Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe Page 0,11

to notice anything. Ernie had once played against a quarterback who looked like Bill – no chin at all – Michigan, it was – and he got hit once and that was it for the afternoon.

"Would you join me in one?" Gillian was asking.

Ernie didn't like martinis. He didn't trust them. Anything that looks like water and tastes like fire – he knew he couldn't handle them. But that was the challenge and he nodded assent. He watched the new waitress as she walked away. Maybe there was something there, too, he thought as he watched her posterior stretching the white nylon skirt. Ernie was always working on the next one, even when he was in the middle of drumming up action. He had never discovered that man has relatively little to say about it.

"We just got in from New York," Gillian was saying. "Do you ever listen to our show? I don't blame you – it's basically for women anyway."

When the martinis arrived they were on the rocks. Gillian jiggled the glass and noticed the expression in Ernie's eyes. She jiggled the glass again and again it happened. It was as though his eyes had turned to ice. It was the same look she had seen Saturday before he turned into a raging animal. Gillian had minored in psychology at Bard, but the psychology she relied on now was something she had been born with.

"The ice cubes look nice, don't they?" she said. "Nice, just floating in the glass."

Ernie could feel the dampness on his forehead. He reached for his glass and took it in a single burning swallow. Better, better now. Gillian watched the small scene with mounting academic interest, as though once again she were observing from a concealed vantage point. She said that it might be wise to go slow on the martinis, particularly if he were not used to them.

"I'll drink what I fucking please," Ernie snarled at her.

"I was drinking when you were still using candles on yourself."

Gillian knew then she should get up and leave. She looked over at her husband's table – the men had all disappeared. She felt uneasy then, but didn't protest when Ernie ordered the last round of martinis.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" she said.

"Where's your husband?" Ernie said. "Where's old shithead off to now?"

"Is there anything you want to tell me, Ernie?"

"Why did you marry a shithead like that?" Ernie said.

"You've got to have a screw loose, marrying a shithead like that."

"Go ahead," Gillian said.

"Broads," he said. "I've fucked more broads than the sultan of Baghdad or somewhere. And I've fucked your kind before. You broads who think your ass is made of gold because you went to college."

Gillian took a drink from the fresh martini. She opened her compact and studied her lips. She knew it was time to go but, even as she thought it, she chided herself. Chicken. What can happen now?

"I've had things with broads," Ernie was saying, "things you wouldn't believe."

"How do you know, Ernie?" Gentle now. "How do you know unless you tell me?"

"I had a thing with a broad in Honolulu…." He stopped and looked around. The main room of the Plaza was all but deserted. The waitress with the nice ass was polishing glasses at the bar, laughing at something Benny the bartender was saying.

"You were telling me about Honolulu," she said.

"Mind your own fucking business," Ernie said. "You want to know what they're gonna put on my tombstone. Here lies Ernie Miklos, yes sir, here lies Ernie Miklos, he got his in Honolulu."

"Tell me about the ice cubes, Ernie," she said.

"Up my ass," he said. "That's right. That little cunt shoved it right up my ass just as I was blowing my load. She took a chunk of ice and jammed it there. She took me, all of me, and I came for it seemed like three days. 1Ithought my teeth were going to be sucked right through my prick. Oh God…."

Ernie slammed his head down against the table. The bartender and the waitress stopped the giggling and looked around as Ernie screamed again, "Oh my sweet God!" His head fell back against the wall and his eyes were closed tight. Gillian was unprepared for this display and her purse slipped off her lap onto the floor.

She reached down, and the dregs of her drink spilled down the front of her gray suit.

"Right up my ass," Ernie said softly. "What do you think of that, huh,