Wendy.”
She pulls up at Departures, and she swallows her panic. Maggie, her brother, her constant, slipping back to La-La Land. “You’ll be back, right?”
“Of course. Two weeks. Maybe less. I’m scared to bring Genai, though—one look at that handsome little hoover, and she’ll ovulate on the spot.”
“Bring her.”
“Really?” Magnus unfolds his long legs, preparing to get out. “We should do it? Have a kid?”
“Enh…,” Eva says, and they laugh. “No, I’m joking. Please, do it. God, Maggie, keep me company. Keep me sane.”
34
Portland Heights Shell
JASON
“I been thinking about this for too long,” Jason says as he bends her willing rag-doll frame over the rust-stained sink. In the mirror, her weasel eyes meet his, and she offers him a lukewarm smile that says, Go for it. He knows what she wants. He can throw it in like nobody else, doesn’t Penny always say so?
“Waiting,” he says, and he grabs around in front of her, unsnaps her jeans. “You have too.” She doesn’t help him, but she doesn’t stop him as he yanks them down to the middle of her twiggy thighs. She’s wearing a turquoise thong, the elastic spent so it hangs in loops on her hollow, sallow hips, and he gives one jerk, snaps it in his hands, throws it toward the trash can spilling over with used towels and tampon applicators.
He’s out of his own pants, and the tiny, cement-floored bathroom fills with the man-smell of him. He stops for a moment, loving the feeling of the winter air on his hot skin. He’ll give it to her so good she’ll do anything for him.
“You got something?” she asks.
“Oh, I got something,” he says, misunderstanding, rubbing it in the crease of her skinny ass. Ugly white goose pimples dot her coffee skin, so fucking cold up here at nine in the morning, on a Monday no less, talk to her boss about a job since she won’t do it for him, but you gotta do what you gotta do, he thinks. Means to a fucking end. A job, cash, Mexico…
“I don’t want a baby,” she says, and he laughs then, thinking she’s as stupid as she is homely.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” he says, because that’s not where he was headed, but she’s digging in her sweatshirt pouch for a brand-new box of rubbers, yanked from over the register out front. Might be better anyway, he thinks as she opens the box with her ugly pointy crank teeth. God knows where she’s been. A few strokes and she’ll be his, do anything he wants. He’s a stallion.
I’m doing this for you, baby. He thinks of Penny, curled up on their bed with the blinds pulled.
“Jesus!” Brandi yelps. She has one of those whiny froufrou-dog voices, and she’s writhing, trying to get away from him, but he’s got her right against the edge of the sink, can feel the front arc of his pelvic bones meeting the back of hers where she is trapped, pinned against the porcelain.
“Don’t move,” he grunts.
She’s whimpering, and he’s sawing away, this was supposed to be so fucking good, so fucking good. He yanks her sweatshirt up in the back and rears back so he can see it, that narrow brown back, dimples at the top of her ass; her showing them around the apartment every goddamn time she bends over and her jeans slip low, imagined this, and how fucking good it was going to be. He’s no cheater, he loves his Penny—with her glorious white ass like two gigantic boiled Idaho potatoes—he’s just a guy doing what guys do, bend over or get bent, he thinks.
He reaches around to grab for Brandi’s tits, pathetic little puddles under her sweatshirt that don’t feel like nothing, This was supposed to be so good, and she’s still whining like a goddamn dog who wants out.
“Shhh,” he says, but it comes out soft, so he barks, “Shut up, shut the fuck up, you want someone to hear us?”
Wasn’t she supposed to be all moaning and grinding back and screeching his name the way she did Lisle’s? Wasn’t this supposed to open doors for him? He is not too proud to pump gas.
And then she’s silent and still, which is worse. The bathroom is quiet except for the jingling of the buckles on his leather jacket with each thrust, like the impatient ringing of a doorbell in an empty house. Jason looks up, by accident catches his reflection towering over her hunched back in the fluorescent lighting, and something