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  "Where do you come from?" he finally asked.

  "I told you. Across the street," she answered, purposefully avoiding the obvious information.

  "I mean, where were you born?" he persisted.

  "Under a stairway," she told him. "In blood and pain. It was quite a shock. I almost died. In fact, that's when I died."

  "Look, sister," he submitted wearily. "I only have an hour before I catch a train. If you want to do business, okay. If not, I'd rather finish this drink alone." His chin trembled at his offer to relinquish her.

  Gloria sat very still. She drained her glass and looked at the fly of his pants. Nothing. She had scared the hard-on from between his thighs. Her head ached from the four martinis, and she knew that she'd have a hard time getting up the stairs alone. Alone. Alone. To lie in her bed and listen for footsteps.

  "I want to do business," she said meekly.

  The man didn't say another word. He pulled some crumpled bills from his pocket and paid Mike. Then he placed his hand under her elbow and helped her off the stool.

  "I live right across the street." The room was turning with carnival abandon.

  "What number?"

  "Forty-two."

  He pushed the swinging doors open for her and they were out on the dark, quiet street. They walked silently to her house.

  "The fourth floor."

  They mounted the steps wordlessly. He's not so bad when he shuts his mouth, she thought.

  At her door, she reached into her handbag and found her key. She gave it to him as she would to a fraternity date. He looked surprised, but he put the key in the lock and let them both into the apartment. The rooms were forbiddingly silent and he nervously cleared his throat. She turned on the lamp in the living room. A distorted light fell on a blue and gray canvas.

  He stood and looked at the picture. "Quite a piece of art." He rocked on his heels.

  "Shut up," she said.

  He looked shocked. "What? What did you say?"

  "Shut up. Shut up. Shut your mouth. Nothing but stupidities come out of your mouth. You have no right to be that stupid. No one has the right to be that stupid." She knew she was drunk. "I bet that you never call anyone stupid. You call them ignoramuses. I bet you have six real long words that you use for speeches and strangers."

  "You know a lot," he said. Then he pulled his hand back and slapped her across the mouth. She tasted blood and surprise, and finally excitement.

  "Do you beat your whores, stupid? Do you beat your whores and then go home and your wife beats you?" She laughed gaily.

  This time he made an enraged fist and punched her in the face. The blow was down on her jaw and she thought he must have broken something.

  "You should enjoy what I'm telling you," she pursued. "You'd have to pay an analyst a bucket of money to get this truthful observation. You have a fat stomach and a fat head and a fat brain. No brain. You are, in fact, an ignoramus. There! I'm using your word. Get the hell out of here."

  He made a mirthless grunt and pulled her arms behind her back. She felt the muscles ache with strain. He pressed his thumbs and then his hands tightly around her breasts. She thought she would faint with the pain.

  "Take your hands off me, you buffoon. You ignoramus... You disgusting, meaningless paunch."

  His hands tightened around her breasts and his knee pressed against her kidneys. She slid to the floor in agony. The man was insane with rage. He pulled his belt out of his pants and struck her hard across the stomach. She screamed with pain and then saw his bloated furious face. It was too contemptible to let that fool hear her screams for mercy.

  "Stop!" she called to him. "Stop and come down here and love me. Fuck me! Fuck me! Don't waste your strength beating me. I love your fat, sloppy belly. Press it on me." She opened her legs.

  But the man had his belt lifted for another slash, and it landed forcefully on her chest. He seemed not to hear her, not to hear anything. The Neanderthal, the preliterate man, was insulted.

  He got down on his knees beside her and roughly tore off her blouse. She thought that at last he was going to take her, then leave her with the few welts. He pulled her skirt off and she lay beside him covered only with a thin nylon bra and transparent panties. He ripped them off her body with his huge, hairless hands. The hands alone made him disgusting.

  She moved her head and was sick on the rug. There was an immediate stench of putrefied gin and she was sick again. He leaned his head close to hers and she heard him say, "Bitch! Filthy, fucking bitch."

