“Not if it’s fake.”
“You add a little spit to it,” she mimicked, licking her hand, “and yeah, sometimes you had to touch ’em.” Her hand closed into a fist. “I just pretended I was milking a cow. Usually didn’t take ’em long. ‘Specially if I talked.” Her hand unclasped his belt buckle with a smooth jerk.
“Then what?” he asked.
“Then what—what?” She pulled back and flicked the cigarette out of the window. “They came. I could usually talk them into wiping themselves with their shirts.” Annie thought this was pretty funny.
“You never…”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” She turned toward him, up on her knees, hands in lap, demure as choir girl. “Put something like that in my mouth? Please. Especially with the hygiene around here. But the thing is, they can’t tell each other the truth—they can’t admit that they never got a blowjob. Hell, they think they’re the only one that came before getting their dick sucked, and there’s no way they want to admit it to each other. They don’t want to be the only one that didn’t come in my mouth. So yeah, they’re out there telling each other that they got the best blowjob of their lives.”
Frank didn’t know what to say. He checked on Petunia. She hadn’t moved. Annie blinked at him. His erection hadn’t gone down. His scalp itched from being shaved. “Why are you telling me this?”
“’Cause I want you to know that I’m not…well, I was going to say not a whore, but that would be lying, wouldn’t it? I am a whore,” she said, almost proud. “I just have boundaries.”
“So why are you telling me this?”
“’Cause I like you. And I want you to like me.”
Frank took another long drink. The bottle was nearly half empty. “Look. I, uh…” The rum decided he should be honest. “Ahh, fuck it. I do like you. I…shit. Ever since I met you, I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Annie’s face glowed in the starlight. “Please Don’t tease.”“
“I’m not. We both do things…things that we wish we didn’t have to.” He reached out and cupped her head, thumb just in front of the ear, the rest of the fingers stroking the back of her skull. He kissed her. Gentle. Tender. Her lips felt soft as clouds. He pulled back. “But you…stimulate cattle for reproduction.” Frank gave her a cold, lopsided smile and Annie wanted to pull away from his touch. “I kill.”
* * * * *
They sat in silence during the ride back. It wasn’t uncomfortable, though. It was more a contemplative quiet, each lost in his own thoughts. Both realized that they had revealed more of themselves to each other than perhaps anyone else alive. This was a new experience, a strange sensation, being so honest, so open with someone else. It felt like struggling into a new skin. Something that didn’t feel uncomfortable exactly, just different.
Frank stopped in front of the satellite dish. Petunia, awake by now, licked his ear. He turned to Annie. “I need to see you again. Soon.”
She gave a secretive little smile, clasped his face with both hands, and kissed him deeply on the mouth. He felt the electrifying touch of her tongue, just a brief little stab, but it was enough to stick in his mind for days. Then, without saying a word, she slid out of the car, let Petunia out, gave a tiny wave, and disappeared into the house.
Frank finished the bottle of rum driving back to the vet office. He grabbed a beer and told the cats about his evening. He wasn’t sure if they were impressed or not, but he was happy. He hadn’t felt this good since the night of the town BBQ and carnival. The nagging worm of doubt about who was telling the truth was gone. Annie had shared her secret with him and he was sure she was being honest. He couldn’t say why, exactly. There was something about the way she watched him most of the time, direct, merciless; but she’d get shy every so often and couldn’t meet his eyes. Soft and hard. Sweet and sour. Yin and yang. It was the contrast, that wonderfully wild seesaw of feelings that pulled him in. He didn’t think she had enough control over her emotions to lie.
He fell asleep on the couch, plotting out an escape to some tiny seaside town in Mexico. He’d earned plenty of cash, and Annie would come down later, only wanting to be with him, to lie in his arms and listen to the distant surf. It was a fine vision.
And it seemed damn close to grab.
DAY TWENTY
Like the cheap rum, the fantasy had rotted the next morning, turning sour and sick in his mind. His head felt brittle, fragile, like his skull was too tight. He wanted to smash something breakable. Around six, the sensation of his head cracking apart like hardwood cooking in the sun drove him into the bathroom, where there was a bottle of aspirin on the toilet. He stumbled back to his cot where he slept dreamlessly until noon, when it took him at least ten minutes to realize someone was ringing the hospital’s buzzer.
* * * * *
Frank drifted along the rows of cages, the eyes of the big cats like starving leeches on his bare skin. His tongue felt as if fungus had covered it during the night. The horizon swam and lurched in his eyes.
And when he saw the two deputies outside, his hangover got truly vicious, grabbing him by the ears and stabbing at the nerves behind his eyes and refusing to let go. His stomach spasmed and quivered, threatening to spatter half digested tiger meat, pasta, and spicy vegetables all over the tile floor.
Through the bathroom window, standing on the toilet seat, Frank saw them waiting just outside the front door, hands on their hips, alternately watching the empty street and the door. They looked like they were trying hard to look bored, but the occasional cry or hiss from one of the hungry cats made their heavy-lidded eyes snap open in furtive movement. Then they’d glance quickly at each other, as if reassuring themselves that they were on the right track. Herschell Thibbetts still wore his mirrored sunglasses, anchored to his squashed, pinched face by a strap around the back of his head. Olaf Halford looked like he’d sheared his head that very morning. Neither one let go of the butt of their handguns.
Thoughts swam sluggishly through Frank’s wounded mind. His first reaction was to simply bolt out the back door, snatch the cash hidden in the horizontal freezer behind the barn, jump in the long black car and drive north. He was all the way to the back door, his hand curling around the doorknob, when he heard Herschell shout, “Mr. Winchester. Mr. Winchester, we know you are in there. That car of yours is back in the barn.” Herschell hit the buzzer again. “Mr. Winchester.”
The last shred of rational thought left in his head begged him to slow down and think. Driving north wouldn’t help him much. Frank needed help, plain and simple. He could always try to run later, if it came to that. As long as he wasn’t a suspect for the murder of some trucker. Or the murder of the zoo owner. Or, while he was being honest, one of the quiet gentlemen, the one he’d pulled into the tank with him.
He let go of the back door handle and stumbled over to the black phone nailed to the wall. He dialed Sturm’s number, but Theo answered.
“Hey. This is Frank.”
“So?”
“Your dad there?”
“Why?”
“This is important.”
“Then tell me. And I’ll decide if it’s important enough to get my dad.”
Frank resisted the urge to smash the phone against the wall. “I need to talk to your dad. Right now.”
“He’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s out.”
Herschell or Olaf rang the buzzer again.
“Well listen. This is Frank. I need to talk to him right now.”
“He’s out.”
“Yeah.” Frank punched the wall. “Listen, doesn’t he have one of them cell phones or walkie-talkie things? Said so himself that this was serious work. Said these cats were the most important element in our business. I know you can reach him. Give me the number.”