The Black Train

CHAPTER NINE

I

Collier had passed out in his bed the minute he’d returned to the inn, and when his alarm went off at six o’clock, his brain felt like a lump of garbage. Shiiiiiiiiit, he thought. Bad judgment was one thing, but now he was truly beginning to suspect he might be a serious alcoholic. I got trashed in a gay bar, he remembered. And I have a date tonight…

The shower shocked him awake. He was still half drunk and half hungover when he struggled into his clothes. The memories crept back…

Jiff turning tricks at the bar, and…

Those two little girls with the dog…

Mary and Cricket; he remembered their names. As he brushed his teeth and gargled he tried to convince himself it was all a dream he’d had when he’d passed out but he knew he’d only be lying to himself. No doubt they were two sisters from a poor family.

They had to be.

Collier spat foam into the toilet; several more gargles couldn’t dispel the hangover taste. Next he stuck his mouth directly under the faucet and filled his belly with water.

Then he remembered that little dog—the feisty mutt—and what he thought he’d seen it doing as he left…

Collier shoved it from his head and left his room but before he could take his first step down the hall, he stopped.

Sniffed the air…

Is it my imagination, he wondered sourly, or do I smell urine? He frowned and walked away.

Sluggish steps took him down. No sign of anyone in the lobby, but then he recalled that Jiff and the rest of his family lived in the rear wing.

Where am I going?

Two hallways branched off the east side of the lobby but both appeared to be rental rooms. Instead he slipped out an exit door into the backyard. He looked down a line of sliding-glass doors, hoping for a clue. If he saw guests, then he’d know it was the wrong wing. He took an adjacent footpath that allowed him to get a look through each glass door without appearing conspicuous. A large spiny bush sat at the end of the wing, and as he was about to pass it, to the next wing, he heard:

“Shit! Come on, girl!”

Jiff’s voice, for sure, but where was it coming from?

“Hold still, Lottie—Jesus!”

Collier turned back and noticed the last unit’s door was opened all the way, while the screen door was closed, and a quick glance into the room showed him…

A face. A big face.

Collier rubbed his eyes. It looks like…George Clooney. He frowned till his vision sharpened and then realized it was indeed the face of the Hollywood star. A poster, he realized. It was tacked to the wall. Clooney’s big smile and big white teeth shot through the screen door larger than life. What the hell’s a poster of George Clooney doing in there?

“Tighter…” Jiff’s voice again. It was coming from the room.

This must be the family’s wing after all. At first he thought that he was likely looking into Lottie’s room, and that she was a Clooney fan but if so, why Jiff’s voice?

Collier took one step to the side, which increased his vantage point. The shock of what he saw so suddenly almost knocked him into the bush.

No, no, no, no, no, he thought.

Lottie had her shorts off, her bare legs spread in a V as she stood bent over at the waist. Was she wearing a man’s shirt? Jiff, also nude from the waist down, stood right behind her, his hands on her hips. His tight, muscled buttocks slowly pumped.

“Shit, Lottie, you could at least have some hair on your ass—”

Collier thought he’d seen everything when he’d witnessed one of Jiff’s tricks at the bar. He was wrong.

“Damn, cain’t you make your butthole tighter?”

No, no, no, no, no, Collier thought again. More than the jolt of incest was the mere ludicrousness of the scene. Now he understood that it was Jiff’s room, and he’d positioned his sister quite deliberately: so that he could gaze at the Clooney poster while he sodomized her.

Next, Jiff muttered, “Yeah…”

Collier’s brain told him to walk quietly away, but how could he? He’d been quite the Peeping Tom of late. He continued to watch, peering just around the bush.

“Tighter—yeah…”

Jiff’s stokes slowed, then stopped.

“Thanks, Lottie. Shit, I needed that. Them johns at the bar got me all gunned up. Turned me three tricks today.”

The outrageous scene was over quite nonchalantly. I do not believe it, Collier thought. Jiff perfunctorily pulled his pants back on, then got to tying up his bootlaces, while Lottie threw the shirt into a laundry hamper and redonned her shorts. Collier saw now that she wore a tight, nipple-revealing Tennessee Titans T-shirt. She sat down on the bed, brushing her hair back.

Jiff disappeared for a few moments, apparently to wash his hands, then strutted back into view. “Aw, dang, that’s right, I forget to tell ya. After I got done doin’ Richard in the lounge, I come out to get myself a beer, and guess who I see sittin’ right up at the bar? Mr. Collier hisself.”

Lottie’s eyes shot wide, and she mouthed No!

“Ain’t kiddin’. Like ta shit my pants when I saw that. The Prince’a Beer throwin’ ’em back with Buster, Barry, Donny, and the rest of ’em. I snuck out the back so’s he wouldn’t see. But I never would’a thunk in a coon’s age that he was gay.”

