“That’s a brand-new Collins Airmaster, headed for Collins airfield,” I said reflexively.
She opened her eyes and looked sideways at me. “Goody gum-drops,” she said, “a brand-new Airmaster.”
I didn’t let my face give anything away, though what I wanted was to backhand that supercilious smirk right off her mouth. We didn’t say anything else until we got to Woodrow and she pointed out her house.
2. What You Got for a Gin Gimlet in Those Days
It was a big red brick two-story, just around the corner from my girl’s parents on Porter. I wondered if she knew them, and then I got worried about someone who knew me seeing me go into her house at five in the afternoon. It couldn’t be helped, though. I opened her garage door and put the readily identifiable Super Six inside. As I helped her out and pulled the garage door down it occurred to me that someone might show up expecting to find the space empty. “You don’t have a husband coming home, do you?”
“Hell, no,” she said. “I’m not that drunk. Floyd and the kids took off on a camping trip at five this morning. You ever hear of a place called the Garden of the Gods? It’s in Colorado.” She went around front, despite my craven suggestion that we go in the back door. She had trouble finding the key, and when she did she couldn’t quite slip it into the lock at the right angle.
“I’ve heard of it,” I said. “How come you didn’t go?”
She laughed that pretty laugh again, only this time it was a little out of control. “I’m supposed to be helping with the goddamned back-to-school church fair. I’m on... on... the organizing committee.” She was nearly hysterical now, bracing herself on the doorframe as the door opened. She practically collapsed entering the front room, and I followed quickly, slamming the door behind me. She fell onto the couch, and I lit a lamp. Spying a radio in the corner, I moved to turn it on for some music.
“Whattaya doing?” she asked, winded, from the couch.
“Thought it might be nice to have some music,” I said.
“What the hell for? I have no intention of dancing with you. S’not Christian.” She broke up again, doubled over, and I sat on the couch next to her. “Organizing committee. Oh, boy. What I stayed home for was to get drunk and screw for a couple weeks.” She finally stopped laughing. “So why don’t you get busy and fuck me, Wayne?”
The first time was on the couch, and it was a quick one, with my pants around my ankles and her dress up to her waist. Afterward she led me upstairs, and despite the fact that less than two minutes earlier I had been inside her, I stared at her ass as longingly as old Gleason had as she mounted the steps ahead of me. One of her stockings had rolled down past her knee, and the sight of the backs of her long legs as they climbed, their muscles relaxing and contracting with each step beneath a healthy layer of fat, was enough to get me ready for another roll in the hay without a breather.
The room was pretty bright and not stiflingly hot, since two windows were open and a pretty good cross draft blew through it. The wallpaper was dark green, and there were fresh flowers in a cheap mail-order vase on the dresser.
“You might go a little slower this time,” she said as she fell back onto the bedspread. “I’ll get a lot more out of it.” I didn’t take it as an insult. It had been extremely quick, though she had certainly made enough noise to give the impression — probably to the whole neighborhood — that she was having a good time.
I undressed her slowly, exposing what hadn’t already been exposed, and in the golden light slanting through the Venetian blinds I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen naked. I shocked her by putting my mouth onto her private parts, but she’d done the same to me downstairs when we were getting started, and pretty soon I had her going so fast and hot she didn’t care if it was against the laws of nature or not. After I was pretty sure she’d had her share of the fun I got inside again and rode her slowly but surely to the point where we were both yelling and moaning. Right before I shot my second and more satisfying load she squealed, “Rudy... take me, Rudy, take me... that’s it, Rudy,” and then her cries became incomprehensible and animalistic before tapering off as I disengaged and rolled onto the sheets.
I lay there next to her for a little bit, feeling the breeze cool my sweaty torso, and when it seemed like it was time to talk I asked her who Rudy was.
She pointed at the dresser, atop which sat among many framed family pictures a signed portrait of Rudolph Valentino. “I always thought it was a damned shame he died before I got the chance to give myself to him. I coulda made him happy in a way that Russian bitch never could.” Her eyes were wet with tears now, though she didn’t sound as drunk as she had in the car.
I’d always heard Rudy was queer, but it wouldn’t do to say it to her. He was ten years dead anyway. She was swimming in melancholy, luxuriating in it, and I swung my feet off the bed so I could wash up and get away.
“Where the hell are you going?” she asked.
“Thought I’d go and let you have a little peace and quiet.”
“The hell with peace and quiet. You and me got more screwing to do.”
I must have had a funny look on my face, because she laughed.
“What the hell’s the point of picking up a real young sport if you’re not going to take full advantage of all that extra horsepower?”
What the hell, I was having a good time. “Okay.”
“Anyway, there’s plenty of things we haven’t done yet. I sure did like that mouth-on-the-pussy business of yours. It’s a safe bet Floyd’s never gonna put his mouth anywhere near the goddamn thing.” She got up on her knees and leaned forward. “Have you ever had sex with a lady’s rectum, Wayne?”
I nodded. A very religious girlfriend in my sophomore year was eager for it that way, since she believed that vaginal intercourse was for marriage only, and even then only for the purpose of conceiving future soldiers of the Cross. It had been a year and a half since I’d messed around that way, though, and I missed it.
“Well, we can do some of that if you want, I don’t mind. Believe me, there’s all kinds of ways to do it we haven’t thought of yet.” She moved to the edge of the bed and dangled her legs off it, and with a thoughtful look cupped a hand under each breast as though trying to guess their weight. “Last time Floyd took the kids on a camping trip was more than a year ago, and I am just about as goddamn horny as it’s possible to be without taking to the streets.”
“Floyd doesn’t ever give you any?”
“What Floyd gives me happens once a week and takes about ninety seconds, and I could get more satisfaction from a sanded-down dowel rod. I often do, as a matter of fact.”
I looked back up at the dresser and saw what I assumed to be a picture of Floyd, a beefy-looking kind of guy with a gap in his front teeth and a receding hairline. Next to that was a picture of him with Mildred, and three little kids. Judging by her apparent age in the picture, and her bobbed hair and flapper dress, it was a few years old. “How old are your kids?”
She thought for a second. “Sylvester’s seventeen. Myrtle’s fifteen, gonna be sixteen in October, and Herbert’s ten. He was a surprise, if you catch my meaning.”
Fuck a duck, I thought, and my hands began to tingle as though I’d been hit in the funny bone; I had just put the meat to Sylvester Halliburton’s mother. I’d stolen my girl Sally from Sylvester the year before, and he still hated my guts for it. I wondered what he’d do if he found out I’d fucked his dear old mother, and the thought got a laugh out of me.
“What’s funny?” she asked, and I said it was nothing. Rather than pursue it, she wondered if I knew where to get a bottle, since neither of us had thought to get one to go at the Royal Crown. “Floyd won’t allow me to keep any in the house. It’s against the law,” she said, mimicking an idiotic hillbilly’s voice. I knew a source just a few blocks away, and I decided to walk rather than take the car. “Make it rum,” she shouted after me.