Hick - Andrea Portes [44]
“I wish I could, believe me. I wish I could.”
He starts to come closer and I stand my ground, not wanting to seem scared. You got to treat lowlifes like horses, if they smell fear, they know they got the upper hand. I’m wondering when Eddie is gonna interrupt this little romance but I have a feeling, a broken-down kind of feeling, that this one is on me. The light flickers above us and if this man looked bad standing in the dim light of the bar, in the green fluorescent he looks like twenty miles of country road. I can’t believe it but he’s starting to salivate. This I’ve never seen before, so I’m real-quick lost in a strange fascination with the spit building up on the sides of his lip. I got to get out.
“Well, Mister, it’s been nice meeting you and all, but—”
“You ain’t going nowhere.”
“Oh yeah, keep dreaming.”
And with that I march right on past him, straight for the door. My plan works perfect except that he grabs me by the hair and pulls me back towards him, whispering in my ear, “I haven’t got my hundred bucks’ worth.”
I think I can actually hear my heart cracking into bits and pieces, falling clink clink clink down the green sink drain. I muster up the courage, trying to get my soul back out the sink, and ask, “What are you getting at, Mister?”
“You’re the bet, little girl. Your uncle lost.”
“What? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Where’s Eddie?”
“You’ve been traded.”
He chuckles, pulling my arms behind my back and swinging me into the nearest stall. I struggle against him, squirming in and out of his reach, lashing out, but it’s no good. For a skinny little fucker he can fight. He forces my head back into the metal stall, cupping his hand over my mouth. I bite. He cackles out, pleased.
“I see we got a live one here.”
He grabs my wrists with his other hand and lifts them back behind my head. I am waiting for Eddie and sinking into the realization he’s not coming. I am squirming and fighting and clawing and squirming, but he’s wearing me down. He and his breath and his skinny long nose and his gritty teeth and his gray stubble chin. Each little outburst is leaving me more and more exhausted, panting, trying again, panting again. He’s stronger than me and it’s not a fair fight. But we all know about fair in this life. that’s something for movies with courtrooms.
I go to kick him between the legs but he blocks me. He stops my leg with his knee and then forces my legs apart with his body. He’s holding me down now, pressed up against me. He’s looking directly into my eyes, not two inches away, like he’s getting off on how much I hate him. You may think this is the part where I’m supposed to cry, but I ain’t letting that happen. No sir. He ain’t getting that outta me. He leans in closer and whispers into my ear, “You know what I like to do to little girls like you?”
I look at him, waiting for his answer, about as defiant as a girl can be with her mouth gagged, her arms pinned and her legs spread wide open by a toothless stranger.
“I like to break em in.”
He smiles a derelict little smile and traces his tongue on my neck. He bites the bottom of my shirt and pulls it up with his teeth, keeping me gagged and pinned. He starts working his way all around my neck and chest with his mouth, looking up at me like I’m supposed to like it, grinning a degenerate grin like this is his Christmas. He starts concentrating on the pink part of my chest.
And this is where the strange thing happens. This is where the thing that’s not supposed to happen, that no one ever talks about, happens. There must be something wrong with me, some screw loose in the back of my head, because even though this is a sick old dirty old toothless old man, ugly as the day he was born . . .
I start to like it.
There’s something going on, new and tingly, that is somehow on the other side of justice and reason and everything my mama told me about what you should and should not do. I know now that I am a wrong dirty girl, the kind that ends up sleeping