Читать книгу Acting Badly - Michael Scofield - Страница 6

“LILE, BABE, WE GONNA INDULGE IN A LITTLE HANKY-panky?”

“If you’ll do me like I like it.”

Ron and Lila Kirkpatrick had returned late from Mama Cheetah’s where they’d celebrated with filet mignon and fresh asparagus the cash bonus Ron had won as February’s Home Loan Champ. They’d dragged out dinner to calm Lila’s fury that two of the tiles in the upstairs bath—where Ron now sawed a conical brush between his teeth—had popped free of their mastic. Ron’s belly jiggled under the Go Lobos! T-shirt he liked to sleep in. The off-white tiles slanted up near him beside the toilet.

As they talked, their next-door neighbor, Manny Barnes, in sheepskin, robe, and sweats, was sneaking round the embankment toward the white Cadillac Escalade that Ron had parked in the driveway rather than the garage so as not to wake Lila when he left for breakfast. Lila stood now in her black, see-through wrap lighting four votive candles. They surrounded a soapstone sculpture squatting on the glass table near the TV. She had thumbed the switch on its electrical cord to start a trickle of water past two bonsai pines when Ron yelled out:

“Another’s poppin’, Lile; son of a peccary.”

The hem of her wrap flapping, unveiling the skein of veins beginning to blue at the back of her knees, Lila ran barefoot across the blue pile that carpeted all twelve of the town houses dotting Plaza Hill, and stared in the direction of Ron’s thrust forefinger. The eight-by-eight tile rose on one edge like a trap door. It stopped a couple of inches above its bed of yellow mastic.

With his left hand, Ron, gazing, hoisted his testicles against the bottom of his belly.

“Here comes another!” Lila cried.

His lips tight, her long jaw hanging, they goggled at what sounded like a pack rat gnawing through plasterboard as the edges of the tile facing the one just risen cracked their grout and broke free.

“Ron, make them stop!”

“Stop, you Comanche motherfuckers!”

The tile halted just above its mates. Ron slammed the heel of his cowhide slipper to it as if it were a giant miller moth, cracking it in two.

“What are you doing? Insurance has to see this. They won’t believe this. How can this be happening?”

“We live on an Anasazi burial mound; the ancestors are strikin’ back.”

“Fuck.” Lila swiped at her salt-and-pepper hair, yanked the black ribbon off her ponytail, and tossed it to the floor. Her hair fanned across her shoulders. “This goddamned town. Maybe I can stay married to you—don’t bother lowering your eyebrows—but putting up with Maxine Morgan convincing us to buy this heap of shit? I’m heading back to Fort Worth. I mean it, Ron. I’m not your trophy wife. I’ll drag us through a divorce that’ll flatten you like that toothpaste.”

“Lile, hon—”

“Watch that tile!”

The floor grate rattled as the furnace clicked back on. Lila squinched her eyes and wrinkled her nose at the sour musk.

“I love it when you steam. So does Prince.” Ron pulled his T-shirt out and up to show her the small erection peeking over his testicles.

She brushed her palm across the rayon clinging to her drooping left breast and its ingrown nipple. “Maxine Morgan’s ugly.”

He threw the toothpaste to the counter, sending the box of floss clacking against the wall. “What are you accusin’ me of? Better believe I noticed you smilin’ every time neighbor Barnes mouthed off at the homeowners meetin’ how he loves the way you’ve styled the boulders at the entrance to our compound, how you’ve chosen native I-forget-what—”

“Blue flax and Apache plume.”

“—flax and Apache to plant this spring. I saw you take the chair next to his, babe. I noticed.”

“Fuck you.”

“One finger at me, three back at you. I partner real estate deals with Maxine Morgan for one reason—she hustles.”

Lila snorted.

“Expert on human nature, treats clients like royalty, knows how to close, favors Los Alamos Mortgage. She’ll make us richer than you ever imagined. You married the right cowboy, Lile, followed him here two years ago and you better stay put because when Bush quits diddlin’ and launches this war, you’re gonna see your Tom Mix haul commission checks home so big you can buy yourself and your music-festival galfriends a month of soirées to finger yourselves off listenin’ to Bach or Beethoven or who-the-hell.”

