“Ace is high. Suits are spades high, then hearts, then diamonds and then clubs. Same as in bridge, but you bastards don’t play bridge. Cut the cards, dammit.”
Keegan wanted to cut first to determine the cutting order. Jimmy Joe told him to for Christ’s sake save the comedy for some other time. Flickinger, for once in his life, wasn’t reminded of a story. Lester looked as though they could tear down every Greyhound station and throw all the faggots on the fire and he wouldn’t mind for a minute. Solly cut the pack and got the seven of clubs and said something appropriate. Keegan cut the jack of diamonds. Jimmy Joe got the jack of clubs and insisted that put him ahead of Keegan. Keegan told him to piss off. Solly said diamonds were ahead of clubs. Jimmy Joe told Solly to piss off. Flickinger was sitting on a chair next to Cherry. He had one hand on her behind and was stroking up along the inside of her thigh with the other.
I was going to get an ace. I knew it. I could feel it, the way sometimes you can feel things.
Lester cut a nine, it doesn’t matter which suit. Flickinger was so busy with Cherry it was hard to get his attention, but finally he cut the cards and got the queen of hearts.
Solly said, “Son of a bitch, that puts him first. He gets fifteen bucks every time one of us makes a sale, and now he gets first crack at her crack.”
“Wait a minute,” someone said. “It’s the kid’s turn.”
“Flick might as well start. Queen’s gonna be high.”
“Aces are higher than queens,” I said. I gave the words a Dean Martin drawl because I felt just that cool and confident. I reached out for the pack of cards, cut, and got the fucking four of clubs. They all laughed their heads off, except for old Flick who was too busy getting his pants off.
Lester put a glass of gin in my hand. “No sweat,” he said. “Somebody’s gotta be last. Just five guys ahead of you. The condition everybody’s in, you’ll be in the saddle in fifteen minutes. If it takes that long.”
“Shit,” I said. I drank the gin in one swallow. I don’t ever do that, not even with a normal sized drink, and this was a whole glass of gin. I had already swallowed it before I realized what I had done, and even then I didn’t give a damn.
“A girl like this, she’ll just be warming up when you get her.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Look at her face. Jesus, look at the old bull socking it to her, and she just lies there with that grin on her face. Like she’s enjoying herself but it isn’t really reaching her. You get a girl like that who wants to pull a train, you’d think of her as basically hot, right? But look at her. Cool as ice. That’s the thing. It takes her three or four men just to put her in the mood. God almighty, but will you look at Flickinger. I didn’t know he had it in him. Hung like a stud horse, too. If she can’t feel what he’s throwing her she must have a bun full of Novocain. He’s gonna ruin her for the rest of us if he don’t hurry up and get it over with.”
“He’ll ruin her for the entire human race,” someone else said. “She won’t be fit for anything but donkeys and horses. Take it easy, Flick!”
“And get it over with, Flick, you mother!”
Flickinger got it over with, and almost got himself over with in the process. He finished roaring, and collapsed on the girl, and whether it was the sex or the liquor or what I don’t know, but he went out like a light. We had to roll him off of her, and Keegan kept saying that he was probably dead, but he wasn’t. We got him into a chair and let him sit there by himself while Keegan took over for him.
Somebody handed me the bottle. I knew what I was doing this time, but all the same I took a drink. Just a short one, though. Not that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do anything. I knew I would be able to do anything I wanted to do. But what worried me was that I might be like Flickinger and have a blackout. If I finally got laid after all this time and then couldn’t even remember it, for Pete’s sake, I might as well kill myself.
I wondered if Flickinger would remember. Maybe he just forgot telling stories to people. I looked around to make sure he was okay. He was conscious now, but his breath was coming along pretty raggedly.
While Keegan gave her a slow rhythmic banging, the rest of us somehow automatically started taking off our own clothes. We didn’t say anything but just did this. I suppose the idea was that we were getting ready so that no time would be lost, but it didn’t make any real sense for me, for example, to be in such a mad rush to get out of my clothes when there were still four men who were going to have her before my turn came.
What it was, I suppose, was that we were all knocked out enough by the heat and the air conditioning and the sexual excitement of the scene that the usual inhibitions were gone and the raunchier the whole evening got, the better we were going to like it.
When I thought about it later, for example, I couldn’t remember anyone actually saying that we would stand around watching while each of us took a turn with Cherry. This was never put into words, and yet once things got into gear, we all more or less took it for granted that that was how it would go. Normally I would have found that idea a little off-putting. I would have gone along with it, maybe, but I would have at least questioned it a little. You would think it would just be more natural for a group of men to want to make it with the girl in private rather than as part of a group thing. Maybe we all wanted to watch each other with Cherry, and maybe we wanted to be watched, but it took the special mood of the evening for all of this to come into the open and to be taken so completely for granted by all six of us.
Keegan suddenly increased the pace, and we were all sort of nodding along in rhythm with him as he hit his stride and finished. He was no sooner out than Jimmy Joe was in his place, all hunched up over Cherry so that he could nibble at her breasts as he humped away at her. I got a look at her face. Her eyes were half lidded and her jaw was slack, and she was drooling a little bit out of the corner of her mouth. That was about the extent of her participation in what was going on. She didn’t even move very much, just giving her behind a slight wiggle every once in a while, maybe to prove to us that she hadn’t gone and died somewhere along the way.
Jimmy Joe didn’t last very long. After just a few seconds he started cursing his head off as he gave a last thrust and came. He was swearing all the way through, and he went on swearing after he withdrew, and he walked all the way across the room still cursing under his breath.
“Hey,” Keegan said, pleasantly, “why don’t you put a sock in it, huh? Pipe down.”
“Goddamn sonofabitching—”
“Happens to everybody,” Keegan said.
“What a time to turn into a rabbit.”
“You got excited,” I said. The world’s foremost authority, Chip Harrison, passing out free advice. “You’ll feel easier the second time around.”
“Or the third,” Keegan said.
Jimmy Joe stopped swearing. Lester was taking his turn, not lying on top of her but standing with his feet on the floor. Maybe all those hours in bus station toilets had him thinking he had to be on his feet to enjoy sex. He had Cherry arranged so that her legs hung over the edge of the bed, and then he picked up her feet and doubled them up with her knees deeply bent, and then he bent over her and got down to brass tacks. It was an interesting position and the rest of us commented on its fine points, like sportsmen checking out a Thoroughbred racehorse.
“He’s really getting in that way,” Solly noted. “You double ’em up that way, you can just about tickle their tonsils.”
Someone else said he preferred to do his work lying down, and the discussion moved along, and Lester turned his head and told us to shut up, managing to do this without missing a beat.