Bullet Through Your Face (improved format) (3 page)

Gray’s smile of incredulity bloomed on his face. “I . . . don’t
know. But I suppose it’s an interesting question.”
“Like, if all a guy eats bacon, does it make his come taste like
bacon? Er-er-er, what if he eats lots’a candy?” Her stare beyond the
glass deepened. “I wonder if it makes his come sweet.”
“Perhaps it does.” Gray could barely stifle a chuckle.
This is
some conversation.
“You’re really great,” he finally said when he got
his breath back. Now she was daintily rebuckling his slacks, tucking
the shirt in, making sure the zipper’s tab was right when she pulled
it up.
“There ya go . . .”
“Look, you know, I mean,” he began to babble, “didn’t you say
said you walk this way a lot?”
“Yeah. Ever nat. Ever week-nat that is.”
“Well, see, why don’t we make a deal? I drive home this way
every night too, the same time, and I was thinking that maybe I could
pick you up like this and drive you home, for, you know—”
She seemed elated. “You’s’ll drive me home ever nat fer a blow job an’ gives me twennie
five ta boot?”
“Yes,” Gray said. “Why not?” The quiet calculation registered: twentyfive dollars a night, five nights a week.
A little over six grand a year. Piece of cake
. His two ex-wives were remarried now—no more alimony. “I mean, you need the money for your baby, and I,
you know, I need—”
Her hand, perhaps unconsciously, squeezed his crotch. “That’d be dandy
‘cos, like, most’a the guys who give me rides ever nat, they’se only
pay like five’r ten bucks an’ a lotta times they’se try to do things I
never agreet to. They’se all mostly crackers, see, dirty
fellas and mostly drunk. But I like you. An’ you’s say you give me twenniefive fer a blow? Ever nat?”
“Sure,” Gray said. “Every night.”

She lived way back in the boondocks, all right. An old county utility
road took them deep into the woods. The moon had risen higher; it was
a half-moon, a yellow lump hovering. Gray kept taking sideglances
at it, for whatever reason, but it just made him more aware of the girl.
For the whole time he drove, she never took her hand off his crotch.
He could feel her hand’s warmth through the material. Then she was
rubbing more intently as her big dark-caramel eyes wandered over
the scape of the forest. It didn’t take long before Gray was hard again.

The Corvette’s tires crunched over gravel. At
the end of the
road, a clearing opened, and a little two-story farmhouse sat wedged
into sprawls of high weeds. Blistered once-white paint peeled back
to reveal old, dull-gray wood, and there were dark shutters with
slats falling out. An attic with one blank window peaked out of the
structure toward its rear, some shingles missing from the small
belfrylike roof. Alarge garage branched off one side, obviously a
makeshift
addition, and behind it, an expansive area surrounded by an
eightfoot-high plank fence, more old unvarnished gray. Amid the weeds
crawling around the house, Gray noticed orange bloated objects
sitting lopsided, and then he realized what they were.
Pumpkins,
he thought.
Well that’s damn appropriate, because this dump could
pass for a Halloween house of horrors any day.
Gray didn’t want
to hang around. She had a kid, so she probably had a husband. And
the husband must have a shotgun, to fit right in with the rest of this
backwoods cliché.

He pulled up at the end of the gravel drive, stopped.
“Look,” she said, “I means, you been real nice’n generous to me,
‘specially offerin’ ta pick me up ever nat, but, see, I lives here with
my two brothers Jory’n Hull, but, see, they’se’re mechanics, they’se
work on cars.”
“What about . . . I mean, aren’t you married?”
“Aw, no, I’se ain’t married!” she exclaimed as if it was an
absurdity. “I gotta baby, shore, but that was juss by some fella who
raped me once.”
“Oh, wow,” Gray said. “I’m sorry.”
“Ain’t nothin’ ta be sorry ‘bout ‘cos she’s a beauter-full baby.”
Her fingers, very daintily, tacked around Gray’s crotch. Things
were moving down there again, the tent struggled to rise against the
tension. “I’se don’t want ya ta think I’m greedy’re nothing, but, ya
know, seein’s that yer hard again, I thoughts ya might wanna come
in an’ give me a fuck.”
Just hearing the word—
fuck
—come from her mouth made Gray
feel like he might come right there in his pants. His chest tightened.
“But-but you said you had two brothers.”
“Yeah, I’se do, but, see, they’se ain’t here right now, won’t be
home till tuh-marruh nat on account they had ta go ta Pennsylvania
ta buy car parts at some big car convention. So’s you kin come in,
an’ we’se won’t be disturbed. But, ya know, I’d have ta charge, like,
maybe . . . forty?”
All reason was lost now. Gray turned off the motor and the lights,
opened his wallet, and gave her a hundred dollars.
“Tarnations! Ya don’t have ta give me that much!”
“Take it,” he said. His words came out parched. “You’re really
just so . . . beautiful . . .”