  He stood up and looked long at her naked body where it lay limp next to the mess she'd made. He raised his leather belt and cut her thigh with a heavy stroke. He kicked her over with the pointed toe of his shoe and she felt her stomach slide against the puddle she had made.

  She was suddenly sober now, sober and bruised and wanting to die. She felt the belt lacerate her back and she could not stop the trembling of her body. The belt whistled and fell again with his brute primitive strength. It slashed crazily into her white buttocks, and then up again to her neat waist. Sometimes it curled around to nip at the puffy pink flesh between her thighs. He hit her without direction, up and down her body, sometimes missing completely and pounding the rug beside her. She knew, from occasional returning echoes, that she was screaming for help and release. His arm waved frantically above her, and the leather made a swooshing sound before it planted itself against her skin.

  There was a pause in the incessant beating, and then she heard the dimly familiar buzz of a sliding zipper. She waited to feel her body turned over, but he apparently enjoyed the network of red slashed on her bottom and back.

  She crossed her arms in front of her and leaned her cheek against the soft upper arm, like a child asleep. The pain separated her from her body. She was nothing but a creature lying achingly in filth on the floor – a creature from a nightmare. Her face against her arm was wet with tears. How strange that she had cried. Her body had its habits of response, and a blow produced tears. But all the whipping had accomplished was to stop the buzzing in her cunt, and now he would take her when she had passed the threshold of feeling.

  His hands grasped her belly and thigh. He was trying to lift her buttocks to a comfortable height. Business before pleasure. His thumbs pressed her scarred behind, and she jumped with pain.

  She could still know more agony; she thought he had finished her.

  His fingers crawled between her legs to her soft, dry pubic hairs. He kneaded the mound of sensitive flesh and she writhed in response. She tried to find her voice to insult him, preferring his enraged blows to his groping tenderness. But her voice belonged to her body, and neither belonged to her. His finger pierced the futile tension of her inner flesh. She could feel his knuckle scraping against her, measuring the capacity of her vagina. He grunted his excitement. Pig. Fat, knuckle-mad, cunt-mad pig. The words did not escape from her, and she thought with ecstasy, I'm afraid. Afraid of Mr. Pig, and her body crouched closer to the floor.

  He lifted her higher with an angry and impatient gesture, and said, "Stay the way I put you, sister, if you want to live."

  But she didn't want to live, and she sank her body to the floor.

  He slapped her hard across her inflamed buttocks and lifted her body in a high arch. This time it stayed that way for him, suspended like a Gothic doorway. Her body trembled in its taut position, and he kneeled behind her, relishing her discomfort. Finally, his passion exceeded his brief sadism and she felt him ram his stiff cock into her. He moved in and out against her motionless buttocks, gasping into the silent room.

  "Ahh," he moaned. "You cunts are all alike. You love it when we get it in. You love it more than we do."

  She dug her chin into her passive arm and offered him her still body.

  "So I'm screwing a corpse," he laughed. "So I'm screwing a corpse."

  His belly and balls slapped against her unresisting ass. Then he pumped faster and tighter into her, his prick swelling in her grasping envelope. She felt th
e pressure climb within her, and then he grabbed her belly and rocked frantically as he came. He came as if it would be the last time, every fuck the last time, and her heart chilled with detachment. He released her and she discovered her exhaustion. She sank into the rug and the room spun out of existence.

  Her faint could have lasted only a few minutes, and she opened her eyes to his rampant pawing of her breasts and thighs and cunt. He was breathing his liquored breath against her neck and squeezing her with the ecstasy of possession.

  "Feel that," he urged her. "Feel that."

  She reached her hand behind her and found his stiff, eager prick with her palm.

  "None of this one-shot business for old Charley," he gloated. "I'm gonna fuck you all night, sister. I'm good for another six rounds."

  She began to cry her repugnance. With horror, she imagined that she would spend the rest of her life on the soiled rug, fainting and being taken by the insatiable boor, and fainting again. The room didn't spin any more, and she was relentlessly sober. She pretended unconsciousness, but he continued to squeeze her body. Then he twisted her head and forced her mouth open. He pried at her teeth with drunken energy and howled vulgarly, "I'll buy! This pony is good for another six fucks." He moved up and forced his cock into her mouth. He thrust in and out for a few minutes before letting it pop free.

