The Erection Set (39 page)

“I doubt it. Those days it was a time for thinking first. I prefer to believe I was planned. Bastardly or not, I was planned for.”

She smiled, then suddenly changed the subject. “Was last night real?”

“You were there, Sheila.”

“Somehow, it seems more like a dream.” Her fingers toyed with the top of the sheet. “I have very odd dreams. My whole life is one terrible dream. Even when I'm awake I wonder if I'm
really
awake, because when I'm dreaming I think I'm awake and pinch my skin to see if I am or not and I believe I am.” She turned and looked toward the open shutters that sagged inward on their hinges. “I wish I could be sure.”

“You're awake, kid.”

“I was thinking a long time before you got here.”

“What about?”

“Everything. Nothing. Then everything again. Maybe you you can help me.”

“Just ask.”

“No. I won't do that,” she told me. The covers moved as she took in her breath, held it, then let it out slowly. When she turned her head and looked at me again there was something different in her eyes. “You put me to bed.”

“Somebody had to.” I couldn't put my finger on what was different about her now. I picked a loose cigarette out of my pocket and lit it. “About last night ...”

“There never was any last night,” she said. “There's only from now on.”

“I appreciate that, kitten. I covered all the exits except you.”

“Would you have killed me too?”

“Nope. Women are for kissing, not killing.”

“You're sexy,” she said, changing the subject again.

“Hell, I'm tired and I'm dirty.”

“Do you have a shower?”

“Sure, but all the hot water has run out.”

“I understand cold water has a depressing effect on the male physiology.”

“Somebody told you wrong. It's only some males and only some times. Right now I'm hard as a rock.”

“Really?”

“No, I'm lying,” I said, “but if I keep talking like this I sure as hell will be.”

“You're mean.”

“Certainly. I'm dirty too.”

“So take a shower with me,” she said.

The cigarette burned my finger and I squashed it out under my heel. It left a black smudge on the old wide pine planks. “Sorry, doll, I'm just a natural bastard, not the kind that makes himself into one.”

“Don't fight with me, Dogeron. I told you I have been thinking. I don't want any more of those dreams.”

“I'm not a doctor, either.”

“They haven't been any help. Take your clothes off.”

“No.”

But there she was with me in the shower, slickery slick like Earle used to say, all soapy and turning around so I could swab her down a little better and when I was skiing all over her body with foam-filled fingers she laughed through the suds and said, “Could you really kiss me now, Dog?”

I kissed her, all right. A long, lovely, naked, tight-together kiss.

“You haven't got a hard-on,” she accused me.

“I didn't think I needed one,” I said.

“Really, you don't.”

“Oh?”

“I bet you could do it soft.”

“The hell I could. Look, kill that water and let's get dried off.”

“Coward.”

“Old,” I said, nice and flat. “Men aren't padded with fat like you broads.”

Her hands fluttered around me and age stopped being years and started being a long time ago. I said, “At ease, young lady.”

“Pretty,” she said. She turned the faucet off and stepped back to look at me. “You're larger than the ones in the British Museum.”

“Thank you, sweetie.” I threw a towel at her and stepped out of the shower. But I couldn't stop her. She ran her fingernails down my back and pushed me around while I was trying to swab myself off and there was her face looking up at me with delicious, wet lips and wild exuberant titties all poked out with hard round nipples asking to be eaten and something crazy in her eyes. This time when her hand touched me there was a tremor in her whole arm that made me want to explode right there. But I knew I had to play doctor or she'd never get the chance again.

Her fingers squeezed. “I try hard,” I said.

“Try harder.”

The timing had to be just right. “Where will I put it, kid?”

It was like somebody dropped ice water all over her, then that look came back again, some inner determination forcing it on.

I said, “Didn't you ever take a shower with a guy before.”

“Only Cross. Three times.”

“What happened?” I tossed the towel aside and reached for the economy-sized can of deodorant. I sprayed it under my arms and under the crack of my ass until it got too cold to stand, then recapped it and sprayed myself with something that smelled pretty damned good. At least they never had it in Europe where the girls wore spinach under their arms. And never thought to bleach their pussies.

“You're nasty,” she said.

Now I knew where I was going. “How long have you been married?”

“Too long.”

“That's no answer.” I had one pair of shorts left and was about to step into them.

“Don't put them on,” Sheila asked me.

“Kid ...”

“I
know,
Dog.”

“What do you know?”

“That
you
know. About me. I can see it in your face.”

“I'm trying to be professional about this, sugar.”

“Uh-huh.” And the smile was really real.

She let the towel drop and there was that beautiful naked body you read about with big, pushy breasts and a wildly triangular brunette snatch that hid the entrance to the root of evil with the slidy part skidding the way right into destruction's hollow.

“Am I nice?” she asked me.

“Tantalizing,” I said.

“Get more descriptive.”

I covered up my stupid hard-on with my shorts and pulled on a T-shirt. “Fuck you,” I said.

“Why not?”

I looked at her then, and her entire body was a tingling, vibrating mass of muscular contortions and small undulations along the sides of her belly, but what she was telling me with her eyes was something entirely different and I took hold of her arm, led her into the bleak, dark bedroom where there was a big bed from a long time ago and whipped off my two pieces of clothing so only skin could touch skin and rolled across her so she could feel the initial slithery feel of bodies and held her close until her own mental anaesthesia could take hold and show in her eyes.

