Darkling I Listen (9 page)

He smoked and tried to think of a topic of conversation to which they could both relate.

"Oh, my God!" she suddenly announced, her voice
raised
to be heard over the wind rushing into the car through the open windows and the boom-boom of 'N Sync blasting from the speakers. "I can't believe I'm on a date with Brandon Carlyle
!"

He glanced at her legs again and shrugged. "Get over it,
Charlotte
. It's no big deal."

"Right. Sure. You're only the sexiest man alive."

"Don't believe everything you read. And besides, that was a long time ago."

"Whatever. God, you're better than Brad Pitt ever thought about being. Then again, I don't like blond guys much, and he started wearing that goofy beard thing that makes him look like a goat. And Ben Affleck is pretty awesome. Do you know him?"

"No."

"What about Matt Damon?"

"No."

"'Course, they're lots younger than you, huh?"

He cut his eyes to hers and blew out a stream of smoke. "Right."

"I don't care much for DiCaprio either. I read once that you were considered for his part in
Titanic,
but the producers decided they wanted someone younger."

"Could we please talk about something besides my age?"

"I suppose if you're like twelve or something, you'd find DiCaprio sexy, but when I fantasize about a man,
it's
gonna be someone like y
ou. Tall,
dark, and dangerous.
A
real bad boy. Know what
I
mean?"

He nodded and reached for the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, dug out a cigarette, and used the stub in his mouth to light the fresh one. No doubt about it, he was a card-carrying bad boy.

"I used to be in love with Johnny Whitehorse. God, that Indian was so sexy. I have his poster right next to yours on my bedroom wall. You know the one where he's standing on a street in
New York
with his jeans unzipped?" She fanned her face with one hand and squirmed in her seat. "Then he had to go and get married. And if that wasn't enough, he quit acting and went into politics. Do you know Johnny Whitehorse?"

Brandon
grinned and nodded. At one time Johnny had been a fierce competitor in the business. But his being a Mescalero Apache had limited his opportunities. Johnny had been bright enough to branch into business, and from there to politics. He was now Senator
Whitehorse,
married, with three kids—all boys—and there was buzz of his running for president before the end of the decade. During
Brandon
's trials and tribulations over the Marcella fiasco, Johnny had been the only one of his peers to call and offer not only his support but his law expertise.

"I really loved
Dark Night in
Jericho
.
I heard you did all your own singing. Is that true?"

"I feel like I'm being interviewed by
Rolling Stone.
Could we talk about something other than me?"

She shrugged and reached for a stick of Big Red. "The girls at Wal-Mart didn't believe me when I told them you asked me out."

"You asked
me
out,
Charlotte
."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess I did. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. We're together, huh?" She gave him a tight smile and
unwrapped
a second piece of gum. "I have a surprise for you," she said as she chewed.

Brandon
didn't much care for the sound of that. The last time someone declared "I have a surprise for you," Emerald Marcella had whipped out a pair of handcuffs and a torture device.

He flipped his ashes out the window and, with a sigh of relief, fixed his gaze on the Dairy Queen in the distance. Dusk was just settling, and the lights on the big red DQ sign were just sputtering to life. A dozen or more cars had already congregated in the parking lot. He wondered if maybe they shouldn't get their food to go. The idea of strolling into the burger joint arm in arm with Miss Yamboree made him a little nervous.

Charlotte
hit the directional signal and turned left on Highway 59, away from the Dairy Queen.

A flush of color crept from beneath her tank top as he turned to look at her. "What are you doing,
Charlotte
?"

"I told you; I have a surprise for you."

He looked down into the sideview mirror and watched the DQ sign disappear as they rounded a bend in the highway. "Where are you taking me?"

"It's—"

"I know: a surprise."

She nodded, again with the tight smile that looked disconcertingly like guilt. By now the hot color had crawled up her neck and was bleeding onto her cheeks. "I figured you'd be more comfortable someplace more private. So I packed us a picnic dinner." She thumbed toward the backseat. Turning, he noted the foam cooler and paper sack from Piggly Wiggly. "I hope you like fried chicken," she said.

Sinking back into the seat,
Brandon
watched the countryside slide by as daylight waned. The relief at not having to make an appearance at the DQ was surpassed only by his hesitancy over
Charlotte
's surprise. If he was smart, he'd demand that she take him home immediately; that was the rational part of his brain thinking. Unfortunately, it was another part of his anatomy that had an armlock on his reasoning at the moment.

He glanced again at
Charlotte
's legs, noted that she wasn't wearing hose. He'd never cared for the overt, choosing instead to direct his attention to the more wholesome sort—discounting Marcella, of course, but that had been nothing more than a romp brought about by curiosity and too much booze. He'd never cared much for casual sex, perhaps because of his own disgust with his mother's promiscuity.
Not that he hadn't had his stupid moments.
Seeing Mitsy Dillman today drove that point home with a vengeance. As Henry had pointed out throughout Brandon's coming of age, you better be damn certain when you climb into bed with a woman that you like her looks enough to want to gaze into her face for a long, long time, because if you knock her up, you're going to be spending the rest of your life paying for it one way or the other.

That had happened twice. First with Mitsy. At seventeen he had not had a lot of say in the decision that was quickly made by his mother, who financed Mitsy's abortion.

The second time with an up-and-coming actress he had dated just short of a year. He had already won his Oscar. She wanted still to win one. He offered marriage.

