Burn Down The Night (10 page)

I just barely
understand what she is doing. She leans me up against the sink and I stare blankly at a sign over
the toilet that says "Vietnam Is Only 3000 Miles Away. Is It Safe to Cross the
Street?"

She rummages
around in the medicine cabinet, then goes through the drawers under the sink. She comes up with a
tin of bandages. Then I remember cutting my neck, falling down on a wicker chair somewhere, seems
ages ago, and can't remember where. In any case, I'm still bleeding.

"You've had a
rough time," she says, tearing the wrapper off a bandage. "Let me slap this on your neck and
maybe it'll stop bleeding."

I start kissing
her, both of us leaning crazily against the sink. Nice-looking girl and stoned stoned stoned.
She's laughing as I grapple with her, still trying to get the bandage on my neck. She's
ticklish.

I get my hands
down inside her pants and she jumps. The bandage gets crumpled and sticks to itself.

She giggles
hysterically and drops the bandage.

"Beast," she says
but doesn't seem to mind.

I'm fingering her
and her hands are shaking as she gets out another bandage. Her back arches and she leans against
my hand. Clumsily I make my hand that's still free attempt to unbutton her tight blue
jeans.

The bathroom door
bursts open and a drunken Mexi­can staggers in. Says something in garbled Tex-Mex Spanish,
unbuckles his belt and drops his pants. He isn't wearing any underwear.

"Hey!" cries the
girl, startled, and moves closer against me for protection. My feeble brain can't quite grab the
scenario. I just stare at him stupidly. He weaves toward us, pants at his ankles, chattering away
in garbled Spanish. Neither of us understands what he's saying. This guy's really blitzed,
practically oozing beer from every pore. He shakes his head at us, shrugs and turns his back on
us.

The Mexican sits
down on the toilet and lets go. He must have been saving it for a week.

The stink drives
us out.

We walk out
together, her still struggling with the bandage, me forced to follow because I got my hand rammed
down her tight pants and I got a signet ring stuck in a hole in her underwear.

"Let
go."

"I'm
stuck."

"C'mon! Get your
hands off. People'll see."

"I tell you I'm
stuck."

"Get it
out
of
there!"
She's pissed
off. A couple of her friends have seen us.

I feel like a
little boy caught with his fingers in the cookie bowl.

"I'm stuck on your
underwear. My ring—"

She slaps me.
Pisses me off royal. I rip my hand out of her pants. Come away with my whole hand, her un­derwear
in shreds and some of her pubic hair. Looks like she dyes her pubic hair blond.

She screams and
bends over double, clasping her crotch.

"Sorry! I tried to
tell you. I had this ring—"

Somebody grabs my
shoulder and spins me around. A guy about ten feet tall puts a fist the size of a Ford station
wagon up against my face. It's like watching a train run over your head.

I feel my bones
loosen as my back slams into the floor. Before I can figure out how the floor got so close to my
back, I get a couple of good hard kicks in the stomach. Then I kind of fade out. Not knocked
cold, sort of just stunned semi-frigid.

Then I see a shoe
come toward my face and I pass out before it gets there. Maybe it's an imaginary shoe. Too out of
it to know. Anyway, I go on a snooze cruise.

Don't know how
long I'm out. Maybe ten minutes, maybe a couple of hours, just know that I've got a swollen jaw
that hurts like hell and big nasty bruised places all over me. I feel like a golf ball a drunken
golfer has been slicing with all. day. Real groggy. Feel something wet on my forehead, something
warm. My eyes focus and I see the girl who had lost her underwear. She's got a warm washcloth on
my forehead.

"You all right?"
She's worried. "That stupid fucker. I can take care of myself."

"Who was... who
was that guy?" My throat so dry I can hardly talk. Have a vague idea the entire National Football
League just walked across my tongue in their socks.

"That was my
husband. He's such a jerk. I'm sorry."

"Wow!" I try
sitting up but it hurts just about every-where. She helps me, holding my shoulders.

There's pressure
in my stomach, crotch. Jesus H. Flaming Christ! I gotta go to the bathroom. Got lots of cream ale
inside somewhere, aching to come out and go splash. I mumble something, trying frantically to
scramble to my feet. She grabs my arms and helps pull me up.

"What?"

"Bathroom! I gotta
get to the bathroom." I stumble, almost fall flat on my face. She embraces me, half carries me,
and we stumble off to find the bathroom.

Get to the
bathroom. Locked. Oh, shit!

She bangs on the
door with one knee. "Emergency!"

Some guy inside
tells her where she can put her emergency. She keeps banging on the door.

I am bent over
double, trying not to get religious and send prayers down both my legs and turn my socks
yellow.

Finally the door
opens and we stumble in, as some fat guy with pimples stumbles out.

She locks the door
behind us as I fumble clumsily with my zipper. I kind of notice I am not alone in there but am
too polite to mention it to her.

My hands don't
want to cooperate; I'm leaning against the wall, tugging like crazy on my zipper. Can't get it
down.

"You gotta pull it
down, not up," she says. "Let me help."

I am in no shape
to argue.

She gets me
unzipped, starts dragging my totem pole out, and I let loose a little too soon. Get a little bit
on her hand but she doesn't seem to mind. Just wipes it off on a towel.

Probably I piss
for an hour and twenty minutes. Seems like it to me. Probably raise the water table in L.A. by
two feet when I flush.

When the pissing
is over, I feel much better. Start to zip back up but she's already beat me to it in
reverse.

