Bloodbrothers (6 page)

"Stones, you missed some fuckin' fight." Butler was drenched with sweat.

"Oh yeah?" Stony ordered a seventy-seven.

"So how's Cheri?" Butler smirked.

***

"Well, I'll tell you one thing, mah man, she can fuck Mott, Pot, Snot, Twat and half the fuckin' Marine Corps from now until doomsday, she ain't never gonna find a better stickman than me and
that's
the goddamn truth."

They sat parked in White Castle. Stony scarfed down half a hamburger and exhaled through his nose as he chewed. Butler had stopped listening to Stony's bullshit hours ago. He stabbed a straw through the center of the plastic top on his orange drink and eyed the middle-aged carhop ladies scurrying around the parking lot in royal blue slacks, blue short-sleeve tops and little blue Dixie cups on their heads. Some of them wore blue scarfs under the Dixie cups to keep their ears warm.

"My mother would dig that get-up," Butler said.

"Because not only am I a good fuck physically, Butler, but I know all that psychological shit about scoring pussy too." Stony crumpled the hamburger wrapper into a ball and rolled it lightly between his palms.

"I mean, you know, how to make them, how to get them relaxed." He dragged out his words. "You know how ... how to get them to trust you, you know? So they don't even know they're gettin' laid."

"You know what my ol' man got my ol' lady for Christmas?" Butler challenged. "Ankle socks! A fuckin' dozen pair a
ankle
socks." He paused for the news to sink in, reaching for his cigarettes on the dash. "She
asked
for them." With his thumb he bent a match onto the carbon and flicked a light.

Stony ignored him and went on. "First I get 'em a drink, see? An' then I put on some music, you know somethin' nice, right? An' we'll dance." Stony shut his eyes and dreamily swayed his head. "I won't even grind, maybe just a little bump like ... unh!" Eyes still closed. Stony licked his lips, arched his pelvis off the seat and rotated his hips.

Butler raised his eyebrows and making a noise like a garbage disposal sucked the last drops of orange drink from the crushed ice.

"And now they're startin' to breathe a little funny, right? So I dance just a little closer, not grindin' or anythin', just enough to brush them with my meat, you know? Give them a hors d'oeuvre."

Butler unwrapped a hamburger.

"They try to act like they don't feel it, you know? But let me tell you something, Butler, you gotta be dead not to feel my piece—"

"I don'
wanna
feel your goddamn piece." Butler started in on some french fries.

"Anyways, I only do that once, one time, then we keep dancin'. They can think about it an' then like maybe two minutes later I say to them...'You wanna take a bath?' Very casual, you know? If the chick says 'sure!' you know that bitch is
mine!
" Stony tossed the crumpled wrapper on the tray hanging from the half-open car window. "Except one time I ast this girl to take a bath an' she got insulted. She thought I was sayin' she
needed
a bath."

An orange GTO with an idle like a dragon with asthma pulled in beside them on Stony's side. Butler squeezed Stony's knee. Two girls were in the front seat. Nice blondes with hard eyes and thin lips.

"Hey!" Butler smiled, leaning across Stony's lap. "What's happenin'?"

The driver and her friend stared straight ahead.

"You wanna take a bath?" He laughed, looking at Stony. Stony elbowed him back to his side of the car. The driver turned away and said something to her friend. Stony leaned out the window, winked at the driver and drummed his fingers against the car door.

"Hey"—his smile was right out of a Crisco can—"your name Carol? You look like a girl Carol I know. Your friend's name Carol?" No answer. He shrugged.

Butler bolted over Stony again and hung out the window. "How 'bout a shower?" Stony cracked up, seeing it was a lost cause.

The girl on the passenger side lit a cigarette. In the brief light of her match Stony could see that her skin was ice white smooth and she plucked her eyebrows. His gut wrenched.

"Maybe you just wanna wash up a little?" Butler continued. Stony didn't laugh. He wanted the bitch with the plucked eyebrows.

Butler tried to say something, but Stony held him back.

"What's your friend's name?" Stony asked in a calm but intense tone that made the driver at least look at if not answer him.

"The girl name is Gelia..."

Both Stony and Butler spun half-around at the sound of the deep Jamaican voice. Slowly the rear-seat window rolled down with an electric hum. The impassive black face was almost invisible behind steel-rim shades and a salt and pepper goatee.

