The knot of people broke up, no doubt intimidated by the air of potential ugliness, leaving Walt briefly alone with Betty Ann Johnson.
“Thanks,” the black woman said. “So, you’re a twin, too, huh?”
“Yeah. But that’s a long story.”
“I see.” She obviously didn’t, but she gave him a smile that was bright against her lovely skin.
For a moment, Walt hesitated awkwardly, trying to keep his eyes off the form that bulged in the air between them, its gnarled half-arm seeming to reach for him. Then he stammered, “Ah, hey…it’s getting near lunch time, and maybe you wouldn’t mind, uh, going with me? My treat?”
He saw the woman’s smile flicker at the corners, and he regretted what he’d done. She replied, “That’s awful nice of you…but you sure you wouldn’t mind being seen outside with a girl like me?”
“I got no problem with Negro people.”
Her smile resumed its previous proportions, and she gestured at the figure protruding from her abdomen, to the left of the inviting dark wink of her navel. “I meant this.”
Now it was Walt who grinned, embarrassed. “I wouldn’t ask you if I was worried about it.”
Betty Ann shrugged. “Well, I am hungry. I eat a lot, I’m afraid. Got to eat for Sally, too.”
“Sally. Did your parents give her that name?”
“No—I did. There’s a place right down the street we can go. They’re used to our kind in there, by now. So what’s your name, mister?”
He told her. They shook hands. Walt thought that they both seemed to linger slightly too long at the contact of their warm flesh.
* * *
Seagulls knifed white against the ashen sky, lifted on the icy wind like the few flakes of snow that fell. Walt and Betty Ann walked past shut up arcades and tourist shops, returning from the greasy little diner where they had lunched and had coffee. They took their time on the way back. Betty Ann wore an open coat over a voluminous flower-print dress that made her look pregnant with a Shetland pony, Walt thought. Then he thought of the centaur, and other mythological beings. Gods, goddesses, wonders with the bodies of humans mixed with those of other creatures. Marvels…
At the moment, they were not laughing and chatting comfortably as they had in the diner. Walt had begun telling Betty Ann about his parents, and the two of them were grim, did not look at each other.
“They were both drunks,” Walt told her. “They’d both pass out, and my sister Louise and I had to make our own supper. When there was food enough in the house to cook. They both had other lovers, too. So one day my father came home—my sister and I were outside playing…we didn’t see it…not until afterwards—my father came home and found my mother with her latest boyfriend. And he was jealous. And he shot her with a shotgun. And then the boyfriend. And then himself.”
“I’m so sorry,” Betty Ann told him softly, not looking up from the pavement. She had her left arm cradled under her veiled twin, to help support its weight as she walked.
“The state sent my sister and I to two different foster homes. We were eight years old. And we’ve never been together again.”
Betty Ann came to a stop and looked at him, forcing him to do the same. The emotion in her face was earnest, and painful to him. “But you’re a private eye!” she protested. “You could find her now!”
“It’s too late,” he muttered.
“But…”
“I did find her. I saw her…I watched her. She’s married now, has kids. She looks happy. I couldn’t talk to her. I left her alone. She’s happy now.” Walt returned his gaze to the sidewalk, and resumed walking. Betty Ann fell in beside him again.
When they were outside the “museum” (a couple going inside pointed to Betty Ann’s bulging dress and whispered to each other), Walt swallowed a slug of saliva and asked, “Could I take you to a movie some time?”
“I don’t like to go out in public too much, Walt,” she told him gently.
“I understand…” He was unhappily ready to give up on it at that moment.
“You want to come visit me tonight? After I’m done?” She gestured to the windows above the museum. “I live up here. We could talk some more. Have a drink.”
Walt’s mood lifted. He smiled again, and once more they shook hands. Once more the warm press of their contrasting flesh.
“What time?” he asked.
* * *
Music murmured dark and smoky from the phonograph in Betty Ann’s flat, one floor up from the Five-In-One show. She poured Walt a whiskey. He had removed his fedora and wrinkled jacket, and had left his gun at home with his camera.
Walt sipped, sighed at the painful warmth, laid his drink aside. He spread his arms. “Care to dance?”
Betty Ann, hiding her bathing suit and twin beneath her flowered tent of a dress again, spread her hands above the ungainly shape that was covered like a corpse under a sheet. “Sally sort of gets in the way.”
“Wait,” Walt said, and moved around in back of Betty Ann. She started to turn to face him but he held her shoulders in place. Then, he embraced her softly from behind, resting his hands on her waist above where her hips flared. She put her hands over his, and they began to slide back and forth as one—or as three—to the murky melancholy music.
“This is nice,” Betty Ann said.
“Yes.” Walt drew her closer against his front. “This is nice,” he repeated, close to her ear, so finely and perfectly formed.
Her full bottom pressed against his front, and soon he began to grow hard against it. His erection ached to lie in its inviting dark cleft, the thin but imprisoning layers of their clothing preventing it.
Walt bent his head to her neck, and kissed her brown skin there. It was as warm as her hand had been. She reached up one of her hands, and laid it upon his cheek.
Walt then turned the woman around to face him, impulsively, passionately. He embraced her from the front, but a bit to one side, the twin between them as if to keep them apart. Still, he got his arms around her. Locked his mouth to hers. They exchanged tongues, and still swayed to the music.
After several minutes of this, Walt kneading her left breast through her clothing as they kissed, he stepped back from her and began to bunch up her dress. But Betty Ann took his hands gently. Her face looked pained.
“I’ve seen it,” Walt reassured her. “Remember? I’m not afraid. I’m not disgusted.”
“It’s all people ever see,” she whispered, her voice husky with emotion. “It’s like I’m the one who never got to live…”
“I’ve seen her already,” Walt repeated. “Now I want to see the rest of you…”
Slowly, Betty Ann’s hands slipped away from his. Slowly, he raised her dress up over her head. It caught a moment, snagged on one of Sally’s legs. Betty Ann quickly reached to untangle it.
Again, the white bathing suit-like outfit, as startling against her skin as her teeth when she smiled. She wasn’t smiling now—still looked timid, afraid—but he could feel the heat uncoiling off her skin, coming in slow panting waves from her slightly open mouth.
He removed her top. His lips and tongue brought her nipples, almost black against her dark skin, to a hardness so exciting he had all he could do not to bite down on them. His hands ran across her smooth shoulders, and then drifted down to find the edge of her outfit’s bottom portion. He began to skin it from her. His forearm nudged against the swell of Sally’s body. They both ignored it. They backed as one toward the sofa in her tiny living room.
Atop Betty Ann on the sofa now, Walt hastily unbuttoned his shirt and unzipped his trousers with one hand. She helped him by pulling off his white shirt and pushing his trousers down his legs with her toes. She helped him further by taking his engorged cock in hand and nuzzling its head against her lower lips, which parted to admit it. He fed himself long and deep into her, inside her where it was moist already and so wonderfully, tropically hot in contrast to the cold awaiting them outside her little apartment.