  "You're a pig," she managed to whisper.

  "What? I didn't hear you baby. You think old Charley's a pretty good lay? I been around. Used to having women getting on their knees for me to fuck them. Charley never leaves a lady in distress." He howled his American Legion laugh.

  She was too scared to call him a pig again.

  She moved her head to the side and saw a bottle of gin on the floor beside her. He had found her liquor cabinet. She heard him swallow and wondered if he would kill her.

  He turned her over on her back and sat his fat ass on her stomach. "You're the best little horse I ever bought. A real bucking mare." His prick was pointing to the ceiling, and he straddled her body and moved towards her mouth again. "Suck old Charley," he cajoled. "Be a good obedient mare and suck daddy Charley."

  She closed her eyes as he pressed his ramrod into her lax mouth. She held it between her lips like a stubborn, spoiled child refusing to swallow his spinach. But good old Charley was undaunted. He pressed forward and back on her face, using her mouth as he had her cunt. He used her as he would a life-sized sponge with a few openings. But he was not a man for strenuous exercise, and he grew tired of his joggling motion.

  Her eyes were still closed, and she opened them only when he lifted his body and lay beside her. His face and the whites of his eyes were delicately laced with red. He looked apoplectic, as if he might suddenly spit up all the blood in his head and die before her. She wished he would die. He seemed to pass out for a moment, and she realized how drunk he was. But his prick still stood high and urgent in the air. He came to with an impatient shaking of his head, got up and staggered about the room. She could not take her fascinated eyes off his stiff cock, which seemed to have an independently rigid life.

  He rushed to her when he understood her mocking eyes, and seemed unsure of himself for the first time since he had removed his belt and beat her.

  She lowered her eyes to his thin, frail, white, blue-veined legs that supported his enormous trunk and started to giggle at the horror, humiliation, and stupidity of the evening. He stood furious next to her and kicked her prostrate form. But the kick lacked the enthusiasm and conviction it had had one hour ago. He reached for the half-empty bottle of gin and put the thin neck of the bottle against his lips.

  I must remember to throw the bottle away.

  The hot liquor seemed to renew his assurance. "Get on your knees, you cunt," he commanded.

  She looked at him with disdain, and he roughly twisted her body around. She lay flat, her knees, her thighs, her stomach, her flattened breasts, her shoulders and hair touching the carpet. He kneeled behind her and pulled her body into the arch he elected for fucking. She did not resist him, did not really acknowledge that he was there behind her.

  "I'm gonna do something I've always wanted to do, baby. But I never met a slut I dared to do it with. I'm gonna dig so deep into your ass, you'll taste my come on your tongue."

  He slapped her blood-smeared buttocks, and without pause or warning, jabbed his prick into the narrow crevice between her buttocks. A remarkable pain inflamed her body and she screamed. He laughed wildly and smashed his cock into her rear again, the pain intensifying with each push of his body. She began to rotate her hips wildly to make him come by the next thrust. But he had the hard control of a drunk and he thumped into her narrow hole with shrieks of pleasure. He reached his hand around her jumping hips and felt for her cunt. It was dry – a desert of despair. His fingers found her shrunken clitoris, and he grubbily massaged it. To her shock, she felt the drops of sensuality flowing onto his fingertips. She could not be sure if her body was moving with terror or desire. He raised the stubborn dot of clitoris and pinched it cruelly. Her body was a flame of pain from her waist to her tired knees. He smashed against her, forcing her chin roughly to the rug. His free hand found the nipple of one hanging breast. His nails were like teeth against the stiff red flesh. Her body sang its captivity, and she swung eagerly against him. His hands busily tensed her nipples and cunt. Then he lunged into her with a final howl and removed his hands without warning. Her abused body thumped to the ground. His prick was shrinking inside her as he released a final spurt of sperm, and the smoky liquid seemed to flow to her tongue. Her mouth was full of the taste of him, and with a terrible moan of defeat, she came.

