Once she told me, “I wouldn’t need this if you were as big as Jeff was.”
Later she apologized again – and suggested I punish her again. That time I did. She complained that I didn’t spank like I meant it and my hand was too soft. Mr Fox had done a lot of woodwork so his palms were hard. When he spanked a woman she knew she’d been spanked by a real man.
One night when I was seeing to her pleasure she made a pencil mark on a pad. When I asked why, she told me I’d given her eleven orgasms so far that night and she wanted to keep score. I really worked that night. By morning the score-pad read “twenty-seven”. I remarked, hopefully, that it had to be some kind of record. “Not by a long way. Bill got me up to fifty, once.”
We didn’t go out much. When we did, she flirted with the waiter or someone at the next table and we ended up fighting.
I took her swimming in the pool in her building. That was fun until a couple of young guys came in. Somehow or another she lost the top of her bikini and that made her squeal loud enough to turn the lads’ heads. I left her chatting to them, clutching her bra-top to her breasts.
When she finally came up she woke me to tell me I’d misunderstood her natural friendliness.
“I suppose you expect another spanking,” I said.
“With your soft hands? Anyway, you aren’t man enough, you hear me? You’re a wimp, Paul, with a puny little cock. Those boys down in the pool, though, they were real men. You should have seen the size of the erections they got from looking at me.”
I grabbed her and got her over my lap but even mad as I was I had to take care not to break her arms so she managed to wriggle off me. I pushed her down flat on the bed. The cords were there, tied to the four corners, ready for “play”. I used them.
I slapped her bum four times, almost hard.
She said, “Wimp.”
I grabbed my belt off the chair, lifted it high… and tossed it aside.
She twisted her face towards me as I pulled my underpants up. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going. This is where I came in.”
TRUCK STOP RAINBOWS by Iva Pekarkova
Translated by David Powelstock
I LAY NEXT to the road – and only the sensations I desired had permission to approach me. But a hostile, disturbing sound invaded my pleasant and harmonious space, and began to come nearer along the highway feeder road. At first it sounded like the buzzing of a bumblebee somewhere in the distance, but then this bumblebee began growing and getting closer, until its buzz became the unmistakable sound of a motor.
The sound did not go whizzing by me – the car stopped, and I lazily prepared to open at least one eye: it was probably some kindhearted guy who wanted to give me a ride and would ask me envious questions about my vacation; I’d have to explain that I was sunbathing at the moment and wasn’t interested.
I raised an eyelid.
Two cops stood next to the ditch. Each one had the sun in his hair and one flat shoe half imbedded in the clay; they looked at me with a suspicious expression that struck me as kind of cute. I smiled, at both of them.
(The main thing is not to resist. Don’t be insolent, just pretend you’re an adorable, ditzy, idiot, Fialinka…) One of them said, “What are you doing here? Where are you from? Were you headed somewhere for vacation? Alone? Let’s have a look at your Citizen’s Identification Booklet; yes, a routine check…”
He said it diffidently, abstractly – it really was kind of cute the way the practiced, subtly threatening tone that saturated the voice of every law officer was shrouded by his charming Brno accent… Let’s have look – he said it as if there were syllables in L written at least a fourth part higher on the scale: Let’s have a look… Oh, Brno.
(Be careful, Fialinka, blush; most important, don’t be a wise-ass, for God’s sake, don’t be a wise ass.)
“Comrades” – but just slipped out – “I just adore the way you Brnians talk. Say something else for me. Let’s have a a look at my ID… Let’s have a look... It’s so refreshing, comrades, I just can’t get over that Brno accent, I just can’t… Let’s a have a 1 – ”
They released me from the police station in the center of town about three hours later. It was recommended that I head straight home and not even think of hitchhiking on the highway – the comrades would be keeping an eye on me. I was told that my behavior was extremely suspicious and that the comrades in Prague would be checking up on my studies. So I shouldn’t be surprised when they called… Do you understand, comrade student?
I took the tram (without buying a ticket, of course) that ran most directly out to the Southern Road. A tight-lipped, severe, not very pretty smile of determination was ripening on my lips. A sneer.
My mind was made up. I was on my way to look for that wheelchair for Patrik.
The sun had been at its zenith a long time already when my tram finally jolted up to the end of the line. I worked my way over to the prohibited highway through the honeycombed mire of dried and cracked puddles. I ran down from the overgrown embankment and took a look around. No cops in sight. And as soon as the promisingly Western silhouette of an Intertruck appeared on the horizon, I thrust out my chest and stuck out my arm. Not the usual supplicant gesture of humble, honorable hitchhikers everywhere, I stretched it out seductively and imperiously, like a girl who had the price of admission.
The rig began to slow down almost immediately, and the screech of brakes in that cloud of swirling dust on the shoulder added to my self-confidence. I didn’t sprint the few meters to the cab as usual. I picked my pack up out of the ditch deliberately and approached with the slow step of a queen of the highway. I caught sight of a face reflected in the side mirror. The driver backed up right to my feet, jumped out, and ran around to open the door for me.
And since I’d noticed a little D next to the truck’s license plate, I cleared my throat and said: “Fahrst du nach Pressburg?”
I didn’t add bitte or anything like that – I chose the informal du over Sie without even being at all sure how old he was.
It made no difference anyway.
He smiled (pleased I spoke German), nodded, and, when I added a regal danke after he lifted my pack up into the cab, he observed cheerfully, “Aber du sprichst Deutsch sehr gut!”
And that was the beginning of the long period, maybe too long, when I decided to become what almost every cop already assumed I was.
I had decided to get Patrik that wheelchair.
After twenty kilometers of small talk I was pleasantly surprised at my long-untested German. I smoked Marlboros (somehow convinced that without a cigarette clasped between my delicately outstretched fingers – even though they were still smeared with dirt – the impression wouldn’t be complete) and, with a few successfully composed complex sentences, brought the conversation around to the difficulty of life in a socialist state. Kurt (we’d long ago exchanged names) steered with the barest touch of his left hand and, with his face turned toward me, nodded attentively. He was taking the bait. I don’t know if he was listening, probably not, but he still kept saying how much he admired my German: God knows how few of these highway girls knew anything more than bunsen, the German word for fuck. He doesn’t look unsympathetic, and I could do worse for my first time, I thought to myself. I babbled on cheerfully – and contemplated what would probably happen. This was not like an adventure that comes to you. This was not the work of my old friend Serendipity. I still wasn’t used to my role – and I knew that I was going to have to take matters into my own hands.