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  I packed a bathing suit, a book and my overnight stuff and drove down to Key Largo. The further away I was when Carl read that note, the safer I’d feel.

  I stayed at a little motel and read and swam most of Saturday, got a pizza with mushrooms, like Carl hated. On Sunday morning I went out by the pool and caught a few more rays before heading home. I stopped for a grouper sandwich on the drive back, to congratulate myself on how well I was doing. I could barely eat it. Jesus, was I nervous. I got home around four, pulled into the parking lot and saw Carl’s empty space. I sighed with relief. I looked up at the apartment window. I’d move out for good, as soon as I saved up enough. I unlocked the door and stepped inside. The clothes and tools were gone. I shut the door behind me, locked it, and set down my bag.

  The toilet flushed. “Eh-eh-eh-eh.”

  I jumped. My chest turned to water.

  The toilet paper rolled. Carl came swaggering out of the bathroom. “Eh-eh-eh-eh,” he laughed. The sound was deafening.

  “Where’s your car?” I asked him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Car’s around back. I wanted to surprise my babycakes.”

  I looked around wildly. “Didn’t you get my note? You’re supposed to be gone – I’m calling—” I moved towards the phone.

  He stepped in front of me. “I’m not going anywhere. I love you. We’re a team. Two of a kind.”

  “You didn’t do it.” I spat the words in his face. “You chickened out.”

  He came closer. I could smell the cloud of alcohol seeping from his skin and breath, a sick, fermented odour. “Oh, I did it, babe, right behind Doe’s. Stuck that seven-inch blade below his ribcage and gave it a mighty twist. I left that bastard in a puddle of blood the size Texas could be proud of.” He winked. “I let ol’ Ray know why he was gettin it too.”

  He took my hair and yanked me close against him. He stuck his tongue in my mouth. I gagged but he kept forcing it down my throat. Finally, he drew back and stared into my eyes. “I did some thinkin on the flight over,” he said. “Penny’ll remember telling you about the bars. Also, the directions are in your handwriting, hon. I rubbed off the prints against my stomach, balled up the sheet, and dropped it right between his legs. Cool, huh?” He licked his lower lip from one side to the other. “Oh, yeah, I found one of your hairs in my suitcase, so I put that in for extra measure.”

  My skin went to ice and I froze clear through.

  “I was figuring it as insurance on our marriage – a nice little threat if I needed it to keep you around. A tip to the cops would be all it takes. Guess I saved myself a lot of trouble. Where I go, you go, baby girl. Eh-eh-eh-eh. Together for ever, sweetheart.”

  He grabbed my T-shirt and twisted it tight around my chest. All the air wheezed out of my lungs, and he rubbed his palm across my nipples till they burned. He lifted my hand to his mouth, kissed it, and grinned with all his teeth showing. He slobbered kisses along my arm, while I stood limp. “Eh-eh.”

  Like the snap of a bone, his laugh shot chills up my spine and the sorry truth to my brain. I was the same as Carl, only he’d been desperate all his life. My damned arm would be second to go. I’d already handed Satan my soul.

  The Colour of Lust

  M. Christian

  POOL, the sign said, and BILLIARDS, in typography that somehow managed to be early forties without any of that period’s style.

  Below TEVI’S POOL & BILLIARDS was a tobacconist’s, a dark little corner store with displays of musty boxes lined with greasy old cigars. Next to it a door stood open, showing a heavy green runner on a narrow flight of stairs. The banister was polished to a dark mahogany glow from endless palms.

  A row of narrow smoke-stained windows, once gold-trimmed, ran around the second storey. Islands of threadbare rugs and strips of matted oil-stained carpeting were cast adrift the ancient parquet floor. A cage stood against the far wall containing an old black man in a crisp white cotton shirt and simple black dress tie. His eyes were too sharp and clear for him to need protection. Daisy imagined him as a dapper tiger, kept locked away for the safety of the hall, and not as a precaution against the half-dozen sharks circling lazily around the tables.

  Standing next to her, Eddy’s hard, narrow face slipped into a wry grin. Tevis’s was a heavy place, burdened by architecture, sagging from decade after decade of a meticulous game played by tough, desperate people. It was a place that didn’t know joy or ecstasy, only winning or losing in a game played with sticks and little round balls. Eddy was there, Eddy was on, Eddy was in her place and pool was her game.

