Max Collins - The first quarry

“Do me,” she said, and parted her legs and in the midst of a brown thicket, pink glistened and I buried my face down there and made it glisten some more. She came quickly and hard, and then I was on my back on the bed and she was kneeling between my legs now, and she was very skillful, thorough and even loving.

She got on top of me after that, riding me with no mercy, her eyes rolling back in her head as she came again, just as hard; but we wound up with her on her back and us fucking frantically, as if our lives depended on it, those long legs kicking the air past me, and me rutting like a goddamn dog, as if we’d almost lost our lives together tonight, and hadn’t we, almost?

For all that frenzy, the bang ended with a whimper as she began to cry and I felt my eyes tear up as I held her close and nuzzled and kissed her neck. Emotions were stirring in me, emotions I thought were gone. I hadn’t felt like this since my honeymoon and I had thought I would never feel like this again, and hadn’t really wanted to.

Then she trotted off to the bathroom again. I wiped myself off with my towel and leaned back against my pillow, propped against the headboard, and thought about Dorrie, sad, pretty Mrs. Prof. So far on this job I’d killed three guys and screwed two very lovely women. I’d done it all, in a very short time.

Everything except the job I’d been hired for.

The phone rang, and the Broker said, “I’m in 714, just down the hall from you.”

“Okay,” I said.

I got my clothes on and went over to the bathroom door, behind which water was running.

I said, “I’m going down to the front desk and get us some toiletries-toothbrushes and toothpaste and stuff.”

“Okay!” she said.

“Won’t be long.”

In 714, the Broker and I sat by the window at two chairs on either side of a small round table with a built-in lamp, which was the only light going. His expression was stern. He wasn’t staying long, judging by the camel’s hair topcoat remaining on.

“I have to make this fast,” I said, “or Annette will be suspicious.”

“You’re calling her ‘Annette’ now?”

“That’s right, because she isn’t Doreen or Cheryl or even Cubby.”

This Mickey Mouse Club reference was lost on him, so I cut the comedy and filled him in, in short, brutal strokes.

Finally, he said, “You did well.”

“Will you handle our client? And explain that I wasn’t trying to discover his identity, that it just fell in my lap?”

“Yes. Certainly.”

“Do it now. Tonight.”

“Well, of course.”

“I mean, we’ll stay the night, Annette and me, and tomorrow morning I will need to know the game plan. Does her father want to send somebody to collect her? Do I go back to Iowa City and let her return to her apartment? And do we finally pull the plug on this cluster-fuck of a job?”

The Broker shook his head. “I believe our client will want you to attempt to complete what you’ve started.”

“Getting a window to do that, where the stateroom isn’t jammed with coeds and wives and writing students, may not be a breeze.”

The Broker shrugged and stood. “You’ll do your best, I’m sure…We’ll talk tomorrow, first thing. I’ll let you know then.”

I stood. “Okay. There’s one other thing.”

“What?”

“Tell the desk clerk I need a couple of those little traveler’s kits-tiny toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, and so on. Have a bellhop bring ‘em up right away.”

“All right. Why not just call down?”

“That’s where I am right now, getting that stuff. Got it?”

“Got it.”

When I returned to our room, Annette was still in my bed. The lights were off but for a reading light built into the headboard. Her face had a carved beauty, her Italian heritage giving her a Madonna look, despite our recent whore-worthy bed boogie.

She asked, “Do you mind if I sleep with you?”

“No.”

“May be a little crowded.”

“That’s okay.”

“I just…just don’t want to sleep alone right now. I need somebody strong beside me.”

“Well, I’ll have to do.”

She smiled. I was a card, wasn’t I?

“Jack, where’s our toothbrushes?”

“They had to go rummaging in a storeroom. They’re sending the stuff up.”

Right then came a knock- thank you, Broker — and I gave the kid a buck and took the two little plastic bags of sample-size toiletries and deposited them in the bathroom. Then she was right behind me, in the Concort Inn robe, and first she brushed her teeth and then I did and it was as cute and domestic as could be.

I got in bed, and she got in after me and switched off the reading light, but we didn’t close the drapes, liking the soft glow from the streetlamps and business signs and the river with Rock Island glimmering beyond. I had an arm around her and she was cuddled to my chest, like she was a tiny thing though she was almost as tall as I was.

There is something about being in a hotel room in bed with a woman with the lights out and nothing out there but the night that encourages a peculiar kind of intimacy. Like being at camp in a bunk bed in the dark and sharing with friends all sorts of hopes and dreams and secrets.

I said, “Can I ask you a few things?”

“Sure.”

“Remember how I wondered if you were collaborating with the professor on your book?”

“Yes.”

“And you said you weren’t.”

“Right.”

“He was just helping you.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want to upset you. Maybe this can wait. This can wait.”

She sat up, leaned on an elbow, the big browns locked on me. “No. Tell me.”

“I found something out, shadowing the professor.”

“That he likes to fuck young women?”

“Well, I learned that, too. But…what kind of stuff are you dealing with in your book?”

“What…what do you mean, Jack?”

“I mean, there was something Byron said to you the other day, about you reporting every bad thing you ever saw or experienced with your father. What would that be, exactly?”

“Jack, I…that’s kind of personal.”

Not long ago, I’d been eating her out; not along ago, my dick had been halfway down her throat. And this was kind of personal?

“Honey,” I said, trying that out, “I have a good reason for asking.”

She sat all the way up. I did, too. But the sheets and covers were around her waist, so her small, pointy breasts were accusing me.

She said, “You know I have a rather…strained relationship with my father. Right?”

“I kind of gathered.”

“There are…reasons for that.”

“Reasons besides he’s a drug trafficker and murderer?”

She half-laughed, half-sighed. “Yes. Yes. Other reasons.”

“He beat you?”

“No.”

“Then he…oh.”

“Yes. ’Oh.‘ He fucked me, Jack. He fucked me from when I was twelve, around when my mother died, and until I was fourteen when he remarried and I got shipped off to boarding school. When I was older, later teens, when I was home for vacations or during the summer, there were no…advances, no sneaking into my room. He had a wife now and that was the past and it was never spoken of. Like it never happened. But it did.”

“Christ. I’m sorry. How does a thing like that…?”

“My mother died. Of cancer. It was lingering. In fact, the…abuse, the psychologists call it, began during Mother’s illness. I became the woman of the house at a very young age, her surrogate in many respects…”

Many respects was right.

She was saying, “I have terribly mixed feelings about it all, and-”

“Mixed feelings? What’s to be ‘mixed’ about?”

“That’s just the thing. The horrible, the most awful part to admit-I was his willing partner. Oh, I didn’t like it at first, it hurt me, I was too small, but I knew Daddy loved me and that I made him happy and I was taking over for Mother. Filling in for her, taking her place. And as the months passed, I came to like it. I liked having orgasms, and I liked having closeness with my father, and I became a kind of second wife to him.”