Lottie burst into a round of silent giggles, all the while shaking her head.

“What? You sayin’ he ain’t? Then what’s he doin’ drinkin’ at the Spike? He’s gotta be queer.”

Lottie just kept shaking her head, mouthing No he’s not, no he’s not!

Jiff gave her a stern look. “Don’t tell me you got it on with him!”

Lottie kept smiling, then grabbed a piece of candy off Jiff’s dresser and began to unwrap it.

“Hey! That’s my Chunky!”

Lottie gave him the finger, then opened her hand.

“Oh, right. Here.” Jiff gave her a five-dollar bill. “Thanks.”

Five bucks! Collier outraged. What a rip-off!

It just kept getting nuttier. This really is a different world. Collier slipped away and went back into the inn. His watch told him he only had fifteen minutes. I can’t ask Jiff to borrow his car when he just got done having anal sex with his SISTER, he lamented. Back in the lobby, Mrs. Butler’s old face beamed up.

“Got’cher self a hot date, huh, Mr. Collier?”

Unbelievable. “Actually, yes.”

“Well I hope ya have a wonderful time.” Mrs. Butler was clearly braless again, this time beneath a sleeveless snap-front blouse that shined iridescent pink.

“Thanks, Mrs. Butler.”

Her pose at the desk proffered a wedge of creamy cleavage. Unbidden, Collier’s brain put a younger woman’s head on her shoulders. “Oh, I did want to ask. Are there any other towns nearby?”

“Oh, sure. Roan’s not ten miles west, and they got some nice restaurants there—”

“No, I meant—well, are there any poor towns nearby. Run-down, low-income areas? The reason I ask is because when I was coming back earlier, I saw these two young girls in the woods, and they simply struck me as not from around here. Like girls from a ghetto or something.”

Mrs. Butler looked perplexed. An unconscious finger traced the edge of her blouse top. “None too many poor folk ’cos here. Mostly just old money and ritzy tourist places.”

“No trailer parks or anything like that, low-income housing?”

“No, you’d have to get out a speck for that…Two girls you say?”

“Yes. Sisters. They were playing by a ravine on the hill out here.” The more Collier explained, the sillier he felt. What’s my point, anyway? “And, well, they had a dog—a little mutt—that looked like the one I asked you about earlier.”

“I had Lottie’n Jiff look high’n low for any dogs that might’a snuck in but they didn’t find none,” she said. “None’a the other guests seen it either.”

When Collier thought of mentioning the other oddity—the sisters’ reference to the finger clips—he suddenly determined: Forget it! “Never mind. It was just sort of odd. I was wondering something else, though. Do you…have a car I could borrow for a few hours?”

In the parking lot, Collier winced like someone who’d just discovered their fly open. Mrs. Butler’s “car” was a dented Chevy pickup truck that couldn’t have rolled off the production line after 1955. Rust riddled the flat-black paint like eczema. It looks like that hunk of shit on the Beverly Hillbillies…He glanced, next, to the lime-sherbet Bug, sighed, and got into the truck anyway.

The dashboard had holes where most of the gauges should be. I asked for it, I got it, he reminded himself. He jammed the wobbly three-speed shifter, backed out of the lot, and headed for Cusher’s.

Whenever he looked in the rearview, he saw a sheen of blue smoke following him. Nothing happened when he turned on the radio. Another smart move by me. But at least on the main drag he got fewer looks of hilarity than his airport rental.

At the intersection, a tap on the glass startled him; then the passenger door was creaking open.

Dominique slid in.

“Hi! Right on time…” She assayed the vehicle’s interior. “Isn’t this the truck Mrs. Butler’s father bought to celebrate Eisenhower’s election?”

“I’m sure it is,” Collier groaned. When he looked at her, though, he felt like someone in an inner tube floating at a sudden swell in the surf. Oh my God she’s so beautiful…

Dominique wore a white satin summer skirt with rosette accents and a lacy white bra-cami. The top ran down to just an inch above the skirt’s hem, providing a gap from which her navel could peek. She couldn’t have looked more classily casual. Just below the hollow of her throat, the silver cross flashed.

Collier attempted an explanation. “My rental car looks—”

“Yeah, I heard. Some funky green thing like in a cartoon.” She tossed her head, the predusk sunlight shining orange off each separate strand of hair. “But it’s actually kind of fun riding in a car this old. A whole lot of butts have sat on this seat.”

Collier chuckled. “I never thought of it that way. Posterity measured by posteriors.”

“So how was your day?” she asked, and seemed to be examining her nail polish.

Collier drove through town, frowning each time the truck hiccupped smoke. “Great,” he lied.