  Daisy also knew what her role was supposed to be. “Eddy,” she said with an exasperated little sigh, “there’s not even a fucking bar.”

  “We can get a drink later, doll,” Eddy said, walking away, towards the dapper man behind the bars, the narrow leather case swinging gently in her long, thin hand. “I promise.”

  “Yeah, right,” Daisy said, catching up to Eddy with a quick dash. Her own thin hand clutched at his sleeve. “Come on, Eddy, let’s go get something to eat, OK?”

  Eddy turned to her, looked straight in her pale-blue eyes. Daisy was small, like a model. Sometimes, when Eddy kissed her, when she held her in her arms, a bitter surge of guilt swept up from deep inside her. She was small, like a child. But the feeling rarely lasted more than one or two heartbeats. Eddy had been around, had kissed – and more than kissed – a lot of girls. None of them, even the ones with the leather and the rock-solid attitudes, had been as much of a hurricane in bed. Yes, she was small, but “concentrated” would be a better word. “I’ve got to do this, doll,” Eddy said.

  “No, Eddy, you don’t.” Daisy aimed fiery eyes up at the taller woman. “You don’t have to do anything but go back to the hotel room with me.” In her little blue and white cotton dress with her long blonde hair hanging straight down, Daisy looked every inch like Dorothy or Alice, stepped right out of their native pages. But the heat in her eyes revealed the edge that hid under her candy and silk.

  “Baby, you know I gotta,” Eddy said with firmness, certainty. “You know this is something I have to do.”

  “No, Eddy you don’t. You have to eat, you have to drink, you have to fucking breathe, but you don’t have to play pool. You don’t have to.”

  Eddy stood and looked down at her, the narrow leather satchel still in her long-fingered hand. Daisy’s eyes flicked, and Eddy knew she was right. It was a game played with a stick and a few coloured balls. It wasn’t life, it wasn’t love. It was just a game. Life was many small hotel rooms, a Gideon in a drawer, a blue plate special for dinner, and Daisy.

  Daisy standing naked in a beam of merciless sunlight, her little body graceful and fine. Her nipples were red kernels on breasts as luscious as her thighs; her thighs were as soft and tender as her breasts. The gentle swell of her belly, the tight blonde curls just below, the shocking pinkness of her cunt, the sweet taste of her juice. The way her tongue danced with Eddy’s as they kissed, mingling hot breaths; and the way her tongue danced between Eddy’s thighs, always with the right tempo, the right steps. Other lovers had stepped on her clit’s toes – too much, too little, not enough – but Daisy knew ballet, she knew just the right steps. She was light and strong, and had a perfect sense of rhythm.

  It was a good life. But there was something missing; it all seemed too simple. They were dancing in an empty hall to a predictable tune. There was lust, but it was a lazy, easy lust. Eddy absently stroked the handle of the case with her thumb, feeling the worn smoothness of it and the way the leather warmed under her touch. There was something thundering and powerful in the game: skill, risk, reward . . . a reward not as spectacular as when Daisy danced her tongue between her thighs, but sweeter because Eddy won with her own talent.

  Eddy was possessed by two different kinds of lust. Lust for the green felt, the cue, and the coloured balls, fighting roughly in the back of her mind with that other lust: lust for Daisy in a cheap hotel room, her skin a patina of hot sweat, her sma
ll breasts tented, tipped with tight, hard nipples, her legs spread gently apart, her lips pink like Georgia O’Keefe’s flowery labia.

  A solid click, the hollow sound of a ball falling home in a pocket. Eddy shook her head, clearing her eyes and mind. “I have to do this, Daisy,” she said, turned back to the man in the cage. “I just have to.”

  Daisy just glowered, the fire in her blue eyes only burning brighter.

  “I hear you’ve got quite a pool player here,” Eddy said to the man behind the bars.

  The little man gazed at Eddy for a long time. When he was done sizing her up, he drawled: “So who’s looking?”

  “Just someone interested in a game of pool, that’s all. Just someone looking for a game,” Eddy said with a sly grin. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Daisy heading towards a chair at the edge of the hall. Her little ass moved like poetry when she walked.

  The man in the cage smiled, showing two porcelain teeth and many more of tarnished gold; then in a shockingly loud voice, he yelled, “Hey, Fats, some guy named Eddy wants to shoot some pool.”

