Joe Lansdale - Freezer Burn

“Someone could have seen you come over here.”

“In this rain, not likely. I couldn’t see myself out there. I damn near wandered off the edge into the river. It’s really perfect for me coming here.”

“Why are you here?”

Gidget looked at Bill as if she had just discovered his head had been hollowed out with a spoon. “Didn’t today mean anything to you?”

“I wasn’t sure it meant much to you. Way you disappeared.”

“I guess I was thinking, Bill. I was kind of overwhelmed. I was thinking about us. I was thinking about lots of things. For Christ sakes, offer me a towel. You got any liquor?”

Bill shook his head and got a towel. By the time he handed it to her she was out of her shorts, shirt, and shoes, and was wiping off. She wore only black panties with frilly black lace on the edges. When she spread her legs to wipe the insides of her thighs, he discovered the panties were split in the middle; the split rolled on either side of her pubic mound.

“Those made like that?”

Gidget, who seemed unaware of the fact she was nearly naked, glanced up. “Oh, yeah. They come like that. You like ’em?”

“Yeah.”

“Come here, baby.”

He moved toward her. When he touched her, her skin was cool and clammy, but after a few moments it was warm and damp. He touched her everywhere he could. Her lips were soft and her tongue was like a hot probe.

Finally he pushed her away and came out of his clothes. She did not help him undress. She bent across the freezer, her naked breasts against the mustard and the glass, her tail, trimmed by black lace, lifted to him.

Bill did not remember moving across the room to take her from behind. He felt as if he had fallen into her from a great height. He began to thrust. She moaned and her breasts slid across the mustard-smeared glass and made a sound like a squeegee cleaning a windshield. The corn dog bobbed about and leaped to the floor and rolled under the bed.

“Hurt me,” she said, and he slapped her buttocks with his hands, leaving great red palm and finger marks. He was reminded of pictures he had seen of Indian ponies where their owners had dipped hands in red paint and pressed their palms against the horse’s sides, leaving bright signs of ownership and decoration.

He spanked her harder and rammed her harder and she let out little happy hurt sounds. She rose up on the balls of her feet and her ass grew firmer and he bored deeper, trying not to finish too soon. He thought of other things to hold it back. He looked at the Ice Man through smears of mustard, for the heat of their activity had warmed the glass and made him visible.

Sweat filled Bill’s eyes as he continued to work. He grabbed Gidget’s hair and she squealed. He pulled her head back and kissed the side of her throat, feeling her pulse throb against his lips. He rubbed the mustard all over her.

“I can’t wait,” he said. “Jeez… I’m gonna finish.”

“Now?”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“It’s okay, baby. Give me all of it.”

He jerked her panties with his hands and they tore away. He tossed them on the floor and thrust into her hard, and just as he was about to let loose Gidget slipped from him, dropped and turned and took him in her mouth and he let go.

He pulled her up and lay her on her back across the glass and got between her legs, worked his tongue while he reached up and squeezed her nipples. Seconds later she let go with a soft scream. They found their way to the shower and bathed together, and made love standing up, then they dried off and lay down in bed.

“Won’t he wake up and miss you?”

“He won’t wake up till morning. I’ve used that stuff before. Thing I hate is he’ll wake up at all.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t think I knew how bad I wanted to go away from here until you showed.”

“You didn’t like me, remember?”

“I didn’t like that face. When you cleared up I liked you fine. You look like James Dean.”

“Aren’t we supposed to like each other for who we are?”

“Bullshit. I want someone looks good and wants me as bad as I want him. Let me tell you something, Frost don’t look that good naked. And he has this kind of smell. I can’t describe it. It’s not a bad smell. He’s always pure and clean. It’s like… I don’t know. Do you smell us?”

“Yeah.”

“Hot and nasty and I like it. He’s like angel food cake out of the oven, all sweet and fresh baked. It gets to me. And that hand. I make him wear a glove when we fuck.”

Bill thought of the time Frost had stopped the fight between Conrad and Phil. He had been wearing the glove then. He remembered Gidget at the door of the motor home, somewhat peeved and slightly dressed.

“Why the glove?”

“I don’t like looking at it.”

“You still have to look at it, except it’s in a glove.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have to feel that hand. When he lays against me, I feel that hand. If he lifts up, the hand drops and touches me. .. You just don’t know. That hand… Sometimes I think it’s alive, not just flapping around against me. I keep thinking that hand wants to get hold of my throat.”

“Frost don’t seem that way to me.”

“He isn’t, but I think that hand is… and don’t smile at me like that. You’ve never had to touch it. It’s like something wet and muddy crawling over you. It feels like you think a snake ought to feel. I can’t take much more of it. He’s talking about us having a baby, and I’m thinking, yeah, great, we have a baby I can teach it to wash three hands. It might have four. It could work here in the carnival, wave at the crowd and knit a sweater. I don’t want to have no freak baby. It’s bad enough I got to have a freak inside me trying to get off.”

“But you went with him. It was your choice.”

“I’d have screwed a monkey while I was blowin’ the organ grinder to get out of that damn restaurant. I didn’t know what I was gettin’ into. I thought I could take it. I can’t take it. I want you, not him. We’re a beautiful couple, Bill.”

Bill’s body turned cool and goose bumps rose over him and the bumps were hard, like headstones. No one had ever wanted him before, least of all someone who looked like, felt like, and smelled like Gidget.

“I got to get rid of him, you know.”

“We could go away.”

“I thought about that.”

“We could just go off and you could get a divorce.”

“I could, yeah.”

“It seems like the only way.”

“I’ve gone off before, and I’m always just the same when I get to where I go. I might as well have stayed before I went. Everything I do is like fuckin’ deja vu. This time I got to do different.”

“We could go off and you could get a divorce and I could get a job.”

“Doing what? Brain surgery? You look good, baby, and I like what you do to me, how you make me feel, but you’re not exactly a hot job property.”

“It wouldn’t matter as long as we had each other.”

“It would matter to me. I don’t want to live in no shithole little town in a goddamn trailer with three snot-nosed brats pulling at my dress. I may not be worth a shit, and you may not be either, but I still want something better.”

“Then what can we do?”

“How much do you love me?”

Love hadn’t been mentioned before. Bill was taken aback. “I… I don’t know.”

Gidget turned away from him and stuck her face in a pillow and began to cry. “Jesus. Fuckin’ Jesus.”

“What?”

“Here I am pouring my heart out to you, and I’m just a piece to you. You don’t care about me. You don’t care I got to stay with this freak. It don’t mean a thing to you.”