XXX Shamus (2 page)

In a cheap file cabinet at his apartment, Hopper kept a notebook with a growing list of names—all the women (and one man) he’d ever had sex with. He’d started the list about ten years ago, a college junior who had finally broken out of his shy shell, finally gotten his body in shape, and finally started drinking a little. So in bars it didn’t take long for the sluts to find him. He could tell in three minutes if they were going to fuck him or not.

The list actually began before that, a couple of high school fumblings and fingerings, deep kisses and “feel ups” that didn’t amount to anything, and even his first true girlfriend, the one he wanted to marry. Their first time together was bad, but she was sweet about it and helped him make it better the second time (which was the last fuck they shared). They were engaged for a while, a secret he held back from the older sister who had raised him after their parents died, before the girlfriend realized she was too young for marriage and wanted much more out of life. At least that was her story then. Hopper got a call six months later—she was married, living with the guy’s parents, and miserable.

“Can’t I see you one more time?” she sang softly.

Hopper told her no. Never spoke to her again. Plenty of regret.

Then he got this job while attending the University of New Orleans, pretending to chase an English degree but really not doing much at all. A couple of private eyes needed an extra set of legs. One was closing in on sixty and had lived a rough life, couldn’t keep up anymore. The other was thirty-seven and dressed like
Miami Vice
was still all the rage—smooth hairstyle and stubble and gold. They mentored him and treated him like shit at the same time, liked to make fun of his goofy looks and the awkward way he spoke. Still, he was their guy. They defended him when others insulted him, even taking it to blows with fists and a bat once or twice. Most of all, they taught him confidence, how to carry himself, and that got him attention from more than just the sluts in the bars. The troubled souls, drama queens, dual-faced “good girls” taking a walk on the wild side, the rebounds, decent-looking or stunning or unique, they all flocked to Hopper.

The sex wasn’t always good. Sometimes it was good, and sometimes it was bad, even painful, and sometimes he felt nothing much at all. He let it happen more often than he initiated. He saw very few again, only a handful of repeats on the list.

His tryst with Divinity was shaping up to be his second-longest “relationship” ever. With her, the fucking was always
something
, never left him numb, and he was afraid that he was developing real feelings for the girl. Sometimes he thought she was crazy about him and him alone, but other days he thought she’d take the closest hard dick in the room.

Hopper had inherited the office and an apartment when the older man died (suicide, shotgun, after learning he had cancer) and the Don Johnson wannabe “retired” (drank himself into cirrhosis, then caught the clap off a drunk widow).

Hopper had lost count on the list. He was shorthanding the sex with Divinity, a D and a smiley. For the others, he sometimes listed a full name, sometimes a last, sometimes a first. There was the occasional paragraph or two if it was really memorable, electric, nut-busting sex. Mostly it was a few words, boiling down to today’s “Kristen Hannity, Blowjob. Wet from Rain. Blonde.”

Actually, he didn’t list every name after all. There was one glaring omission, and she would never find a place on his list.

On the way home from the office, the rain finally fading and the steam from the concrete boiling his skin, Hopper looked at the list of names Kristen had given him. The guys sounded weak, ineffective, so they wouldn’t be much of an issue to talk with. No nerves there. His only sexual encounter with a man was when he questioned Cynthia’s ex-boyfriend, a mechanic. The guy got irritated at the questions, hit Hopper with a wrench, forced him to suck cock and then raped his ass. Hopper didn’t report it, too embarrassed. Still, some nights he would stake out the rapist’s garage, think about going after the bastard—work him over with one of the firm’s blood-stained bats. In the end, he couldn’t get up the nerve.

The others on Kristen’s list bothered him because they were female. They were teenagers, but that wouldn’t stop them. He was either a natural magnet for fucking or he gushed pheromones unlike anyone else on earth. The guidance counselor, well, he’d have to wait and see.

Hopper pushed through the front gate of his French Quarter apartment building, hidden down Burgundy Street, half-occupied. He didn’t pay much attention to the other tenants. The fountain in the courtyard was overflowing today and draining loudly into the grate. It seemed to Hopper that the whole city felt wet all the time now, even more so than before. Only a matter of time before they gave up trying to stay dry and became an American Venice. He stepped through a half-inch of rushing brownish water on his way to the stairs. At least the plant life was flourishing, maybe even taking over. Hopper had to push giant tropical leaves out of his way as he climbed. If he had to describe the smell, he’d say “a strong but sweet decay.” He’d seen a few snakes down there among the algae, weeds, vines, banana plants, and other wild-stemmed jungle species he could not name.

Inside, he had three messages from his older sister. Her name was Violet. He never thought of her by name, though. Always “Sister.”

First: “It’s too early for you to be working. Where are you? Give me a call soon, please. Colin just left for the Gulf.”

Colin was her boyfriend of the last few years. He worked oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, oil fields in Iraq, and was often back for a few days here and there before departing for weeks on end. Hopper imagined Colin had girlfriends waiting in most of his ports of call.

Second: “You’re holding out on me. This rain…my head hurts a little. I’ll be okay for awhile. Call soon.”

Hopper fell into his old mentor’s leather chair, reclined, and rubbed his temples with a thumb and finger. Most of the furniture was left over from the old man. The newer pieces were cheaper Wal-Mart buys, out of place and not covered with as much dust. Hopper didn’t want to call his sister.

The third message: (Long silence, then a sigh) “You don’t even have to call first, but I’d like you to. Please, Hopper. I need you to come over and fuck me.”

