Annie slowed down, relaxing into the seat, taking it easier on the cigarette. “I’m sorry. Tonight was important, and those fucking morons fucking fucked it up,” she said and put a hand on Frank’s thigh. But the touch was brief, and then her hand was on to fiddling with the radio. “Fucking radio around here sucks. It sucks long and hard.” With her particular emphasis on those last words, Frank couldn’t help but wonder if she meant something else. Fed up with the selection, Annie switched the radio off. “Where you from?”
“All over.”
“That much I guessed. Where were you born?”
“East Texas.”
“Where’s your family now?”
“All over.”
“You visit with ’em much?”
Frank followed Annie’s finger and turned into an empty parking lot. There was a half moon, just enough to reflect off the fifty-acre reservoir. He shrugged as he pulled into a spot and stopped. “Didn’t see the point in driving all over to visit a bunch of cemeteries.” He stopped the car, facing the lake, under a billion stars.
“Your mom?” Annie finished her cigarette, threw it out the window, but made no move to get out.
Frank gave a sad smile. “Cancer.”
“Dad?”
“Don’t know.”
“My daddy’s in jail. He’s not a good man. I hope he never gets out.”
“How’d he get there?” Frank was hoping she’d put her hand back on his thigh.
Annie gave her own sad smile. “He broke into seventeen campers and trailers across the southwest, killing the husbands and any children, then raping and killing the wife. You probably heard about it.”
“Jesus.” Frank was sorry he’d asked.
“No, I’m fucking with you. He’s in a jail, sure, but hell, he’s just a dumb-ass. He went after armored cars—he’d stake out an ATM and follow the truck back. He nailed two trucks, cops nailed him on the third. Thought he had to be a tough guy and use a loaded gun. So he oughta be up for parole in twenty years or so. I take a bus and see him once in a while.”
Frank turned off the engine and they sat in silence for a moment. “My daddy was a preacher. Can’t exactly say he was a man of god. He believed in…well, he believed in the devil, one. That’s for damn sure. And two, he believed in serpents. He was one of them snake handlers, always saying the word of god was protecting him from bites. Didn’t matter that he got bit twice in the face. He said that was ’cause of me. And mom, but mostly me. His fault for spawning me. God was punishing him.”
Annie twisted around to look at Petunia and put her hand back on Frank’s thigh. “You think she wants to go swimming?”
Frank didn’t want to move, didn’t want to give Annie any reason to pull her hand back, but he carefully turned his head and glanced into the back seat. Petunia snored softly, curled up in a tight ball, dead to the world. “I don’t know. She looks awful comfortable.”
“That’s what I thought.” Annie slid closer. “Kind of nice, just sitting here, looking at the water.”
“Yeah.”
“I know you’ve heard about me,” Annie said without looking at Frank.
“What?”
“Let’s stop pretending, okay? We do it all the time, with everyone, with everything that goes through our heads, so let’s…Let’s just not do it tonight, okay? Not between you and me. It’s demeaning. So, what did you hear? I know they filled you in. I want to know what they had to say.”
Frank exhaled, long and slow, wondering if one of Annie’s cigarettes would help. He thought of something better. “Well. You’re talking about the guys, the clowns, right?” He felt around under the driver’s seat and pulled out the bottle of cheap rum he’d stashed earlier.
“Who else?”
“They’re…they’re big fans. Chuck is, anyway.”
Annie smiled hugely. “Of course he is. But why? What did he say, exactly?”
Frank unscrewed the top, let the cap fall wherever it wanted. “He, uh, he said you were the best.” He took a long, long drink.
“The best. Best at what?” Annie still hadn’t moved her hand. Frank was sure he’d never been anywhere that had been so goddamn quiet. It was so quiet he could hear Annie’s thumb and forefinger tracing little circles, smoothing out the denim on his thigh.
Frank took another hefty swallow, decided to get it over with. “He said that, for twenty bucks, you gave the best blowjobs ever.” He immediately took another drink, then offered it to Annie.
She took the bottle with a knowing smile. “Good. Perfect. That’s what I hoped he’d say.” She took a drink. “Uggh. This is crap. Where’d you get this?”
Frank laughed, took it back. “It was cheap.”
Annie lit a fresh cigarette, took it slow, enjoying the drag. She still wouldn’t look at Frank. “The way I see it, no matter what you do, no matter what kind of job you want to get, it’s all about marketing, you know? It’s all about word of mouth It’s all about perception, see?”
Frank shook his head.
Annie said quietly, “I never gave anybody a blowjob. Shit. I’m still a virgin.” She gave Frank a little grin that stopped his heart. “I just get ’em to pay for a blowjob, and then to say that they had one. You understand?”
Frank wanted to nod and say, “Yeah.” But he said, “No.”
Annie turned in her seat to face Frank, eyes alive with mischief. “It’s simple. Men and their dicks. You play with their ego. See, I start slow. Maybe a little rubbing, through the pants, but the whole secret is talking dirty. You get to talking dirty to a man, I mean, really working it, really stroking his imagination, and hell, you’re almost there. That’s all it takes. Want me to show you?”
Frank’s heart had almost started beating again when this stopped it dead. “Why don’t you walk me through it first.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
Annie laughed. “Okay. Okay. Well, it starts slow, like I said.” She started rubbing his thigh. “Then we go for a drive. Some place private. Like this,” she gestured out at the lake through the windshield.”
“You been here before?
“Maybe. So then I start talking about, oh, I don’t know, about the night or the lake. Doesn’t matter. The point is, I’m using words like soft, wet, smooth, for the place. Then I refer to them, using words like powerful, hard, strong. Things like that, you know?”
With each adjective or adverb, her voice became husky, slow, seductive. The rubbing of his thighs matched her voice. “Then my hand moves up. Hell, half the time I don’t even have to unzip their jeans.” Her palm slid up to Frank’s crotch. He was surprised to find that he wasn’t the least embarrassed about his aching erection, and took another swallow of rum.
“Then I just rub, slow, for awhile, talking to them the whole time. About what I’m going to do to them, about how much I enjoy it, how much I need it. I’ll go into detail about how soft my mouth will feel, how much suction my tongue will give, how much I want them. Sometimes, that’s all it takes. Sometimes, they last a little longer. So I use a rubber glove. Like a surgical glove. Didn’t bring one with me tonight, though.” Her hand paused on his belt buckle. “Thing with latex gloves though, you gotta provide a little extra lubrication, so I’d stick my hand down my pants, pretend to rub myself. All I had to do was act like I was enjoying it. Want me to show you?”