God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (30 page)

"Your husband," he said, "can put an
air conditioner in the wall by himself or pick up an engine block."

That was true, but she didn't say anything because
she didn't want to get herself in any deeper. "And he sits in
that bar across the street from your house, every night for two
hours, talking with his pals, and when he comes home he doesn't say
jack-shit." While he talked, she felt his finger slide under the
elastic, and then he was touching her clitoris. Not moving, just
touching it. She wasn't sure Mickey knew it was there.

"He can take the air conditioner apart and put
it back together," he said, "because he knows all the
parts. That's what he understands, air conditioners and engine
blocks.”

He slid the finger down her clitoris and found her
lips, and circled them once just inside the rim. She knew she was
wet. He took the hand out of her pants and sat up. Then he filled
their cups, touched his to hers, and drank throwing his head back,
throwing something away. And she threw hers away too. He pulled her
down, on her back, and she let him. She saw a cloud pass over the
sun, and then his face was over hers, so close then that it could
have been Mickey or Tom Hubbard, or any of the ones in between, and
then his hand was back between her legs, with more purpose now, and
she was trusting. She was trusting him to take her back after he was
finished.

She felt him push inside her and closed her eyes, and
then couldn't open them, because he was all over her eyelids, kissing
her. He had a nice touch, though. He moved in and out slower than
Mickey, like he had a reason for it besides happening to be there,
and he wasn't in a hurry to get somewhere else.

A few minutes later he pulled her hand down between
them. She thought he wanted her to hold his balls, but when she
reached for them he stopped her. He pulled himself off her chest, 
far enough for her to see his face, and put her hand on her clitoris.
"What?" she said.

"You know what,"
he said; She could feel his cock and his eyes, and she began to move
her finger. She closed her eyes again. It wasn't something she wanted
to see. It moved her, though, farther away from Mickey, from Leon.
She was trusting. She felt him begin to tighten just as she came. And
when he yelled, she thought at first it was just the way writers made
love.

* * *

Shellburn had gone from T. D.'s office to the
fourteenth floor and called her from there. Then he went to a liquor
store just across the bridge in Camden, New Jersey, and bought four
bottles of sixteen-dollar wine—which was the best wine they had in
Camden—along with some cups and potato chips and the basket. He saw
the basket and knew it was going to be perfect.

He came back across the bridge and picked her up. The
daylight didn't spoil her looks. Some women got out in the sun and
looked so healthy, in two minutes they had you thinking what you'd
done to your liver. Jeanie wasn't like that, and he drove out past
the airport toward Maryland, explaining about his job. That's how he
told her who he was.

He took it a step at a time, and she understood.
Sometimes she didn't say anything for ten and fifteen minutes at a
time, and he liked that. She was putting it together. And he liked it
when she told him in the car that she wasn't sure the place in
Maryland was really a place in Maryland, and not something he'd made
up.

It was something he'd made up, until he'd seen it.

They came over the last hill and saw the cove, and
she didn't say anything at first, just put it together, and when she
spoke, it was simple and perfect. "It's beautiful," she
said. He thought he would like to write a column that ended just that
way. "It's beautiful,” she said He couldn't think what the
story would be about.

And she went with him into the field, not pushing
him, not having to be pushed. She had no motives. She showed him her
legs—dancer's legs—and he slid his finger up under her 
panties, and the hair was soft and pressed flat against her, no
tangles as his finger went through it. And she never pushed him, or
had to be pushed. It was like she'd expected him.

He pulled her panties off one foot. Pale blue panties
with little white edges, ruffled. Panties like that didn't come
wrapped together in threes at J. C. Penney. He'd seen the bill that
came to his wife one month from Nan Duskin. He thought of Jeanie
living in the place she did, with the kind of husband she had,
spending that kind of money on panties, and it broke his heart.
Shellburn was touched by her underwear.

He pulled his own down with his trousers, until he
felt the cool air on his bottom, and then settled on top of her and
pushed his way inside her, taking an inch, giving back an inch,
taking an inch and a half. He moved slowly and kissed her eyes and
her lips and her ears.

She got wetter as it went on, and each time he pulled
out of her the air touched his dick and cooled it, and it would feel
that much warmer when he went back in. And then he pulled back out of
her and put her hand on her clitoris, trying to hold her eyes with
his. She'd closed her eyes, though, and her mouth had opened. A thin
line of spit went from her front teeth to her lower lip, and she had
begun to breathe harder, and as he watched that happen, his own
breath came harder, and she rode up into him, meeting him, and then
just as she began to shudder, the collie sneezed in his ass.

It took a few seconds to realize what it was. He
hadn't seen it when Jeanie said something was moving in the trees,
and he hadn't heard it come up behind him, even though it was wearing
a choke collar and tags for rabies inoculations. There was, when he
thought back on it, one warm blow of air, and then a lick—it was as
much a question as a lick—that touched him dead in the crack of the
ass. He jumped—he may have screamed—and came completely out of
Jeanie Scarpato, and then rolled over onto his back, holding onto his
bottom like he'd been shot. The collie dropped to its elbows and made
that noise they make when they want to play. He was black-and-white
and square, and there was mud hanging from the clumps of matted hair
hanging off` his edges, and leaves and Jesus knew what kind of other
shit hanging from the mud.

"Get out of here," Shellburn said. Jeanie
was sitting up, reaching for her blue-and-white lace panties. The dog
ran close to the ground, doing a tight figure eight that ended where
it had  started, back in front of them. He had a head like a
Concorde jet, and his mouth was bubbling out on both sides. Shellburn
said,

"Go on, boy," but the dog had seen the cup
on the blanket next to him, and he took a step closer to put his nose
inside it.