She didn't have to tell me. She was right when she said I knew. I let the hours become minutes and minutes become microseconds, and compacted everything she had taken away a long time ago and lived with so long into a beautiful night of nearly total exhaustion. I listened to the words and the details of her being raped again and again, felt the pain with her and hated the act with her and tasted her desire for the thing she held repugnant and when she called her husband's name at the height of orgasm without knowing what she was doing I knew she'd never have the dreams anymore.

Sheila looked at me, the moonlight crossing her face, emphasizing the wide, sleepy eyes. “Thank you, Dog,” she said.

I had to grin at her. “You're not supposed to thank me, doll.”

“May I offer you money?”

“If you want a kick in the ass.”

“No, I wouldn't like that, but since all this was for me, I'd really like to give you something too.”

“What's to give?”

“Make me a three-way woman, Dog.”

“Hey, honey.”

“Please? We've done everything else. One more ... injection?”

“You're a hell of a patient,” I said.

“You're a hell of a doctor,” she told me. Then she assumed the classic, pornographic position and said, “Deep, Dog. This should be your favorite way if you live up to your name.”

The sky burbled and burped and spit up a gentle shower of rain. Black clouds roiled overhead, deliberately holding back the sickness until they found the right ones to shower the contents of their entrails on. Waiting.

Waiting.

Everything was waiting. Somewhere.

Arnold bell was waiting. The Guido brothers were waiting. Chet Linden was waiting. The movie company was waiting. Cross McMillan was waiting. Ferris 655 was waiting.

The seed that became a stalk that bore leaves that showed a flower became fruitful and I remembered Ferris. Six fifty-five was the drop number and only once did I meet the courier who had set it all up and that was back in 1948. His name was Weal and we used to refer to him as the Ferris Wheel because he was so damn devious he went around and around to keep from being tagged by anybody at all, taking his cut without asking questions, always delivering on schedule and never tried the shit the others did when they thought they had an advantage. I had to run him down because I didn't like any loose ends in the organization and besides, his damn anonymity was a challenge to me and they said I couldn't do it. So I did it anyway and finally saw the guy who terrorized the Nazi bigwigs who occupied Paris during the little time they were there and he saw me and all he did was give me that funny smile and walk away, head down, knowing I realized he really wasn't eighty years old, but maybe fifty or so and quick and strong enough still to be able to kill with hands or feet and get away across the rooftops while the Gestapo were looking for an aged cripple.

How many years ago was that? Hell, now he would be an old man. Shit, the Ferris Wheel was still turning, but where and why and how? Especially why?

Then I knew why and I damn well had to make Ferris come out into the open. If he was cagy then, he'd be cagier now and with what was happening he was about to throw everything away. He'd figure it was still the old days and the old ways, but if things soured out the river would get it all and he'd kiss everything good-bye and go back to some little place some little somewhere, remembering all that went past and maybe smile because there was still enough left in him to almost carry out the last mission.

So think, baby, where would Ferris be? Where would the old wheel be hiding?

I thought, and I knew.

There wouldn't be a chance in hell of finding him because I knew where he was, and unless he tapped me on the shoulder or the long arm of improbable coincidence reached out, Ferris was buried in his natural cover.

Ferris, you bastard, I thought. You're going to make me smoke you out. Okay, old snake. I can do it. You're waiting to see if I can.

The sky laughed and spit down on me again.

 

Rain. And Teddy Guido was dead. Somebody had thrown a hand grenade through the window of his study and he was a little bag of garbage in a closed copper coffin on a shelf in Mario Danado's New Jersey mortuary. The services were slated for the day after tomorrow. The grenade would have gotten the entire family if they hadn't left the room a minute earlier. His brother was in South America shivering his insides out knowing his turn was coming next. I was on Chet's wipeout list as fast as he could get the men inside the perimeter and I told him to send the best and if they didn't make the hit I'd be on his back, like personally and with the old blade, so watch it, boy. All contacts were cut and it was time to flush the toilet. I was the bowel block that had to go down the drain. I told him I'd have to be surgically removed and he said he'd do that too, if necessary. I said to bring a big, long-handled spoon because he was going to need it.

I looked up at the house where my father fucked my mother and got me in the bargain and I said into the night, “Damn, Pop, I'm glad you fucked and didn't have intercourse. There's a difference, isn't there?”

Maybe the wind had a voice, but something answered me. “You're damn well told, son,” it said.

I nodded and started on the last lap.

Down at the flag line a leering skeletal head with a black cloak was standing. It held all the armament.

Except the big one.

I had that.

 

They had the stockholders' meeting and I lost. I was holding a boxful of paper and elected to the board along with my cousins, but Cross McMillan was chairman and his boy was president with all the power going to the head of the table and only a few swing votes put it that way and it was enough. All I had was the dubious satisfaction of knowing Dennie and Alfred realized I was the one who had bought up all the crappy stock and the money I had spent was already down the drain. Sure, I owned Mondo Beach, but they had Grand Sita which stood smack square in the middle of all the action and it was theirs. Like theirs. The counselor could even prove it for them.

Time was running out and they damn well knew it.

Only I didn't know it.

We had dropped off the idiots and I sat across from Leyland Hunter, watching him play with his drink and he finally said, “You're gone, boy. I tried to tell you.”

“Trying isn't good enough.”

“You know McMillan can even stop the picture if he wants to?”

“Yup.”

“What else do you know?”

“He won't.”

“Why?”

“Cross wants me to fall, that's why.”

“And you won't?”