Do you love me, Brandon?

I care for you, baby. I care a lot.

Brandon
, people care for pets. They care for a comfortable pair of shoes. They care for an old sweater knitted by some elderly aunt in a rocking chair. Do you love me?

I don't know.

Perhaps he was simply expecting too much from love. He wanted to feel gut-punched. Knocked out. Obsessed. He wanted to be so swept away with intense love and desire that he'd throw himself in front of a train to protect his beloved
…
after he had sent her into orbit with the best orgasm she had experienced in her life.

Beautiful and career driven, his girlfriend got an abortion and told him about it afterward. He never spoke to her again.

It occurred to him in that moment that if Mitsy had had their baby, the kid would be seventeen … not much younger than
Charlotte
, trusting that
Charlotte
had been honest about her age. Studying her in the dim dashboard lights, he began to suspect that she just might have lied.

Thick pine forests crowded the two-lane highway.
Charlotte
turned the car up a gravel road that
Brandon
recognized. It led to the
quarry,
Ticky Creek's infamous make-out spot. Once excavated for sandstone, the place had been closed once the government had declared the surrounding countryside a national forest. For years people used it as a landfill. Then Smokey Bear had decided to divert murky Ticky Creek trough the old quarry, believing the large, creepy lake would attract locals and tourists to fish and swim and picnic.

Charlotte
stopped the car thirty feet from the water, shifted into Park, and killed the engine. She left the ignition on so the headlights and stereo remained working. She smiled at
Brandon
,
then
reached over into the back and dug into the cooler, extracting two icy beers, one of which she pushed into
Brandon
's hand.

Sinking back against her door, one leg partially propped on the console between the seats, she tipped the sweating beer bottle up to her lips and drank deeply. He watched her, his mouth dry and his fingers gripping the bottleneck. The scent of the beer made him dizzy.

One beer isn't going to kill you. It's not as if it's Chivas.

"You bring any Cokes?" he asked, aware of the tightness of his voice.

"Nope. Don't you like beer?"

Just a couple of sips. To cool you down.

He lifted the bottle and pressed its cool, wet surface to his forehead, tried to focus on the pool of illuminated water up ahead and not on the fact that his hands were trembling. In the car's headlights the water looked green and bottomless.

"My old man once caught a catfish out of this place that weighed fifty-five pounds,"
Charlotte
informed him as she stretched out her legs and kicked off her shoes. Her feet, with black-painted toenails, rubbed against his knee. "If you're hot, you can open the door."

"Good idea." He shoved the door open. He planted one foot on the ground. If worse came to worst, he could jump and run.

"Aren't you gonna drink that?" She pointed to the bottle in his hand.

"I don't drink," he admitted without looking at her.

She giggled. "Come on. You're joking, right?"

Shaking his head, he handed her the bottle.

"I thought you were a real boozer."

"I got well."

She shifted and shoved the bottle back into the cooler. When she straightened, she held an ice cube in one hand. She leaned so close he felt her body heat. The ice melted and dripped through her fingers onto his shirt. "Open up," she told him softly and placed the ice against his lower lip, slid it between his lips as she nestled closer. "You don't mind me getting a little cozy, do you? I mean, it isn't every day a girl gets to spend time with a movie star." Her hand slid across his chest and toyed with the shirt buttons. "Do you ever get turned on when you're doing love scenes?"

"No." That was a lie, of course, but he didn't want to encourage her.

She wiggled closer. Her breath smelled like cinnamon, and her skin radiated Red Door. Her breasts pushed against his arm. Her hand slid down his stomach toward his crotch. He grabbed her wrist.

Her eyes widened and her mouth pouted. "God! I hope the rumor I read about you isn't true."

"Which one?" he asked through his teeth. Her lips were an inch from his; her fingertips felt hot through his jeans, which were growing tighter by the second.

"That you're really gay."

"I'm not gay,
Charlotte
. I promise."

"Then prove it." She slid her left leg across him and settled onto his lap. Her skirt slid up around her hips, revealing the fact that she hadn't bothered to wear underwear. In one swift move, she pulled her tank top off over her head and threw it over the steering wheel.

He stared at her breasts as his body broke out in a sweat.

Charlotte
lifted her breasts as if showing off two prize melons. "Nice, huh? And they're real."

"Congratulations." Gripping the sides of the car seat with both hands,
Brandon
attempted to take a deep breath. Impossible. The heat of her crotch had begun to melt through his jeans. If she so much as wiggled, he was going to explode.

Forcing a smile, he looked into her eyes. "You have lovely breasts. Tempting as hell. But I don't operate well on an empty stomach. Maybe we should eat first."

She took his face between her hands and kissed him, wringing a groan from his throat. Pulling away, she smiled and said, "You just think about that for a while. I'm gonna take a little dip. I'm just so hot, if you know what I mean."

With that, she slid off him, exited the car through his door and strutted into the headlights' twin beams. She unzipped her skirt and allowed it to fall to her ankles, kicked it aside, gave her blond hair a shake so it tumbled in a mass around her face and over her naked shoulders. She ran for the water, her nice sound ass reflecting the lights like a glowing celestial body.

He punched the
Off
button on the stereo, filling the car with the sudden sound of croaking night creatures. A bullfrog bellowed as Miss Yamboree sank to her breasts in the green water. She bobbed up and down and shouted, "The water's great. Take off your clothes and join me!"