“You through yet?”

“No. I could care less if the tiles upstairs and all the ones downstairs break free and we have to hightail it to a motel while Vic Valdez—he should have stuck with carvin’ santos—or the guy Barnes uses, or whatever Anglo or damned Hispanic we hire comes to glue ‘em back down. Max found you and me and Manny Barnes and his gal these places for a lullaby, a mug a milk. Location, Lile. Views. Within a year we’ll trade up for an acre in Wilderness Gate. Look at me, sweaty as a peccary dogged by hounds.”

Sweat massed under his breasts and in the creases of his belly. Ron fingered his dangling penis and snuffed. “This night was sposed to be romantic. We’ve stuck it out a long time, Lile.”

“Since you groped me in the pinafore Daddy bought for my seventh-grade birthday.”

“Can’t we make tonight work, hon?”

“Do I get my golden shower?”

“You’ll bring me off the way I want?”

“If I can have my shower.”

Ron turned and spat minty saliva into the sink. “I need to come somethin’ awful. That breakfast I’m endurin’ tomorrow involves a tenderfoot from Silicone Valley that Max’s husband set us up with. The guy uses some lone wolf tax advisor in town named Ridley.”

“Helen Ridley’s husband? She helps me with publicity for the music festival.”

“I dunno.”

“Is she going to be there?”

“Ridley’s wife?”

“Not Ridley’s wife.”

“Max isn’t comin’,” he lied.

“Good.”

“Better use a larger towel than last time, babe.”

“I bought a plastic cover and big fluffy flag I thought might turn you on.”

“American flag? I dunno.”

“You want your orgasm?

“Gimme those.” He stepped over the sprung tiles and threw his hands out, trying to reach her breasts. She jerked away.

“Wash that cute thing with soap. And wipe the sweat off your belly. And sprinkle on some aftershave.”

He was upending the bottle of wintergreen when he heard noise crackling from the bedroom’s TV. “What’s that for?” he called, rubbing his palms and slapping his cheeks.

“When I switch on my vibrator.”

“Vibrator?” As he left the bathroom, he saw headlights mow a path of yellow across the blinds. Who up here so late? Frowning at the crunch of tires on the dirt road, he crossed the rug to stand near Lila while she punched channel changes into the remote, after muting the sound.

“Vibrator you bet your butt. Anyhow, Patriots and Tomahawks and helicopter gunships and all this new talk about chemicals help me come.”

He shuffled to the bed and tossed her lace-slipped pillows and stuffed animals to the floor. “Hey,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re goin’ to war to get rid of Saddam’s thugs and nukes and anthrax and sarin gas. We’re goin’ to war to give those twenty-four million sand niggers a shot at democracy. Not so squaws like you can get their rocks off watchin’ the news.”

“You don’t care how we’re staying safe from terrorism?”

“Right now, at this moment?”

“There’s Fox News showing Stealth bombers loading up missiles. Aren’t they beautiful?”

She went to her side of the bed and stooped. “Pull that spread, Ron, and scrunch the blanket back.”

From under the bed frame she hauled up the beach towel, then unfurled its stars and stripes over the sheet.

He knuckled the towel; the plastic underneath gave the sheet a crinkly feel. Pulling his T-shirt over his balding head, he tossed it into a wicker chair. “Light level okay? I dimmed it in the bathroom.”

“Perfecto. Nuts—a mouthwash ad. Lie still so I can play.”

He felt his penis swell as his buttocks cratered the mattress. A tingling surged into testicles the size of Brazil nuts as she threw her black wrap onto the half dozen badgers and koala bears and pandas and lion cubs that lay at the base of the bedside table. Freeing a paper cup from the stack lying on its side in the drawer, she set it down and straddled his chest, facing his toes and the TV.

