Dan Wakefield - Home Free

The breasts, huge and pendulant, the stomach in folds, the thighs bruised and mammoth, she stood before him, smiling at his hard-on.

“Good,” she said. “One thing you are gettin. You’re getting laid .”

And he did.

Again and again and again till he couldn’t remember.

At some point she got another bottle and they kept it by the bed, not bothering with glasses.

Late afternoon the second day she grabbed his cock, which was hard still again and said, “You like it here?”

“Yeh.”

“Let’s keep this party goin.”

“OK.”

“Here. In my little ole Dream House.”

“Sure. Got to go to work, though. Buster’s.”

“Buster’s? Shit, that’s no work. Besides, the season’s almost done. He won’t need you. He can get along. You work for me now. Keep me nice and cozy in the ole Dream House. Got any stuff in town?”

“Yeh. A room, near Buster’s. I’ll go get it.”

She pressed her lips down over his cock and her teeth made a tiny little bite.

She looked up smiling.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “You don’t go marchin into town with all those pink little nubile twats twitchin at you. You might get other ideas, and Mama don’t want that. Mama’s gonna go in for ya and tell Buster you had to quit because of some awful emergency and then get your things and bring em right here. Mama’s gonna get some gin for us this time just for a little change and you can lie right back here and play with yourself a little and think about what it’s gonna be like when Mama comes back. But don’t you dare get so heated up you spill any out because Mama will get real mad. She is greedy and she wants it all inside her.”

She rubbed herself between the legs, grinning.

They lived like that. Days. A week. She let him go into town now on his own because she knew he’d have to come back. She let him drive the big yellow Olds in and get gas, and buy them the junk food she loved at the grocery and the booze they both needed at the liquor store. People looked at him funny now, amused or hostile, depending on whom. Mama made him tell her about it, laughed, slapped her thighs. She loved it. She loved that the fucking town all knew she was screwing herself silly with this cute little skinny young kid. One night she made him take a shower and put on his best outfit which was the summer cord suit and a tie and she put on a black satin shift and silver bracelets near up to her elbows and big silver earrings and they went and had dinner at The Pier Restaurant. She waved and called to people and laughed loud and everyone in the place was looking at em and Gene went along with it, smiling and graceful, somehow glad to help her say Fuck You to the world, or her tiny part of it. When they got back home she laughed and kissed him and took off everything but the silver bracelets and when they got into bed she whispered huskily, “Mama’s real pleased with her young gentleman friend. He behaved real good, and Mama liked that a lot. Now cause he’s been so good like that, Mama’s gonna teach him some tricks.”

And she did.

September was cold there, a chilly wind rattled the windows and seeped through cracks in doors and swept down the chimney with a shrill, chilling rush. They alternated drinking gin and Four Roses and stuffed down frozen pizzas with lukewarm centers, peanut-butter sandwiches on raisin bread, Hostess Twinkies, Sara Lee cheesecakes, cans of Chef Boy-ar-dee ravioli, pretzels, and potato chips … With their “meals” they drank Coke and after that they’d start passing a bottle between them and he would listen as her voice grew fuzzier, her laugh more scratchy and scary, her language more frequently punctuated with cocks and cunts and pricks and twats, until she would kick the empty bottle across the room and wrestle her clothes off, wanting him to give it to her on the floor, in the Dream House Picture Window Living Room, she would lie there heaving and waiting, waiting for him to smother as much as he could of her body, her thoughts, the sound of the wind and the echoes of other years, and he understood her need and covered her and filled her with all he could give, blotting out her hurt as best he could. Afterward they would lie there on the floor naked on the nap of the carpet, cold and not caring, not minding at all, being beyond that. No one mentioned the future because there didn’t seem to be one.

Sometimes in town to get supplies Gene would walk along the sidewalk looking at the ordinary people, the ones who were doing something or going somewhere and he wondered whether he shouldn’t think of such things, but when he tried to his mind would be like a blank movie screen and so he would just go on, back to the Dream House.

Once he stopped for a drink at the bar of The Pier and so took longer than usual getting home and Stella’s eyes were snappish.

“You don’t go getting ideas when you’re there in town, do you?”

“No,” he said. “None at all.”

Which was true.

It was still true the day he disappeared from her for good.

It wasn’t his idea.

He was walking down the street when he noticed a car cruising slowly, a head peering out.

A hand waved.

“Hey, Gene!”

He hadn’t been called that for so long that for a moment he didn’t connect the name with himself. He just stopped, not knowing why.

The car pulled up beside him and stopped.

It was Barnes. Driving the car. He rolled down the window and Gene peered in.

“Hey, man,” Gene said. “Whattya doin here?”

Gene looked in the back of the car, which had suitcases and clothes bag piled up in it.

“Hey, where ya goin?” he said.

“L.A.? Wanna come?”

Gene opened the door and got in.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where do we go to get your stuff?”

“I’ve got my stuff,” Gene said.

“Where?”

“On. It’s all I need. In fact, when we get to L.A. I won’t even need the coat.”

“Guess I caught you at the right time,” Barnes said.

“You could say that.”

Barnes gave him a curious sidelong look.

“What the hell you been up to? Basic training?”

Gene smiled.

“You could say that.”

Barnes pressed down on the gas. At the first chance, they turned west.

The open road.

Roads, opening.

Closing behind you, people and places, left.

Others opening. With the road. The roads. Fast highways. Six lane. Super. You sailing. Smiling.

Roll down the window and let in the air. Tune in the radio, turn it up. Or off, talk. Tell about the time you, she, we … recall what happened when we all … remember? You know the words to the one about Laura—or is it Ora? Lee. Sing. Together, top of the lungs, or delicate, do the harmony, harmonize, sing-along, or sing alone, solo. Stretch, smelling fumes of gas getting pumped while the gallons and dollars and cents roll backward, up and out of sight, making a ping at regular intervals, take the key tied to the piece of wood marked M and take a pee, relieve yourself for the next stretch of road, guzzle a Coke that clunks down out of the body of the red robot, grab a Mounds Bar for munching through the journey’s next leg, pause, while Gus is getting your change, feel the special freedom of standing still between motion, the rumble and whirr of it crisscrossing out there in front of you, long distance traffic wind blowing your hair a bit, the taste of dust and odor of gas a curiously nice intoxicant, subtly exciting; being on the road, on the move, on the go, going, no matter where, something filling in the act, in being in it.

Barnes wasn’t in a big hurry and Gene was in less, so they didn’t mind getting lost, swerving off the super-lane highways to bump down onto slim ribbons of blacktop or even long gashes of gravel in search of “real” places to eat, that is, no famous-name franchise food. They sought the sort of place Barnes categorized as “Your Quintessential Old-Fashioned Fly-Specked Diner,” places with straightforward names like EAT, Jack and Fran’s, LUNCH, Joe’s Place, STEAKS, Main Street Restaurant, and FOOD. They hit the places with the old stained menus with a fresh sheet put in with a paper clip that said “Today” and had typed or more often written or printed words in ballpoint or pencil, the bill of fare, and anything described as “Special of the Day” they ordered, and any available pie guaranteed to be homemade on the premises they had for dessert.