He would never understand her motives. A sickness, maybe the same type that screwed up the teacher who got knocked up—twice—by a seventh grader and went to jail over it. Maybe it was power, like the therapists say. Sister wasn’t an unattractive woman, and she obviously could hold down real relationships such as the one with Colin, and she had been married once for nearly six years before the husband realized he wanted children desperately and Sister would never provide.

Whatever the cause, the disease, the impulse, Hopper didn’t exactly feel like a typical victim. She’d always been the mother in his life since he was eleven. At the time, nudity between a seventeen-year-old high school senior and her younger brother was part of everyday life. Thinking about it years later, Hopper wondered if it wasn’t all part of some master plan. Sister had bucked the system, convincing their grandparents and a rich uncle that she should keep the house, raise the boy, and she could still attend college through a scholarship and some help from the extended family. She got her wish—persuasive, clever, sexy girl.

She would have boyfriends over. They would make out on the couch, on the porch swing, in her bed, in her parents’ old bed. She knew Hopper was watching, even if he was hiding in closets, peeking around corners. He knew she knew because after the boys would leave, she would call out for him. Shirtless, braless, her jeans unbuttoned as the MTV played INXS and Poison, she’d ask her brother, “What did you think of him?”

“He was ugly.”

“Just rough around the edges. I didn’t like how he touched me, though.” She’d stick her tongue out, make a face. Or if she did like the way he touched her, she’d run her hand down her neck until she reached her nipple, cover her breasts with her forearm.

“What was he doing when he put his hand in your pants?”

That’s how Hopper learned about sex, asking questions after these “demonstrations” from his older sister, and she would put her naked arm around him, pull him beside her on the couch, and explain it all.

“It’s fingering. You want to get a woman off, you can finger her, go down on her, or fuck her.”

When he was thirteen, he was still a novice with a lot of untried info. Videos and movies only gave him a little bit more than Sister was feeding him. Then he watched one of her boyfriends pull out his dick and start playing with it while he fingered Sister. She pushed him down to the living room floor, straddled his legs, and put his dick in her mouth. Every once in a while, she’d pull away and work him with her hand. It was during one of those moments when she said, “You’d better come. You’d better come now.”

Hopper was feeling his own hard cock by then, not exactly sure what to do with himself. He watched as the guy on the floor groaned, grunted, and then erupted. This gluey mess shooting out of him, hitting his sister’s chest, running down her hand. Then he calmed down. He was breathing hard. Sister and he laughed like they knew a secret.

“I’ll be ready again in a half-hour,” he told her.

Sister laughed louder like
she
knew a secret. “Dude, I’ve got the boy to deal with. School tomorrow, you know. Rain check for now.”

“That’s all I get?”

“More than
I
got. So wipe off and get out. I’ll bring you a towel.”

When he was gone, Hopper slipped up to his room, the erection still at full attention, aching, and Hopper really wanted to pee but couldn’t.

He sat on the edge of his bed, finally pulling his shorts down and letting the thing flick into the air. Much better. The front of his underwear was wet, and clear fluid was glazed on his tip. So he did what the guy downstairs did—wrapped his hand around it, tugged. It needed to be slippery. He licked his palm and tried again.

What the hell?

You usually think you’ve felt the range of things your body can feel after surviving childhood to become a teenager. You knew sex was out there, and people having the sex couldn’t get enough, but then you discovered why.

He was barely getting started when she knocked on the door. In that house, the knock meant she was going to open it immediately. So there she was in his doorway, T-shirt nightgown barely covering her blue panties, leaving bare her wide hips, seeming to get wider each year, and sculpted legs, tiny feet. She saw her brother with his cock in his hand, and she kept a straight face. Her throat made this noise, a deep hum that Hopper didn’t know what to do with. He stopped cold, covered himself with his sheet, reached for his shorts.

After a moment, Sister said, “It hurts, doesn’t it, when you can’t do anything about it?”

He said, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. This is natural. We’ve talked about it.”

“Talk didn’t feel the same as this, though.”

That got a grin from her. He noticed she stood with her ankles crossed now, her torso moving in a little circle. She said, “Are you going to finish?”

“Later.”

“It’s still hard now, isn’t it? Do it now.”

Hopper knew no matter what he’d seen her do that the vice versa wasn’t supposed to happen. She was the older one, so why did she want to watch a brand new teenage man jack off?

“I can’t. Let me do it later, on my own.”

She took in a deep breath, slipped a hand under the bottom of the T-shirt nightie and tugged her panties down her hips until they fell to the floor on their own. She took a slow walk across the room to her brother, whipped the sheet off. Easing his hand away, she said, “Let’s do something about it.”

It didn’t really hit him until a month or so later, finally noticing the girls his age in school and what they lacked compared to Sister, but he still lusted for them without having to think twice. It didn’t hit him until Sister got mad when he turned her down a few times, the way she made him feel guilty about it. That’s when he started waking up in the mornings, his naked sister next to him in bed, and running into the bathroom to vomit. It was wrong, what they were doing. She wasn’t going to let him stop.

Not ever.

Hopper ignored Sister’s last message and called the teen girls’ parents. He arranged to speak with both girls at once. Less dangerous that way. The parents would be in the room next door. Funny how they didn’t seem to have a problem with it, both saying something like, “As long as you’re not a cop. You’re really not a cop, right?”

“I’ve never been a cop.”

“Good enough for me.”

Something about “New Orleans” and “police”—the words didn’t mesh.

The frat boy was next, but Hopper knew he’d have to trap him, surprise him when he least expected. The current boyfriend, squeeze him in there too. And the guidance counselor, Hopper arranged a dinner meeting. Out in public. He had learned to pad himself that way, couple of layers of insurance.