Her long strands of hair tickled his belly. He stared at the mole that swelled off her right shoulder as she ground her vulva against him. Attending for a moment the furnace’s hum and the gurgle of the soapstone waterfall, he reached around her ribcage for breasts veined like the back of her knees, and shuddered as her fingers began to knead his testicles.

“Once my tits were good, weren’t they, Big Shit? Remember how you used to suck to make the bud pop out?”

“Unh,” he groaned, and his middle finger pushed into the hollow where her nipple hid. He saw the infant they never talked of, saw Lila press his tiny ears and re-guide the tiny lips to her right breast.

“They’re loading Tomahawks under the wings of a Super Hornet on the Abraham Lincoln, Ron.” One arm stiff against his thigh, she stopped grinding and began to milk his penis, spitting on her palm and sliding it up, releasing and beginning again near the loosening scrotum.

“It’s workin’, hon.” He crimped his eyes, concentrating on the building heat.

“Little Prince is growing fast.”

“Huh, huh, keep your promise, babe, do it.”

“A flatbed’s bringing a missile up I’ve never seen.”

“Do it, Lile!”

His thighs twitched and his testicles ached as she released him and clambered onto her side, scrambling to bunch the edge of the towel into the hollow between her hip and the sheet. She lifted her head to take his glans into her mouth.

“Don’t forget the jewels,” he panted, arms flung from the fat spreading from his rib cage.

She freed her lips. “Stop telling me.”

Sweat massed in the folds of his eyelids as he felt her fingers massage his testicles and stroke his inner thighs. She lowered her face to mouth his erection. Lucky Max’s husband when she needs his money to add a cubicle to her office or remodel the office kitchen—no paper cup, Ron thought.

“Slow down,” he gasped.

She licked the nerve as he’d taught her—the nerve Max teased to drive him berserk—and resumed squeezing his shaft, pressing the glans with her lips.

“Now!” he cried, releasing his own breasts, heavy as water balloons, and raising his right arm in salute.

Palming his testicles, she plunged down on the shaft, back up, down and back, until his semen massed for eruption. The ends of the hair she shampooed twice daily felt like feathers swishing across the tops of his thighs.

“Oh Jesus Christ and Paul Apostle, suck, don’t stop, suck, suck, oh Judas Christ, oh.” The wrinkles in his neck were soaked. “Uhhhhhhhh.”

He arched his back, vising her head as the vasectomized liquid spurted toward her throat. When she strained to free her head, he relaxed his grip. She rolled over, grabbed the cup, spat into it, and clapped it on the table.

“I’m good?” she asked, chest heaving, voice throaty, turning her face toward him. The capillaries in her cheeks flamed. She pulled an edge of the towel around to wipe his forehead and neck.

“Oh yeah.” He began to wheeze. His right hand squeezed his testicles.

“Do me now.”

“Gimme a breather, Lile.”

“You big shit.” She reached for a pillow and plopped it against the headboard. She stroked her clitoris—longer than most (but be glad, a gynecologist had told her before marriage; she’d thought it deformed)—and stared at the catapult slinging an F-18 from the end of the carrier’s deck. Between her other thumb and forefinger she rolled her nipple. Her chest stilled.

“Lie back,” Ron growled, scooting off the bed to his knees.

She settled herself on the American flag’s cotton nubs, legs dangling off either side of him. “Play with my tits,” she murmured.

“I need balance to do this right. You play with ‘em.” Pushing his palms against the sheet and tucking his thumbs under her shoulder blades, he lowered his face to her gray nest of hair and found her clitoris. He drew his tongue’s tip back and forth along the organ, so much longer than Max’s; fussed with it like a cat, nipping, flicking; felt her hand slip under his forehead to join him.

“Good-O. Don’t stop, Ronnie, please?”

He had trouble keeping his tongue connected because she had started revolving her pelvis. The ligature on the underside of his tongue smarted as if nicked with scissors.

“I’ve got to use my finger, babe.” He rested his cheekbone on her thigh, gazing at his silver wedding band and its bits of turquoise.

“Come back, I’m almost there. Please, Ronnie?”

