Bloodbrothers (33 page)

"'Lo, Pollyanna Dresswear."

"Is Mrs. Cutler there?"

"Yes, one minute."

"Never mind. I just wanted to know if she was there." He hung up.

No. Shit. That was stupid. What if that woman told her mother a man called for her and then hung up? She might get scared and come home. Or call home. And he wouldn't be there.

"'Lo, Pollyanna Dresswear."

"Is Mrs. Cutler there? I'm her son, I called a minute ago. Can I speak to her?" Jack was sweating.

"Jack?"

"Hi, Mom, how you doing?"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Mom, I just wanted to say hello."

"So hello. You sure nothing's wrong?"

"Yeah, I just wanted to say hello."

"I don't believe you, you don't sound good. Are you sick?"

Jack was in a panic. "I'm great, Mom, really."

"So why are you calling me?"

"What do you want for dinner? I'm gonna go shopping now."

"Jackie, what's wrong?"

"Nothing." His voice was cracking. "Can't I call you up to say hello?"

"Jackie, something's wrong, I'm coming home."

"No! I'm fine. I'm fine. Don't come home."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, Mom, really. I love you."

There was silence on both ends.

"I'm going shopping now. Mom. I'll be gone about an hour."

"Get some fish."

"Sure, Mom, see you at five." He hung up. Goddamn motherfucking bastard. She was coming home. He knew it. Maybe not. He shouldn't go up to Marie's apartment. She'd know. After five minutes of sitting on the couch he jumped up again, fumbled with all the locks, flung open the door and ran up the stairs to Marie's apartment. Maybe just a quick one.

***

Jack rang the front doorbell a second time.

"Who is it!" Marie saw Jack through the peephole.

"Jack Cutler," he whispered into the peephole.

Marie unlocked the door but kept the chain on, opening it a few inches. "What do you want!"

"You told me to come up here!" Jack was starting to get hysterical.

Marie closed the door, took off the chain and let him in. He stared at her figure in the nightgown.

"I asked you up here to give you back your two quarters."

Jack didn't hear her. He could see her nipples standing out against the acetate. Her legs were veined and potholed but real woman's legs. Marie got scared. He wasn't listening.

"I have my period, so just take your money and leave," she said.

He grasped her arm and immediately let go.

She gasped, stepping back. Suddenly she imagined Tommy looking in on this scene and laughing his ass off. Pathetic. She was a grown woman of forty-five years. Mother of two children. A nonvirgin of twenty years.

"I'm sorry." Jack cringed.

"In the bedroom." She nodded in that direction, leading the way.

Jack started to undress tentatively.

Marie sat on the edge of the bed, some of her momentary bravado fading. He had a decent body. Paunchy a little, not very muscular, certainly not like Tommy's, but he was o.k. He hesitated at his underwear, embarrassed to go on. She tried a flirtatious smile to encourage him. She pulled her nightgown over her head. Instantly he got a hard-on, its tip peeping up through the elastic of his briefs. Marie started getting excited. She walked over to him, her breasts gently swaying back and forth, and tugged down his underwear. He had a bigger dick than Tommy. She touched it. Jack caught her, throwing her back on the bed. She started kicking and screaming, he was panting like he was brain-damaged. With his dick in his hand he fumbled for a hole. Any hole. Unwittingly he started giving it to Marie up the ass. Marie reached between his legs for his balls, squeezing for all she was worth. He yelled and jumped up, red-faced, gasping for breath.

"Hold it! Hold it! Ya goddamn animal! Ya goddamn degenerate!" Jack had doubled over, both hands between his legs. Marie wasn't scared anymore. She was boiling. The guy was a slob. An asshole. "Now look, first thing, you bring condoms?"

"What?" His face was screwed up in pain.

"Condoms, rubbers, scumbags!"

"No. Oh, God, ah ... ah..."

Again Marie thought of Tommy looking in, laughing. "Maybe my husband has some." Nice touch. Tommy'll get the horns with his own bags. Marie opened Tommy's bottom dresser drawer. He kept a twelve-pack of Trojans in a brown bag under his sweaters. She lifted the sweaters. The rubbers were gone. She tossed the sweaters around the room. "Shit!" She turned angrily to Jack. "Shit," she said louder.

"I can go down and get some," he said a little easier. The pain was subsiding. He started getting dressed.

"No, wait!" Marie stopped him in his tracks. "Lay down on the bed."