  He was motionless beside her, and she saw that he had really passed out. He looked dead. She lay gasping for breath for a few minutes, and then swallowed a mouthful of the raw gin. It slid hot down her chest and gave her an instant's strength. She shook the lifeless form. He did not respond at all. She kicked him hard with her foot, but he was deeply, profoundly unconscious. The hated face was turned up with impotent calm. Instead of the vicious attacker he had been to her, he resembled a stupefied whale. She remembered her body's deceit and kicked him in disgust. She wanted to get into her bed and sleep, sleep for a hundred hours. But she could not sleep with this senseless bulk on the studio floor.

  Gloria walked to her bathroom and washed her tear-stained, sick-stained face. She took a paisley dressing gown off the door hook and moved her pained body into it. The robe stuck to her hips and buttocks, and she knew that the blood he had drawn was still flowing. She brushed her hair from her face and caught it at the nape of her neck with a tortoise shell clip. Her face was fatigued and bruised, but younger than it had been in the morning. She was not thinking of the rapist, not thinking of anything but getting that bulk off the living room floor.

  She walked back to him, to find him still stretched out, motionless and stupid. Some spittle ran down the corner of his chin, and he snored with a wet, gurgling sound. She reached down and took him by his two bare feet. His huge shape formed its own fulcrum, and she turned him like a top toward the door.

  She opened the hall door and made sure that the house was still and empty. With tremendous effort, she pulled his body into the hall; it was naked and ludicrous in the tiled dark passage. She did not want his sprawling form snoring outside her apartment, so she dragged him down the steps feet-first to the second-story landing. His head jumped with a hollow sound at each step.

  You're going to miss your train, Charley. You may never run to catch another train.

  She left him on the second floor and dashed noiselessly up to her apartment. The door was standing open. She grabbed his underwear, his shoes and socks, pants and jacket, shirt and tie, and holding them wide in her arms, rushed to the landing where he lay. He was covered with spit, his penis little and pink on his thigh. She dropped the clothes on his unconscious figure and rushed quickly to the fourth floor. She slammed the door behind her and nervously latched the safety lock. She breathed in hysteric
al little gasps and putting her palm automatically to her forehead, found it burning with fever. Well, I'm sick, she thought. I've been trying to die, but I've only managed to get sick. For the first time, she did not think of her search for the white-eyed violator. All she wanted was to get her throbbing body between the sheets of her bed.

  She walked towards the bedroom and saw the bottle of gin lying empty on its side. Next to the bottle was Charley's belt. She had not noticed it in her mad grab for his clothes. She picked the belt up and studied it. It was long, to circle his ridiculous girth. There were six holes on the pointed end of the belt, and a silver buckle that was initialed C. D. on the other side. The leather was worn shiny, and it was stained with blood where it had struck her.

  A well-earned souvenir. I'll keep Charley's belt as a souvenir.

  She dragged herself tiredly to bed, holding onto the belt as if for support with both hands.

  CHAPTER VIII

  That night Gloria had a dream. It was exact in every detail and went back eleven years to her adolescence. Her brain had retained a photographic image of the school she had gone to, the clothes she had worn, the length of her hair, the feel of her shoes, the smell and color of the school corridors. In the dream, she went to a moment she had never left. She walked out of her geometry class into the student- filled corridor without a glimmer of the years that followed. So this walk would exist forever. Every act was a final one. She went from geometry to the lunchroom, as was her habit. The clock said five minutes to twelve, which was the right time. In the cafeteria, she moved surely to the table where she ate her lunch every day. She opened the brown paper bag she held and saw that her mother had prepared sandwiches from last night's roast lamb. It was what she had expected for lunch ... or had her mother told her? Gloria bit into the dark bread and a blob of ketchup fell on the table. She knew that the red stain made her a criminal, that her body was no longer innocent. She chewed her sandwich methodically. At ten minutes to one, she would have to be in music class. The music teacher had a red wig and was very sensitive about lateness. She must have had a boyfriend who was twenty years late in calling. Someone said, "Hello, Gloria," and she looked up see Margaret moving into the chair opposite her.