She's got my pants
down around my ankles and is working on peeling off my underwear

"Hey,
what's—"

She pushes me
against the wall, one-hands the toilet lid down, sits on it and grabs me with her mouth. She's
got to be kidding. Wonder if she's heard the expression "flogging a dead horse."

I am long since
past the mood to be in the nude.

At least I was
pretty sure. I look down and see where she is beginning to create a very convincing
contradiction. Mentally, I am a little stunned. Physically, I rise to the occasion.

However.

I remember a
certain house-size fist with my facial expression no doubt imprinted on the outside of
it.

Push her head
away. "What about your husband? You trying to get me killed?"

She licks her
lips. "I locked the door. Relax. He can't get in."

She moves back in,
mouth centering on target. My mind may still be protesting but my body is leading its own parade.
This girl is experienced. She probably entertained troop ships.

But I keep
thinking about the fist as big as all outdoors. I push her away again.

"What if he comes
looking for you?"

"Hey, cool it. Be
cool. Just enjoy it. Told you I locked the door."

She grabs me
again, clamping on me so hard with her tongue I almost shoot the rapids in one big
jump.

I notice how
flimsy the bathroom door is. "Holy shit! That door won't stop him! Christ! He could eat
that
door."

I relax a little
anyway. You can't fight fate or fast tongues. If you can't beat them, put your hands behind their
necks and help them.

I am definitely
feeling something, I mean something besides my aches and bruises. Them I don't feel at all
anymore. Amazing painkiller. Yes, definitely feeling something. Not going to last long at this
rate. This girl is healthy, this girl is vigorous. She's gone down on everything but the
Titanic.

My legs tighten, I
rise up on my toes and I am about to have a Grand Canyon Climax. I am as hot as a rabbit on the
rag.

Just edging into
it and there comes this knock on the door. Sounds like somebody hit the door with a ten-pound
sledgehammer.

"Oh no! It's
him!"
I panic, trying to pull
away.

She locks her
fingers around my back, tries to swallow me whole.

"Let me go! Let me
go!" I panic, trying to push her away.

She shakes her
head, tightens her mouth, and hangs on.

"I know you're in
there, Marsha!" Sounds like the war cry of an enraged bull elephant.

"I'm gonna break
this fucking door down and kill you both!" The door strains outward and then the doorknob falls
off.

You know, I
believe him. I believe every word he says. I am willing to take him at his word.

I shove her hard,
losing some skin to her teeth in the process, but I get free of her. She falls off the toilet
seat and lands on her back under the sink. I groan in agony, rubbed raw, half gummed to
death.

There's this
hammering on the door and the door is bending in like it's made of cardboard.

I'm frantically
pulling my pants up, trying to stuff my erection into tight pants and not finding any room for
it. I ram it in anyway, hunching forward a little with a lot of pain, and look around desperately
for weapons. What I need is an elephant gun. Maybe two of them. One for each hand.

"Marsha! I know
you got that wimpy little bastard in there. You hear me!" Guy is screaming with rage now. "I'm
breaking down this fucking door!"

No weapons but,
hot damn, there is a tiny window. Only thing is it's a size seven window and I am a size ten. It
doesn't open all the way either. Oh, shit!

Marsha's standing
up now, one hand rubbing the back of her head where it hit the bathroom floor. She goes to the
door, shouts through it, "Jack, you stupid bastard! If you break this door down, I'll castrate
you! I'll kill you!"

"Fucking bitch!"
he screams back at her.

This is too much
fun for me so I am not sticking around. I'm standing on top of the toilet tank, kicking like
crazy at the window frame... Not all that easy to kick at something you're holding on to. Finally
I connect, having already shattered the window with a clumsy kick or two. I knock the little
window right out of the windowsill. It crashes outside and smashes into pieces.

I duck my head
through the window and start squirming. Even with the window gone I'm having a hard time getting
myself through. Mother Nature had given me a big chest, nice for the ladies but hell when it
comes to windows.

There's this big
crash and the bathroom door comes bursting into the room. The door catches the girl head on and
sends her spinning back into the room as if she were catapulted. I feel her body smash into my
legs.

Oh,
shit!

She's screaming.
He's screaming. I get a glimpse of him. Only thing slowing him up is a size seventeen shoe that's
caught in one of the door panels he put it through.

A worm could have
learned something from me. I squirmed like I hope I never have to squirm again ever in my life,
short as I know it's going to be.

My belt gets
caught on the little crank that winds that window open and shut.

Oh,
shit!

A hand grabs my
leg and practically yanks me in two.

I get my hands
around the frame of a TV antenna tower that's outside the window. Get a death grip on it, but
Hercules is reeling me in like a goldfish on a line baited for shark. My fingers ache, strain and
begin to slip. He twists me around. Now I'm on my back and can see him. You could reconstruct a
dinosaur along the lines of this guy's physique.

He gives a
tremendous yank and I lose what little grip I've got, already twisted out of position.

This fucker is
gonna kill me.

Now, almost back
inside the room, I make one last desperate grab and hang on to the top of the windowsill with
both hands. Now he's got me pulled out straight like a witch on the Inquisition rack.

Everybody's got to
die someday. But who wants to die in a toilet? Ain't gonna look like no crucifixion of Christ, is
it?

My fingers are
slipping. The bastard is laughing. He knows he's got me. He's laughing 'cause he knows he's gonna
kill me.

Suddenly the girl
is in front of him and gives him a shot in the eyes with an aerosol can of hair spray from the
medicine cabinet.

He screams, drops
my legs and claws at his eyes. I fall down with a bang, my back crashing into the wall. I slip
down, one leg going into the toilet.

He's still
screaming, hands clamped to his eyes.