He obediently lay on his back, watching her. She crouched next to him, perpendicular to his crotch. He reached over to touch her dangling breast, but she pushed his hand away. He lay there spread-eagled and motionless.

She had never given Tommy a blowjob because she thought it was vile, disgusting and sinful. He had always wanted one. Twenty years of head pushing. Twenty years of "C'mon, just lick it once." She had never given in. But now her hunger for revenge overcame her loathing and fear. This would be the supreme galling fuck you she could throw in his face. She hesitated for a moment, then held his dick. He started to sit up, she pushed him back.

"If you come in my mouth I'll brain you." Her voice was trembling. Holding it in her hand she gave it a tentative lick. It had no taste. It was just hot. He gasped. She gave it another lick. He gasped again. She felt dizzy. She could smell his crotch. She put half the head of his dick in her mouth and held it there. He started moaning. With the tip in her mouth she began jerking him off with her fist. She rolled her tongue around its head. He started pulling his hair and flailing his arms. She jerked him off faster, moving her mouth up and down over the tip. She felt herself getting wet. She let out an involuntary moan and with her other hand cupped his balls.

"Teeth," he moaned. "Ah... no teeth." She didn't hear him. She kept licking and pumping, squeezing his balls, pressing her thighs together so tight her knees shook. With a shriek he came in her mouth. She pulled away gagging and spluttering, come dripping from her hair and chin. She retched, furiously wiping her face. "Oh, thank you, thank you," he droned, drunk with pleasure.

She spit come in his face and, snarling, slashed him across the cheek with her fingernails. "You filthy disgusting pig! I'll kill you!" She gasped for air, her chest heaving.

The streaks of white on Jack's cheek turned pink, then dark, then crimson. Jack leapt out of bed, stumbled into his pants, threw on his shirt and barefoot ran out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Marie retched some more, then, wiping her chin, collapsed on the bed.

***

Running down the stairs Jack heard sirens in his head. What had happened, he was sure, was just this side of murder. He was crying when he opened his door and almost ran smack into his mother in the vestibule.

She grabbed his arms. "What happened!"

"Nothing, Mom!" He struggled to get past her, but she wouldn't let go.

"Don't tell me nothing!" she screamed. "You're crying, you're bleeding! Don't tell me nothing!"

Jack broke loose and ran to his room, his mother hot on his trail. He couldn't close the door on her. He sat on the corner of his bed, his head in his hands, trying to collect himself.

"Where are your shoes?" she screamed.

"Oh... Gaw-wd!" He let out an anguished cry, jumping up and hugging his mother, shaking and crying. She felt confused, angry and frightened. She sat him back down on his bed, trying to control herself.

"Jackie, what happened, where are your shoes?"

He gingerly touched his cheek. His fingers came away bloody. With a cool damp cloth she wiped away the blood.

"Who did this?" she asked.

Jack told her the whole story in graphic detail. She sat there ashen, horrified, hand over her mouth. When Jack got to the part about Marie blowing him, his mother stood up and in a wrathful and terrible voice said, "What is this woman's name!"

Jack didn't want to say, but he couldn't fight his mother. "Mane."

"Marie what?" she demanded.

"Marie De Coco."

"De Coco." She nodded with terrible knowledge. "De Coco."

She left the room and picked up the phone in the kitchen. "Information, give me a listing for a De Coco in Co-op City, please?"

"One moment. I have a
Louis
De Coco on—"

"That's it..."

***

Chubby lounged on the couch watching an old Robert Mitchum movie. Phyllis was out. Said she would be back around five.

Four forty-two. Chubby constantly kept checking the time, his guts jumping. Whenever Phyllis was out Chubby now counted the minutes, the seconds, for her return, like a housebroken dog who hadn't been walked all day.

The phone rang.

"'Lo."

"I would like to speak to Mr. De Coco, please."

"You got 'im." Chubby ate a tuna sandwich as he talked.

"Mr. De Coco, I won't give you my name. I'm a neighbor of yours. I'm calling you about your wife."

Chubby frowned. "What about 'er?"

"I think you should know that she's in the habit of seducing young men in the laundry room and bringing them up to your apartment and—"

"Who the fuck is this!" Chubby dropped his sandwich. His face was burning. Mrs. Cutler started to quiver with emotion.

"She brings them to your apartment and makes them do—"

"Who the fuck is this!" Chubby shouted.

"I'm a mother!" Mrs. Cutler bawled back, slamming down the phone.

"Makes them do what!" Chubby screamed at the dial tone.

