Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe Page 0,53

fucking is dirty and you shouldn't do it but only once a month. Only when you have to. Fucking is the curse God gave us because of Mother Eve. Only Agnes never laughs."

"I won't laugh, honey," Gillian said.

But composure was difficult, especially with Paddy going on about Agnes. Then he was telling her how his name was really Walter, Walter Madigan, and that Paddy was given to him by his manager. And how it somehow seemed to fit with Agnes because her name really was Bridget Murphy before they were married and that she had changed her name to Agnes because her cousins told her that Bridget was too old-fashioned and too Irish. Then he told her about being in the Seabees during World War II, just a kid, and when he heard his outfit was going to Guam, he began wetting his bed, even though Guam was secured.

His tiny penis had made him shy of girls, he told her. There was a slut in San Francisco who said he was the only guy she had ever met who drove a tack with a sledgehammer. He had beaten that girl black and blue, and his manager had to pay her a thousand dollars just to keep her big mouth shut. And there was a girl in the Bronx who said it was so small she couldn't even bite it, and he had knocked out her two upper front teeth and that had cost $500.

Paddy began crying again.

Gillian's hand stroked his shoulder and then once again the ludicrousness of the situation struck home. She tried to hold back the giggle, but most of it escaped.

Paddy reached up then and slapped her across the face. That did it. Gillian's head made an arch to the pillow and she started to cry then. It was the first time she had ever been struck by a man. It wasn't the humiliation, though, that prompted the tears. It was the pain. Paddy had caught her a good one.

"Please don't cry," he was saying. "Please don't, missus."

It was no use. His words were almost a prayer, but they ran together and they seemed to come from a great distance. Gillian tried to look up at Paddy but his face appeared blurred, the face seen through a window in a rainstorm.

"Please, please, please," he was saying. "I'll make it right."

She felt him then, reaching under her and slowly massaging her buttocks. Wondering what the point of all this was, she didn't resist. She allowed Paddy to spread her legs, and his fingers found the dampness there and he stroked and crooned and she spread the legs even farther. Then, with a last quick cry, Paddy's face lowered itself into the darkness and Gillian crooned. She found herself holding onto the back of his head, guiding it, pressing it, and the tears went away.

It was nearly dark. Paddy felt as though he were waking from a long sleep but his eyes hadn't closed once. The time had gone somewhere and he hadn't been aware of its passing. Gillian had gone, too, and he hadn't known that either.

His manager had known the truth about Paddy. Maybe he was the only one besides Paddy to discover it. They both knew that Paddy Madigan fought out of desperation alone. "He's got a heart the size of a pea," the manager had told Agnes after that last fight, "but he's so scared that he fights like hell – that's what he's always had going for him."

Agnes had accepted this truth without comment. Her one reaction was to purchase a small Japanese pistol for self-protection. Paddy thought of that pistol as he struggled from the bed and smoothed it with faltering fingers. He could feel his desperation come to life again. He stumbled into the living room and groped through the closet under the stairs where Agnes kept her pistol.

Paddy was shaking then, saying words that only he and his God could understand. He grabbed at a chair, then threw it away from him and knelt down before the crucifix. He stared at the image of Christ on the cross for more than a minute, and then he turned away from it and faced the tinted picture of Agnes. He blessed himself with the right hand, forgetting that the pistol was clasped within that hand.

"Bless me, Agnes, for I have sinned," he began.

The wind, which bore only a tinge of its Canadian origin, had blown the loose leaves from the backyard toward the