Horsepower by Tom Piccirilli
Cole was coming out of the comic shop on Bleeker Street with a bag full of silver age Fantastic Fours when she caught him from behind.
Terry somebody, Italian last name, he knew her a little from high school. She’d gone goth pretty heavily over the past couple of years. Lots of black and fishnet now, one eyebrow pierced with a chain hanging to her ear, a spiderweb tattoo working itself out of the low-cut collar and up her neck. The city could do it to you.
He wasn’t sure if he liked the change, but he let that go for the moment. She stood with two other girls who were much more into the scene, leather and latex and gossamer, dragon tats wrapped around their arms down to the wrists – one real and the other henna. They’d hardly seen any sunlight in the last six months, even now only coming out at dusk. He liked the goth trappings but saw trouble coming as they looked him up and down, giving him the slow once-over. The pudgy belly, the glasses, the sweatshirt, sneakers, holding comic books. They both wanted to be lady death and they did a good job at it, and he knew they wouldn’t be able to resist taking a shot at him any second.
There was a war already under way and he had no idea how to stop it. Something about him pissed the new goths off and always had. Maybe it was because he had no real style, too much vanilla padding, totally whitebread. Screaming taxis and family cars with slipping trannies slid past, barging through potholes. One of the lady deaths bent her knees as if she might lunge at him, shove him into traffic. Cole felt sort of weak until a blue ’64 Pontiac Lemans GTO 389, the pioneer of the muscle car era, sped by with its dual exhaust bellowing. It gave him some poise back and he almost felt aroused, able to meet their severe eyes now.
Terry Scoletti, that was it. They’d had some good conversations back in Film Studies, sitting side by side in the middle of the class. Peckinpah and Hitchcock and Arthur Penn, film noir, Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Easy Rider and Two-Lane Blacktop. She found herself a football player and that was about the end of it.
She seemed to remember something about him and cocked her head, blinked a couple of times, thinking back. He could smell a touch of gin coming off her, the others stinking of stale smoke. The dipping sun shed a splash of blood over everyone, pooling at their feet. He could tell by Terry’s glittering eyes that something was up, some kind of game being played in there. He was about to be toyed with, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. One lady death grunted, and then the other.
Hopeful, he decided to wait it out. Terry said, “Hey, how’re you doing? Haven’t seen you for a while.” He nodded, watching, as she became all angles and arches, slinking towards him. He got it now, she was going to put on an exhibition right here, for anybody watching. This was display, this was exposure.
Grinding it into him, pressing at his throat, she was against him in an instant while he stood tightening into stone. “Are you shy?” she asked. The reek of gin was much stronger as she brought her lips up almost to his, the blaring horns growing louder. She let loose with a grin that made him heady. Sometimes it could be like this, seeing old acquaintances out of context. Free of past circumstances.
He knew he appeared almost exactly the same, and maybe he was except for a few threads of silver in his curls, out in front. Terry wanted to have some fun with him, put on a show for the ladies death or maybe, just possibly, for Cole.
Or perhaps it all had something to do with murder. He remembered she had a sister who’d died down in the subways – mugged?… pushed onto the tracks? His imagination moved along too fast and he could look into her mind and watch her pulling out a three-inch blade, stabbing him between the fifth and sixth rib, leaving him there on the street because she had to get the rage out. It was an ache he could understand.
Dry-mouthed, he let out a tiny chirp, trying to keep his hands from flashing up to protect his chest. He could see the ladies were voyeurs and had watched this game before. Even this little bit of it was already having an effect. The death gurrls huddled closer, holding hands, their tattoos touching and forming some new picture he couldn’t understand. Terry continued to grind on, right there in the street, with businessmen swinging their briefcases and Chinese delivery kids riding by on their bikes.
OK, so it was going to be like that. Terry’s blouse was satin and the buttons opened easy, as she slid against his chest a couple of times. They popped open, one after the other, and the hint of her tits made him groan softly, clenching the bag tighter. She was trying to meet his eyes, but he kept staring past her, into the street, waiting for another classic car to come by.
The light had begun fading. She touched the sides of his face and drew him aside. He saw that the web tattoo started at her right nipple and went all the way up. Terry had large, dark areolae. The sight of them made him nose forward, lips parched but his tongue feeling too large and wet in his mouth. She closed in on him, wrapped a leg across his thigh, as she rubbed against his crotch, which was springing up a tad. He probably would’ve dug this a little more if they weren’t out in the middle of the sidewalk, and if two murder gurrls weren’t giving him the killing eye.
Or maybe it didn’t matter. This wasn’t going to work anyway, there was no heat in the seat, no horsepower. Terry laughed, throaty, deeper than he could remember, one hand at the back of his head now and pulling him down. She was holding on to him tightly, had some real strength for such a tiny girl, and he brushed his cheek against her breast. It was the right thing to do and she let out a gasp. She kissed him, both of their tongues working together roughly, even though the make-up, this close up, didn’t do anything for him.
There’d been rumours about this sort of thing happening in the Village. A couple of kids just start going at it, right there in a doorway or on somebody’s front steps, on the kerb, while the homeless wandered out to watch. The guy left there dying afterwards with his throat cut, the girls laughing. The games had escalated, it seemed. But maybe that was just his naïve perspective – perhaps the world had always meant for him, and failures like him, to croak in the gutter for no reason.
He tried thinking about it but Terry wouldn’t let him. “Here,” she said. “How’s this?” Her hands were claws, capped by two-inch black nails, flecks of red on them like she’d been scratching somebody down to the vein. He let out a hissing stream of breath and she did the same, sort of tugging on him now, leading him. He took four or five steps and she stayed wrapped around him just as firmly. Where were they going? Was she going to toss him into traffic? Taxis kept blaring, mufflers off half the cars in the street, so loud they set his back teeth to shaking. There was no muscle to them.
Terry pulled a funky move, something out of the WWF, spinning until she was behind him, one arm around his waist, jerking him all around. It was a surprise and she kept it going, twining up his back and yanking him once more, as she grooved against him. He almost smiled even though he knew he was being led somewhere he didn’t really want to go. She backed off a step and pounced, came into his arms too quickly and crushed the bag in his hand.
“My comics!”
It hit her as if he’d just chopped her in the throat. “What?”
“Listen -”
“Your comics?” There was a titter at the edge of her voice, but it didn’t come all the way through. The death ladies tightened their grip on one another until their fingers had grown ashen. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Come on, for Christ’s sake,” he said, realizing he should shut up. “Issue ten features the third appearance of Doctor Doom.”