"...an' she go for thirty bills."

***

"You work outta this place mainly?" Stony tried to sound cool as he took off his shirt. Gelia didn't answer. They were in a clean but boring motel off the highway on the Bronx side of the Mount Vernon border.

Gelia pulled off her green turtleneck. A plump pale tit fell out of her peach-colored bra. She hadn't looked at Stony once since the deal. Stony eyed the curve of her belly. She didn't bother to put her tit back. Stony sucked in his gut and casually tensed his biceps. She could have cared less. She slipped off her tartan plaid skirt but left on her brown leather knee-high boots. Stony sat down on a wooden rocking chair to pull off his shoes. He stared intensely at the opaque outline of her pubic hair through the lacy mesh of her white panties. When she turned around to pull down the bedspread, he imagined fucking her in the ass. The skin of her back was milky, and he followed the line of her spine up to the nape of her neck. Her yellow hair fell on either side of her neck. He could see the darker roots fan out from her part. With her back still to him she bent down and slipped off her panties. Stony stared at the scalloped curve of her ass for a minute. He was afraid he was going to come too fast so he got up and locked himself in the john. He tore off the blue and white sanitary seal on the toilet seat, took out his throbbing hard-on, straddled the bowl and started jerking off. When he came, his first feeling was of crushing loneliness and wishing that Butler was out there instead of the bitch. He imagined getting shit-faced with Butler, then cruising in Butler's car and scoring some pussy. Then he realized that's exactly what they did. He opened the bathroom door a crack and watched her standing naked except for the boots. Her bush was brown, soft and flattened against her slightly arching belly. Her nipples were smooth and untaut. Her eyes were narrow snaky green, devoid of emotion. Her nose was long, thin and freckled. He started getting another hard-on. Absently he pulled on his dick before returning to the bedroom.

"A blow job's ten extra but I don't feel like it tonight anyhow. I don't do ass fucking. I gotta fuck on my side cause I got a bad back and if you shit in bed or do anything funny I'll cripple you for life."

This was the first time she'd said anything to Stony. He sat on the bed and tried to say something amusing. "You tongue-kiss?"

Ignoring him she walked around to the opposite side of the bed and lay down on her side facing the wall. She left the boots on. Stony stared at her spine, noticing little bumps all the way up.

He lay on his side in the same position, his nose touching the back of her neck, his prick flat against her buttocks. He could sense that her eyes were open. The overhead light was still on. She lifted her left leg so that he could slip it in. Stony lowered himself a little so his lips were kissing her shoulder blades and taking his prick in his hand he tried to get inside. He couldn't do it. Death Valley. When he pushed harder she winced in annoyance. He froze, afraid she was going to do something like she threatened. He stared at the overhead light for a second, absently kissed her back.

He wanted to lightly run his palm along the hills and curves of her side, but he was afraid. Her leg was still up in the air. Thinking that she might be getting impatient he tried once more to get in. No dice. He spit in his hand and rubbed the saliva over the mushroom tip of his dick. That made it easier. A little. A little, a little more, soon he was all the way in but still was afraid of stroking her belly or touching her tits. He held his breath as he fucked. He liked rubbing his crotch against her buttocks every time he went in deep. Raising himself slightly on his elbow he could see her profile. She was absently chewing on her thumbnail and spacily staring at the red on red fake brocade wallpaper.

"How you doin'?" Stony ventured as he kept it moving around. Leaning slightly forward, not enough for him to fall out, she clicked on the plastic ivory-colored radio on the night table. Frankie Crocker's low-key riff filled the room. He stopped moving inside her, his guts felt like spilling water.

"You come?" she asked. Stony started moving again, though he was losing his hard-on.

"Almost." He stared at her back, her shoulder, the wallpaper. Frankie Crocker chuckled. He started feeling angry, and he fucked harder and faster, but she didn't move.

Tell me somethin' go-o-od
Tell me that you love me...

She laid her arm against her side and patted her thigh in rhythm with the song.

***

When Stony came downstairs to the lobby he found Butler sprawled out on a narrow sky blue couch with metal rods for legs. One arm lay across his eyes, a foot rested on the linoleum floor. Above him on the wood-paneled walls hung a Woolworth's painting of a kid fishing near a barn. When Stony got closer to the painting he realized the wood paneling was contact paper. Stony lightly kicked Butler's foot. Butler raised his head, eyes dazed, arm still shielding his face. "Hey! How'd it go?"

