On the TV screens, I'm a gray-haired millionaire tycoon giving it to my secretary across a carved wood desk. Other screens, I'm a plumber snaking the pipes of a bored housewife.
Laying inside Brenda, just so to protect her, I let a little piss leak out. That bladder of mine was busting, and my flow couldn't shut off. My little dribble kept gushing, and Brenda rolled her eyes to look into my eyes, our eyes close to touching, our noses touching, her lips brushing my lips.
Brenda said, "What are you doing?"
And bearing down to stop, clamping down to not piss, still inside her, I said, "Nothing." I go, "I'm not doing anything."
On the phone, the teddy-bear dude goes, "You have somebody in mind?" He laughs and says, "I told you, I don't care how gross…"
Brenda wrestled against me, rolling side to side on the blanket and beating me with her fists. She kept saying, "You pig. You're a pig." Underneath my hips, Brenda bucked and squirmed, telling me to get off her. To pull out.
And I kept saying, not yet. My hands holding her arms, I kept saying this was to keep her safe.
On the TVs, I'm in ancient times, doggy-styling Cleopatra. I'm an astronaut, doing round-the-world with a green alien babe in a zero-gravity space station.
Under those flowers and stars, on top of Brenda, I couldn't stop until she worked one knee up between my legs, kicked her knee up, fast, and crushed my balls. With that smack, the pain took over. My dick twisted out, popped out, still rock-hard, piss still spraying, hot champagne piss hosing all over both of us. I grabbed my crushed nuts in both hands, letting go of Brenda's arms, and she rolled out from under me.
Something fell and hit the side of my face, too hard to be a little flower, hurting too bad to be spit. Brenda grabbed her empty clothes and took off running, and that's the last and final time I saw her: running away from behind, with my piss running down the insides of both her thighs.
The teddy-bear dude goes, "Fine, send whoever, just send him now." Dude shuts the phone and hands it over to me.
That's how come I advised the kid the way I did.
Teddy-bear dude makes a face, spits something chewed-up on the floor. Another condom. He squints his eyes at me and says, "You suggested that confused young man urinate inside of his mother?"
No, I go. And explain about the cyanide pill Cassie wanted, how I was supposed to bring it inside the locket, but the kid agreed to carry the pill to her.
And the teddy-bear dude, his mouth falls open fast as his eyebrows jump up. His face comes back together, the dude swallows and goes, "Those two pills he showed me—you're saying one was cyanide?"
And I nod my head yeah.
Both of us, we're looking at the closed door to the set.
On the TVs, I'm an old-time caveman daisy-chained in an orgy with a tribe of other humanoids, dirty and hairy and hunched over, none of us quite human, not yet evolved.
The teddy-bear dude shrugs his shoulders, going, "Even if the kid takes the wrong pill, we'll still set the world record." Dude says, "I called an agency, and the cavalry is on its way."
Dude says how this agency knows somebody who'll do an hour for less than fifty bucks. Some old dude, the agency says, the joke of the adult industry, flabby and wrinkled, with scabby, peeling skin. Bloodshot eyes and bad breath. Some porn dinosaur the agency can't book, they said they'd try and contact him, rush him over here so he can fill in for kid 72. In case the kid's dead or gone limp or told Cassie he loves her and gets kicked out.
Teddy-bear dude goes, "Based on their description, I can't wait to see how bad this monster might look." He's blinking his eyes, looking out one eye, then the other. He rubs his eyes with the heels of both hands, blinks fast, and squints up at the TV screens, frowning.
On the TVs, I'm a totally buff naked model in the center of a figure-drawing class, getting sucked off by beautiful coed art students.
What bounced off my skull that night, my last night with Brenda, what hit me too hard to be a little pink flower—it was my promise ring I'd gave her.
In my hand, my phone starts to ring. From the number on the screen, the incoming call is my booking agent.
26. Mr. 72
The stopwatch girl lets me come back, on account of I have to give Mr. Bacardi something important. She leads me back down the stairs, to the waiting basement. The smell of baby oil and cheese crackers.
The minute Mr. Bacardi sees me, he presses his cell phone to his chest and says, "You kill her?"
The Dan Banyan guy says, "Or, worse. did you say you loved her?"
And the stopwatch girl says, "Gentlemen, may I have your attention…"
When a guy goes up there to be with Cassie Wright, he might as well be visiting her in the hospital. They got her laid in a white bed with white sheets and pillows, laying with her legs open, sipping orange juice from a glass through a plastic bendy straw. Her bottom half covered with a sheet. The lights shine on the bed, hot and bright as an operating room. And when the girl with the clipboard brings you in, Cassie Wright might as well be a lady in bed waiting for some nurse to clean up her just-born baby so Cassie can feed it.
Crowded around the head of the bed, they got flowers in vases and wrapped in bouquets, roses and roses and roses. Every different kind, but all roses. And standing up, on the tables beside her pillows, they crowded greetings cards, frilly with lacy edges and sparkling with glitter. Cards tucked in bouquets. Cards knocked on the floor and printed with the dirty tread of somebody's shoe stepped on them.
All those cards, Mother's Day cards. "To the World's Best Mom!" And "To the Best Mother a Boy Could Ever Have!"
The stopwatch girl brings you in, tugging by one arm, and she says, "Ms. Wright…" The girl points at the flowers I'm holding and says, "We've brought you another son…"
In the waiting basement, afterward, the Dan Banyan guy says, "Your mother is such a hoot!" He says, "You think, if I asked, would she go out to dinner with me?"
Yelling into his cell phone, Mr. Bacardi says, "How can you say that?" He yells, "I have the deepest, most even, darkest, best tan in the industry!"
Crowding the room for the movie set, folks with their clothes on, they were balancing cameras on one shoulder, or holding and watching the slack cords that snaked from each camera to plug into some power boxes, to wall outlets, to other cords. Other folks waved sticks with a microphone dangled from one end. Folks leaned over Cassie Wright with lipsticks and combs.
They monkeyed with the bright lights and tinkered with shiny silver umbrellas that bounced the light to land on Cassie in her bed.
The whole family of them, laughing, their eyes bloodshot from staying up all hours, waiting for a baby to be born. People with pretty Mother's Day cards stuck to the underneath of their shoes, tracked around the little room. Rose petals were scattered everywhere.
The stopwatch girl steers you in through the door, pinching you by the elbow, and a guy holding a camera says, "Crimony, Cass, how many kids did you have?"
Folks laugh, everybody but me.
That whole family you're being born into.
Talking around a lipstick stuck in her mouth, sunk in her bed, Cassie Wright says, "Today, I've had them all."
Back in the basement, Mr. Bacardi tells his cell phone, "My best work is not behind me!" He yells, "You know, nobody does a better split-reed standing anal with an on-demand hands-free pop-shot release."
And the Dan Banyan guy looks up at the TV screens and says, "You think she'd marry me?"