Bahia
Left boot won’t accomodate her right foot. Kerry swaps stances, dons one waterproof shoe, then the other. “Can I get a ride home, Mr. Jarius? It’s late, and the streets aren’t safe.”
Slumping, Jarius strokes the leather quietly for a few seconds, then bravely straightens and puts the cowl aside. “Our relationship is not at an end, Ms. Hackett. We’ll discuss this further another day.” The man rises to his feet and crosses to an intercom panel inset next to the door. He speaks orders quietly into the grille, then turns back to Kerry.
“Anselmo will be waiting with the car by the time you get downstairs.”
Clutching her coat, Kerry darts out into the corridor.
With night’s full descent, the echoing basement garage, its cement walls sweating gelidly, has become even chillier than earlier. Kerry hastens to enter the idling limo and declare her destination. For all the individual attention she receives from blank-faced Anselmo, she might as well be a cardboard box he’s charged with delivering. Kerry stares blindly out the window until the short drive is over, as if mindlessly cataloging the city’s manifold dispassionate obscenities. The purring limo pulls away from the curb in a cloud of frigid exhaust before she’s even fully pushed past the unlatched outer door to her building. (The tiny lobby hosts no beggars.)
The small shadowy apartment at first appears empty of life, a crab’s tenantless shell. A darkness-triggered nightlight in the galley kitchen valiantly spills an otiose radiance onto the vacant table. Expectedly missing is the NUfive bill Kerry pinned down almost twenty hours ago; but also gone are the six pill vials than anchored the cash.
“I sold the prescriptions on the street.”
Tango’s surly drunken voice emanates from a corner of the living-room containing his favorite chair, a lumpish flowery Goodwill piece, more hummock than furniture. Kerry crosses the familiar barely illuminated domestic terrain and sits on the broad chair arm. She lays a hand on Tango’s coarse hair, brushing it off his forehead.
“You’re already hot,” she says quietly. “Why did you do it?”
Tango snorts. “Like you care? Coming in at this hour? Fuck, why not? I’ll never be cured, not me or anyone else. They’re just an expensive goddamn finger in the dike, those pills. Might as well start doing without them right now.”
“You can’t.” Kerry’s earnestly plaintive voice seems ready to break. “You have to go out right now and get them back from whoever you sold them to. You have to.”
Tango thunders his reply. “I don’t have to do anything you say, bitch!” Without warning, he shoves a thick hand up her skirt. “Didn’t you even bring a change of panties, you little slut? He’s dripping out of you.”
“No, Tango, that’s not true—”
Her waist is nearly encircled by Tango’s disease-attenuated yet still strong paws. He immobilizes her while he erupts up from his seat. “I may be on the way out, but I can still remind you who you ought to be fucking!”
“Tango, don’t—” Kerry tries to twist out of his pinioning, but can’t. He lifts her struggling off her feet and carries her into the bedroom. Window blinds filter the streetlight into bars that slash the floor and furniture. He tosses her down onto the rumple-sheeted mattress, and quickly unzips himself.
Kerry’s voice strive for reasonableness, but quavers uncontrollably. “We can make love, Tango, but you have to wear some protection, especially if you’ve gone a day without your medicine—”
“Fuck that. And I’m not dicking around where loverboy’s already been.”
Kerry frantically tries to lever herself up off the mattress. “No, Tango—”
He pushes her around and back down, onto her stomach. With one hand he wickets her neck, while with the other he strains aside the fabric of her underpants revealed by skirt’s disarray. Kerry sobs wordlessly. He kneels astride her, bringing his hard cock into a bar of cold light: nubby welts like ceremonial scarring wrap his pellagric penis. He spits on his hand, transfers the saliva to his cicatriced cock, and brings its head to Kerry’s asshole.
The man’s wide glans pops through the tight muscled ring where earlier her dream jaguar’s pointed cocktip only delicately snagged.
Tango’s brutal strokes culminate after a blessedly brief set. He pulls out and retreats across the room. Kerry’s quiet crying counterpoints the sound of his retoothing zipper.
“All right, now get out.”
Kerry stifles her sobs. “What? You can’t mean it—”
“Get out now, or I’ll kick your ass out.”
“Where will I go?”
“Back to loverboy.”
“I can’t. He’s not—”