“Get much work done on your book?”

“Oh, yeah,” he lied again. What could he say? I got drunk in a gay bar, passed out in the woods, then watched an act of incest. “The book’s nearly done, and I’m happy to say I’ll make the deadline. Speaking of which…”

At the next light, he extracted the permission form from his wallet. “All I need is you to sign this release. It gives me your permission to comment on your beer.”

She signed it without even reading most of it. “This is wonderful. Now more people will know about it than these yokels—Oh, where are we going for dinner?”

Good question. “Since I’m new in town, how about you make the choice?”

“Do you like Korean?”

“Love it.” Collier hated Korean cuisine. It always sat in his belly like a corrosive.

“Good. There’s a great little Korean joint at the edge of town. You’d think you were eating in Seoul it’s so authentic.”

Don’t they eat dog in Seoul? Collier didn’t care—he was with her. They chatted about beer as he followed her instructions to a tiny restaurant squeezed between a hardware store and—Collier raised a brow—a dog salon. An aroma strong as a stench greeted them once they entered: spiced cabbage and lemon grass. But Collier knew it was a good sign that every other patron in the place was Asian. “The bulgogi is terrific,” Dominique enthused at their booth, “but so is the bibimbop. I can never decide which to order.”

“I happen to love both of those, too,” Collier lied, “so why don’t we order both and split them?”

“You’re so accommodating!”

“And since we’re both beer snobs,” he continued, “I guess it’s OB.”

“I like OB with Korean food. It’s probably my favorite Asian beer that’s not brewed here on a license,” she was quick to add. “Oh, and it’s great with rice.”

You’re great with rice, Collier dopily thought. He couldn’t believe he’d been given this opportunity. As one of the most credible beer writers in the country, Collier never needed to be told that genuine brewmasters knew more about beer than anyone, including him. He gauged her plain but vibrant beauty as she perused the menu for appetizers. Why couldn’t I have met her ten years ago? he scorned himself. Why couldn’t I have NEVER met Evelyn and met Dominique instead? We’d be the perfect match. We have everything in common…

The glittering cross around her neck suggested otherwise.

When the waitress arrived with their beers, Dominique said, “Here comes my one beer of the day.”

Collier sulked within himself. How many had he had today? Jesus…“I’ll have to try your method some time,” he said. “That is if I have the willpower. That’s never been my strong suit.”

“It wasn’t mine, either, until…” She half smiled and half smirked. “Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

Collier didn’t get it. “What?”

“You’ll think I’m Holy Rolling you again.”

“Go ahead and Holy Roll me.”

“Okay.” She took a sip of beer. “Nobody has willpower, not on their own. God knows we have weaknesses that are destructive, so that’s why he gives us an out. I’m not just talking about salvation, I’m talking about the shit we’ve got to bear while we’re here—”

I love it when she says shit, Collier mused.

“Half the apostles were probably alcoholics and whoremongers before they met Jesus. So what did they do?”

“I…don’t know.”

“They gave their burdens to God,” she said very casually, “and were freed. That’s what I did.”

Collier unwrapped his chopsticks. “How do you give away a weakness?”

“Ask God, that’s all. And he’ll answer.” She shook her head. “You should’ve seen me in college. I was an asshole, I was a tramp. I couldn’t tell you how many scumbag guys I had sex with. Every night was a party: beer, booze, dope, and sex.”

Her candid talk astounded him…and the gutter that was his mind tried to picture the scenario. It was thrillingly crude.

“I was so hungover in college,” she admitted, “I don’t know how I ever graduated. Don’t know how I managed to not get pregnant, either. I’d read things about myself on bathroom walls, and the worst part was”—she shot him a cunning look—“they were all true.”

Collier felt impacted and aroused at the same time.

“Then one day it occurred to me that I was letting my weaknesses destroy a child of God. So I asked God to relieve me of my burdens so that I could one day find salvation, and he did.”

“Is it that simple?” Collier asked, then noticed that his own beer was half drained already. He knew he was only listening in part, but trying to act like she had his full attention.

“It’s not like rubbing a magic lamp and then the genie grants your wish, no. Look at it this way. God’s forgiveness is a million times bigger than our sins, so we’re covered. You just have to do some stuff in return.”

Collier wanted to make out with her under the table, on the floor. In my case, he thought, God’s forgiveness would have to be TWO million times bigger than my sins. Suddenly his falseness seemed as solid as the chair he sat on. If human beings really did have auras, he knew that his was black with lust. Say something, you moron…“Stuff in return? What kind of stuff? Go to church? Give to charity?”

“No, no. Deeper than that,” she said. She crunched on some spicy bamboo shoots and pickled radishes. “That’s between you and God. But it’s like charging on your credit card. You have to pay for it someday. And declaring bankruptcy doesn’t cut it.”