Shellburn let him. Jeanie had her pants back on and
was edging away, making no sudden moves. "He won't hurt you,"
Shellburn said.

"He must be lost," she said.

He tried to protect the afternoon. "No, there's
a farmhouse half a mile over that hill .... " He pointed over
her shoulder, away from the water. He didn't want her thinking about
anything lost. The collie liked what was in the cup. Shellburn
watched him splash little drops of it up on his muzzle and his head
while he drank. "He's probably just out having a look around."

"I thought he bit you," she said. _

When the dog had finished the cup, Shellburn filled
it again, and found new ones for himself and Jeanie, and filled them
too. She took the drink but kept an eye on the dog. Shellburn reached
out and patted the collie's narrow head. Then he saw the
uncomfortable way Jeanie was sitting, and he patted her too.

"There'l1 be plenty of other times," he
said.

He leaned over to kiss her cheek, and his trousers
dropped off his hips to his knees. The collie looked up from his
wine. Shellburn pulled his pants back up and fastened the belt. The
dog went back to his cup.

Jeanie said, "I think I better get back,"
and the afternoon was out of step.

"It's my fault," he said, not wanting her
to blame the place.

"It's a bad time," she said. "There's
too much left to do at home."

Shellburn poured the collie a last round and
collected the basket and the blanket. She straightened herself and he
admired the flat drop of her stomach and the way her blouse clung to
her sides. He thought of how warm she'd felt, but she was all
business now. On the way to the car he stopped at the top of the hill
and looked out over the cove. "You're right," he said, "it
is beautiful," but she'd already opened the car door and was
getting in.

The trip back was like the
trip down, except when she didn't talk he worried about what she was
thinking. She sat still in her seat looking out the window, and about
halfway back Shellburn had the feeling it might be hard to talk her
into coming back.

* * *

Mickey woke up when she slammed the car door. It was
dark outside. He sat up in the chair, she came in the front door. He
heard the car going up the street. A heavy car.

She jumped when she saw him. "It's going to be
all right," he said. She didn't know what he was talking about.

"Leon's back at Jack Moran's," he said.
"We'll have the funeral Saturday afternoon." He saw he was
going too fast. "The services. We'l1 get it all over Saturday."
She stumbled kicking off her shoes, he stood where he was. “It's
going to be all right,” he said.

She smiled at him and started up the stairs. He
followed her, keeping the same distance. "That reporter ain't
going to help nothin'," he said. "When he gets what he
wants, he'll forget about you."

She stopped on the steps and turned around. He
thought for a second that she was going to tell him that Richard
Shellburn cared about the common man, but she just stood there
looking.

"It's going to be all right," he said. She
went the rest of the way upstairs and into the bathroom. He heard the
bath water running, and then it was quiet. It was quiet a long time.

When the phone woke him up, he was in the chair
again. He didn't remember sitting down. There was a blanket over him,
and a different kind of quiet upstairs. She was asleep, but she'd
come down and covered him with a blanket. He got to the phone on the
fourth ring, and from there he could see into the kitchen where there
was a clock on the wall. It was two-thirty.

"Yeah?"

"Mick? It's Bird." He was whispering.

"Where are you?"
 
"I'm
home," Bird said, "and Sophie's packin'. Askin' do I need
what color socks. You should of seen it, Mick."

"I heard about it," Mickey said. "How
the fuck did she get them?"

"I don't know," Bird said. "When I got
out there the one asshole was already in pieces. It was the guy went
with us to Jersey Monday."

"Yeah."

“
Well, when I got there he was already down. I
didn't even know she kept that fuckin' thing loaded. They was
hollow-points, too. They had to be. I got there, she moves me out of
the way and points it at the door and waits, and sure as shit, a
minute later this other guy comes runnin' through and she blows a
piece of his head off. A major piece."

"What the fuck?" Mickey said. "They
goin' to whack the whole world?"

"I don't know," Bird said. "With these
people, they could whack babies for cryin'. We're leavin' in a couple
minutes, I ain't going to make it easy for them. Me and Sophie are
gettin' in the Cadillac and headin' south."

"Where?"

"Don't tell nobody this, make them find us."

"What do you think?" Mickey said. "I'm
going to give you up?"

"I mean nobody. Not even Jeanie. We're goin'
down to Palatka, Florida, which nobody ever heard of. They got a
trailer park there, a bunch of old people like Sophie. A river. Did
you know the St. Johns River is one of only two rivers in the country
that flows north? It's very interesting?

"What the fuck are you talkin' about?"

"If that don't work out," Bird said, "we
can try Miami, get lost down there in the Jews and the Cubans.
Whatever, we gotta get out of here. I ain't going to help 'em."
Mickey thought of Bird in Florida, coming out of the trailer in the
morning to watch a river flow north.

"Did they say anything?"

"They didn't get much of a chance," Bird
said. The connection went quiet then, while they thought of waiting
it out in Florida. Then Bird said, "Lissen to me, Mick. If you
need a place to stay, you can always come to Palatka."

"Good," he said.

"Only don't sneak up on Sophie. She's probably
up there puttin' notches in the handle right now. Jesus, Mick, you
should of seen her."

"And the people, they didn't say nothin?"

Then Bird was talking to Aunt Sophie about what
sweaters he wanted her to pack. "The last trip she took, she
come to America," he said when he was talking to Mickey again.
"No, Soph, I don't need no red pants .... Hey, Mick, I got to
go."

And then the connection went dead, too fast, before
Mickey agreed to it, and he sat in the living room looking at the
phone. And the house seemed emptier than it had before.

He slept in Leon's room again. He got up at nine,
Jeanie was still asleep, buried in a pile of pillows and blond hair.
He brushed his teeth and washed his face and waited until he was
downstairs to put his shoes on. The next time she saw him, he wanted
it all done.