'Welcome home,' she says. She pulls some tequila miniatures out of the mini-bar, while I just stand here like a spare prick, then she curls up on the bed closest to the window. Somewhere in the composition of the air-conditioning is a licked-skin smell that brings a plague of fruity tangs to mind, damp edges of elastic crusted by sand and sea; salt lips pouting musk and vinegar. I scatter them, and move to the bed. Her sunny-smelling hair makes it seem like a regular day on vacation; fluffy, normal and free – I guess like your sixteenth birthday should feel. But my ole lady will be home, thinking it's my birthday, and trying to shut things out of her mind. She probably bought my cake while I was still there, just to start looking forward to it. I picture a lonely cake on the table, with my mom sobbing over it. 'Lord, you'll make it soggy!' Pam would say. Even the truth of things, like that she'd probably be at the Barn with Pam, even that makes me sad. Taylor must pick up some of this backwash, because she throws a tequila at me.
'Snap out of it.'
I fumble the catch. ' Tay – you're here to see I ain't committing any murders. You're a witness – right?'
'Whoa, back up. I don't want to even, like – you know? I'm just here for whatever.'
'But if a court, I mean if…'
'You ain't quitting, are ya, killer? She pats the bedclothes by her thigh. Come to Tay-Tay, you bad boy.'
Taylor raises her bottle, and we slug our tequilas down. I lie back on the bed like I'm wearing guns. She crawls half off the bed to grab some beers, and as she does it, her ass strains into the air. Panty-line. Bikinis. I'm fucken slain. In my dreams we're always alone, stuck tight together, somewhere secluded and safe, but never anywhere fancy like furnished rooms. Always just in a gap in some bushes, or in a field, where she absorbs me like an ameba, all kiss-smell, and thighs, and lips blow-drying the sweat on my skin. Part of the dream includes a kind of yearning to be in a room, all locked up with her, but I never am. Until now.
After four drinks, I'm laid back on one elbow feeling like it's my birthday. Drinks are wonderful that way. Taylor kicks off her leather sandals, one of them flies behind the TV. She runs a finger around the lip of her bottle, and studies me through vixen eyes.
' Vernon, tell me all those things you did.' Her voice is like a little girl's.
What did I say about trouble? She rolls closer until there's an inch of breath between us, alcohol haze with a far-away hint of cheese. We don't touch at all, but hang suspended, sucking chemical data like trembling dogs. Then comes a shock from the tip of her nose, wire touching wire. We melt into each other's mouths, my hand finds the round of her ass, surfs it, a finger charts an edge of panty – doesn't pick, or lift – just teases and glides, moving higher, feeling the climate change around her rudest rebellion, all for Vern.
'Violent, nasty boy,' she says. 'Tell me you killed for Tayla.'
Her whisper becomes a thread in the lace, fibrous and baking with desperate heat. She squirms out of her shorts, kicking them onto the floor by the mini-bar. Panties – The Final Frontier. I lower my face as the creases on her mound disappear, taut glory unfurling, pressing into my touch, forcing my hand flat to squeeze nectar through the silk, lagoons that trickle over the elastic and run down her thigh.
'Death-bug – God, murder – uuugh, God...'
She tries to close back her legs, wriggles hard, but she's lost, I'm on fire, committed even more now she's shy of her musky damp. I pull aside her weeping panty to face a delta writhing with meats, glistening with sweat carrying spicy coded silts from her ass; olives, cinnamon dust and chili blood. She gives up, beaten, without a secret left in the animal world. Her knees bend up and she takes in my tongue, my finger, and my face, she cries and bucks, horny ridges, ruffles, and grits suck me up, suck me home to the stinking wet truth behind panties, money, justice, and slime, burning trails through my brain like acid through butter. Pink Fucken Speed.
'Ugh, fuck! Tell me what you did to those people, tell me you loved it.'
I don't make a sound.
'Tell me! Tell me you killed!'
