Lawrence Block: Chip Harrison Scores Again

We talked a little more. She asked if I minded if she smoked, and I said I didn’t, and she lit a cigarette and opened her book and I settled back in my seat and closed my eyes. I was just as glad she was reading because she wasn’t that outstanding to talk to. It was nice watching her and listening to her voice, a very pleasant voice, but it was very hard to concentrate on what she was saying.

So I thought I would doze off again into that sort of half sleep that’s possible on a bus, but I couldn’t manage it. It was her, the perfume, the presence. I was aware of her. Somehow I was more aware of her now when she wasn’t talking and I wasn’t looking at her than I had been before.

After a while she said, “Chip? Are you asleep?”

“No.”

“Could you do me a favor?”

She was very large on favors. I opened my eyes. “Sure,” I said.

She handed me her book, her finger indicating a place on the page. “Starting right here,” she said. “Could you just read that scene?”

“Out loud?”

“No, silly.”

I took the book and started to read, and the first thing I did was start blinking furiously. The book was called either The Swinging Swappers or The Swapping Swingers. It hardly matters which. And the scene she had given me involved six people in a sexual tangle, with everybody doing everything to everybody else, and all in the crudest and most explicit sort of writing. Absolute hard-core pornography. The scene went on for God knows how many pages. I stopped after two and a half of them, and it was just gathering momentum.

And so was I.

I don’t know whether I actually blush or not, but if I do, I was doing it then. I closed the book and turned very very slowly to look at her. The expression on her face surprised me. Very serious and matter-of-fact, with a little vertical furrow in the center of her forehead.

“Did you read it?”

“Uh, a couple of pages, yeah.”

“You read fast. Could y’all tell me something?”

“What?”

“Was that there an erotic scene? Was it exciting?”

“Yes.”

“It was?”

“Uh, yeah. Yes, I would say that you would have to call that an erotic scene. Yes.”

Her face relaxed and she gave a little sigh. “Well, that’s good news,” she said. “See, I thought maybe it was just the bus that was getting to me. I always get so randy on buses. I swear I get like a mare in heat just from riding on a bus. I don’t rightly know what it is that does it. The rhythm of the wheels?”

“Maybe.”

“You think that could be it?”

“I suppose.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I can feel it right now,” she said. “The rhythm of the wheels on my backside.”

From her tone of voice we could have been discussing the weather. Think it’ll rain? Oh, most likely not. Course we’re due for a little rain. Yes, and I always get so randy on buses. Christ almighty.

She said, “Feel my heart, Chip,” and she took my hand and placed it on her left breast.

“Can you feel it?”

I couldn’t feel her heart beat, perhaps because my own had suddenly grown so loud. I could certainly feel her breast, though. I felt it through the thicknesses of sweater and bra, felt the nipple poking against my palm.

I cupped her breast, stroked with my fingers. It was as warm and soft as a little bird. I kept the little bird in my hand and dreamed of giving her two in the bush.

Our mouths found one another. She tasted of cigarettes. I don’t like to smoke but I like that taste on a girl’s mouth. We slid into an all-out kiss right off the bat. She was very goddamned good at kissing. We kissed for miles, and I held her breast as if I was afraid it would fly away if I let it go. I wasn’t about to take any chances.

When we broke the kiss she sagged back in her seat with her eyes closed and her jaw slack. Her breathing was really ragged. I was a little shook up myself but she was way out ahead of me.

Finally she said, “Get my coat, Chip.”

“You can’t leave now. I mean, the least you have to do is wait until the bus stops.”

“ Leave? Who’s leaving?”

“Not me. I thought you wanted your coat.”

She sighed and tsssted at me. “Don’t you have no sense?” she whispered. “To put over us. To neck under. So nobody sees us.”

“Oh.”

“Because I’m not about to stop now. Chip, I told you how I get on buses, and then reading that scene with them… and then you messing around with me, I mean I’m not about to stop now.”

“Fine by me.”

“Now fetch my coat.”

I fetched her coat and draped it over us. While I was getting it I checked out the other people in the area. If any of them were checking us out in return they were doing a good job of hiding it. The seats across the aisle were empty, and most of our other neighbors were asleep.

As soon as I was seated beside her she grabbed my hand and tucked it up under her mini skirt. She was wearing panties. Very moist panties.

I said, “Willie Em—”

“Shhhh!” she whispered. “No more talking, Chip. Oh, Lord have mercy, I’m so hot I could bum! But don’t talk, don’t say anything. Just get me off. God, please get me off— ”

The thing is, she kept getting off and climbing right back on again. There was only so much we could do. I played with her and that was about the extent of it. She was unbelievably responsive. Each orgasm just seemed to make her that much more anxious for the next one.

This went on for maybe half an hour, and I could see where it was destined to go on all the way to Bordentown unless I happened to run out of fingers somewhere along the way.

And I was going to get off the bus in Bordentown with testicles the size of basketballs, and they were going to hurt like hell, and that was just too damned bad because I had already decided it was worth it.

Maybe she wasn’t the only one who got horny on buses. Maybe it was the other people around, or maybe it was the build-up and letdown I’d gotten earlier from Mary Beth, or maybe it was just Willamina Emily Weeks herself, but whatever it was, it was worth six Waterloos and an Armageddon. I mean it was very goddamned exciting, believe me.

God knows how many little orgasms she had. I couldn’t keep score. But she finally got the big one and collapsed like a tubercular lung.

In less than two minutes we pulled off the highway and stopped for a ten-minute rest break in Erewhon, North Carolina.

I swear she planned it that way.

She said, “Get my suitcase down, Chip. And put your jacket over those two seats across the aisle, and leave my coat here. And when we come back you sit over there and sort of take up both seats until the bus moves. So no one sits across from us, you hear?”

I heard and I did. I didn’t know why she wanted her suitcase, or why we had to get off the bus and back on again, or any of those things, really. I would have understood the bit about the coats even if she hadn’t explained it to me, although I’ll admit I wouldn’t have thought of it on my own, not just then.

But I wasn’t going to bug her about any of this. I mean, it was pretty obvious this wasn’t the first time she ever got randy on a bus, and it wasn’t the first time she ever decided to do anything about it. This bus fetish was something she had indulged in before. And probably often. Which was why she sat down next to me to begin with. And why she wanted the window seat — partly so that we could bump bottoms while changing places, and partly because she would be better shielded from observation if she sat away from the aisle.

I didn’t really want to get off the bus and back on again. Walking presented certain logistical problems that would be even more obvious to spectators if I had to leave my jacket on the bus. But I got off and I forced myself to drink a Coke and munch a pack of those peanut butter and cheese things. I waited until she emerged from the ladies’ room and got on board the bus before I followed her. She put her suitcase on the seat beside her so that no one could sit there, and I sprawled over the two opposite seats and looked as unkempt as possible so that no one would want to sit next to me. She waited until the bus was back on the highway before giving me a nod, and I came over and put her suitcase overhead and sat down next to her.