picked her up in his arms and walked up the wall to the roof. The action amused her, and she stroked his cock through his ill-made proletarian pants. Once atop the roof, he took off his black-market quilted jacket from Manchukuo and laid it down. The street artist dragged her Levi's off over her work boots, lay down on the jacket, and gave her strange little giggle again. He took off his shoes and pants, and dropped to his knees between her legs. The scent of rut reached him, and he felt a tide of blood flush his skin, blast through the roof of his skull, and carry him away to someplace else.
What followed was fast and brutal, and by the time the act was over, his clothes were in shreds, and there were a couple dozen cuts on his back. Panting for breath and faintly sick to his stomach, he felt as if he'd been hit by a truck loaded with pheremones.
Shad got painfully to his feet and started dragging his clothes on. The girl looked up at him gleefully and started rolling around on the roof, skinny pale legs and buttocks contrasting with the heavy coat shed never taken off. He picked up his Manchukuoian jacket and shrugged it on. He felt a chill and stole a little heat from the still autumn night, his cloud of darkness rising above the building as he drank in scarce photons.
He wondered if this was what she'd had in mind all along, if this was why she'd been following him around. Maybe she had a crush on him.
Funny way to show a crush, though.
The street artist came up behind him, put her arms around his waist. She pressed herself very close behind him and began rocking back and forth, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. Her hands rubbed lower, pressing over his cock.
"I have an apartment near here," he said. "You mind if we go there, or does this have to happen out of doors?" She didn't appear to care one way or another. Shad picked her up, covered them both with darkness, and went straightline, up and over buildings, till he came to his own illegal loft. He snapped on the light for which he stole electricity from Peoples' Edison. The street artist was already on the bed, legs parted, arms stretched out.
Shad looked down at the naked vulva and the skinny legs in their heavy boots. Little stones from the flat tar roof were still clinging to her skin. "Not much time for romance in your life, huh?" he said. He bent down, began undoing bootlaces. "Let's at least get these off, okay?"
The second act was only a little less frenzied than the first, and afterward Shad lay facedown on the bed while she carefully licked the blood from the wounds she'd clawed into him. It had become obvious by now that she didn't bathe very often. He got her into his shower and scrubbed her down while she made little bubbling sounds and did a kind of dance, arms over her head, spinning around and around on her toes while the warm water splashed down around her.
When he handed her one of his threadbare proletarian towels, she raised it to her nose and took a suspicious sniff before she used it. Naked, her hair wet, her thin body looked maybe all of twelve years old. Great, Shad thought, now he'd added pedophilia to his list of crimes.
He took his billfold out of his pocket and took out the photo he'd carefully cut out of a 1988 issue of the New York Herald and Worker that he'd found in the library. He showed it to her. "This is where I'd like to go," he said. "Ellis Island. The Rox. Okay?"
She took the picture, looked at it without interest, then handed it back to him. She climbed into his narrow bed, curled up, and closed her eyes.
He sat down on the edge of the cot and looked down at her. Her body was covered with scars and calluses, and there was a big yellow bruise on one shoulder. What looked like a long knife slash ran down the side of one thigh. Shad traced the scar with his finger, and sadness welled up the back of his throat.
"Shit, girl," he said, "you don't have to live like this. Even in my world we can find somebody to take care of you. Hell, I'll take care of you.