Chapter 2

It was a long night in that empty bed. I sniffed her pillow, then exchanged it with mine. Then changed it back.

I couldn’t stop imagining what they were doing. All manner of sex acts and positions no doubt, buried deep in my psyche came forth in a rush. She liked to be on top. She’d ride it high, purse her lips just at the moment of crisis, then lift just short of out as I’d inject her in long streams.

“Yeah, like that, boy. Squirt it. Knock me up, you fucker, you.”

She’d release her beaver and would drain my stuff into her palm, look into the pool like she was reading taro cards.

“You came a lot, youngster, though it’s murky and smells different. You want some?” She’d stick her finger in it.

“No, but, I want to eat you, whole.”

She’d sample it though, occasionally.

“Someday we’re not going to block these little guys and I’m going to bear your child. And you think I scream loud like I’m going to do after you’ve licked me there, just you wait till we’re in that delivery room. I’m gonna raise the dead, Culburn. I won’t even accept a local. I don’t care if he’s coming out sideways. Nada. Just you, me, and the doctor, brother.”

She crawled up, stationed it accurately, dropped it in my face, rotated it and shook the metal roof, what, twenty minutes later? Closer to ten.

I pictured Tommy atop her. They were sleeping together as I obsessed and ruminated about them sleeping together. Now I knew precisely what “sleeping together” was all about. Or, did I really?

I picked up the phone more times than I care to admit to during that long night. And stopped myself three and four digits into the dial cycle. I knew his phone number by heart for crying out loud. Hell, I didn’t even know him six hours ago! Never heard of the man.

I picked up my keys more times than I care to admit to during that long night and headed for the car, Tommy’s rent receipt clutched in a death hold. Had it turned over one time, but, chickened out. Did I want to stop them, or, did I want to break down door(s) and catch them, watch them if only for a second split into a thousand frames of sight until I was either thrown out by this man, or, arrested, hell, by this exact same cop and end up in the same damn hoosegow that I’d been headed to mere hours and a lifetime ago in the bitter end of this endless day?

“Jack off!”

I implored myself. I had to know, I had to hear, I had to see thru Girl’s words before I shot my seed upon my belly. Pulling it in anger, in regret, in resentment, in rank ignorance caused nary inclination. I never even came close.

“No!” I spat into Girl’s bathroom mirror.

Upon move-in: “Cully, you use the other bathroom, and this will be my bathroom. Agreed?”

“Agreed, angel.”

And standing there I began to realize, to specter that some day, God willing, in the far off future, further than I could ever see, after we’d grown old, gray and no longer beautiful one of us would be left to go on without the other. And I remembered on our wedding day finally turned night, when the girl covered that certainty...”Cully, don’t leave me here.”

I woke cursing me every name in the book for gifting that second night.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I excoriated myself.

I was so angry I used Girl’s bathroom to piss---pissed all over the rim and floor. If I got an ounce of urine in that toilet bowl I’m a monkey’s ass. Spent the next hour cleaning the entire bathroom top to bottom with bleach. I love bleach. It’s everything. Sometimes I use too much and my nose bleeds.

“Cully!”

Finished, I finally braved my first time check. I denied myself upon waking, purposely blurred my vision so I wouldn’t see the bedside alarm clock and restart my infernal clock watching.

“7:36? My ass.”

That meant I got up at 6:30. It was after 3 AM when I finally conked out to dreamless slumber.

I looked at myself in Girl’s mirror. I was the epitome of death warmed over.

“They’re probably doing it again to start their day.”

I can’t function sexually in the morning. “No, Cully, you’ll rub it raw again, boy. Uh, uh.”

“Please, it’ll be okay this time, Girl. I swear it.”

“No.”

I bet Tommy had no problem cutting the mustard of a morning. At least I knew he couldn’t lick the jar like I could. I’d heard somewhere that black guys didn’t like to lick the jar.

“Girl, did he lick your jar?”

“Oh, God, Cully, did he, and I thought you were the living end at that. Ha.”

I checked the phone. Dial tone was still there. I cradled it, then snatched it up fast to see if it really truly was live. “Thank Christ.”

“How bout driving over there and hiding in that corn field next to his complex?”

There had to be a cornfield there.

“There’s one every other fuckin’ place.”

It never bothered me that I talked to myself before. Now? Now it bothered me.

“No, Dale, seriously drive over in Girl’s car so you ain’t so damn conspicuous in that death trap and just watch his cruiser. What else are you going to do today?”

I had the answer: “I’ll be sitting over there when she calls, you damn fool, you.”

“You’re right.”

“How bout a walk?”

“Phone, a-hole.”

“Oh, yeah.”

They were probably going to go somewhere, somewhere special after they showered together.

“Where would you like to go, Girl? Anywhere you like is fine with me, Missus.”

Yeah, I bet he didn’t call her Missus anymore. (Missus), what the fuck was that all about anyway? Some kind of gentlemanly act I imagined.

“Huh?”

Serve him right for asking. He’d end up in a museum, or, the zoo.

“You never go where I want to go, Cully. It’s not right. It isn’t fair, Cully.”