***

"If he's any kind of man at all, she'll be taken care of," Mrs. Cutler said as she applied first aid cream to Jack's face.

***

Chubby slammed down the phone. "Phyllis!" he bawled in rage. He kicked open the bedroom door. Phyllis wasn't home. "Phyllis!" He stormed through the house. He grabbed his jacket. "Fuckin' hoowah!" He slammed the door.

T
HE SKY
was a nightmare of luminous grays. Chubby steamed across the street as the first drops hit the ground in ugly slaps. As he reached his car, the clouds ruptured into a furious jungle-thick sheet of rain. The car door slammed.

Banion's was deserted when Chubby tramped in trailing water like a dog climbing out of a lake. He collapsed onto a barstool, slammed his forearms on the counter and violently shook his head, spattering the area with rainwater.

"Banion, gimme a towel." Chubby furiously rubbed his hair dry. He shivered as the wetness of his shirt seeped under his skin. His teeth chattered. Banion sat behind the bar watching him. "Banion, you got a extra shirt?"

Banion wheeled down the bar, pulled out a heavily starched white busboy shirt from under the counter. He hadn't seen Chubby since he was in the hospital. Banion was nervous. Chubby seemed totally bent out of shape.

Chubby sat nude from the waist up, drying his back and his armpits. He took the shirt from Banion.

"It's freezin' in here!" Chubby's teeth sounded like castanets. "Don't you got no heat?" He pulled on the shirt. It was so small that it pinched the hair in his armpits, the front of the shirt not even making it around his ribs. He leaned over the bar for a tall glass and a bottle of Scotch.

"Hey... Chub. How you been feelin' since las' week?" Chubby ignored him, poured the glass three-quarters full, drank it down like Coke. "I gave Tommy some Haig to bring to you." Chubby poured five fingers, took a fistful of ice, dropped it in his drink and slugged it down. Banion automatically reached under the seat of his wheelchair and felt the police .38 held there. "I was gonna call you, but I kept gettin' hung up."

Chubby rubbed his mouth, frowning at something invisible to Banion's left. "Banion, what does seduced mean? Fucked, right?"

Banion brought his hand up from under the seat, empty.

"What?" He was sweating, fanned himself with a rolled-up crossword puzzle magazine.

"Se
duced
, se
duced
. He se
duced
her, means he
fucked
her, right?"

"Who did?"

Chubby sighed, rubbed his eyes, his arm flapped down on the bar, palm up. "Banion, take the fuckin' cotton outta your ears. Se
duced
means fuck, right?"

"Yeah." Banion pouted. "Sure."

"Yeah, yeah. I thought so." Chubby shook his head in affirmation. He slapped both palms down on the bar again and grimly stared at the row of spout-capped liquor bottles along the mirror. "FUCK!" He hurled his empty glass at the bottles. Banion ducked, loosened the .38 in one motion, but when he brought it up and pointed it with two shaking hands, the bar was deserted except for the wet mound of Chubby's discarded shirt.

Chubby drove at ninety miles an hour on the rain-blind highway. From the back of his throat emerged a whiny high-pitched singsong note, which he repeated over and over as the car swerved and skidded. He was calm, but his eyes were glassy, his foot frozen on the accelerator.

He didn't slow down until he hit the Bronx. He ran stop signs and red lights on the empty streets, pulled the car to a screaming rocking stop half up on the sidewalk in front of his building. He sprinted to the entrance, the busboy shirt pulling away in the back like water wings, his naked gut bouncing and rolling with every step. He hit the elevator button, cursed, punched the door and ran up the stairs. On the fifth floor he collapsed, panting and wheezing, resting his head on the banister. He staggered into the elevator and rode up to eleven.

***

Phyllis paced the empty house, muttering, shaking her hands and pointing her finger in emphatic gestures. As she did this, her face took on a rapid range of expressions, like a street schizo.

"Now, Chubby"—she pointed at Allen Funt, chortling on television—"I want you to tell me straight and don't
bull
shit me." She glared at the screen. "Who is she?" The elevator door creaked open, and she scooted into the kitchen, heart pounding in her ears, frantically pulling out pots and pans without rhyme or reason. She dropped a griddle, the clatter making her flinch. She crouched to pick it up. Chubby stood wheezing and steaming, dripping wet in the kitchen doorway. His eyes were wide-open crazy and his teeth were clenched. His asthma-stuffed chest, naked and slick, labored with every breath. From her crouch Chubby's head looked like it almost touched the ceiling.