Annabel - Kathleen Winter [118]
“Fuck you, Broderick.” Derek Warford pulled down Wayne’s hood. “See that hair?” Derek took a handful of Wayne’s hair and twisted it. “Nice head of hair if only a little girl would comb it once in a while.” Derek took a flask out of his jean jacket and handed it around. “Like vodka, little girl? Don’t show up on your breath at all. When you get home to your boyfriend, Steve. Hey, don’t want him to know you were out with us, do you? Where is he tonight? Know what? I think I saw him over by Katie Twomey’s place just after you left. I think he’s over there waiting on her veranda for you come spend another evening with him. Sweet, hey? Isn’t that sweet, boys? You fuck Steve, little girl? You and him give it to her on Twomey’s old planks? Good thing she’s gone out west to visit Brian and doesn’t see what you and Stevie are up to on her property. Take off your bra for us now, little girl. Some of those snaps on them new bras are hard to get off unless you’re the owner. What, you don’t have a bra on? Okay, boys, we need a volunteer. Fifield, what’s wrong with you? Get your — yeah, get the little girl’s shirt off. Yeah. Holy shit, what have we got here? I wonder, is there any hair on the fucking tits? Holy fucking Jesus snapping fucking fucked arseholes. Fifield, undo its belt. Give me a report on what you find.”
Beauty is gone, Wayne thought. Beauty is gone and beauty is never coming back and it has not even been here yet. Just like Wally Michelin wanting to sing the “Cantique de Jean Racine” when they were little more than children. A thing could depart before it reached you in the first place. There were things like that. The “Cantique” was one, and beauty was another.
“Fuck, Warford, headlights.”
The lights arced across the bushes and glinted on Warford’s jagged bottle over Wayne’s closed eyes. If he opened his eyes he would have to stop thinking about beauty and start thinking about sight. Whether he wanted to lose that or not. Warford could do it in one lurch. Then it wouldn’t matter if beauty was gone forever. Wayne’s own eyelids, then air the thickness of one more set of eyelids, lay between the broken bottle and his eyeballs.
“Fuckin headlights.”
“Fuck, man, what’s wrong with you? That’s only Jesus Graham fucking Morrisey what does he know? He’s got his head so far up Tina Payne’s cunt he don’t care about no little girl we got here. No little monster fucking girl with hairy tits and — what has she got down there, Fifield? A cunt or what? Too bad we haven’t got a camera. See, what I’m interested in is which one of us has the guts to fuck this here little girl.”
“Don’t go looking at me.”
“What about you, Broderick? Come on. Get your fingers ready. You can go at it with your fingers first, then unpack your cock. Come on.”
“Fuck off, man.”
“Or one of these Sweet Marie bars. What about that? Come on, Fifield, what’s wrong with you? Too bad we didn’t get one of those black corncobs off Mary Fifield’s front door — that’d be just like a big nigger cock we could use. Go get it, Fifield; it’s your aunt’s door. Big fucking Jesus nigger cock.”
“Come off it, Warford.”
“That’s what she wants.”
“Give it up.”
“I mean, why would anybody want to be a little girl when they didn’t have to, unless they wanted to get fucked?”
“Come off it.”
“That’s what it’s all about, folks. That’s the name of the game. See here, boys, what you got here is a real, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
28
The Costume Bank
DARK GREEN VELVET, almost black, caught light from the costume-bank ceiling, and there was muslin too, and lace, some of it handmade. Wally Michelin had learned the different kinds of fabric in her aunt’s shop, and she liked knowing their names and their quality. Before she had come to work in Boston she had not thought about whether her own clothing, or that of her mother, her neighbours and classmates, had been made well or thrown together cheaply. Even the dress she had worn to her prom, with its tailoring and its red satin, was not, she saw now, like the satin dresses here. These had more