Pete Hamill - Loving Women

“And?”

“Belly.”

Her hand moved over her belly, eyes closed tight, examining the hard pads of muscle, the concave dip. And then she pressed the heel of her hand above the blackness.

“You better get over here, child.”

She guided me into the tight wet channel, the light off now, the rain pounding down, arms around my back, squeezing my cock inside her. “Don’t move,” she whispered. And squeezed again, as if wanting to remember the feel of it, its size and thickness and pulsing presence. I was afraid to move, and then she moved, pressing against me, and I moved, six, eight times, all the way into the tight emptiness, and once more, and then exploded, shuddering, a hoarse involuntary cry coming from me, with Eden Santana holding me tight and squeezing me, and pushing hard against me until I was done. I eased away from her, feeling the fool. A crude kid who couldn’t hold it back. A boy who shot his load faster than a man ever would. But she held my head in her hands and kissed me on the mouth and whispered “You’re so big.” And told me “You’re so strong.” And kissed me again and then slipped away and went into the bathroom. Water ran. I couldn’t believe I was there. This wasn’t Dixie with her savage old eyes and hungry mouth. This was Eden Santana. Who was beautiful. And then she was back with a hot washcloth, bathing my cock and my balls, the hotness of the cloth like a second cunt. We lay there side by side for a long time, her arms around me, saying nothing, the flower smell very strong and the rain falling. And after a while she turned my head to hers and kissed me again and then I felt her hand lightly on my chest and she pinched my nipples, little stabbing pinpoints of pain, and she touched my flat belly and then my cock and I was hard again and the rain still falling. She lay on her side with one knee raised and delicately rubbed the head of my cock against the lips of her cunt, her breath coming in short quickening gasps, and then she whispered, “Now” and I was in her again and her body was convulsing and I drove into her and she moaned and I rammed harder and she groaned deeply and then her voice was rising with the rain still falling and she dug her fingers into my ass, kissing me wetly, rubbing her tongue on my face and eyes, making panting sounds and then a long high-pitched sound and still I kept going, driving away into her, her legs up high now, the wide feet flat against the low roof of the trailer and I kept going and going and going until everything in me exploded and convulsed and I could feel each part of myself bone muscle fiber blood plunging down and out of me and she screamed one last triumphant time while the rain still fell through the dark sky.

She dressed quietly, pulling on high rubber fishing boots and a yellow slicker. I looked at her, wishing I’d drawn more, knowing now what was beneath the clothes and thrilled by the private knowledge but wishing I had a record. I liked her in clothes too, tossing her hair, about to plunge again into the storm to drive me back to the locker club. She turned to me and smiled. What do you think of me now woman tell the truth did I fuck you well or are you just being polite tell me tell me now tonight not tomorrow . Her face seemed to glow in the soft light.

“We better hurry, child,” she said hoarsely. “You’ll be late.”

She opened the door and the wind blew it shut again. I pushed against it, held it open. The rain was still falling in sheets, hurling itself loudly at the trees and echoing off unseen water. “That’s a lake out there,” she said, pointing at the darkness behind the trailer. “Little bitty lake, almost a pond, so small it don’t have a name … Runs into the River Styx, if you could believe that name.”

We dashed to the car, slamming the trailer door behind us. I got in on the passenger side and she slipped behind the wheel, dripping with rain. Go ahead ask her how was it how was the fuck the second fuck not the first one ask ask . She started the car.

“The River Styx?” I said (making talk instead of the real talk). “Isn’t that the river of death?”

“In Egypt, maybe,” she said, “Or Greece, but not in the goddamned Florida Panhandle. That’s for damn sure. I figure they just didn’t know how to spell sticks. S-t-i-c-k-s. That’s the way they should of named it, cause this is where we are. Out in the damn sticks .”

She laughed hard and it was tough for me to imagine her doing all these things, running to the car, starting it, getting the windshields wiping, joking about the River Styx, after what we’d done in the trailer. She behaved as if we’d just left a movie. But I felt different. Not just in my teeming head. I felt as if my body was heavier and lighter at the same time, as if my skin had been stripped off and replaced, as if I was twenty years older and had just been born. All at once. There was no sign of any such extravagant change on her face, but in the tight, packed air of the car there was one difference and I couldn’t define it.

“I smell like sex, don’t I?” she said, and smiled. She must have sensed my awareness and how little I knew. Certainly she told me what it was in the car. “Haven’t smelled this way in a long, long time.”

And (Michael you dumbass kid you former virgin you schmuck) I thought: Who made you smell this way last time? And where? And when? Husband lover sailor Mercado bus driver friend who? But said: “It’s a good beautiful smell.”

And believed it.

“I’m glad you think so.”

Now she was bumping up and down over the gravel road, the wheels spinning, the high beams trying to penetrate the driving rain. And then I saw a black man on the corner, before we turned out to the highway. He was under a tree, holding an umbrella. It was Bobby Bolden.

“Wait,” I said. “Pull over. That’s a guy from the base. Guy I know.”

She paused, as if thinking this over. Then sighed: “Okay.” And pulled across the highway onto the shoulder and waited. She rolled down the window. “He’s gonna know what we been doin’, child.”

But it was too late. Bolden came over, slowly and carefully, looking at the car, peering at us. “Prob’ly thinks we’re the damn Klan,” she said. “Come on , man.”

Then Bolden saw my face and nodded and began to fold the umbrella while I opened the back door.

“Thanks,” he said, getting in.

“She’s droppin’ us at the locker club,” I said. “After that, we’re on our own.”

“Just change your clothes fast, I’ll drive to the gate,” Eden said. “Otherwise you’ll turn into pumpkins.”

“Okay,” Bobby said.

We drove to the locker club in silence, Eden Santana leaning over the wheel, squinting into the rain. She pulled around in front of the club and Bolden and I jumped out. In the club, I remembered: I left the goddamned pad and the chalks in the trailer . That meant I couldn’t show the drawings to Miles. And thought: Just as well . They were probably terrible. And I didn’t want anyone asking who the woman was. None of them. This was secret. Mine. Private. In the small tight trailer with the rain and the flowers. I pulled on my whites, hung up the civvies. Bolden was already waiting inside the door in uniform.

“Sure you want this?” he said.

“Want what?”

“Some fuckin’ cracker jarhead libel to hassle our asses. Woman like that drivin’ a black man home.”

“Come on.”

She drove us to the gate. Bolden got out first and hurried into the gatehouse. It was a minute to midnight.

“When can I see you again?” I said quickly.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I gotta think about this, child. What happened tonight, well, it happened. But—”