Her analogies were interesting. He wanted to be engaging, he wanted to be involved with what enlivened her, but his lust nagged at him. And that’s when the truth hit him, rearranging her own words: My lust is a million times bigger than my desire to be forgiven…

Every time he looked at her bosom, his eyes were repelled by the cross, like a vampire.

“But enough of that,” she said, beaming. “Here comes our dinner.”

The waitress set down fragrant, steaming entrees. They’d also ordered a dish of squid flanks in scarlet hot sauce. “Be careful with that.” She pointed a chopstick to the latter. “It’ll torch you up.”

Collier was already torched up, by the lust boiling over in his psyche, which only made him feel more fake, more despicable. She could pick a phony like me out in a crowd, he knew. The worst thing I can do is pretend…He tried a piece of some kind of sweet barbecued beef. “Great bibimbop.”

“That’s bulgogi.”

“Ah, of course. It’s been a while for me.” The bibimbop looked like a hodgepodge of greens and meat submerged in broth, with a half-cooked egg on top. He tried some squid instead, which was tender, delicious, and—

“Wow, that’s really—” He chugged his entire glass of water.

“I told you it was hot. It’s better to eat it with some rice.”

Collier followed her lead with the food, eating it in the same way.

“So how was your lunch with the venerable J.G. Sute?”

“Do I detect sarcasm in your tone?” he asked after his mouth cooled.

“Just a tad,” she laughed. “He’s a legend in his own time—just ask him. Actually he’s quite a nice man, and he does know more than anyone about this area’s importance during the Civil War.”

“Well, his knowledge of regional history seems very detailed,” Collier said. “But I wasn’t asking him as much about the war as I was—”

“About the house,” she guessed. “And the legends. The cursed fields, the murdered slaves. The mansion of evil, and Harwood Gast and his railroad to hell.”

“Sute told me it was built privately by Gast, with his own funds.”

“Funds that were never depleted, by the way,” she added.

Collier remembered. “Oh, yes, he talked about that, too. So what did he pay his men with? They weren’t all slaves.”

“No. The white workers on his crew were paid a small fortune, and the slaves were well clothed, well equipped, and well fed—all thanks to Gast’s money.”

“So how did he buy the materials? All that track and railroad ties, spikes, tools, supply cars?”

“Nobody knows.” Dominique smiled. “Some say Gast sold his soul to the devil.”

The word flagged him. “And you said that there really is a devil.”

“Um-hmm.”

“So if there really is a devil, maybe people really do sell their souls to him.”

“People sell their souls to the devil every day, for a whole lot less.”

Collier found that if he ate the food without looking at it, it was much less radical. When Dominique excused herself for the restroom, his gaze covered the back of her body as effectively as a paint roller. He ordered another beer from the waitress and had her take the other bottle after draining it, then drank the new bottle down to the first bottle’s level. Yeah, that’ll fool her, all right…

When he saw Dominique coming back, he dug his fingernails hard into his leg. Don’t look at her boobs anymore, you sexist pile of shit! Instead, he sensed her breasts riding ever so slightly in the clinging cami-top.

“What were we talking about?” she asked. “Oh, yeah. Deals with the devil.”

But the idea seemed to taint the power of the legend. Could it really be that bland? “Satanism, then. The Gast myth is just a painted-up version of that?”

“Probably. Inventing stories is part of our nature, I guess—as the highest animal. Detractors of religion say the same thing about Christianity. It’s just a caveman legend: the savior comes and plucks the good people out of their hellhole existence and takes them to paradise.”

“A fair point, for people who consider religion objectively.”

“Of course it is. But seeing is believing. Those detractors never get a chance to really see, because they don’t believe in anything strong enough to ask to be shown. They believe in concrete and steel and Ford and Mercedes. They believe in Starbucks and Blockbuster and Super Bowl Sunday and reality TV. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are all the saviors they need. And their paychecks, of course. All that shit in their lives prevents them from seeing anything everlasting.”

“Money and fashion is the new god?”

“The new golden calf,” she said. When she crossed her ankles under the table, her toes brushed his leg. “Sorry. Wasn’t trying to kick you.”

Baby, you can kick me anytime you want…and I’d LIKE it… “So with your caveman analogy, and objectively speaking, we create ghost stories because we’ve always been intrigued by them—”

“Not just intrigued. We need them,” she said. A squid tentacle slipped between her lips into her mouth. “Cavemen wanted to believe there were ghosts, because the idea reinforced ancient myths of the afterlife.”

Collier’s brow furrowed.