She starts to tighten her legs, draw away, and I whisper until she relaxes, and pulls me back to her vee. I've heard about these kinds of girls.
'Did you, Vern, did you do all that for me – for us…?'
I feel a fatal oscillation on the head of my man, press him into the bedclothes, rub the stitching across his veins. 'Yeah,' I moan. 'I did it for you.' I keep whispering, but a new reality seeps into me, heavy like the beginnings of an infection. Suddenly her pout turns to rubber, her breeze to raw shrimp and metal-butter. Something ain't right. She scoots to the edge of the bed. Her cleft sneers through the silk of her panties as she bends over one last time. I know I've had the last of Taylor Figueroa. My world dissolves under my belly with a jet like stung snakes squirted out through their own eye-holes. Then quiet. Just a slow ocean moving slowly, and spit-curry after-poon drying cold on my face. Taylor pulls up her shorts, ties her sandals, flicks her hair in the mirror.
'Okay!' she says into the breast of her jacket.
The door opens and four men walk in. I shield my eyes from the glaring camera lights. 'Vernon Gregory Little?' asks one. Like – duh.
I could handle everybody in the lobby staring at me, if only one of them was Taylor. She doesn't stare, or even look. She crouches next to a smiling technician, and listens to an earpiece connected to wires in her jacket.
Then she giggles into a microphone. 'It's so exciting. You really think I can anchor the show? Like, God, Lalito…'
I'm led away from her crouching ass, an ass barely dry with my spit and my dreams. Her careless laugh follows me from the lobby. People around the hotel entrance fall silent when I come through in hand and leg cuffs. You can actually hear indoor palms rustling in the air-conditioning, that's how quiet things get. Quiet and icy-cold, I don't have to tell you. A plane is waiting at the airport. Right away you know some money got invested in the story. Like, it'd be hard to tell some anchorman it was all just a big mistake. Anchormen across the land would drop mountainous loads if you tried to tell them that. I struggle to work up some cream pie. But I can't, can I fuck. Instead I choke on aviation perfume, and the 'Goodbye' sound of jets whining, like when Nana used to go up north. Across the way, you can see stressed passengers shuffling to immigration without a thought in their heads except the shine on their mall-brand luggage. Me, I'm tied in a metal tube with two marshals who choose conversations according to how well they contrast with the fucken shit I'm in. Talk about their car, a steak dinner, a ball game. One of them farts.
I just sit and watch a flashbulb on the tip of the wing light up the dark outside. After a couple of hours of flashes, which is a lot, we descend through puffy tumors that hang over Houston Intercontinental airport. When the plane turns to land you get a view of eight thousand patrol cars on the ground, lights flashing off recently wet concrete, and probably sirens and game-show buzzers running as well. All for little Vernon, Vernon Little. After landing, the plane turns toward some bleachers set up around an empty section by the airport perimeter. We slow and park sideways to the stands, and I'm drenched through the window by flashlight from crowds of media. You physically feel the jackrab-bit pulse that says, 'There he is!' It's Tuesday, exactly three weeks since hell's tumble-dryer went to work on our lives. Although it's four in the morning, you just know every household in the land is tuned in. 'There he fucken is!'
The marshals handle me down the steps of the plane, and parade me in front of the bleachers. Behind the bleachers is a fence, and behind the fence you can sense hordes of angry people, the type that show up wherever angry people are needed. I'm lifted into the back of a white truck, where some men in lab coats and helmets are waiting. They harness me into a chair, and we get escorted into town by half the world's police cars. All the world's helicopters ride overhead, beaming lights down like a Hollywood premiere, the fucken Slime Oscars, boy. One learning I can give you from here: patrol cars don't smash up everywhere. Not at all. Nor do you get any simple ideas about how to distract the cops while you make a break for it, and leave them smashing into each other, and driving off bridges and shit. What's more, as soon as you're in a patrol car, you're immediately visited by the certainty that it won't happen. They drive fucken straight, take note.