Brian's ass relaxed and he shifted onto his side. His erection nodded off like a man falling asleep.
There was Wheat Woman and then there was the Corn Queen. No talking, just vision and texture, knowing their names without hearing them. No tension or flirting, just a silent understanding of what was to happen.
Wheat Woman was first. She was dry. Her hair was cropped close to her skull, a tight-packed wool of small kernels that rasped when he brushed it against the grain with his hand. Her eyes were an unsettling flat gold with a large, black pupil. Staring, sunflower eyes. Her lips cracked as she opened her mouth, her tongue was sandpaper like a cat's when they kissed. She kept her eyes wide open. Her kiss stung him, no saliva or softness in it. Her breasts were hard kernels, the husks thick as fingernails. She moved loser. They clinched, both naked, her skin like burlap against his. She pulled him on top of her, gazing steadily out over his shoulder. He pushed himself in when she split her legs apart and she was dry and tight, like forcing his cock through a straw hat. She had his ass clutched in her stalky fingers and was jerking him hard in and out, pumping for moisture that never came, little puffs of fine chaff rising each time their hips clapped together. She was strong, a brittle strength that made him afraid to pull away lest he snap something. But his cock was scraped raw and she was still thrusting, threshing under him in a mechanical rhythm and he broke loose with a sound like falling through branches and she kept on bucking, eyes soulless as a shark's, with her knobby butt rapping the floor and her smile cracking to show a mouthful of brambles.
The Corn Queen came to soothe him. Her skin was taut and had a waxy yellow sheen. Her hair hung to her waist, albino corn silk that was cool as it slipped over his chest and belly. Her eyes were light green and when she bent to kiss him her lips stretched back over tiny white kernels of babycorn teeth. Her tongue flowed down to comfort his dry throat while his own lolled in corn syrup, a long, drinking kiss of it. Her breasts hung down swollen, he squeezed one lightly and a honey-colored cream oozed from the tip. She smiled gently and straddled him. He reached between her legs and folded soft, green shucks back against her thighs, opening her, parted a tuft of corn silk and then she slipped herself down around him. She was wet, she was warm and more than slick. She rolled on him like oil, like there wasn't a hard bone in her body. His cock was swimming thickly, he couldn't feel the walls of her, the shape of her insides, only the warm syrup that poured out to butter their thighs and bellies, that flowed down and greased the floor beneath his cheeks till they were fucking in a puddle of her. It was too thick, too flowing, he didn't know if he was still hard in her and he was pressed helpless under her liquid weight, drowning in her and maybe he came but it was like spitting at the bottom of the ocean.
Honey.
Something about honey.
She was calling him, Mary Beth, calling up the stairs to see if he wanted to get up. Get up and eat.
Brian made some noise to tell her he was coming and rolled on his back. He had shot off in his pants. Wasted one, Russ Palumbo used to say. Got to dreaming pretty hot and heavy last night and I wasted one. Lot of nice pieces round here could of used it. Brian hadn't had a wet dream since he was sixteen and a virgin. He thought maybe they were supposed to stop once you'd joined the club.
He undressed and wiped himself off with his B.V.D.'s and put his pants back on. He threw the underwear beneath the bed. Give the movers a laugh when the bank sent them.
Mary Beth had found some canned food and had it going on the range, hash and baked beans and some cream-ofmushroom soup. She had brought bread in from the car and gotten an old toaster to work.
"They didn't bother to turn off all the juice," she said. "Just unscrewed the fuses."
She had changed from her shift into a bulky denim coverall. She was wearing work shoes. It was like her flesh itself had hardened while he was asleep. She sat him down and dished him out a plate and a bowl and spoke softly to him, almost like she was apologizing for something. It was all Brian could do to keep his stomach from climbing up his throat to meet the food halfway.
"You just chew on that for a while, honey, and then I got something special for our dessert," she said. "You let old Moby take care of you."
"Moby?"
She shrugged. "Mary Beth Dickson. The kids on the campuses where I do my, you know, business deals, they call me Moby Dickson. Had it since I was a girl. Sort of followed me around."
"Oh."
"Boys yelling `Thar she blows!' in the hallways. What you call a literary allusion."
Justine yowled loudly from the front of the house and Mary Beth clonked off to see what was wrong. The toast popped up and Brian went and made himself a hash sandwich. He didn't know if there was anything he could say to Mary Beth, anything that wouldn't make her feel worse. It's not that I don't find you attractive but — but what? Everything he could think of sounded like the line Angela Rizzo used to give him when he made any serious move on her. Sounded just as slight and just as false. He swallowed his food in big bites and felt each drop distinctly into his stomach.
"I slept like a rock," he said when she came back holding Justine. Maybe it would be better if she could think that he really hadn't known she was there. "Like a zombie. How long was I out for?"
"Couple hours," she said. "You've got plenty of daylight left for hitching." She crossed to the counter by the toaster and frowned. She dropped the cat.
"Oh shit."
"What's wrong?"
"Our dessert. The acid."
"What?"
"I had a couple squares of windowpane acid sitting here. I figured we both had a lot of flat country ahead of us, might be nice to put some wrinkles in it."
"Acid."
"Yeah. You know."
"I know. But what happened to it?"
"Justine must have gotten it, she's acting a little weird. But Christ, I figured the two of us would do a half-pane each and she ate four times that. It must have been her. You weren't over here were you?"
Brian looked at her. "I got the toast. I put it down on the counter to make a sandwich."
"Oh Christ. You think you might have picked it up on the toast?"
"I don't know, what's it do to you?"
"You never done it?"
Brian shook his head. It was one of those things that had passed him by in school, like the Hong Kong flu had in the fifth grade.
"Oh, honey," said Mary Beth and took his hand, "I'm sorry."
He didn't know that they still made the stuff, there hadn't been anything on the news in years. "So it's me or Justine."
"Gonna be hard to tell right off if it's her. Cats are so spacy anyways. I don't really know what to do."
The idea kind of appealed to him. He wouldn't be responsible for anything, just stick his thumb out and let it carry him. "I think I should finish the beans," he said. "If I'm going places at least I'll have a full stomach."
Justine sat over the dash and stared at Brian for an hour and a half in the car. He stared back at her. Mary Beth drove and kept asking him how he felt. He didn't feel much different. A little nervous maybe. Still hungry. That was a strange one, still hungry.
"Some of it will hit you real quick," Mary Beth told him, "and then sometimes you get a batch that kind of sneaks up on you. You ate all that food, takes a while to digest — who knows? And then maybe it's just some weak stuff, I haven't tried any yet. How you feeling, honey?"
She drove him to the far side of Des Moines and turned south. She tried to talk him into coming with her to Kansas City. He got out of the Chevy and Justine hopped down into his seat.
"I'll be all right," he said, "you just watch your cat."