“Not only are ghosts proof of an afterlife, but they’re also proof of a netherworld—or hell. If the caveman really believes there are ghosts haunting the woods, what else can they be but unsaved spirits? And if there are unsaved spirits, then surely there must be saved spirits, too. Follow the code and you go to heaven. Don’t follow the code, and you’re a ghost prowling the woods at night.”

Collier tried to make more observations without being the devil’s advocate. “So…not objectively speaking?”

“I don’t worry about it because I see the reality of God every day.”

“What does that look like, exactly?”

“You have to ask God to see, Justin,” she nearly exclaimed. “It’s personal. It’s between God and the individual. If I say anything more, I’ll only sound like a Holy Roller again. I don’t have to explain why I believe that Christ is my Savior—”

“No, no, I wasn’t asking you to do that,” Collier hastened. “I understand that it is personal.” He feared the conversation was growing too touchy. If he touted any serious Christian ideals himself, Dominique would smell him out as a fake. “I believe in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount and all that. My problem is following them. Back to what we were talking about earlier. Weakness.”

She just looked at him and nodded. “Humans aren’t strong—not since Eve bit the apple. That’s why God gives us an out. We either find it or we don’t.”

He tried to assimilate. “Then what did Harwood Gast find? You say that you know there’s a God because you’ve seen evidence of him in your life—”

“Sure. A bunch of times.”

“So if you know there’s a God, then you know there’s a heaven, and if you know there’s a heaven, then you know there’s a hell?”

She laughed. “Yeah.”

“So then maybe all those cotton fields are cursed. Maybe the Gast House really is haunted, and maybe Harwood Gast genuinely made a pact with the devil, or, well, a demon, which is what Sute suggested. Maybe all those stories are true.”

She shrugged. “I agree with the possibility.”

“So what about you? I believe you when you say you’ve seen evidence of God in your life. Have you ever seen any evidence of anything else?”

Her gorgeous eyes narrowed. “As in what?”

“At lunch, didn’t you imply that you had seen something at the inn? I just want to know if you’ve ever witnessed anything around here that might suggest it’s not all a bunch of—”

“Bullshit? Well, in all honesty I can say…maybe. But I won’t say what it was.”

Collier sighed.

Now she was grinning. “I know. I hate it when people do that, too. But I don’t want to say anything ’cos then you really will think I’m a crackpot.”

“I swear I won’t,” he about pleaded. Collier was getting the same jive from everyone around here. “There’s no way I’ll think you’re a crackpot.”

“Well…” Her gaze darted up to the waitress. “Oh, here’s the check. This is Dutch treat—”

“I’m not Dutch.” Collier gave the waitress cash, with a big tip. Then he leaned into the table. “Tell me.”

Her reluctance was genuine. “All right, but not here. You paid for dinner, so I’ll get dessert…”

A hot fudge sundae on top of…squid, Collier thought in disbelief. He opted for a large shortbread cookie and followed Dominique out of the corner ice-cream parlor. They sat on a bench facing a semicircular half wall of old brick and mortar, which highlighted a large cannon. The cannon had no wheels but sat on a round track and swivel; a pyramid of fat shells rested beside it. Collier half noticed one of the omnipresent historical plaques: LONG-RANGE ARTILLERY BARBETTE BUNKER AND MODEL 1861 6.4-INCH PINTLE-MOUNTED CANNON. A world of hurt, Collier thought. Beyond them, tourists seemed to emerge from the settling dusk.

Dominique dug into the sundae as if ravenous. As each spoonful was savored, Collier saw the wet shine of her lips and tongue-tip in a Daliesque clarity; nightfall hovered around the radiant face and the gem-shine of her eyes. “I’m such a pig, but this is so good,” she reveled. “You sure you don’t want some?”

“No, thanks, I’m stuffed.” When he imagined his stomach’s reaction to ice cream mixing with Korean spices and squid, beef, and half-cooked egg—plus all the beer he’d had today—he shivered. In all, he had to force himself to eat the cookie.

Then he imagined something else: when she raised the next spoonful to her parted lips, she froze. Suddenly she was topless and sitting spread-legged on the bench, the quirky Christian reverting to her college-tramp roots…

Her mouth sucked the ice cream off the spoon, where it sat on her tongue till it melted, and then her lips expelled it. The slew of white cream marbled with hot fudge began to run a slow line down her chin, over the hollow of her throat, and between her breasts. It stopped to pool in her belly button, and that’s when the fantasy put Collier on his knees licking it out. His hands molded her hips and slid up her ribs as his tongue followed the track in reverse. He evacuated the adorable navel, then sucked upward over a quivering stomach. His mouth could feel excited blood beating in vessels beneath succulent, perfect flesh. No thoughts formed in his own mind, just the carnal craving. She had become his own ice-cream sundae. When his tongue laved her cleavage, her breasts vised his cheeks.