As I was bent over the Atlantis Pinball Table in the Old Market Area.

The management finally banned me for ruining the machine. Said I “corrupted” it.

“You were warned, Cully. I don’t feel sorry for you.”

After the museum there’d be dinner, a special dinner, probably at Ross’s Steak House.

“Don’t do it, Girl, that’s our place. Please I’m begging you.”

And after all was said and done it was our place; Tommy, Girl, and I.

I finally laid down on the couch after I dragged the phone close, the fifty foot line was the first problem I didn’t have and checked the dial tone for the umpteenth time. I watched game shows. I got into the “$10,000 Pyramid” to the point where I fell asleep. This time unlike in our bed I dreamed. Dreams of rats haunted me at times and the dreams of that Monday morning had that vermin in generous supply. They were close to me, laying entwined, long, furry and opulent, over fed, over grown, almost like lurid pets. I woke with a start, checked the phone and remembered I hadn’t had my caffeine fix. The headache reminded me.

I started up talking to myself again:

“If you have a headache that means it’s after eleven.”

“11:11. I want to cry.”

“Go on, it’ll do you good.”

But, the tears simply would not come. Not even close.

“Why the fuck did you give them that second day?”

“How did this happen?”

“Did they trick you?”

“Was Tommy sitting there waiting for you to come by?”

“If you had it to do it over again would you grant them that second day?”

“Please, I’ll be lucky to get off the phone today without gifting them a third day!”

The coffee warmed my cockles. I wolfed down some cold French toast she’d made me just before we went to church a million years ago.

He had his hands on her. She had her hands on him. Thank God we didn’t have a gun. I laughed a bit at her banning that BB gun. I’d never took the sling shot back. Hid it in the shed. Should go over there with it and shoot his cruiser windows out.

Shot the neighbors car window out.

“Somebody got me last night, Cully.”

I walked him back to his mobile home before big eared Girl heard that news. It had been a bully shot.

I pictured her sucking him. Her white body kneeling before Tommy. No kneeler like at church I bet. Both knees on the hard floor, in total supplication. His ebony body with nary an ounce of anything but muscle and sinew. I bet she didn’t catch his stuff in the old palm-a-rooney and read the tarot over it.

So lost in my regrets tour I don’t know how many rings had been made, but, I was close, so damn close.

“I’d about given up, honey. I was starting to get panicked, whether I should have Tommy drive me over just so I could check on you.”

“Why the fuck did you pick that fuckin’ phone up?” I pantomimed to my reflection in the blackened television screen.

“Ride the High Country” (1962)

The marriage ceremony:

- “We’re gathered here in the high mountains in the presence of this august company to join this man and this woman in matrimony.

Now, I’m not a man of the cloth, and this is not a religious ceremony. It’s a civil marriage. But, it’s not to be entered into unadvisedly, but reverently and soberly.

A good marriage has a kind of simple glory about it. A good marriage is like a rare animal. It’s hard to find. It’s almost impossible to keep.

You see, people change.

That’s important for you to know at the beginning. People change.

The glory of a good marriage don’t come at the beginning.

It comes later on.

It’s hard work.”

- “Judge Tolliver” - Edgar Buchanan

In the split second before I opened my mouth I decided I’d brazen it out. Portend that everything was fine, that I’d not dreamed of vermin, pissed on her bathroom floor, etc.

“No, no Girl, I’m fine. Just fell asleep here on the couch watching ‘All My Children.’”

“Thank goodness, Cully. We’re out at Westroads (mall). Tommy took me shopping.”

She was lit up. I was so relieved I felt like shooting them both with my sling shot. And I was going to mention, warn her off about presenting in public with him, but, I just let it go. She was too happy. She liked men, but, she loved shopping, or, was it the other way around?

“And Tommy insisted on buying you some gifts as well, Cully. We can’t wait to show you. He’s so generous. Cully. Cully, are you there?”

“We?” To-my-self.

“Yes, baby, I’m so happy you’re having a good time.”

“I am, honey. And it’s because of you. Thank you, Cully and Tommy thanks you. Trust me, he’s a whole new man in the little time we’ve spent together. He’s found a purpose for his life now. The extra night made the difference I believe. Thank you again, Cully.”

I thought about inquiring as to what that “purpose” was exactly, but, she plowed thru my place in the queue.

“Cully, I want to ask a favor, a biggie, honey.”

Oh, Christ, another day? Well, at least she beat me to it, I was going to offer another day without request.

“Cully, would it be okay if we had Tommy over for dinner on Wednesday evening, well, afternoon? He wants to thank you in person, and get to know you, honey. Get to know us. It would mean the world to him, Cully. Please, for me, Cully, for me?”

She’d do the (Please, for me, Cully, for me?) protocol at rare times. Started as far back as Jr. High. The first time I became almost entranced by her approach, the change in her tone, body language and spirit. And I granted that request at once though I couldn’t tell you the particulars of that charter appeal, just that signature approach. I do remember the mini skirt she’d worn that Friday. Just high enough to keep me on pins and needles, low enough to get by the school dress code. They’d check the girls with wooden rulers, measuring it out, wooden paddles at the ready for the offenders.