Authors: Sarah Kernochan
Night is falling by the time Seth returns from Valyou Mart with the shopping bag full of douche. He chucks it inside the bathroom and closes the door against the horrendous stink.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Soak your butthole in it.”
He’s outa here. Hanging a “Closed” sign on the motel office window, he disconnects the night bell. Feminine douches remind him of Marly Walczak. He decides to drive by her trailer for a free fuck.
He would like to pay Marly once in a while. Or buy her some shiny lingerie that would make her look younger, lift up her flattened little boobies. Bring her a box of fine chocolates, to flesh her out a bit. But Seth knows never to flash money around and attract the suspicion of parents, friends, or cops.
Summer lightning rakes the treetops as he turns into the “Whispering Elms” trailer park. Clouds clump low; the air bulges with humidity. A simmering breeze balloons the patio awnings on the single wides, carrying the odor of backed-up septics.
Old Dave Gottschalk, who has lived on disability since he shot one foot off in World War II, is out in front of his Airstream, cursing and kicking the satellite dish with his good foot. Further on, 12-year-old Dom Pizzarro and his middle-school mates have their amps all the way up, quaking his mother’s pink RV while she sucks oxygen and cigarettes in the bedroom, a goner from emphysema.
Marly’s car isn’t by her trailer, whose front door stands wide open. Through the screen, Seth can see the glow of the hanging lamp in the kitchenette.
PEARL RUMMAGES IN
her mother’s bureau drawer, searching for the orange vibrator. The blue one doesn’t show up well on camera. She has been taking pictures of herself to post on the internet: posing on her bed in a satin teddy, aqua with black lace, and a Ninja Turtle Halloween mask.
Her profile lists her weight at 325 pounds, which gets more responses than her actual weight of 230. There are a lot of chubby chasers out there. At first she writes back to her e-mail suitors in a sweet, seductive tone. Then, when the guy is hooked, she abruptly bombs him: “Choke on my labia you dirtdumb jizzbag hey loser stick yr sucky worm dick in a blender & press liquefy fuckass.”
A few of them actually like the abuse. She suggests to those ones that they meet her in a secret chat room, and sends a link that takes them to the homepage of the FBI.
No orange vibrator. Pearl closes the drawer. Thunder rumbles close by; her skin tingles in the electric air. The faraway beep of the microwave reminds her that the nachos are ready. Anticipating the warm ooze of cheddar over salsa, jalapeno slices, ground beef, Baco-bits, and corn chips, she pads into the kitchenette. As she opens the oven, she hears the bell jingle outside on the gate, then Pook’s bark.
It’s too soon for her mom to be back from the bars.
Someone mounts the stoop to peer through the screen door.
“Hi.” It’s Seth Poonchwalla. “Is Marly in?”
Pearl strides to the door, slapping it open. “She’s out.” She blocks the door, a boulder on legs.
He stands dumbly in his camo shorts and wife-beater, black eyes startled, mahogany skin gleaming under the porch light. Lightning flits behind his head; fat drops of rain pock the steps. “Can I come in?”
“Your funeral.” Pearl steps aside as he enters, making no move to hide her pink acreage. Let this dweeb get the shock of his life.
She doesn’t notice Pook struggling to get up the steps, and closes the door on the dog.
The storm cracks open: rain cascades onto the roof. “If you think you’re gonna wait for her,” she heads back to the microwave, “I got no idea when she’ll be back.”
Seth slides into the banquette, eyes on Pearl’s back: the folds of it, the burst of her rump below the skimpy lace hem.
“Smells good,” he says, as she removes the platter of nachos from the micro.
“You can’t have any.” She sets the plate down on the dinette table and sits, buttocks claiming both sides of the banquette’s corner. Her sumptuous breasts toss about like waves as she shakes pepper sauce on the cheese.
“Why not?”
“Beef in it. Sacred cow.” Her eyes mock him. The tops of her aureoles swell above the black lace, like tender pastel-pink sunrises. They must be about nine inches in diameter. “Isn’t that your religion?” she adds.
“I eat anything.”
“Notice, so do I.” Circling the platter with one arm to hoard it, she lifts a sauce-laden chip to her mouth, tongue snaking out to snap the rope of cheese restraining it. Butterfat and salsa wash over her knuckles.
His dick has never been so hard. He is ready to cut diamonds with it, and lay them at her feet. He wants to enter her with his whole self, pulling all her soft flesh over him like a stack of comforters, filling his mouth with her pale pink sunrises.
Pearl pushes the platter between them. “Okay, have some.” He feels like weeping. She guides a wad of nachos to her mouth. “Mom’s kind of crabby these days. She’s not gonna want to see you.” Her lips close around the food, forming a tiny mauve flower.
“What about you?”
Pearl frowns, chewing. “Whabbout me?”
“Do you want to see me?”
She swallows warily. “Depends.”
Jumping to his feet, he yanks his zipper down. “I want to see you,” he says. His rod unbends, prongs out. “Maybe you can tell.” His eyes are a beggar’s.
Leftover rain drips in the silence. Outside, Pook scratches at the door. There is a dizzy sense of transition in the atmosphere, something departing, and another something arriving.
Pearl clears her throat, her voice husky with confusion. “You must be desperate.” He wishes she could see his heart. “Bitch, don’t you know you’re beautiful?”
Rolling her eyes, she reaches for more food. “Yeah, right. I’m a sacred cow.” Through her mouthful: “Go fug yourself.”
Seth is stymied, his jeans halfway down his thighs and his member standing in a draft. Then he gets an inspiration. “I’ve got money.”
Dotting the grease from her lips with a paper towel, Pearl considers. “How much?”
“I’ve only got twenty on me. But I can get more.”
She cleans out the inner pockets of her cheeks with her tongue, not answering.
