The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [29]
“Oh, baby,” she told him afterward, cuddling his head to her little breasts. “Baby, if I had the strength to move, I’d lock the door and swallow the key. I’ve got me a sweet young stud and I’m not letting go of him. Are you always so great? Be a gentleman and lie and tell me I had something to do with it.”
“You had everything to do with it. It’s not a lie. It was … I can’t fit words to it.”
“Baby says the sweetest things. Oh, I knew you’d be good for me the minute I saw you. You’re so beautiful and you turned me on so much, and I knew you would want me a little. But talk about beyond the lady’s wildest dreams. The sun and the moon and all the fucking stars. I don’t think I’ll ever let you out of this room. You can go but your cock stays right here.”
“I want to keep it company.”
“I’d never let it be lonely. Oh, my God! How can you be ready already? I have a feeling we’re going to screw all night. How do you want to do it? Think of a fantasy and we’ll work it out. Oh, just stay like that. Let me get on top, let Mama do the work. Baby worked hard and baby deserves a rest. God, you feel good inside me. You’re so beautiful. Do you like this? And this? Oh baby, Petey baby, you’re divine, you know that?”
There were still times like that. They would go weeks without having each other, especially when drugs them too far inside their own heads for the sexual appat ratus to function. Then the mood would be suddenly right and they would take each other in frenzied coupling. At such times they thrilled each other as neither had ever been thrilled by anyone else. The rest of the world looked at them and saw a depraved older woman and a young man who lived off her; no one knew how tightly they were bound to each other.
He had fled homosexuality before meeting her, preferring a sexless existence to a way of life that had grown increasingly uncomfortable and guilt-ridden. She made him aware of himself as a fully heterosexual being. And now, even knowing that he had to leave her, that she was tearing him apart, he realized what he owed her and how much he still seemed to require her.
“Let me get on top. Let Mama do the work.”
“… vacancy coming up at the Shithouse, so if you know anybody looking for a place—”
“Dear dear Sully. Now how could I in all good conscience recommend that establishment to anyone? It should be condemned, you know.”
“It’s a solid building. And it gives people what they need.”
“So do the heroin peddlers.”
“You know the longest I ever had a unit vacant? Ten days, and that was in the depths of winter.”
“The depths of winter. Winter’s gloomy depths. Suleiman, you’re a closet poet.”
Peter looked up. “A vacancy? Who’s moving out? Or are we evicted?”
“I wouldn’t throw you two out. Hell, I love you people.”
“Then who is it?”
“What’s-his-name, Hillary. Top floor.”
“Who told you they were moving?”
“Well, he left town, didn’t he? I guess his girl’s still around the way I heard it, but she won’t be staying.”
Peter shook his head. “She’s staying.”
“Staying in New Hope? Who told you that?”
“She did. A couple of hours ago.”
“And she’s keeping her room?”
“For the time being. I don’t know how she can afford it. She works part time for Olive McIntyre and I don’t think she can be making more than twenty-five or thirty dollars a week.”
“Maybe she’s got money of her own,” Sully suggested.
“Well, maybe, but I have the impression she doesn’t.”
“Which means I haven’t got a vacancy now but probably will in a couple of weeks. Well, that’s something to know. Very interesting. What’s her name again?”
“Linda.”
“That’s right, Linda. Not a bad-looking girl, either. Not bad at all. You wouldn’t know her last name by any chance? He took the place in his name, Hillary, so I never got her last name.