Her face leaned
forward in the dark. He couldn’t see it as much
as feel it—its softness, its warmth. She kissed him very lightly on the
lips while her hand lingered at his crotch, his lust rekindled now
fullforce. Yes, so much lust for her, lust that felt like an inchoate,
molten
mass.

“Come on,” she whispered. “I’ll’se make ya feel real good. You
ain’t even gotta use a rubber if ya don’t want.”
Rubbers were the last thing on his mind just then. In fact,
everything was—everything but her. Gray got out, almost fell over
in some distractive euphoria. Did she giggle? She led him into the
house, holding his hand. The front door creaked open; she switched
on a light.
What a dive,
Gray thought. This looked like the place Jed and
Granny lived in
before
they moved to Beverly Hills. More dilapidated
inside than out, a shit-heap. But then he scolded himself. Certainly
she was underprivileged. No education? Picking crabmeat? And
she’d do that to support her child rather than go on welfare. In a lot of
ways, she was a better person than he.
“Sorry’se ‘bout the mess,” she apologized.
The words barely registered. Gray stood in a prickling fog,
staring. His eyes seemed to be entities with minds of their own; he
couldn’t take them off her. She nonchalantly turned, tossed her head,
gave a despondent smile. Then she took off the halter and, just as
nonchalantly, stepped out of her cutoffs.
God Almighty,
Gray thought.
Even in this tacky place, in this tacky lamplight . . . she was
beautiful. It was a sporadic kind of beauty, an honest kind, utterly
divorced from centerfold appeal and women’s-mag chicness. Here
was a real woman, however unsophisticated, full of real life. Even
her flaws were beautiful: one upper front tooth slightly crooked,
one distended nipple minutely larger than the other, an old scar
on one knee.
Beautiful,
Gray thought in his daze. His mouth felt dry. She didn’t seem the least bit inhibited about standing before
a perfect stranger totally naked. Fine hair showed traceably from
her underarms. A plot of dark-blond fur puffed from her pubis, and
within it, just barely, he could see the lovely folds of her femininity.

The large, high breasts swayed as she stepped forward. “You
ready?” she asked.
“Yes,” he nearly croaked.
The vision entranced him, pulled him to his knees. Now he was
face to face with the nebulous triangle of hair. Gray brushed the hair
with his lips; it was so soft he barely felt it. Just as soft were the backs
of her thighs, over which his hands glided until they found their way
to her buttocks. His mouth urged closer, the hair tickling, and when
his tongue slipped against the nugget of her clitoris, her ass clenched
in his hands.
“I-I lack that,” her whisper flittered down from above.
Lack. Like. Yes, he wanted her to like it, that most irrational
part of himself. The other part was buried somewhere, interred in a
sepulcher of modern common sense. Licking a prostitute’s vagina
wasn’t something the upwardly mobile did in this day and age, but
Gray did it anyway, reveling in her sharp taste and moist heat. He
could hear her breathing faster. She tweezed her clitoris between two
fingertips and gently pulled up. The action extruded the little acorn
of flesh more directly, so Gray could lick it better. The fingertips of
her other hand pushed the back of his head. She was gasping gently
now, the knowing human noise turned Gray on more, and her own
excitement couldn’t be contested. He could taste it, that salty glaze
beginning to flow from the folds beneath the downy hair. Gray
couldn’t have been more pleased with himself. He was a tekkie, a
computer geek, yet here he was arousing this worldly woman of
obvious sexual experience. If anything, her responses were very
flattering.
But his own needs were raging—the needs he was paying for.
“Now, baby—”

Gray looked up, saw her face looking back down at him between
the beautiful breasts. The face was flushed, the eyes narrowed with
desire. Her hands were on his shoulders next, urging him to stand,
and when he was back on his feet, the front of his pants bulging, she
kissed him and ran her tongue between his lips.

“Git’cher cock out, baby,” came the next parched whisper. Gray
did, and was tempted to jerk it off right there when she turned around
and bent over to clear off some space on the kitchen table behind
her. His eyes ran up the back of her legs, over the tight, white rump,
up the sleek lines of her back. When he squeezed his penis—just
once—it didn’t even feel like his. It was insanely hard, throbbing like
some convulsant animal, a fat veined lizard.

Then she turned back around, almost dizzy now. She sat up on
the edge of the table, lay back, and held her legs wide open for him,
her feet poised high in the air. “Put it in me, baby. Juss stick it right
in . . .”

Gray stepped up, slack and shorts down at his ankles. He eased
in and out of her, biting his lip.
Not again . . .
The simple feel of
her inside turned him into a hair trigger about to fall. Struggling, he
summoned more baseball images.

Gray tried but—
Forget it.
Not even imagining being in the
showers with Randy Johnson could hold off the inevitable. Gray’s
balls drew all the way up to the root; he gasped. The first spurt of his
orgasm vaulted out of him and into her, a flood-gate knocked down,
but before he could even be aware of the second spurt—