A few more swipes with his middle finger and he returned to licking and flicking the clit slick with fluid until the gaps between her moans shortened, as they had before Jonathan’s birth. Her pelvis began to thrash. He bore down with his tongue until she screamed.

As awed now as he had been at their son’s birth, he watched her fling her head. How was he going to dump Max? Christ Amighty, listen to those screams, look at Prince stretch. We’ll start over, Lila, I swear it. Max can never have an orgasm anyhoo.

He bent to lick perspiration from the navel of this wife of thirty-eight years, massaging her nest with his palm until she quieted, her jaw hanging.

“Thank you, honeybunch, oh Lord.”

“Lile, babe?” He pushed his testicles against his penis, wincing at how his heart galloped as he stood. “Let’s do doggy.”

“Your doctor didn’t say only one spurt a night till you lose weight?” She rested a moment. “Another fib? You do it twice with that whore? And I put up with it.” Her voice dropped to a murmur.

“There’s no Max Morgan and me that way, Lile. I told you! I learned my lesson after Cowtown. Yes, the sawbones said one orgasm. But tonight I thought, Lila and I deserve more. Okay, we shouldn’t.”

“Right. Though I don’t believe anything you say anymore. Good trophy wife.” Leaning on her elbow, she swung her legs up and, knees squashing her breasts, rolled off the towel toward the headboard. “Come on up here.”

His own breasts and belly jiggling, he climbed onto the mattress and lay on his back parallel to the stripes now warm and damp with lovemaking.

From the Fox newscaster she turned to face Ron on her knees, straight-arming the mattress with her fists on either side of his shoulders. Saliva wet her teeth and gold fillings—she’d cracked two molars after Jonathan’s death at Fort Ord.

“Rise up, Lile, you’re hurtin’ me.”

“Too bad. You ready?”

“I guess.”

Raising her buttocks, she hunched forward, shaking the mattress with her knees and fists. He looked up into her matted vaginal nest, inhaling its salt, clenching his eyes like a boy expecting a slap, stiffening his shoulders.

“Piss on you, Ronald Kirkpatrick. Piss on that fat. Piss on treating me like shit. And piss on you for making me leave our beautiful Fort Worth home.”

“That was your idea.” Flinching as her hot urine splashed his face and chest, he pressed his lips together—that smell, more than sulphurous. He was trying to suck air through his nose when she cried out:

“Ronnie, green, it’s green!” At that moment came a loud crrraaaak and a rumble like thunder at the rear of their house, below the upstairs sliding door. It was followed by what sounded like crockery hurled against the back wall that faced the downstairs deck.

“What was that? What’s that smell? Get off me!” He wrenched his head to spit onto the towel.

“Something’s wrong!”

“Who’s throwin’ things down there?”

“How should I know? Don’t you care I hurt?”

“Where?”

“My snatch—call nine-one-one.”

At last the crashing outside ended. Wet as a walrus, he heaved himself off the bed as she folded into a V. Green mottled the towel’s white stripes and the sheet; the red seemed blistered black.

“Oh, Lord,” she moaned, hugging her knees and rocking. “Something terrible is happening and worse downstairs and you stand there with your mouth open, squeezing your balls. The Lord’s punishing us, Ronnie. We’re crap and you’re crappier than anybody. Do something.”

Wheezing, he hurried into the bathroom, lifting his feet over the raised tiles into the shower end of the tub. He turned the faucet on cold, grabbed a washcloth, and, shivering, slapped the cloth to his chest, legs, and arms.

He dried off and wrapped the towel around him, then reached into the closet to pull his robe and blue Home Loan Champ cap from their hooks.

He was heading for the phone on her desk when he twisted to face her in the dimness. Across the TV screen, Super Hornets banked in unison, emitting white contrails. The soapstone waterfall gurgled, the four squat candles flickered in their hammered-silver bowls.

“Asparagus, Lile. We had asparagus for dinner. Take a laugh break.”

He flipped the switch to light the stairs and lumbered down.