Nobody Bats a Thousand (27 page)

“Do you ever have any cravings, Bobby?”

“Billy.”

“Well do you, Billy?”

“I guess, I…”

“Billy?”

“Yeah?”

“
Do y
ou want to fuck?”

I froze. “Sure,” I said, s
ilently praying that I’d heard the question correctly.

“Well? Are you coming over here? Or do I have to come over there?”

After a quick pause, she rose smoothly, guided her long slender body around the table until she was next to me on the couch. After a long solemn look to study each other’s face, she leaned to bring her lips down to
my level. We kissed and embraced. After a few minutes she pulled back, sighed, didn’t look at me but at my crotch as she used both hands to suddenly detach the buttons of my jeans.  She took me into her mouth as I sat there not knowing what to do or think or say with this mass of blonde hair draped across my lap, working up and down. I was like a spectator in the twenty-fifth row, too detached to be involved, too overwhelmed to become part of the action. Soon she gave up on this position, made awkward by the length of her torso, and brought her body off the couch so she was on the floor on her knees. The switch accomplished without missing a beat.

I could now see her face, her cheeks contracted, her eyes closed. She kept after it, lightly rubbing my chest with a free hand, stopping for just a moment to look up at me with sleepy eyes, her hair falling across her face. “I want to taste it,” she said before turning her head again and going back to business.

It took me a moment to understand what she was saying and even longer to believe it.  I tried to relax to let go and accommodate her, but I was still rigid and nervous, still more of a spectator than a participant.

The time slipped by. Finally, she came up from the flo
or. “Come on.” S
he took my hand, and
led
me off the couch, down the hall past the bathroom, and into a bedroom lit only with the dull light filtering from the living room, revealing a small mattress on the floor.

“I grabbed these at the store when the guy
wasn’t looking.” S
he tossed me a small package of condoms she pulled from the breast pocket of her overalls then she unhooked her straps and her outfit fell on the floor. Her T-shirt came off, and I undressed.  I noticed the sheets were fresh as I lay down next to her. I kissed her, lifted myself, lowered and went inside her, the penetration as effortless and flawless as if we’d been practicing the trick for years.

My stomach
and legs felt tight and strong.
With
my arms straight and stiff, my palms flat on the bed next to her arms,
I held my balance and
went after it like a pile driver at full speed, breathing slowly and deeply, trying to maintain the power and speed.

“Be gentle, baby. I’ve had enough of that macho shit. Can you be gentle?”

“Yeah,” I said and surprised myself that I could, hovering over her long frame, slowly moving in and
up, rhythmically, fluidly;
naturally without worry or concern.

I came but didn’t stop. I stayed at it for as long as I could, plus a minute more. I slowly rolled off her, pulled off the rubber, tossed it into the darkness across the room, and then just lay there gaining perspective and catching my breath.

She didn’t say anything but softly stroked my shoulder and arm. Her touch and the sight of her in the weak light got me going again. I kissed her lips, then her neck, then worked my way down to her small breasts. She played with my hair and gently prodded my head past her breasts down to her stomach.

“Go down between my 38’s, baby.”

38’s?
  No way were her breasts that big, and I’d just come from that direction anyway.

“38 inseam.”
S
he took my hand and moved it to her leg. “Kiss me down there.”

Generally oral sex with a woman was vilified if not
downright
prohibited in my crowd. I’d been going out with Gina for over two years and no matter how hot and heavy we got the thought of giving her head never crossed my mind. Hernandez would try and disgust us once in a while talking about the joys of eating pussy, but Red would always rebut, “That urethral acid can
kill you.” And the subject was
always quickly change
d
. But now, as I worked my way slowly down to that vital part of her anatomy I felt ready. As if the act felt somehow natural, somehow pure. Kiss her, that was the key phrase, kiss her womanhood like I had her mouth, and I did for a very long time, much of the time looking up at her, smiling in repose, until the base of my tongue was tired and sore.

When I finally stopped I slid up next to her again. She kissed me with just her lips then closed her eyes and went to sleep. I looked at her for awhile, she was so long and lovely; then I guess I was finally
overtaken with exhaustion after my heart quieted, and I too fell asleep, next to this woman I didn’t kn
ow in the bed of a giant biker, despite thoughts
that my car was probably being dismantled by a group of hoodlums out in the street fifty yards away.

But I didn’t sleep long. There were no curtains on the windows, and I was awakened by the light from the first faint blessing of morning. I lifted myself out of bed slowly, so not to disturb Rita, and suddenly I noticed a stain on the middle of the bed. I reached down to investigate. It was still rather fresh—blood—Oh God! What had happened? What had I done to this girl? Then it dawned on me what had transpired. I quickly forgot about her and began to worry about myself.

I rushed into the bathroom, stuck my face against the mirror and thoroughly checked my mouth and the area around it. Somehow there was no blood to be seen, but I washed my face anyway and rinsed my mouth and spit several times. This could only happen to me. Simultaneously I had been introduced to sodomy and earned my red wings, the old Hell’s Angels’ expression for oral sex with a woman on the rag, here in this biker’s apartment where it seemed almost appropriate but still scary and weird.

Still rattled by my discovery, I went back into the bedroom and started to dress. I was almost finished when Rita opened her eyes and smiled.

“I’ve got to go.”

She reached up, took my hand, pulled me down, kissed me on the lips then let me go. “You’ll probably never see me again,” she said
, “but you’ll never forget me.” S
he smiled with her eyes barely open, then rolled on her side and went back to sleep.    

