long enough to show that he was the boss, the manager returned with an application form.
"Just fill this out," the manager said, offering Cooper a pen.
Cooper stared blankly at the paper.
"It's just a formality," the man said. "We can always use someone who's willing to work."
"I'm willing to work," Cooper said. He held the paper back to the man as if the transaction had been completed.:'You still have to fill it out," the manager said.
'I can do dishes," Cooper said.
"Good."
Cooper looked into the open kitchen, seeking the dishwasher or the sink.
"We use mostly disposable dinnerware here," the manager said.
Cooper wondered what he was talking about: dinnerware. Cooper knew how to do dishes, he had been trained to do that in Huntsville, he knew how to work the machines.
"Why don't you just fill it out and return it to me when you're finished. No hurry, take your time."
The manager walked away and Cooper sat at one of the plastic tables, his big legs folding uncomfortably under the surface. He saw the place to put his name and printed it there in block letters. A few more of the questions were easy enough, but some of the rest of them confused him.
They had taught him at Springville how to fill out a form like this but he had forgotten some of it.
He wished that his punk were there. The punk could read like nobody's business.
A male employee swabbed at the table in front of Cooper's with a sponge.
Cooper wrinkled his nose at the scent of the astringent cleanser. He growled menacingly; it was hard enough to concentrate without somebody sticking ammonia in his nose. Cooper glowered at the employee. The man heard the sound and turned to look.
He had the big eyes and swollen head of Down's Syndrome, and his face was wreathed with a beatific smile.
"Hi," the man said sweetly.
Startled by the sweetness, Cooper said "hi" in return, then studied the application form again. A fucking retard could get a job here, Cooper thought. Did they have to fill out a form, too? They couldn't keep him from having a job now, there was no way they could deny him, he could work rings around that guy.
He glanced at the worker again and the man was still smiling, his eyes so happy he looked as if he and Cooper were long-lost friends. I don't know you, Cooper thought.