Just do this and clear your head, Rick told himself.
Eighty minutes later, the black girl announced, "My time now."
"Not yet," cried the blond girl.
"No, no, it's my time now."
He heard these things but as if from a great distance. The black girl was whacking him on the ass playfully, so he got off the blonde, who immediately curled into a ball and rolled onto her side. The black girl spread her legs and presented him with a full beard, two dark lips, and something that could almost be the pink tip of a tongue. I've only studied four things in my life, he thought to himself as he shoved in, I have studied how to steal big things, how to get fish into a boat, how to lift weights, and how to fuck. Only the fishing is good for society. With each topic you studied it and then it got frustrating and then you unexpectedly learned more. With fucking, if you could keep from ejaculating for the first half hour, you passed into a zone where you could get the real work done. This was where he was now. He was driving the black girl hard, as hard as he wished, but with no rising pleasure for himself. Just driving, minute after minute. Her head was thrown back, eyes shut, and when he pushed, her brow furrowed. She made little analytical grunts. The bigger the thrust, the more animated and inflected the grunt. "Huh. Hu- uh uh." It might have been pain but it wasn't. She hooked her legs up over his shoulders and ran her hands over his thighs like someone dreamily feeling the finish on a new car. The cadence was steady and she had a moment to recover before he went back in, and every three or four strokes her cunt rippled out the air being pushed in. It was an embarrassing, flatulent noise, but they were well beyond that now; questions of embarrassment and identity and power and race and who is the President of the United States and what day of the week is it had all been obliterated by the idiot donkey machine of lust, to which he was helplessly shackled, waiting for it to release him, not yet ready for it to release him, and so he drew a breath that cleared his wind-he was running six or seven miles on the treadmill these days-and kept on, not knowing why exactly, and the black girl rolled her head left and right on the pillow, talking to herself in a demented, hallucinatory whisper, her lip caught up in an angry sneer, her tongue tasting the sweat dripping off his chest, and sometimes her right hand would ride up and down the thick pillar of his arm, squeezing or shaking it, and other times she made a fist and punched his chest in weak protest, frowning with her eyes closed, as if to press wordless unanswerable questions upon him. Why are you doing this to me? Why do I want you to? How do I know you and how do you know me? And then she would give up the interrogatory and lapse back into herself, her hand falling back against the pillow. He glanced over at the blond girl, who had slowly lifted herself to her hands and knees, perhaps to crawl off the bed and go pee, and that-that sight of her, unthinking of him, lost in her own vulnerable moment-was what he wanted. He wanted her disinterest in him. He wanted to destroy it. His mouth filled with spit. He pushed away from the black girl, who covered her breasts and moaned in relief, and then he grabbed the blond girl from behind with two hands, one on each hipbone, and dragged her back across the bed toward him. "I can't again," she cried, arms above her head, "I'm sorry." He didn't care-no, not at all, too bad, nothing to do about it-and she couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and five pounds, and he lifted her and stuck her on himself, and for a moment she was a screaming rag doll, thrashing and weeping and fighting him. Then he pushed her legs farther apart with his knees and lay down fully on and well up into her. She spread flat on the bed, hands outstretched on either side. He slid his arms under her to support himself, which let her breathe better, and when she felt his thumb near her mouth, she seized it with her teeth and sucked on it spitefully, whimpering and biting him as he rode up into her, mashing himself at the end of each thrust. Maybe I can hold this, he thought, but she began to wiggle her tight little ass against his weight, forcing her own renegade rhythm against his, tightening herself, defying him his control of himself, and then she wrenched one of her arms free and thrust it under her belly and past where he was going into her, stretching her fingers so that her fingernails raked his balls from underneath, and that and her defiant butt-wiggling made the nerves in his face go funny, and he went at her, went maximum, clutching her hips as the yard-long rope was pulled from him, gobbing and spasmed, and then, breath shrinking, his mind was blanketed by softness.
His desire was dead, his hatred gone.
The blond girl pushed her way out from beneath him. "That hurt, you fucker."
But the black woman laughed. "Nah, Kirby, I seen you, that hurt good."
The blond girl smiled. "Yeah, but I can't fucking walk."
But he was not listening. He wanted only to put on his clothes and step out into the late afternoon. His mind was clear. It had worked-perfectly, in fact. He was ready to talk to Christina now. He'd shower at the gym and have a cup of coffee, get a new shirt out of the truck, then walk over to her building and press the M. Williams buzzer and be able to speak to her. Without fear, with clearness.
He sat up with his underwear and pants. The blond girl left, keeping the door open. He found his shirt and socks. The black girl lit a cigarette. She cupped her left breast and lifted it, examining the sweaty crease beneath it.
"What're you looking for?" Rick asked as he pulled on a boot.
"I get these things, they called skin-tags. From the rubbing. These little pieces of-" She looked up and took a sharp breath. "Do something for you fellows?"
Her voice was different and Rick turned.
Three men stood in the doorway. The short one sported a silky green baseball jacket, argyle socks, and good shoes. The other two, each almost Rick's size, wore double-breasted suits.
"You must be Rick," said the one in the green jacket. "My name's Morris."
"You are-?" he began.
"You know who we are, Rick." He pointed a soft pink finger. "Get your other boot on there, no hurry." He looked at the girl. "Pardon us, miss," he said with gentle authority, "we don't wish to compromise you."
She didn't move. "Where's Jason at?"
"He's out there."
She was trying not to look scared. "Bring me Jason in here and I'll get out of bed."
Morris nodded to the older man in the suit.
I can't jump out of the window, Rick thought, too high.
The bouncer came into the room and picked up a blue robe. "Let's go, baby."
LaMoyna threw back the covers and stood regally as the bouncer held the robe. She wasn't beautiful. The other men waited impassively, as if for a train they knew always to be late. Morris unzipped his jacket and opened his wallet.
"Miss," he said to her, "this is for your trouble." He handed her a new one-hundred-dollar bill. He pulled out another, gave it to the bouncer. "You're a champ."
Rick stood. The two other men stepped forward and put handcuffs on him. Morris motioned toward the door. "Let's go. Just a bunch of guys, right?"
"Right," whispered Rick, his voice grieving.
They were not cops. With cops there was a lot of sitting around. Things need to get written down, and someone always has a radio. They walked him down the stairs without speaking and outside to a taxi repainted green. In the backseat, the two big men sat next to him. Morris drove. Two large carpenter's toolboxes were stacked on the passenger seat.
"Hey," Rick breathed out, "just tell me."
"We'll talk when we get there," Morris answered. "Just relax, it's all fine. Really, this is not a big deal."