Audrey shook her head. “No. I made him stop it. It made me feel cheap.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Three blocks away.”
All green lights to make his best stupid move an epic. “You got it all figured out.”
Audrey said, “I didn’t think you’d say no.” She waved her mink coat. “And I brought a towel for the morning.”
Buzz thought, RIP Turner Prescott Meeks, 1906–1950. He took a deep breath, sucked in his flab, pushed through the saloon doors and started peeling. Audrey came in and laughed at the bed–pink satin spread, pink canopy, pink embroidered gargoyles as foot posts. She got naked with a single flick of a clasp; Buzz felt his legs buckling as her breasts bobbed free. Audrey came to him and slipped off his tie, undid his shirt buttons, loosened his belt. He pried his shoes and socks off standing up; his shirt hit the floor via a bad case of the shivers. Audrey laughed and traced the goosebumps on his arms, then ran her hands over the parts of himself he couldn’t stand: his melon gut, his side rolls, the knife scars running up into his chest hair. When she started licking him there he knew she was okay on it; he picked her up to show her how strong he was–his legs almost blowing it–and put her down on the bed. He got out of his trousers and boxers under his own steam and lay down beside her–and in a half second she was all arms and legs around him, face to face and mouth open, pushing up against him like he was everything she’d ever wanted.
He kissed her–soft, hard, soft; he rubbed his nose into her neck and smelled Ivory Soap–not the perfume he’d played pretend with. He took her breasts in his hands and pinched the nipples, remembering everything every cop had told him about the headliner at the Burbank Burlesque. Audrey made different noises for each part of her he touched; he kissed and tongued between her legs and got one big noise. The big noise got bigger and bigger; her legs and arms went spastic. Her going so crazy got him almost there, and he went inside her so he could be part of it. Audrey’s hips pushing off the covers made him burst going in; he held on and she held him, and he gave her all his strength to smother their aftershocks. Half his weight, she was still able to push him up as she kept coming–and he grabbed her head and buried his head in her hair until he went limp and she quit fighting him.
Pink satin sheets and sweat bound them together. Buzz rolled over on his side, hooking a finger around Audrey’s wrist so they’d keep on touching while he got his breath. Eight years without a cigarette and he was panting like a track dog–and she was lying there all still and calm, a vein on the back of her arm tapping his finger the only thing that said she was still racing inside. His chest heaved; he tried to think of something to say; Audrey made finger tracks on his knife scars. She said, “This could get complicated.”
Buzz got his wind. “That mean you’re thinkin’ angles already?”
Audrey made like her nails were animals’ claws and pretended to scratch him. “I just like to know where I stand.”
The moment was slipping away from him–like it wasn’t worth the danger. Buzz grabbed Audrey’s hands. “So that means we’re lookin’ at a next time?”
“You didn’t have to ask. I’d have told you in a minute or so.”
“I like to know where I stand, too.”
Audrey laughed and pulled her hands away. “You stand guilty, Meeks. You got me thinking the other day. So whatever happens, it’s your fault.”
Buzz said, “Sweetie, don’t underestimate Mickey. He’s sugar and spice with women and kids, but he kills people.”
“He knows I’ll leave him sooner or later.”
“No, he doesn’t. He figures you’re an ex-stripper, a shiksa, you’re thirty-somethin’ and you’ve got no place to go. You give him a little bit of grief, maybe it gets his dick hard. But you stroll, that’s somethin’ else.”