  The place had four walls. Two of them had narrow windows, two were banked with chairs. Eight tables. The cage. The stairs. From somewhere Eddy hadn’t looked, Fats appeared.

  It was as if a smudge of night stepped out into the cool twilight of the pool hall. Big and round, she walked – she didn’t lurch, she didn’t struggle, she didn’t roll. Fats had a grace that froze Eddy in her tracks and made her incapable of doing anything but watch as Fats materialized from her hidden corner of Tevis’s Pool & Billiards. She moved as if on oiled bearings, as if she’d discovered the pure beauty of what walking could be, and was now demonstrating it to Eddy.

  She was middle-aged, her dark face a play of round cheeks and dark, hooded eyes. Her hair was the purest black, cut so short that the shape of her perfectly round skull was showing. Fats wore an immaculate white cotton shirt, perfectly pressed and buttoned up tight to her dark throat. No tie, but instead a tiny cross hanging from a thin gold chain. At her wrists she sported gold and onyx cufflinks. Her pants were black, almost invisible in the shadows of the hall. She wore black and white men’s shoes that looked brand new. The room was warm and getting warmer in the growing day, but Fats looked elegant, refined, immaculate and cool. “Yes, Winthrop?” she said in a deep, drum-roll voice, naming the black man in the cage.

  “Girl here is interested in a game of pool,” Winthrop said, with a tilt of his head to Eddy.

  “Is that true?” Fats said, turning her dark face to towards Eddy. Suddenly she smiled, showing a row of perfect white teeth.

  Before Winthrop could answer, and before the allure of Daisy and another soft hotel bed could change her mind, Eddy said: “I heard you’re one of the best, Fats. I heard it in Oakland, I heard it in Chicago, I heard it just the other day on the train. I just want to see if it’s true.”

  Fats slowly measured her, looking Eddy up and down as if sizing up a lobster in a tank. Under her dark-eyed gaze Eddy felt a surge of heat in her face and chest. She felt herself shrink under her scrutiny.

  Someone put a small, very strong hand on Eddy’s shoulder. “Come on, Eddy. Come on back to the room with me,” Daisy said, her voice edged with tired anger. “It’s just a game, Eddy. Come on, it’s just a game.”

  Eddy felt the anger thrill up her spine, tension bloom in her long arms: “Come on, fat girl. You wanna play or not?”

  The smile returned to Fat’s face – but it was worse, much worse than her cool scrutiny. “Let’s play pool, Eddy.”

  Eddy put her case on the table and carefully popped the tiny latches. “What we shooting for, Fats? Hundred a game?”

  Fats nodded, a long, slow motion as if she had all the time in the world. “Let’s see your roll first, girl.”

  Eddy smiled, showing sparkling, perfect teeth. From a deep pocket she pulled a fat roll, tossed it down onto the velvet. “Ten grand, Fats. Count it if you want to.”

  Fats picked up the roll, weighing it in her chubby, dark hands, her face suddenly cool and earnest. Then she smiled, tossed it neatly back to Eddy. “Looks good, girl.”

  They rolled to break; despite her humming nerves, Eddy got the opening. In her hand the cue was steady, a part of her body. Languishing before the virgin balls, she cocked and slid the pale pine along her fingers, driving the cue in a perfect strike – just enough, and no more, to snap the eight and four balls away to bounce gently against the cushions and return to the pack. No quarter taken, none given.

  “Deal with that, fat girl,” Eddy said with a note of bravery she barely felt.

  Fats smiled, showing the sparkle of a gold tooth. There is a mastery that disguises itself as bored, casual actions. Without looking, with a careless stroke, she smashed the pack, sending the right two balls into side and right corner pockets with hollow sounds of perfection.

  Eddy could do nothing but watch her clear the table.

  As the next to the last ball fell neatly into a side pocket, a hand suddenly rested on Eddy’s shoulder, and firm but soft voice whispered in her ear: “Come on, Eddy, let’s go back to the room.”

  Eddy wanted to shrug off Daisy’s pity, her simple answer of a soft bed and a hot cunt, but she didn’t. The first burn of failure was too hot. Instead, she patted Daisy’s hand and said, “Maybe, but not yet.”

