But I noticed something about Cherry. She was starting to get interested in what was happening. Lester had told me this would happen, but I didn’t really believe him. It was true, though. There were loads of sweat on her forehead and upper lip now, and between her breasts. She was breathing hard, and her hips were bucking and twitching, and after all the time she had spent just lying there, she was gradually getting into the mood in a big way.
Which meant I was the lucky one, I thought, reaching for the bottle and knocking back another drink. I mean, they were just getting her ready for me. I was the one who was going to have the best time of it.
I guess her excitement had an effect on all of us. The talk gradually died down and stopped completely. The five of us watched in silence, eyes riveted to the two of them on the bed.
Lester finished. He dragged himself off the girl’s body and staggered over to the bathroom. Solly took his place and just stood there for a minute, looking down at the girl. I wanted to ask him what the hell he was waiting for, but I didn’t break the silence.
He sighed, then put a hand down and touched her between her legs.
She moaned. I guess it was the first sound I could remember hearing her make.
He lifted his hand and looked at it. “Soaking wet,” he said to himself. “Dripping, the little mink is dripping. And hot.”
Come on, I thought. Come on already.
He entered her slowly, very slowly, and she moaned again, a rippling moan that was unlike any sound I’d ever heard. I was a little worried now that Solly was going to be the lucky one to make her come. It was a pretty silly thing to worry about now that I think back on it, but at the time it seemed very important that I be the one to do this. So I stood there with my hands in fists, wishing that Solly would learn Jimmy Joe’s impersonation of a rabbit.
He worked slowly at first, in and out, very slowly, and my whole brain was filled up with the picture of the two of them rolling around on my bed, locked together in this slow thoughtful screw. If there’s anything that looks more ridiculous than people screwing, I don’t know what it is. I mean, if you stopped to think what you look like when you’re doing it, the facial expressions and the position and all, you might not feel as much like going through with it. They looked foolish, but they also looked as though what they were doing was a tremendous amount of fun.
Then bit by bit the tempo picked up, with each of them working at the same pace. She spoke for the first time, begging him to do it harder and faster. She talked nonstop, and she didn’t use more than five different words all in all, and three of them were obscene, which is a pretty good average if you spread it over a person’s whole vocabulary. She begged him to do it, and he did it, and she wrapped her legs around him and dug her nails into him and really let herself go, kicking and screaming her head off.
Solly gave a cross between a growl and a roar. He pitched forward on her the way Flick had done earlier. But Cherry didn’t stop kicking and screaming and wiggling her tail, as if she didn’t realize that the record was over. For a few seconds Solly just lay there being tossed around by her hips. Then he grunted and heaved himself up and away from her. She tried to hang on. He unhooked her arms from around his neck and dumped her on the bed.
“She don’t know when to quit,” he said to no one in particular. I started for her, but he was standing in the way, just shaking his head and saying that she was a crazy little broad who didn’t know when to quit.
She was writhing on the bed, making noises like cats fighting under a full moon. “Oh, I almost made it,” she said. “Oh, I’ll make it this time, somebody, help, please, somebody, I’ll make it this time.”
Keegan started for her. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
“My turn,” I said.
“Oh,” he lied, “I forgot about you.”
“Sure you did.”
“Easy, now. If you want to stand arguing, someone’ll take your turn. That what you want?”
“You know something, Keegan? I never realized it before, but you know what you are?”
“Lad—”
“You’re a son of a bitch, Keegan.”
“Easy, now,” Keegan said.
“Please,” Cherry said. “Please please please please—”
“Open up in there,” a voice said.
“Please please please—”
“Open that door.”
The room went silent again. I had shouldered Keegan aside and was on my way to the girl. Someone grabbed my arm. I shook the hand off.
They kicked the door in. Four cops the size of the Green Bay Packers. One of them went around waving a badge and a gun at everybody, and the other three pulled me off Cherry.
I bit one of them in the leg and hit one of them in the face and kicked one of them in the family jewels. If there had just been the three of them I think I would have taken them. I really mean it. But the fourth one managed to get behind me and hit me over the head with the butt of his gun.
“Oh, you rats,” I heard Cherry howling. “I almost made it. Another minute and I would of made it, you rats. I’ll never let you dirty cop rats screw me again. Never, damn you. Oh, I almost made it—”
The gun butt popped me again. The lights went out and so did I.
You know, I can understand how people can become paranoid. It isn’t that hard to figure out. When things have been going wrong in one particular way over and over again, it’s natural to figure that there’s a conspiracy against you.
Take me, for instance. (Take me! I’m yours!) No, seriously. Here I was, for Pete’s sake, with just one flung I really wanted to do, and I was being turned at every thwart. I was playing the goddamned Doris Day part in one of those movies where the big question is whether or not Doris can keep her legs together until the end of the film, and the big answer is always yes.
You already know about Francine — remember? to hook your attention? the gun going off — and here I was the last man in line at an orgy and the cops came in just when my number came up.
Why shouldn’t I be paranoid? Obviously those cops were just waiting in the hallway for it to be my turn. Obviously someone had switched decks of cards, so that I wound up cutting a deck where every card was the fucking four of clubs. Obviously there was a hole in the wall, or a two-way mirror, and good old Gregor was out there taking pictures and old Haskell was watching and beating off in the name of sociological research, and the Head was laughing, and the basketball coach was saying that a winner never quits and a quitter never wins, and Cherry was taking off her red wig and revealing herself as Aileen, being faithful to Gregor in her peculiar way, and Calvin was saying Rowrbazzle, which means Up your ass in Siamese, and my parents weren’t really dead, they were just trying to escape from their boring mess of a kid.
I couldn’t have been unconscious for very long, because the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a pair of baggy pants. I watched as the pants were pulled up past my face and onto Flickinger, to whom they belonged. I was lying on the floor next to the bed, and Flickinger was sitting on it, and pulling his pants on.
I stayed where I was. There were conversations going on, but my head was buzzing and I was sort of listening through the conversations without hearing them, the way you do when you watch an Italian movie. All I knew was that there were four cops in the room, along with the five guys from the crew. I didn’t see or hear Cherry.
I guess I must have realized sort of vaguely that nobody was paying attention to me, and that this was Just As Well. So I was very careful to stay where I was, and I closed my eyes again, and I found out that with my eyes shut my ears worked again, and I listened to what they were saying.