The Waste Lands (Page 74)

Jake stepped into the corridor, and although he screamed when the door swung shut behind him with the sound of a mausoleum door being slammed, he wasn’t surprised.

Down deep, he wasn’t surprised at all.

ONCE UPON A TIME there had been a young woman named Detta Walker who liked to frequent the honky-tonks and roadhouses along Ridgeline Road outside of Nutley and on Route 88 down by the power-lines, out-side of Amhigh. She had had legs in those days, and, as the song says, she knew how to use them. She would wear some tight cheap dress that looked like silk but wasn’t and dance with the white boys while the band played all those ofay party tunes like “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love” and “The Hippy-Hippy Shake.” Eventually she would cut one of the honkeys out of the pack and let him lead her back to his car in the parking lot. There she would make out with him (one of the world’s great soul-kissers was Detta Walker, and no slouch with the old fingernails, either) until he was just about insane . . . and then she’d shut him down. What happened next? Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? That was the game. Some of them wept and begged—^all right, but not great. Some of them raved and roared, which was better. And although she had been slapped upside the head, punched in the eye, spat upon, and once kicked in the ass so hard she had gone sprawling in the gravel parking lot of The Red Windmill, she had never been raped. They had all gone home with the blue balls, every damned ofay one of them. Which meant, in Detta Walker’s book, that she was the reigning champion, the undefeated queen. Of what? Of them. Of all those crewcut, button-down, tightass honkey motherfuckers. Until now.

There was no way to withstand the demon who lived in the speaking ring. No doorhandles to grab, no car to tumble out of, no building to run back into, no cheek to slap, no face to claw, no balls to kick if the ofay sumbitch was slow getting the message.

The demon was on her . . . and then, in a flash, it—he—was in her. She could feel it—him—pressing her backward, even though she could not see it—him. She could not see its—his—hands, but she could see their work as her dress tore violently open in several places. Then, suddenly, pain. It felt as though she were being ripped open down there, and in her agony and surprise she screamed. Eddie looked around, his eyes narrowing. “I’m all right!” she yelled. “Go on, Eddie, forget about me! I’m all right!” But she wasn’t. For the first time since Detta had strode onto the sexual battlefield at the age of thirteen, she was losing. A horrid, engorged coldness plunged into her; it was like being f**ked with an icicle. Dimly, she saw Eddie turn away and begin drawing in the dirt again, his expression of warm concern fading back into the terrible, concen-trated coldness she sometimes felt in him and saw on his face. Well, that was all right, wasn’t it? She had told him to go on, to forget her, to do what he needed to do in order to bring the boy over. This was her part of Jake’s drawing and she had no right to hate either of the men, who had not twisted her arm—or anything else—to make her do it, but as the coldness froze her and Eddie turned away from her, she hated them both; could, in fact, have torn their honkey balls off. Then Roland was with her, his strong hands were on her shoulders and although he didn’t speak, she heard him: Don’t fight. You can’t win if you fight—you can only die. Sex is its weapon, Susannah, but it’s also its weakness. Yes. It was always their weakness. The only difference was that this time she was going to have to give a little more—but maybe that was all right. Maybe in the end, she would be able to make this invisible honkey demon pay a little more.

She forced herself to relax her thighs. Immediately they spread apart, pushing long, curved fans in the dirt. She threw her head back into the rain which was now pelting down and sensed its face lolling just over hers, eager eyes drinking in every contorted grimace which passed over her face. She reached up with one hand, as if to slap . . . and instead, slid it around the nape of her demon ra**st’s neck. It was like cupping a palmful of solid smoke. And did she feel it twitch backward, surprised at her caress? She tilted her pelvis upward, using her grip on the invisible neck to create the leverage. At the same time she spread her legs even wider, splitting what remained of her dress up the side-seams. God, it was huge! “Come on,” she panted. “You ain’t gonna rape me. You ain’t. You want t’fuck me? I f**k you. I give you a f**kin like you ain’t nevah had! Fuck you to death!” She felt the engorgement within her tremble; felt the demon try, at least momentarily, to draw back and regroup.

“Unh-unh, honey,” she croaked. She squeezed her thighs inward, pinning it. “De fun jus’ startin’.” She began to flex her butt, humping at the invisible presence. She reached up with her free hand, interlaced all ten fingers, and allowed herself to fall backward with her hips cocked, her straining arms seeming to hold nothing. She tossed her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes; her lips split in a sharklike grin.

Let me go! a voice cried out in her mind. But at the same time she could feel the owner of the voice responding in spite of itself. “No way, sugar. You wanted it … now you goan get it.” She thrust upward, holding on, concentrating fiercely on the freezing cold inside her. “I’m goan melt that icicle, sugar, and when it’s gone, what you goan do then?” Her lips rose and fell, rose and fell. She squeezed her thighs mercilessly together, closed her eyes, clawed more deeply into the unseen neck, and prayed that Eddie would be quick.

She didn’t know how long she could do this.