When his tongue slathered over the fudge-covered cross, he recoiled—

It burned like a tiny branding iron.

“—and, see? Those are some of the very first tracks, right there.”

Collier’s head surfaced from the dirty delusion like a bubble breaking sewer water. She’d been talking but he hadn’t heard any of it.

“What’s that?”

She pointed past the cannon, to the brick-paved street. Two parallel lines crossed the quaint lane, and the lines seemed sunken beneath the bricks.

“Oh, railroad tracks,” he finally recognized. “Gast’s railroad, I presume.”

“Right. See that plaque there?”

Another old brick wall sported the plaque: ORIGINAL SITE OF DEPOT NUMBER ONE, OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY—1857.

Collier looked at the strangely rustless rails. “So the original track still exists?”

“Oh, no. Most of it was taken up after the war—for reparations. But they left these here, and there are a few more sections around the town, even with the original ties. But this site, right here where we’re sitting, is where the madness of Harwood Gast officially began in 1857. It ended less than five years later in an area in Georgia called Maxon.”

“Maxon,” Collier uttered. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the place.”

“That’s because it doesn’t exist anymore. The Union army razed the entire area. There’s nothing there now except scrub.”

Collier thought back. “Mr. Sute told me that Gast actually built the railroad to take prisoners to some sort of concentration camp. Was that this Maxon place?”

“Yes,” Dominique grimly replied. “And the prisoners weren’t captured Union soldiers, they were—”

“Civilians. I remember him telling me that, too. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, from a military standpoint, I mean.”

“Neither did Dachau and Auschwitz, until you consider the motivation behind it all. It wasn’t logistics or efficiency—it had to be evil.”

“So Harwood Gast was the Hitler of the Civil War?”

“Maybe worse, simply because Gast was never political. He was a private citizen,” she said. “He was never in office, and he never bid for office. He simply built his railroad and killed himself.”

Collier smiled darkly. “His service was done, the pact complete: building a railroad that had no military use during a war. Himmler answered to Hitler, but Gast answered to a higher—or I guess I should say—”

“A lower authority,” Dominique finished. “At least that’s if you believe the legend.”

“Which, by the way, you haven’t really said if you do or don’t,” Collier added, “but just a little while ago you told me you didn’t necessarily disbelieve the stories…which leads me to my next point…”

“You are one persistent beer writer,” she laughed. “All right. I’ll tell you what I saw that night.”

They walked the fringes of the main drag as the town turned over to nightlife. Carriage-style streetlamps drew floating lines of light down the street.

“Just, please,” she said halfheartedly, “don’t tell anyone this because it makes me look idiotic.”

“You have my word.”

Her shadow angled before him, a sexy cutout. “Several years ago a wedding party hired the restaurant to cater their reception. They rented the atrium at Mrs. Butler’s inn. It all went fine, but at one point just before we brought out the desserts, I looked in the far corner of the room. There are a lot of little nooks on the sidewalls where Mrs. Butler keeps all those bookshelves and display cases full of Civil War stuff. Between two of those bookshelves, there’s a little alcove that’s hard to notice—”

Collier remembered immediately. “Right. And there’s a desk there, with very elaborate carvings and little drawers and compartments.”

Dominique nodded. “And also a tiny portrait of Penelope Gast on the side, like someone hung it there to keep it hidden. Anyway, I’m counting heads for the desserts—some of the wedding party had already left, so I wanted to get the number right…and I see someone sitting there.”

“At the desk?”

“At the desk. It’s this guy hunched over the desk writing something. I hadn’t seen him before, so I figured he was a late arrival and maybe he sat down at the desk to fill out a wedding card or something. I go over there and ask him if he wants a homemade Napoleon for dessert.”

“Yeah?”

“He stops writing and looks up at me—and this guy is, like, really ugly. Real pale face, crabby hands, big hooded eyes—and something messed up about his nose—looked like it had gold foil on it or something—and there’s this bizarre-looking red hat sitting on the desk, too. He looks at me like he’s pissed off I interrupted him, and he says, ‘Napoleon? I met him in Egypt, and he was absolutely deplorable.’”

“Huh?” Collier emphasized.

Dominique’s bare white shoulders shrugged. “That’s what the guy said, so I’m thinking he’s drunk and making some strange joke. I ask him again if he wants dessert, and he kind of grimaces and says, ‘Can’t you see I’m busy? I have to pay more to Harding, out of the railroad account. Mr. Gast just put in an order for fifty more, to send to Maxon. They’re wearing them out down there.’”

“Wearing…” Collier began.