"Fantastic," Stony monotoned. "Let's go."

"You wanna go home?" Butler leaned over the rear of the front seat as he backed out the driveway.

"Let's have a drink. How'd it go for you?"

"Ah, for shit. That black bastard said thirty bucks, right? Well, I get undressed. I'm layin' on the bed nude, right? She takes her clothes off, sits between my legs and whips out a bag. Awright, I prefer bareback, but it's for my protection too, you know? Anyways, so there I am with this ski glove on my cock and she starts jerkin' me off. I'm gettin' nice and hard and I figure she'll jump on when it gets to her likin', but all of a sudden I'm feelin' like if she keeps it up I'm gonna come so I says, 'You better hop on now before you miss the show,' and she says. 'For thirty bucks all you get is a hand job, if you wanna get Laid it's an extra twenty.' " Butler punched Stony on the arm. "Mother
fucker!
So I said, 'I don't
have
an extra twenty,' and she says, 'How about your friend? Can you get it from him?' I said, 'Ahh, just finish what you're doin',' an' I came." Butler shrugged. "It was all right."

"Dunsky," Stony laughed.

Butler pulled into a roadside bar with a bright orange "Topless Dancers" sign in the window.

"Butler, please." Stony gestured at the sign. "I just ate."

Butler backed out to the highway. "That didn't happen to you, hah?"

"Are you kiddin'? She was makin' so much noise we had to turn on the radio so the cops wouldn't come in."

Butler shifted into forward.

"I swear I was gonna ask
her
for thirty bills."

"You know, Stony, if I didn't think you was lyin' through your teeth I'd be jealous."

"I ain't lyin'." Stony shoved his fingers under Butler's nose. Butler sniffed without removing his gaze from the road.

"Smells like hamburger to me." He pulled into Roland's, a nice, quiet, empty bar. "C'mon, I'll treat you to a Dunsky's Delight."

An hour later, Butler almost carried Stony back to the car. "Butler, this tequila is makin' me sick. I can't explain to you about Cheri. I would come in her mouth, and she would make one little motion, wiping her lips with her pinky, and I would get a hard-on all over again right then and there, and later I would fall asleep and wake up thinkin' all my crotch hair was burned, and I would feel the crispy burnt stubble and fall back on the pillow sweatin' like I was gonna die, and you don't understand. I
want
to feel this ... this shit I'm goin' through now. Like all my skin is peeled and any way I turn it hurts. Don't you understand, you stupid prick, you motherfuckin' bastard with your goddamn thirty-dollar hand job. Chen, you cunt of a lifetime, I love her, I can't breathe. Butler, you bastard; you stupid ... let's go home. I saw her put her goddamn lips on that pig's
mouth.
Butler, do you love your prick? You should. I love my prick. It's like nobody else's. I don't understand how she could touch anybody else's when she got mine. Butler, open the goddamn windows, go faster. I need air. My dick is like my left hand. It got grace. Butler, open the goddamn window
more.
My hand can dance. Butler, you pinhead, I'm never alone. My hand is a goddamn ballerina. I'm never alone. When I was a kid I would lay in bed and my hand would dance for me in the dark. Butler, what's she doin' now? I want Chubby. Butler, be Chubby. Do you know how scared Albert is all the time? Do you know Mott, that motherless bastard, must got a prick like a dead twig? All fat guys except Chubby got small dicks. That's the law. Can you imagine what it must stink like when he takes a dump? She's a fuckin' hoowah, Butler. I wake up and my crotch is burnin'. I can smell the burnt hair an' she's sleepin' like nothin' happened. Butler, where we goin'? I don't wanna go home. There's nothin' there." Stony slid down in his seat, his cheek resting on the window.

"Stony, I just got one question." Butler removed a fleck of tobacco from his tongue. "If I came runnin' into your room at the motel there tonight an' told you I needed another twenny to get laid, would you've given it to me? Hah?"

Stony slept.

"Y
OU WANT SOME COFFEE
, Tommy?" Phyllis stood before her husband and brother-in-law, almost kowtowing in her pale green housedress.

"No thanks, dear." Tommy dangled one leg over the arm of the Barcalounger.

"Chubby?"

"No thank you, sweetheart." Chubby sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on knees, biting his nails.