he’d listened to her story.
He switched the razor blade to the trembling fingers of his left hand. He pressed its edge into the palm of his right. Blood welled up, and he cupped his hand to hold it.
Tanya took the razor from him. She slid it against the skin of her mound, and a crimson thread appeared alongside the scar. She lifted Jeremy’s bleeding hand. She pressed it tightly against her cut. Blood squeezed, spilling around the sides of his hand, trickling down her legs, dripping onto the towel under her spread feet.
She felt hot through the blood. Beneath her skin there seemed to be a curving ridge of bone. Jeremy kept his hand bent back as far as possible, not daring to touch what was below the ridge. But Tanya pressed his fingers upward. Into slippery folds of flesh.
“Your blood is in me,” she whispered. She was breathing hard. She was moving slightly, rubbing herself against his hand. “My blood’s in you. You’re my…lover in blood. Say it.”
Jeremy heard himself repeat the words.
She guided his hand upward, keeping it pressed to the scar. The scar felt like a narrow, puffy ribbon. His hand left a red smear as it slid up her belly, up her rib cage to her breast. Her breast was pushed upward and sideways by his moving hand. The nipple bent like springy rubber as his thumb passed over it. She slid his hand higher, and Jeremy rose to his feet. His hard penis felt trapped inside his pants, squeezed and bent.
She lifted his hand to her mouth. She kissed its cut palm. She licked the blood from it. Gazing into his eyes, she took his thumb into her mouth. She sucked and licked it clean, then did the same with each of his fingers.
“Your blood and mine,” she whispered. Her lips and chin and cheeks were dappled with it. She lowered his hand. She placed the razor blade in his palm. “Keep this with you to remember.”
“I’ll never forget.”
“I know.”
Jeremy took a handkerchief from his pocket, wrapped the blade, and closed his fingers around it, pressing the cloth to his wound.
“Go on home now,” Tanya said in a gentle voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
His throat tightened.
He was supposed to leave?
He was so turned on! So was she!
It can’t stop now!
He suddenly blurted, “But aren’t we gonna—?”
She touched a finger to his lips. “You’ll have to prove yourself first.”
“How?”
“With time. And loyalty. And courage.”
“Not tonight?”
“Not tonight. But soon, maybe.”
At the bedroom doorway he stopped and looked back at Tanya. She stood on the towels, facing him, naked and smeared with blood. “I love you,” he said.
“And I love you, Jeremy.”
He left her there.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard faint sounds of music and voices and laughter from the trollers below. He wondered if he should go down and rejoin the party.
He didn’t want to.
And Tanya had told him to go home. She hadn’t told him to go downstairs with the other trollers.
One of them might give him a ride, though.
I can walk, he told himself.
He trotted down the veranda stairs, stepped off the curb, and began to stride along the driveway.
The air smelled of pine trees. The night was not especially cold, but Jeremy shivered as he walked. His throat was tight. He squeezed his arms across his chest. The handkerchief and razor were still in his hand.
He felt so strange.
Dazed, confused, disappointed, empty, and weak.
Wrecked.
But, at the same time, elated.
He felt like leaping and shouting with joy. He felt like weeping. And somewhere in Jeremy was an odd desire to get home and hide under the covers of his bed and stay away from Fun-land and the beach and Tanya and all the trollers forever.
Twenty-eight
Gloria woke up in the backseat of her Volkswagen. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep. When she looked out the window, however, she saw that the parking lot was deserted except for three or four other cars.
So Funland was closed for the night.
With a tremor in her stomach that felt like a mixture of excitement and fear, she lifted her grocery bag. She pushed the seat back forward, opened the door, and climbed out. She locked the door. Then she headed for the main entrance of Funland.
Her day hadn’t gone as well as she’d hoped. She had succeeded in carrying out interviews, of sorts, with only three subjects: Mosby, Dink, and a woman who refused to reveal her name. She’d taped the conversations on