I left the apartment. Quietly shut the door behind me. Came out into the morning and was relieved that my car was still there
intact
. It was probably only five-thirty, but the desert heat was already brewing. By eleven it would be over a hundred degrees.

The logical place to head was to my bed for much needed sleep, but I really didn’t want to go home. My dad would be gone to his job at the post office pretty soon, but I didn’t want to cut it too thin and bump into him because he was such a morning person. Most of the time he seemed almost sullen, since he was quiet and rarely smiled, but at the break of day he was always happy, smiling, full of talk and questions. Which could be rather annoying to someone still trying to wipe the sleep out of their eyes as they desperately struggled to get that first cup of coffee down and that caffeine into their bloodstream.

I drove away from town, east out into the open desert where I parked, got out, leaned against the hood of my car, and watched the sun coming up over the hills, its light permeating across the horizon, the day stretching itself awake. I tried to reconcile the perversion I’d put myself through in the last few hours.
She
was so beautiful and exciting
,
but
tho
ughts of regret came with
thoughts of repercussions and disease. Herpes of the mouth, syphilis of the throat, or maybe AIDS contracted though the digestive system, unpleasant, probably
silly
irrational thoughts, but thoughts that hung with me no matter how I tried to bury them.

I wouldn’t have been so stupid and careless if I hadn’t been drinking, I thought
,
but regret was only part of the problem. The lack of regret, the part of me that wanted to rush back and do any perverse thing that beautiful stranger wanted, that was the part that plagued me the most. Crossing the line, cheating on Gina, doing what I knew to be wrong and not being able to totally con
demn my actions or feelings
was a strange sensation. It was like I’d just had sex with a willing hundred-year-old woman and liked it.  Like I’d had gay
sex with a first cousin
and lived to remember it fondly. These thoughts wouldn’t budge, these feelings of fear and shame, they stayed right there at the front of my mind the entire drive home.

I parked in front of my house, went inside, and immediately locked eyes with my mother who was sitting at the kitchen table reading the morning paper.

“I stayed over Benny’s last night.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, Red got real drunk. We had to take care of him. Benny and I had a good talk. About the meaning of life and that kind of stuff,” I tried to sound convincing.

“Did you get everything solved?”

“We’re still working on it.”

My mother paused without taking her eyes off me. I felt a little self-conscious and looked down quickly to make sure I’d put all my clothes back on.

“Did you hear about Paul Briggs?”

“Hear what?” I shook my head no.

“He got killed, a head-on collision on Highway 95. He had just moved to Phoenix. He flew back here to get his car, and he was driving
back there to start his new job.” S
he paused.  “His mother’s in bad shape. The doctor has
her
on something to sedate her.” M
y mother
shook her head and looked down at the table. “I don’t know what I would do if something like that happened to you or your sister.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, and I meant it, but I really didn’t feel too upset. Maybe I was too tired to feel deeply about the tragedy. I sat down across the table from my mother and began to think about Paul. He was only six months older than me but had skipped a few grades, entered college early, and had gotten a Masters in chemistry before he was twenty-one. He was the ultimate achiever, good at sports, straight A’s all through school, didn’t smoke or drink, never liked to waste a second, and was always in a hurry like there was so little time and so much to do. Now all those things he was so worried about
doing
just wouldn’t get done.

“The funeral’s Monday. Your grandfather is doing most of the arrangements. He’ll probably need you to help deliver them.”

“Sure,” I said, and right away, though I needed the money, I knew Monday was not going to be a good day. My grandfather owned one of the two floral shops in town. My mother still worked there part time as she had for as long as I could remember. I had worked there, here and there, since I was a kid, and though I love my grandfather dearly, I just couldn’t work for the man.  He was, like my mother, as hyper as a hummingbird, always hovering around you waiting to correct your mistakes, making
you
hyper and nervous. Finally through my mother I let it be known that I would help out on the real busy days—Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, maybe a big funeral or wedding—but otherwise I was done with the store. It was the one time my father didn’t bug me about quitting a job. It was the one time he seemed to understand.

I went into my room, automatically turned on the TV and flopped down on my bed. I purposely left my door wide open so when my mother walked by she could look in and see I wasn’t asleep. I didn’t want her to k
now I had been awake
all night
, and
that I was so tired I felt dizzy
and weak. I planned to just lie
there feigning sobriety and consciousness as best I could until she finally left for work when I could finally let go, pass out and enjoy some deep, deep slumber. It was the longest hour of my life. I acted like I was interested in whatever was on TV even though my attention span was down to about half a second, and I couldn’t tell now what I had been watching if you put a gun to my head and demanded the answer. All I could
remember is listening to my mom,
listening
to her every move as
she fluttered around the house doing this or that
before she left for work. In my frame of mind it was slow torture, every second,
every
sound. Every time she opened a squeaky drawer or turned on a faucet or made a noise in her bedroom or the living room, it just served to heighten my anticipation of her departure; stretching tighter the lingering pain of my guilt and fatigue until, just as I thought I could no longer bear any more
suffering, I heard the tinkling
of her car keys, and I figured she was on her
way to the garage.  But the tink
ling noise became louder until I looked up and saw her standing in the doorway of my room.

“Just thinking
about Paul and his poor mother.”
S
he stood holding her purse, shaking her head, and
looking down. “It’s hard to underst
and why things like that happen.” S
he looked at me. “He had so much to look forward to, his whole life ahead of him. When things like this happen, it just…. it just makes me feel so confused.”