Ann Griffin - Skin summer

"What's the matter with you?" she hissed.

He pulled her up, her breasts in his hands. "I'd love to screw you, Brenda. More than ever now, because I feel something for you. But not under these conditions. Not as a paid hand."

"You can do it for nothing, then."

"No," he said. "You'd still want to be punished, debased. And I am no longer a hustler. I respect you as a person now. I can't do it. I can only love you and please you as I would a woman without your hangups. And that would not satisfy you."

"Damn right!" she said, furious now, her eyes wild, her hair hanging down over her flushed and contorted face.

"Let me love you," he said. "Let me try to help you. There must be some reason for your masochism. Something we can dig up. Let me help you find out what it is."

"Go to hell," she said.

"Brenda…"

"Go to hell!"

The shout echoed about the room.

"Please," he said.

"Get out of here." She had the look of a wild-woman, of someone close to violence. It was wise to move, to get out, as much as he hated to leave her like this.

"I'll go," he said.

"Fast!"

He put his limp organ into his trousers and zipped up. "Look, Brenda, if you change your mind…"

She spat on him. "Come to me if you want."

"Damn you!" she whined, crying now.

"Anything you want. You know where my cabin is. But no ugly stuff. Just love."

She grabbed a glass ashtray and threw it.

It missed him by inches.

He went out the door.

She slammed it behind.

After his confrontation with Brenda, he did not know whether he was prepared to face Susan. He wasted some time about it, walking along some of the shady trails in the camp, thinking what he would say. After half an hour of this self-torture during which his tension became far greater instead of less, he turned and went to her cabin. She was changing clothes for supper, and she came to the door in a robe, her abundant figure bursting at the seams.

When she saw who it was, she tried to slam the door, but he got a foot in the crack and wedged it open, held it against her pressure with his hands. "My roomies' here," she said. "If you try anything, they'll be two of us to handle."

"I'm not here to try anything," he insisted.

"You're breaking in."

"I am not. I only want to talk to you."

"There's nothing I want to hear from you."

"There is," he said.

"Please, Sam, go away. You know that I don't want to see you. Forget it. You won't get any money from me. I said I wouldn't talk to anyone about it."

"I don't want your money. I don't give a fuck about your money. That's changed."

She looked doubtful – and beautiful. He could not conceive of his former stupidity in trying to use her as a mark, in not giving her the love she deserved from the start. He had been an emotional cripple; she had been a faith healer.

"If I listen, will you go away?"

"Yes," he said.

"Go on, then."

It was difficult saying the things he had to say, but he managed to get them out. He told her about his family, his unknown father, his mother and her friends. He told her about his first sexual experiences, how he found he could get what he wanted with his body, how he did not know what love was. He told her about Brenda, about returning the money. About how he had fallen for her, Susan, at once but had been too stupid to know it. About Linda and Jenny and what they had talked out. About what he hoped for them, how he wished he could undo it and make her accept him again.

It was a long speech, and when he was finished, he waited for her reply.

She said nothing, only looked at him, her eyes cutting deeply into his eyes.

At last, he said, "You don't believe me."

"I don't know," she said. "I don't think so, Sam. I really don't think so."

And she closed the door.

Left him standing there, sick.

He did not go to the dining hall for supper, but returned to his room and showered, exercised, trying to forget, through the sedative of routine, this rejection he had just received. But there was no hope of blanking his mind so easily. He loved Susan, and that love could not be erased like music on a tape. It ate at him, walked around inside his head until he could not sit or lie still. He was a man possessed, a man with a monkey on his back. And that monkey was his own, ugly past which would not leave him be.

He wrestled with it, but could corns nowhere near conquering it. At last, when he knew he was going to have to put up with misery for a while, he went into the kitchen and came back with some beer he had purchased that afternoon, after Linda and Jenny had left, before he had built courage enough to go to Brenda Markwell. He nursed the first bottle, letting it ice his throat and numb some of the nervous strain that plagued him. The second bottle, he pulled harder, drinking it like a man who wants to be bombed, who wants to cross out his memory and operate only in the present where things could be as rosy as the liquor could delude him into viewing them.

He was opening the third bottle, a few minutes before seven o'clock, when there was a knock on the door. He was in his jeans and a tee-shirt, so he went and answered it. It was Susan Calderwood-Logan.

He looked stupidly at her.

When he said nothing, she said, "May I come in, Sam?"

He nodded. "Sure. Come on in."

She went past him.

He closed the door.

He turned and faced her, his eyesight a little bleary from two fast beers and no lunch or supper. She came into his arms then, encircling him with her own arms, mashing her huge breasts against him, burying her face in the hollow of his neck.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Sam, Sam," she said in a tiny voice.

He held her, afraid she was a vision, a smoke ghost that would vanish if he didn't clench her to him.

"I was wrong," she said. "As wrong as you were yesterday. You are trying to change. And – And you do… you love me, don't you."

"Yes," he said.

She raised her head, pressed her moist lips against his, found his tongue with her own and washed him with it. She scoured his gums, his teeth, picked at him with the sensuous tongue, pried and teased and excited him.

When they pulled away, breathing hard, he said, "But you didn't believe me."

"I wasn't sure. I wanted to believe. But experience has shown me that people always say they are changing from bad habits and never really do. I couldn't commit myself. If I had, and you were just on to a new method of hustling, I would have been destroyed. I would not have been able to take that. You see, I love you too. I don't know how much, but I know love is there."

This time, he initiated the kiss, a long and amorous one. His hands roamed the contours of her tits, and he longed to free them, to kiss and suck and squeeze the bare, warm, vibrant flesh. And it was nothing but love now, no hope of profit.

When they pulled apart again, she went on. "I told myself that I should forget you. That if you were hustling me still, I was only in for heartache. But the part of me that loved you wouldn't let it rest there. It kept telling me to check your story out. Be sure. Know for certain. So I went to Brenda. I had found out yesterday that you had been hustling, conning her. She was angry. Said you'd given her money back. Sam dear, I think she needs help. I don't know exactly why, but she seems ill to me. Mixed up, anyway. Troubled. So, after I left her cabin, I took your advice and looked up Linda Mock and Jenny Sansom. They were waiting for me. It was all as you said. I think Linda loves you. Though not as much as me. So I want to try again. Do you think we could?"

He hugged her. "I don't see what's standing in our way."

"Just…"