Edward Lee - Mangled Meat

God’s really kicking my ass today—showing me THIS, Flood thought. His groin seemed to cringe. The woman appeared to be in a hurry, looking over her shoulder. Flood just stood there; he didn’t even bother trying to pretend he wasn’t staring overtly at her body.

She walked right up, stopped; she seemed perturbed but cheerily greeted him. “Hi.”

“Huh-hi,” Flood said.

She kept looking behind her. A gust of wind lifted her white-blond hair. Flood was staring at the nipples showing through the net squares but managed to be coherent enough to ask, “Is something wrong?”

“Well, yeah. Some filthy old drunk guy is following me…”

It pained him, but he took his eyes off her body and looked down the beach. In the distance, he saw a guy with glasses staring back but he wasn’t moving. He was just standing there staring as no doubt many, many men stared at her with regularity. Dressed like this—if one could call a few ounces of threads “dress”—she must be used to it.

“No, not him. That guy.”

Flood’s eyes flicked. The glare of sun provided a momentary camouflage…then, from its glow a man emerged. You gotta be kidding me, Flood thought. It was one of those beach denizens, who was probably forty-five but looked sixty-five. Raggy shorts and flip-flops, skin scorched by decades in the sun, skinny but with a belly sticking out from chronic liver damage.

“Does this guy even have teeth?” Flood remarked. “He looks like Captain Salty on the skids.”

The girl laughed but was still addled. “He’s been following me for a half mile, saying the dirtiest things, stuff like because of my bikini I’m asking for it.”

“Yeah, well, I think all this guy’s gonna be asking for real soon is a liver transplant. Look at him. He’s a wreck.”

The man staggered closer. Tufts of matted hair sprouted around the rim of a crooked Orioles cap stained nearly white with sweat-salt. The gray-blond beard looked like fungus-encrusted Brillo. “Hey, there, brother,” he cragged, “what say let’s double-team that honey? You see the tits and box on that?”

Flood snapped, very unlike him, and stuck his face right in the old man’s, shouting, “What the FUCK is your problem, you wasted geezer? I mean besides the obvious alcohol problem? What are you doing harassing that woman?”

Captain Salty didn’t back down. “Don’t’cha be messin’ with me, brother, unless ya want more’n ya can handle. Get out my way so’s I can make me some time with that piece’a splittail—”

Flood clouted the man once on the forehead, so hard his fist came away aching. That was it for Captain Salty. He was out cold, flat on his back.

“That’s so great! ” the girl squealed.

Flood was shocked at himself. Several couples sitting on beach towels applauded.

“Well…I guess he had it coming,” Flood said.

“It’s about time somebody cleaned that guy’s clock,” a man in a fold up chair said, and a beautiful woman next to him, in a raving pink thong, added, “He’s out here every day, running his gutter-mouth, and staring at people.”

The remarks made Flood feel better for his violence. The girl in the fishnet took his arm. “Come on. Let me buy you a drink.”

“No, really, that’s not necessary—”

“Come on,” she insisted.

Now he felt self-conscious, ludicrous even in his parrot-green trucks and stark-white skin.

“Thank you,” she said. “That guy was creeping me out.”

“I can imagine. I’m not a violent person but sometimes—I don’t know—I have no tolerance for sloppy, dirty, loud-mouthed drunks.”

“This is usually a nice, low-key beach. People come out here to mind their own business and have a nice time, but every now and then you’ll run into some guy like that who ruins things for everyone.” Her right arm clasped Flood’s left, while her fingers smoothed over his forearm. It almost seemed affectionate, and that titillated him since he’d had no genuine affection for a very long time, or…perhaps not ever. Even during his marriage, when it seemed stable, he knew now that Felicity’s affection had been a play-act. Her only real affection she’d saved for the men she was seeing behind his back.

Nevertheless, this… was nice.

In his swim trunks he could feel his cock filling with desire and blood. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach.

“Well, I’m just really grateful for what you did,” she was going on. “I work this beach sometimes twice a month, and I’m always running into that guy.”

Flood was distracted. Impulse kept dragging his eyes to catch glimpses of the net-covered breasts, the bare nipples extruding . Oh, Jesus, this is crazy… But what had she said? “Maybe that guy learned his lesson, that if he’s gonna act like an ass, sometimes he’s gonna get decked. But what did you mean when you said—”

She obviously already knew the question; perhaps the remark was her lead-in. “I work this beach, and others. Resort areas, tourist beaches, and especially conventions. I’m a tour guide. My name’s Carol. What’s yours?”

A tour guide ? “Jake,” Flood answered her. “I’m a computer accessory salesman from Seattle.”

She giggled, a vocal gesture drenched in sex. She stopped, turned, and ran a hand down his white arm. “Believe me, I could tell you’re not from here. Be careful, you’ll burn fast.”

Honey, I’m already burning.

“So I won’t jack you around with the usual games. I’m a call-girl, Jake, one of the higher-priced kind.” She stood and coyly ran a toe across the sand, making squiggles. “I charge a lot by most standards but—”

“You’re worth it,” he said without thinking. He laughed to himself. “This sounds corny, and I’m sure you hear it all the time, but you’re absolutely the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Carol blushed. Now a finger made circles on his chest, through the V of his open shirt. Flood felt his own nipples instantly stand up, as his eyes struggled not to stare outright at hers. When she opened her hand and ran her palm inside his shirt, Flood’s penis began to drool, threatening to spring up to full hardness right in his trunks.

“You’re sweet, thank you. My rates are high, but because of what you did for me back there, I’ll give you a half-rate for anything, I mean, if you’re interested.”

“I—” was all Flood could say.

“No pressure, and if you don’t want to, that’s cool. Just think about it.”

“I—”

“Come on! Let’s get a drink!”

She was dragging him off again. The situation was so cliched: middle-aged workaholic walking arm in arm with a stunning bombshell, feeling like he was real again. It wasn’t real at all, but that didn’t matter.

Their hips bumped as they walked, each bump urging another drop of pre-ejaculant down his urethra. When the tanned skin of her thigh slid against his, he could’ve moaned.

“I love this bar. Wanna know why?”

“Good drink specials?”

“No! It’s outrageously overpriced! But I love it ‘cos it’s always empty!”

“That’s more my speed too,” Flood said for lack of an intelligent response.

“I’m supposed to meet my friend Therese here later.”

The name crackled in his head. Therese. From his eavesdrop on Leon and Jinny. Jesus, Jinny, Leon had complained, you’re gonna turn into a junkie like Ann and Therese. Oxycodone, they’d been talking about: needle-free heroin. But it was clear Carol couldn’t be into similar recreations, not with a body and glow like this. She didn’t really even look like a prostitute: she looked too grand for that, too perfect.