“Lifted it out of my mother’s purse.”
“She’s gonna miss that much, you fucking idiot.”
“She already asked if I took it,” he said through a smile. “I just said no and she believed me.”
I shook my head. “You’re nuts, man.”
“Hey, don’t tell anybody about the magazine, OK? Chuckie said if it got back to him that I told anybody where I got it him and DJ would kill me.”
Chuckie DiNunzio was a squat kid who wore wayfarer sunglasses and his hair slicked straight back. From his skinny ties to his straight-legged Levi corduroys, Chuckie was a neighborhood legend that came from a family of convicts and seemed destined to follow. A year older than we were, he’d run the neighborhood’s version of a black market for as long as we could remember. Whatever you needed, Chuckie either had it or could get it. If he came up empty his best friend and sidekick DJ Jablonski went to work on it. DJ, who was borderline retarded but physically enormous and the only sixteen-year-old still in junior high school, also provided Chuckie with the muscle he needed when deals went bad or “customers” got out of line. Chuckie dealt mostly in cigarettes, Playboy and Penthouse magazines, beer, pocket and hunting knives—even concert tickets once we hit high school. If you wanted it but couldn’t get it, Chuckie DiNunzio was the man to see.
This, however, seemed over the top even for Chuckie.
“I ain’t gonna say shit to anybody,” I mumbled.
Bernard carefully peeled back the cover to reveal a group of pictures segmented into various panels across the page. All were black and white and continued in a series what had begun on the front cover. The same woman was bound to the chair, the photographs tight shots; the background dark and without depth, as if they had been shot in front of a ceiling-to-floor black sheet. My eyes moved slowly, taking in one picture after another, each worse than the one before it. A fat shirtless man in a leather mask had joined the woman, and stood next to a table on which several odd devices and instruments of torture had been scattered. The first series of pictures consisted of the man hovering over the woman threateningly then progressed to a row where he was holding her chin up and slapping her repeatedly across the face.
“That’s fucked up,” I said. This magazine was already having the opposite effect on me that others had. A naked woman was one thing, but this was dark and grotesque and not even remotely sexy.
“Oh,” Bernard said breathlessly, “wait.”
He turned the page and although something told me not to, I looked anyway.
The man had cut the woman’s bra off and let it fall to the floor. In the remaining series he was touching her while she screamed and attempted to squirm away. The last photograph on the page showed the man standing next to the table, an odd metallic device with a long and thin rubber hose dangling from it in one hand, his other pointing a reprimanding finger at the still bound and terrified woman.
“What the hell is that?” I gulped so hard it hurt.
Bernard looked at me and smiled; his small chest rising and falling faster than before; a band of bright sunshine reflecting off his eyeglasses. “You know what an enema is?”
I did, but it took me a few seconds to remember the exact mechanics of it. “Jesus,” I finally said, “he’s not gonna do that, is he?”
Bernard nodded rapidly, his face flushed, but not from the sun. He turned the page.
“She looks all scared at first,” he said, slowly returning his gaze to the magazine, “but then once it starts she likes it, see?”
“Oh, man, that’s fucking nasty!” Afraid I might be sick, I struggled to my feet and brushed the pine needles from the seat of my pants. “Why the hell would I want to see something like that?”
“She likes it,” he said again. “Look, on the last page he unties her from the chair and she—”
“You’re fucking deranged, dude,” I said, forcing a cavalier laugh.
Something changed in his expression, and he gave a subtle shrug. “Nice tits, though, huh?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well, fuck, man, she’s probably older than my grandmother by now.”
He closed the magazine and slid it back into the bag. “You think Julie Henderson’s tits are that nice?”
“They’re not as big as those,” I said, relieved to see he was putting the magazine away. “But much nicer, not even close.”
Julie Henderson was 19 and gorgeous, the older sister of Brian Henderson, one of our classmates. Everything alive and male lusted after her, and we were no exception. To make matters worse, Julie jogged through town in late afternoon wearing short-shorts and a skimpy top almost daily, so of course it was not unusual for us to stop whatever we were doing and make sure to be on the street to see her pass by. From this simple event, which usually took all of fifteen seconds, countless discussions arose regarding all things Julie—most typically locker room in nature, of course—which only further fanned the fires of our sexual fantasies.
Bernard crawled across the fireplace and stuffed the plastic bag deep inside before replacing the loose stones. He stood up and hopped down next to me. “You know she runs right by here, right?”
I hadn’t known that but didn’t want to appear ignorant of her route. “Yeah, sure.”
“Sometimes I hide behind the fireplace and watch when she goes by.”
“Yeah, OK, perv-boy.”
“Sorry I’m not a fag like you.”
“Shut up, asshole.” I pushed him playfully, and not with much force. “Yeah, I’m a fag just because I don’t hide in the woods and beat-off watching some girl run by.”
Bernard staggered a bit, laughed then straightened his eyeglasses. “You watch her just like everybody else does.”
“Yeah but not out here. I mean, if I’m outside and—”
“If? Oh, yeah—right!”
“Fine, so I make sure I’m outside when she runs by.” We were both laughing now, and although I felt better, the pictures in that magazine kept appearing in my mind. “I look and I smile and she ignores me like always and jogs right by. Then I go inside and that’s it. I don’t fucking wait out in the woods and hide like some jack-off.”
Bernard looked at me like the thoughts occupying his mind were more important than returning my put-down with one of his own. “You know,” he said softly, “if you wanted to do something with her… this would be a good place to do it.”
“Yeah, I’m sure Julie can’t wait to come out here and fuck you, Bernard. She’s probably home right now, all playing with herself and shit just thinking about it.”
I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. “Maybe she wouldn’t want to at first.”
“Try ever. Shit, if you were the last guy on the planet she’d probably go lesbo.”
“I’m being serious, dick-weed. She’s going away to college in September, you know.”
“So?”
“So, if we’re gonna do something with her it has to be before the end of the summer.”
“Bernard, listen to me. Julie Henderson would never do anything with you. Get a clue, dude, she probably doesn’t even know who you are.”
He walked toward the path leading out of the forest, then stopped and looked back at me. “I was talking to Rick about it.”
“About Julie Henderson?”
“Yeah. He said it would be funny if we waited out here one day, then when she ran by one of us could stop her and start talking to her.” He was smiling again, like he might be kidding. “Then one of us could sneak up behind her and pull her shorts down real fast. She’d be all embarrassed and stuff, but we’d get to see her.”