Edward Lee - Mangled Meat

Flood took a last useless look at the perfect breasts suspended in the big fishnet cups. “Likewise.”

Therese gave his thigh another squeeze. “Where are you staying, Jake?”

“The Rosamilia Hotel, just up the beach.”

Her breasts jiggled flawlessly when she stood up. “Cool. That’s where I’m staying too.”

“Maybe we’ll run into you before you leave,” Carol offered.

Flood was done talking, done thinking, and very much done with seeing what he couldn’t have. “That’d be great,” he said for formality. “You girls have a great day.”

“‘Bye.”

“‘Bye!”

Two more pecks on the cheek (and a final insufferable crotch-rub from Therese), and they were off. It was relief from the humiliation that overwhelmed Flood when they left. Their shadows lengthened to sultry jet-black threads as they departed back to the sand.

His head droned with an arid silence, noise that wasn’t noise. The sound of his soul? Because that’s what his soul felt like just then. Arid, sterile. A husk.

It occurred to him that if he died at that very moment…he wouldn’t have cared in the least.

His hangover dragged through the dinner hour and on into the night. He didn’t bother checking in with Farris and Nathans to see how the day’s business went; he didn’t care. He lay naked and dried out on the hotel bed, head thumping, sparks of pain behind his eyes, throbbing along with the images of those two impeccable women: the abundant flesh of Carol’s breasts blaring through the fishnets, the sparse mist of downy red hair covering Therese’s mound. The coltish legs and flat abdomens. Each image twinged in his head with his heartbeat, and each heartbeat made him feel more hopeless. He thought of calling Dr. Untermann and telling her he felt like maybe committing suicide but didn’t for two reasons.

One: She’d think I was even more pathetic than I really am.

And, two: I don’t have the balls.

The sun had set brilliantly—a fireball that looked nuclear—and soon full dark bled into the room. Flood stared at the ceiling, not listening to the baseball game that shot scatters of wavering light on one wall. He wished he could fall asleep, erase the humiliating day, and begin a new man in the morning.

But he wouldn’t be a new man, would he?

He’d be the same impotent, royally-fucked-up-in-the-head man he was today and had been for the last three years.

As his senses began to drift, he heard voices…

“It ain’t bad really, we’re doing better than the rest. We got fifteen girls and only a handful went bad. I’m sure Jinny won’t fuck us over again. I think the skinny bitch learned her lesson.”

Flood sat up in bed, glanced to his window. It was Oscar’s voice, the big bad bald guy. I left the window open, Flood realized. The curtains billowed at a breeze. And the maids hadn’t come in because he’d left out the do-not-disturb sign.

Flood sprang out of bed, seized, but not exactly knowing why. Just as he arrived to the window’s edge, Leon’s voice was floating up.

“I know. You’re one terrifying motherfucker, Osc. Jinny’ll have nightmares about you.” A laugh.

“Bitch sucked my balls the whole time I was driving her home, then begged me to fuck her in the ass back at her joint.”

A darker resolve shifted into Leon’s next words. “But the other two are liabilities.”

The other two? Flood recited.

“I had dinner with Therese tonight. Cunt lied to my face all through her steak. Got no idea Stoolie’s ratting on Phipps’ stable.”

“You’re shitting me?”

“Nope.”

A pause drifted in with the warm breeze. Oscar said, “Lemme kill her. I’ve always hated the bitch.”

Flood’s heart stilled. He felt frozen, half his face peering out his window down into the window of Room 415. He could see the salmon-pink drapes fluttering, and in their gap, the brightly lit room. Oscar sat on the bed drinking a Heineken; Flood could see his knees and back of his large, shaven head. Leon sat in the chair along the wall, legs crossed.

“I don’t want her iced, but I want her uglied up bad for when we boot her lying ass back to Phipps.”

The back of Oscar’s bald head nodded.

“It’s that other lying cunt I want iced,” Leon added.

“Good. It’d be a pleasure.”

Now Flood’s heart surged, a lump of muscle that felt on the verge of bursting. The other one? No! he thought. Not Carol!

Who was the other one?

“I’m not sure where she is tonight,” Leon continued. “I already talked to Nick. He’s going to keep an eye out for her.”

“Nick? Oh, yeah, the new security guy downstairs.”

“I’m paying him well. He’ll give me a call on my cell if he sees her.”

WHO ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? Flood’s mind detonated.

But Carol had given him his card; she worked directly for Phipps, not Leon. If she was two-timing on Leon, she’d have Leon’s card, wouldn’t she? he reasoned.

It didn’t matter. Nothing would happen to either girl because Flood was going to make an anonymous tip to the police right now. Last night was a mistake, a weakness on his part.

And that won’t happen again, he vowed.

It amazed him how the sound from their window carried so well up here. He could even hear the knock on their door.

“That’s her,” Leon said.

Oscar got up and walked out of the frame.

Flood stood shivering. He watched, unblinking, as Therese walked into a corner of the window. “Hi, guys!” she greeted. “Got a beer or something?”

Oscar handed her one.

“And I’ll need a oxy for later.”

“No problem, babe.”

“Oh, and look!” she exclaimed, all bouncy and bubbling and probably really high. She shoved some money at Leon. “Four hundred!”

“Thank you, Therese. You’re a dear.”

Flood could see her in the veil-like wrap she’d been wearing at the bar, her sleek back to the window, her short, bright-scarlet hair. Her rump looked naked due to the t-back, a perfect double-orb of flesh.

“I got some time,” she said, but she seemed jittery now, overstrung. Was it the dope, or was she starting to think something might be wrong? “Got two doctors said they’ll meet me at midnight for a double blowjob, said they’d pay five bills. You guys wanna fuck me first? I’m dying for some cock.” A giggle, then, that sounded nervous. “I been so horny all day I been fingering myself whenever I’ve been sitting at a table.”

“Yeah, I could use some of that,” Leon said.

She shed the veil, then flicked off the t-back and bra. It seemed so perfunctory when she turned for the bed, but an instant later her breasts were suddenly tremoring. Her eyes bulged above Leon’s opened hand, which had snapped around and clamped over her mouth. “Not too hard,” Leon said very calmly. “Just put her lights out…”

WHAP!

Oscar, having already slipped on one of the sand-mitts, clouted her solidly once in the forehead. She fell limp as a sack of packing peanuts in Leon’s arms. He tossed her on the bed—

—while Flood…watched.

His hand remained poised in mid-air—just like last night—about to reach for the phone. But instead—

Call. The. Police…

—he watched.

Oscar wrapped some duct tape around her mouth, then dropped his slacks and straddled her chest. She lay totally unconscious, arms and legs askew, head lolled to one side. Oscar spat liberally into the valley, then pressed the breasts tight around his penis and began to pump. Meanwhile, Leon had picked up one of Therese’s inch-soled platform sandals, was fidgeting with it. “There we go, Osc,” he said. He found some sort of clasp on the bottom of the sandal, then was peeling back the sole. “Stoolie wasn’t jiving us.”