“That’s what he said, didn’t explain. But I didn’t care, the guy was a snot to me, so I left him there and went to help my people serve dessert. I ask my assistant manager if she saw when the guy had come in, and she says ‘Who?’ and I point to the alcove. ‘That weirdo sitting at that desk,’ I say. But—”

“When you looked again, he was gone,” Collier supposed.

“Right. Gone.”

Collier thought as much. “A creepy story, for sure. But…is that all?”

She playfully slapped him on the shoulder. “No! That’s just the beginning. See, I shouldn’t tell you the rest—you’ll just make fun of me.”

“Tell me the rest!”

They turned a darker corner, a side street of shops that had closed earlier, and just one candlelit bistro with people having cocktails at outside tables. Dominique’s bright white apparel and lambent skin made her ghostly now in the lower light.

“So the reception’s a big success, and the bride’s father pays the bill and tips hard. Most of the people are gone by midnight, but a few stayed past that for drinks. I let my people go home after they got everything loaded up, and I stay to serve the drinks and listen to these drunk people in tuxedos jabber. At one point I look out the window and I see someone walk by—two little girls in white dresses.”

Collier’s throat tightened. “Was…there a dog?”

She looked at him funny. “A dog? No. Just the two girls. But then something else catches my eye, on the stair hall. Another figure. Guess who?”

“The guy at the desk?”

“Yeah, and now he’s wearing that imbecilic red hat. I see him go down the hall. I’m positive I saw him. He even looked down at me and scowled. Could be wrong about the two girls in the window, but I’m sure I saw him. I figure he’s a guest staying at the inn, maybe the crotchety old guy with the nose was the kids’ father or grandfather or something. No big deal, right?”

“Okay.”

“By one, everybody leaves, so I’m just doing the lastminute cleanup, shouldn’t take me more than an hour. I want to get out ’cos I’m tired. Mrs. Butler shows up to see if I need a hand, so I ask her how many guests are staying at the inn that weekend, and she says none.”

“Oooooo,” Collier remarked.

“Um-hmm. Ooooo. She tells me she’s going to bed and I can lock up when I’m done. If I need anything, I can just call out for Jiff ’cos he’s around mopping the floors.”

Collier errantly touched her shoulder. “Please tell me you went upstairs to look around.”

“Of course I did. But by now I have to admit I was a little freaked. Most of the lights were out, and the place was real quiet. I’m positive that no one came down the stairs because you can see both stairwells from the atrium. So I go up…”

Collier was becoming intrigued. “Yeah?”

“It’s dark up there. The minute I set foot on the landing, I regretted it. But I look anyway. All the doors were open to air the rooms…except one. It was locked.”

“Room two?” Collier asked.

She looked surprised. “Yeah.”

“That’s the room next to the one I’m staying in. It’s also the room where Penelope Gast and her maid were murdered.”

Dominique’s look of surprise darkened. “I didn’t know that. How do you—”

“Well, I mean that’s what Mr. Sute told me,” Collier amended.

“Wow,” she paused, reflecting.

“So—come on—what did you see upstairs?”

“Nothing,” she said.

Collier felt cheated. “Nothing?”

“Nothing yet. I didn’t see the guy and when I looked out the windows I didn’t see the two girls but—and this is the unsettling part—I did smell something.”

An irrepressible chill swept up Collier’s back. Please don’t tell me you smelled—

“I smelled urine. Jeez, I’ll never forget it. Old urine, like when you walk under an expressway bridge where homeless people pee. It seemed to emanate from that door—room two. I actually got down on my knees to look in the keyhole, and that’s where the smell was coming from—right from that hole.”

Collier didn’t know what to say, or what he might add to corroborate.

“But the funniest part? It was gone a minute later.”

“The smell, you mean.”

“Right. One minute the hall reeked, and the stench coming out of that keyhole was so strong it was like steam. And the next minute…”

“Gone like it was never there.”

She nodded slowly.

Collier remained silent for several steps; then her face turned mischievous.

“Either you just swallowed a frog or…something’s bothering you all of a sudden.”

Collier decided what the hell. “I’ve smelled the same thing a time or two myself.”

“I love it!” But then her enthusiasm lapsed. “But, you know, it’s probably just a rotten carpet or something. Mildew.”

“Yeah, maybe. That would be a much more sensible reason why Mrs. Butler never rents that room. It’s just unserviceable, not haunted,” he said, but continued in thought: Haunted…by urine?

“Sure. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe I’m more impressionable than I think, and I simply thought I smelled it.”

Collier pushed his hair back. “Your mind invented it, in other words?”

“Yeah.”

“Dominique, what reason would your subconscious mind make you think you were smelling…that?”

“Because of the story!” she exclaimed as though it were obvious. “You know. The whole ‘Mrs. Tinkle’ thing. I’m sure J.G. Sute told you about that, didn’t he?”

