Edward Lee - The Black Train

Thank God it’s not far …He could see the Gast House all alight at the top of the hill. Nice and slow, he thought, settling down. Just another quarter mile—

Suddenly Collier couldn’t see. His heart shouted in his chest when the wheel slipped, and he felt the vehicle go off the hardtop.

Fwap! Fwap! Fwap! Fwap!

He was mowing down bushes on the roadside. All he could see now were Lottie’s bare breasts in his face. She’d dropped her shoulder straps and was trying to straddle him in the driver’s seat—

“Lottie, for shit’s sake!”

One of her hands clamped his crotch and squeezed.

“You’re going to get us killed!” He shoved her back, and—

Thud!

She slid across the dash and fell into the passengerside foot well, flat on her back. Then—

No movement.

Collier had managed to stop the car a yard short of the largest oak tree in the front court. He backed up slowly, then realized this:

That’s the tree Harwood Gast hanged himself from…

He pulled his eyes off the sprawling tree, then idled to the parking lot.

No lights lit the half-filled lot; only moonlight traced into the car. Collier let his heart settle down again. In the moonlight, he found both of Lottie’s bare feet in his lap…

He put his hands on them, paused, then moved them off.

She wasn’t moving. Christ, with my luck she broke her neck when she fell! He leaned down and felt her throat. Thank God. There was a steady pulse.

Feeling weird, he looked closer at her, then gulped when he realized that one bare breast was exposed, its nipple dark and pointed like a Hershey’s Kiss. Man…

The toned legs seemed radiant in the moonlight. Then he looked at her face: serene and peaceful.

The silly ditz is out cold.

Then…

Would it be, like, sexual misconduct if I…

He couldn’t believe what he’d considered. I wanted to feel her breast…An UNCONSCIOUS girl’s breast…

He didn’t think about it, or at least tried not to, but then that other voice—the alter ego, the id —seemed to whisper, Go ahead. What’s the big deal?

His hand reached down without any guidance from his mind…

He pulled it back.

What a wuss! Go ahead! Cop a feel! Any REAL man would!

He ground his fists together.

Come on! She’ll never know!

It troubled Collier more than significantly: the amount of time it took to decide not to. I’m REALLY screwed up…

But then…something else occurred to him as the memory flashed: his keyhole this afternoon, and the immaculate, hairless pubis displayed in it, and the unique freckle.

It was probably Lottie, and…judging by her behavior tonight, I’d say there’s a 99 percent chance.

More curiosity, then.

He already knew that she wore no panties beneath the tight, diaphanous dress…

I’m just seeing if it was her, that’s all, he thought as if to offer an excuse.

He raised her motionless leg, angled it away…

The moonlight didn’t reach that low so, very briefly, he turned on the dome light—thought, Pervert! —and glanced down between her legs.

Wrong again.

There was quite a bit of pubic hair down there, a veritable pie wedge-shaped tuft of it.

He took a breath, clicked the light back off…and found himself shaking slightly.

The other voice again: Shit, she only weighs a hundred pounds. Take her in the woods and have a go. Who’s going to know?

Collier could imagine the headlines. TV BEER GURU RECEIVES TEN YEARS FOR DATE RAPE.

His mind swam. He was mortified that the idea had even occurred to him. Got to get her back in the house. Now.

Eventually he got her shoulder strap back up, hauled her out of the car, and was trudging toward the front steps.

Jesus…

After twenty paces, gravity turned this hundred-pound “pipe cleaner” into an armful of cinder blocks. Collier wasn’t in the best physical shape, and being drunk only compounded his effort. I wish I could just leave her on the damn steps and go to bed. He was tempted. But, no, he’d already been enough of a scumbag tonight.

He opened the front door—

Oops.

—with her head and muscled through the vestibule. A very agape Mrs. Butler sprang up from the desk and came briskly forward.

“Mrs. Butler, this isn’t what you think,” he started. “She—”

“Oh, that silly daughter’a mine,” snapped the now-familiar drawl. “She got drunk is what she did.”

“Yes, ma’am. And only on one beer.”

“Lottie! What am I gonna do with you!” she bellowed at the unconscious woman. “You’ve embarrassed Mr. Collier!”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Butler, it wasn’t much of a problem—”

The old woman plucked Lottie from Collier’s arms and threw her over her shoulder like she was a straw doll. Lottie’s bare bottom looked Collier right in the face, then was spun around.

“Please forgive this, Mr. Collier!”

“Really, it’s no big d—”

“I would just die if you went back to sunny California and told all your TV friends like Emeril and Savannah Sammy that folks in Gast ain’t nothin’ but a bunch’a drunks’n crackers.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Emeril.” He struggled for something to do or say, through some sudden obligation. I can’t very well let her old mother lug her back to her room. “Here, let me help you.”

“Wouldn’t think of it! You been inconvenienced enough! You can bet corn bread to gold doubloons that she’ll be punished rightly.”

“No, please, Mrs. Butler. She was just trying to have a good time and drank too much—”

“See you in the mornin’, and please sleep well!” The old woman was already hustling away, her own shapely backside shaking in a loose lavender dress. “And, again, I’m so sorry ’bout this!”

Mrs. Butler disappeared down a hall beside the desk.

What a night.

And it was finally officially over, he realized, when the lobby grandfather clock tolled midnight. He began to trudge up the steps, amused now by the previous debacle. Mrs. Butler’s upset had seemed a bit over the top. So what? Her daughter got drunk in front of a small-time TV star. Not that big a deal. But then he recalled Jiff’s little bit of interesting info earlier. The younger man had literally been trying to set Collier up with his mother.

The only one I wish I could be set up with is Dominique…

But how preposterous was that? Just because she didn’t have a ring didn’t mean she wasn’t married or involved, he knew. Brewers, just like cooks or masons, didn’t wear rings for obvious reasons. How could a girl that pretty and that on the ball NOT be taken?

And why worry about it anyway? His TV “stardom” was at an end, he was over-the-hill, and soured by L.A. and a catastrophe for a marriage. Collier knew he wasn’t exactly the Total Package.

Back in his room, he dropped his shirt on the floor, stepped out of his pants, and groaned into bed.

At least the bed wasn’t spinning, and when he burped he did so as the genuine connoisseur that he was. The burp was light and hoppy, and had good “nose.” It reminded him that he’d found what he’d been looking for right away: a preeminent American lager. So even with all of the day’s disasters and absurdities, it had been a terrific success…

And I got to meet Dominique…

He felt like his first grade-school crush. But it’s just lust. That other voice crept into his head.