  During their words, the last two balls had sunk neatly into pockets. Winthrop had emerged from his cage, swimming lazily through the murky depths of the hall, and had quietly racked them up.

  “You’re good, fat girl,” Eddy said, stepping away from the wiry energy of her lover to peel off some bills from her fat roll, slap five of them down on the table. “You’re damned good. But you’re not the best.”

  “Are you going to talk, or shoot pool, Eddy?” Fats said, her coal-dark face calm and inscrutable.

  “I’m going to do what I came here to do, Fats; I’m going to show you the best damned pool player there is.”

  With that, leaning into the shot, pine slick and fast between her fingers, Eddy made the first break – sinking the right two balls, neat and clean.

  “I already own a mirror, Eddy,” Fats said with a frighteningly cruel smile as she signalled Winthrop for a cold beer.

  Despite the deep sting, Eddy cleared the table and won the game. Then the next, and the one after that. She was on, she was there; right there, in that hall and in that game. Every ball obeyed her will, every shot was sweet perfection. It wasn’t the body scream of orgasm, or the thrill of Daisy’s nipple in her mouth, but it was the climbing glory of winning.

  A hand, again on her shoulder. “I want you, Eddy,” the sultry voice said, low and deep, whispered in her ear. “I want you, back in our room. Your fingers deep inside me, your lips on mine, my nipples hard, yours as well.”

  “Not yet, not yet,” Eddy said, chalking the tip of her cue and smiling slyly at Fats.

  “Eddy, you’ve won. Please, Eddy, come back to the room with me. Lick me, fuck me, suck me, put those sweet fingers in my cunt, my ass. I want you to come with me; I want to come with you. Don’t bathe, don’t shower, just spread your legs for me – I love the smell, the taste of your sweat, the perfume of your cunt. I want it all. I want it now.”

  Eddy hesitated in the game to look down into Daisy’s burning, hungry eyes. There was so much hot and steamy stuff. But then she looked at the table, saw the balls still in play. “Not yet. Maybe later.”

  Eddy won the next game – making it ten to six – but her edge slipped away in the middle of the one after that and Fats ran the table clean. Then the big black woman won the next, and the next after that. Eddy felt the world slip away, felt it vanish like chalk between her fingertips, like one of Fats’s balls falling into a deep, dark, bottomless pocket.

  “Come back to the room with me,” Daisy said, whispering again in her ear. “Make my clit hard, make my juices flow. Make me scream and cry. I want to lay in bed half asleep and watch you, naked, walk to the bathroom for a drink – I
love to watch your ass jiggle, your neat little tits jiggle when you walk. You’re so beautiful.”

  She did OK with the next game. But as the seven ball sped towards the cushion Eddy felt the edge fade again; the ball bounced just short of the pocket and lazily rolled away, giving Fats the perfect opportunity to run the table.

  “Come with me, Eddy,” Daisy said, arm wrapped around her, holding Eddy close. “I want you, warm and soft in my arms. I want you in me, on me, I want to hear the way your voice changes when you come, the way you breathe quicker and quicker till it just bursts out of you in a great, wonderful sigh of release. I want to feel your cunt grab my fingers, your muscles holding on tight as the come surges up and out through you. Come on, Eddy, this is only a game.”

  Eddy stared at the table, hypnotized by the way Winthrop racked up the balls, nestling them together in momentary perfect geometry, waiting to be shattered apart and scattered across the table.

  A game . . . only a game? Absently, Eddy chalked her cue as she walked over to the table. She could just put the cue down, shake Fats’s hand and walk out into the fresh night. Maybe a cup of coffee, a cheeseburger in some diner, then back to their cheap room. A kiss, Eddy’s hand cupping Daisy’s small, firm breast; Daisy reaching down, pulling her cotton dress up and off, standing in the cool night air of the room in bra and panties. White cotton below and yellowed nylon above, holding Daisy’s perky little breasts like deep secrets. With a sly smile, she’d reach behind her back, unsnap and reveal herself – two neat puddings, pale and silky, yet firm and upswept. Nipples burning pink, like they’d been lipstick-painted.

  Then, reaching down, she’d step out of her simple cotton, revealing the uncommon beauty of her golden-coloured curls. Then she’d stand, naked in the dim light, a lithe nymph, a Kansas goddess, a strong little wheat and plains sprite.