He presses on: “A lot more. A hundred dollars.”
“Is that what you think I’m worth?” Her look is plaintive; suddenly he feels her vulnerability. She’s a virgin, he realizes.
“Two hundred,” he says.
WHEN THE SKY
goes inky and the rain begins, Marly switches on her low beams, turning her battered Cavalier onto Route 404. If she can’t get help with her problem from the church, she’ll just cheer herself up at O’Malley’s Mare. Russ will be behind the bar, Chuck and Oly playing pool, Gil Reynard watching baseball. Waiting for her.
Suddenly she swerves, narrowly missing some kid in a purple anorak walking beside the road. Marly can’t see anything through this downpour; she switches her wipers to high speed. That’s all she needs, another accident.
Checking her rearview mirror, she sees the girl receding down the road. Her headlights had only briefly illuminated the lower half of the girl’s face before Marly swerved, not enough to tell.
Was it the same girl? That would be too perfect.
The storm gushes and flares. Good: now people will stop bellyaching about the drought. The men at the bar will talk about the Red Sox line-up, grub prevention, foreign wars, dyke actresses, the price of tires. Never about love. It’s up to Marly Walczak to lay them down one by one, the males of Graynier, stroking their hearts to awaken vigorous love. That’s what she’s here for.
Running through the rain from her parked car, she swings through O’Malley’s door. The same grins greet her, the same voices shouting come-ons above the honky-tonk.
Suddenly she’s rocked by a repulsion she has never experienced. Here are the same drunk assholes; the same meaty hands all over her tits; the same beer tasting like carbonated armpit. All at once she sees herself nailed into her mattress by a procession of contemptuous men, her hands flung wide and bleeding from the fingertips. Waking countless mornings with the horrid crust of semen on her thighs. Used goods, marked down and degraded.
Negative thoughts—banish them! Things could be worse! She gropes, by habit, for things to be grateful for.
What, for her leaky trailer, demeaning job, slave wages? Her lumbering foul-mouthed sourpuss illegitimate daughter?
The repulsion will not be quelled; she feels like she’s drowning in it. In a heartbeat she’s back outside, panting for air.
The rain abruptly stops. In ten minutes it will have evaporated. There will be no relief from the drought.
AS PEARL AND SETH
lock themselves in her bedroom, Pook wanders along the fence in the rain. Looking up suddenly, he searches the void with milky eyes, confused by an unfamiliar smell.
He hears a voice, a gentle command:
Lie down
. He obeys, rolling onto his side. A point of light grows in his vision, like a star, joined by others, pricking through the dark.
The dog pees with excitement, imagining his sight is returning. Instead, all the senses fade: the odors of weather, home, and intruder; the sensation of ribs pressing into the wet earth with each breath; the sound of that breath diminishing; the taste of minerals as his tongue lolls onto the dirt. The points of light cluster and revolve. Pook gradually relaxes; all is as it should be.
Good dog
, says the voice.
Pook floats into the meadow of stars.
Good dog.
This is where Jane finds him: a small still-warm shape stretched on the grass inside the white plastic fence. Stilling the bell carefully with one hand, she pushes the gate open and crouches beside the dog. Her purple anorak drips rain onto his body.
Lifting Pook, she carries him to the screen door and peers inside. Hearing no voices, she steps inside quietly, as she has learned to do when entering strangers’ houses.
She lays him on the kitchenette table next to a plate of half-eaten nachos, murmuring, “Poor little fellow.” Then she opens the refrigerator to find what she came for.
THE BELL ON
the gate tinkles.
In the bedroom, Seth lifts his mouth from Pearl’s nipple. “What’s that?”
“Must be Mom’s home.”
He pulls out of her, feeling a sweet estrangement. He sits back on his heels; holding her thighs apart, he gazes, stunned, into her manifold mystery.
Pearl has never bagged a boy’s heart before; for the first time she knows the thrill of ownership. Sliding the window screen aside, she helps Seth slip out, watching him stumble off into the night.
A high, heartbroken wail echoes through the trailer.
Pearl quickly throws on a wrapper and hurries to the kitchen. Her mother stands bent over Pook lying across the table.
“My baby,” Marly whimpers. She can’t bear to touch him, already knowing his fat little tummy will have no spring; his pink ribbon of tongue is hard as wire. Rainwater has pooled around his body on the formica tabletop.
Muddy sneaker prints lead to and from the screen door.
Marly turns on Pearl, her voice thick with rage. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know, I was asleep.”
“Somebody killed him! Someone was here! Look!” Marly points to the counter beside the refrigerator. “They ate my yogurt! They drank my root beer! They killed my dog! Whoever did it, I’ll shoot the fucking sonofabitch!”
C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN
T
he stabbing pain in Hoyt’s neck wakes him early. He stumbles into the bathroom to take some Tylenol and put on the foam collar he bought in the pharmacy. The day is already sweltering.
Padding naked to the kitchen, he helps himself to a breakfast of toast and gin.
Outside, a car door slams. Peering out the window, he sees Marly get out of her banged-up Cavalier and march up the path to the bungalow. What is the sorry bitch doing here? She looks strange. Hoyt is more used to seeing her in drugstore makeup, tight denim cat suit, and fuck-me-shoes—or naked. Today she’s wearing dingy sweatpants and thongs and looks thinner than ever, distracted, disheveled, her complexion grayish. Her usual moronic smile is gone.
He slips into some boxers and opens the door.
“Hi, Marly. Gettin’ any lately?”
She brushes past him into the house.
“Come in, why don’t you?” He closes the door, answering himself, “Thanks, don’t mind if I do.”
She shifts from one foot to the other, eyes darting around the room. “Could you loan me a gun?”
“No.” It’s what he always says, no matter what Marly asks for.