What he couldn’t figure out was why it was going to happen the very night before Angela came back. If Violet said she wanted to fuck him, he didn’t know if he’d say yes or no because of Angela, and it was on the order of a quiz show and it worried him that maybe he wouldn’t have the right answer.
“What are we going to talk about?” he asked.
She leaned forward and said: “You and me.” She finished her drink in a gulp. “For instance, what do we have in common?”
“I don’t know you.” Pohl tried to make it sound casual.
“You don’t have to know me to know what I want.”
“What have you got in mind?”
“Plenty.” She stared at him, uncrossed her legs and opened them to give him a view.
Pohl nearly choked on his drink.
“Usually I talk about money at this point, but I’m tired of it,” she said. “Come here, on your knees.”
Pohl didn’t get what she meant about money but he followed instructions and crawled toward her until his head was between her legs.
“Lick me.”
She took a handful of his hair and pulled his mouth against the crotch of her panties and he stuck his tongue out and got them wet and then pulled at the material with his teeth. After a minute he felt a couple of fingers against his upper lip trying to get past his mouth and when they did get where they were going they pulled the piece of fabric aside and he had access to where he wanted to go.
When he came up for air, his eyes focused on the soft skin between her legs and he saw the glistening wetness of where he’d been and a scar that was a blemish on her inner thigh. He touched it with his index finger, then slipped two fingers inside her, spread the fingers and moved them rapidly in and out while the heel of his other hand pressed down on her lower belly.
A transparent liquid came out of her, a low sound came from the back of her throat, and he moved his hand faster until his wrist was soaked.
Violet looked at him through crossed eyes and when they uncrossed and she saw him clearly she was looking at a cracked smile on his face that made him look like he was high as a kite. Pohl sat back on his folded legs. He wore a grin and at the corners of it there was plenty of saliva.
“This gets very interesting,” she said.
Pohl wiped his mouth, smiled amiably, aiming the smile at the very wet place between her legs, then bringing it up along her flat belly and crumpled skirt and sending the smile past the short-sleeved sweater, driving it farther on and finally parking it on her full lips. Her green eyes burnt a hole in his forehead and he started to sweat.
[ 74 ]
Fitch wasn’t used to going to 4 Nightingale Lane in daylight. He wasn’t used to doing much in daylight because he was either asleep or planning another job at the earliest in the late afternoon, and now he felt as if everyone was watching him as he drove past them on a busy street. But he shrugged it off, he was tired, and gave himself a smile and his eyes shimmered. He was almost through with trying to figure out and fend off Angela Mason. He switched on the radio.
The afternoon sun shone yellowish-orange across the hood of the car. He looked through the windshield at the passing shops, a nursery of plants and trees and a gas station on his left, went through the green light, and then suddenly the smile faded from his face as he rubbed a thumbnail lightly across his underlip.
What’ll I do when I’ve finished the thing I’ve been doing every night with Angela? But there were a lot of messages on his answering machine and he told himself that he had plenty of things to do with a dozen calls and more clients than that waiting for him to come around out of this job and make himself available for the next one. You get what I’m saying? There isn’t anything to worry about so quit worrying.
His eyes were on the road but he wasn’t concentrating and a truck with a tarp tied down over the bed cut in front of him and he swerved and leaned hard on the horn. The truck turned right at the next intersection.
“Fuck,” he said with his head inclined and his eyes narrowed. Without sound he said, You sure that’s what you figure on doing?
But he didn’t have an answer because he was busy looking for the turn onto Hartrey and when he found it he took the turn and continued to the end of Hartrey and made a left, following the drive a short distance until he got to Delaplaine Road, then turned right and went straight to Lavergne Terrace. He pulled over to the curb in front of the garden at the center of Lavergne Terrace, shut off the engine. Fitch was two blocks away from the small, four-room house at 4 Nightingale Lane in Pigsville.
The sun was going down slowly. He sat behind the wheel contemplating the change of light, then reached over to the glove compartment and removed a special sack that kept its contents cold. He took a narrow, rectangular box out of the sack that held his personal set of chloral hydrate suppositories, individually sealed in a foil jacket, shaped like bullets. He’d put them in the box with its padded cradles before he left his apartment. Each suppository of the brand Aquachloral was 650mg. The right dose would take effect in about half an hour, which meant giving her two of them, inducing sleep in less than an hour. Their melting point was 135°F. He snapped the case shut and reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette.
He thought of the moment he would put them inside Angela and smiled because he was an ordinary man and it was a real pleasure to see himself spreading the cheeks of her ass. He knew the instructions by heart:
If the suppository is too soft to insert, chill it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or run cold water over it before removing the foil wrapper.
To insert suppository — First remove the foil wrapper and moisten the suppository with cold water. Lie down on your left side and raise your right knee to your chest. (A left-handed person should lie on the right side and raise the left knee.) Using your finger, insert the suppository into the rectum, about ½ to 1 inch in infants and children and 1 inch in adults. Hold it in place for a few moments.
Stand up after about 15 minutes. Wash your hands thoroughly and resume your normal activities.
For rectal dosage form (suppositories):
For trouble in sleeping: Adults — 500 to 1000 mg at bedtime.
Fitch put the box in the side pocket of his jacket, got out of the car and locked the door. He walked toward Nightingale Lane without a hardcover notebook, smoking and avoiding garbage strewn along the sidewalk and listening to the birds singing in the overhanging branches of trees. He came to the four-room wooden house at 4 Nightingale Lane and went around to the back and let himself in.
Angela wasn’t expecting him. She didn’t know whether or not it was daylight but she had developed an internal clock that told her Fitch was a lot earlier than usual. He took off her blindfold and untied her arms and legs and she rubbed the irritated places where the rope had rubbed against her skin. She was barefoot and there were red marks around her ankles. Fitch tossed his cigarette in the toilet, flushed it down.
“We’re finished,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I knew that already.”
“I’m going to give you something to put you out,” he said. “Then I’ll take you home.”
“You’ll get paid. I’ll give you cash.”
“It’s not the money I’m worried about. I know you’re good for it. But I want to talk to you about life after therapy.” He emphasized the last words with a bit too much sarcasm to make her understand that he was worn out by the whole thing and had something else on his mind.
“What kind of crack is that?”
“Listen, I don’t want you to tell anybody about what we’ve been doing.” He was staring at her and feeling uneasy and not knowing why. “You got it?”