“No, but Mayor Snodden did. Some kinky ‘water sport’ fetish is what I assumed.”

“No, no, that’s not it.”

“Well then what is?” Collier insisted. “Why did people call her Mrs. Tinkle behind her back?”

Dominique almost blushed. “Same reason they called her ‘Penelope Piss.’ You don’t know?”

“No! So tell me!”

She seemed coyly uncomfortable now. “That’s what she’d always have her secret lovers do. You know. You never heard of Redneck Birth Control?”

“What?”

“A Southern Douche? Jeez. I guess I have to explain everything…as gross as it is. Whenever her lovers were…done…”

Collier finally put the pieces together. They urinated in her after they came, to wash the sperm out. For shit’s sake! “All right, I get it.”

“And the rumor is she always took her lovers to the same room—the door marked room two now—and that’s why it always reeked of urine.”

“How charming,” Collier muttered. Yes indeedy. A Southern Douche.

“It didn’t always work, of course,” she added. “Penelope had several abortions.”

“Sute was kind enough to point that out.”

A stasis passed as they walked. Collier presumed her story was over. “Oh, look,” she said and immediately stood on her tiptoes.

Collier’s sudden leg fetish raged. Her shapely calves tensed as bare heels elevated in the sandals. Then he pictured her standing like that bent over nude…

Pervert. The word clacked in his head like two stones smacking. Pervert, pervert, pervert…

“The moon,” she said. “Tell me that’s not creepy…”

They’d walked to the end of the side street. There were no streetlamps here. Crossing the road at an angle was another length of track sunken in the bricks. It extended past the street and seemed to continue into scrubby grassland. Collier walked out farther with her and actually found the rail still mounted securely on century-and-a-half-old railroad ties. An oblong moon the color of brick cheese glowed eerily in a shallow sky.

In the oddest vertigo, like a snippet of nightmare, Collier saw a woman’s face, grinning in a wanton evil, then skeletal hands rising up toward the moon.

The face of the mirage belonged to Penelope Gast…

“I second that,” he finally said. “Perfect setting for your ghost story.”

“And that’s the land, right out there. God knows how many acres, not used for anything anymore.”

He realized after the fact that they were holding hands.

Something almost like a hidden terror trembled in him. Who did that? Me? Her? He didn’t know…

“And it never will be,” she continued, gazing. “People really do believe the land is hexed by what Gast did out there.”

Staking the heads of slaves and hoeing them into the earth, he remembered. It was monstrous, but…

Collier wasn’t particularly focused on town history anymore. Oh my God, this girl… His blood felt like oil heating up on a stove top, just from the warm sensation of her hand.

“And in a way, even though all that scrubland out there is pretty ugly…there’s still something beautiful about it.”

“Yes, there is,” Collier agreed without even getting it.

The low moonlight on her face surrealized her features, leaving lines and wedges black but luminescing the rest. Now her eyes looked bottomless, the swell of her bosom and the moonshine on her legs a threshold to something that transcended the reality of his lust. Collier had never seen a more beatific face in his life.

Who turned whom, then? Collier didn’t know. She remained on tiptoes when he suddenly found himself kissing her. Her grip on his hand tightened and grew hotter; the tips of their tongues met. Her other hand stole around his back and urged him closer, and when he slid his mouth off her lips and ran it down the side of her neck, she sighed in what could only be desire.

Collier felt he had stepped into a precious demesne, a place where desire was more than instinctive brain cells firing to compel reproduction. He was overjoyed to be in that special place—the first time, truly, in his life. But he also knew it was a place he did not deserve to stand in…

Her could feel her nipples go rigid against his fake Tommy Bahama shirt; he could swear he even felt his own nipples sensitize. Another hot, liquid sigh, and she pulled his mouth back to her, and sucked his tongue, inhaled his breath…

Her hand opened on his chest and she pushed back.

“Time to stop—”

SHIT! “I don’t want to,” he said, and tried to recaress her. But her opened hand remained firm.

She seemed disappointed and awkward. “Justin…I’ve only explained some of myself, not all. There’s stuff you don’t understand about me. I’m just the way I am, I can’t help it, and I don’t want to.”

Collier felt like a popsicle that had just been run over on Arizona asphalt. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I want to know what you mean. I want to know everything about you.”

“It just wouldn’t be fair.”

“Fair? To who?”

“To you.”

The reply stunned him. Next, she was leading him by the hand back to the bench. “It’s too soon.”

“Okay, that’s fine,” he nearly pleaded. “I’m very patient—”

Her chuckle fluttered in the dark. “Yeah, right.”

I’m fucking crazy about you… “I can wait till it’s not too soon.”

“No, you can’t. Shit, in this day and age there’s probably no guy anywhere who’d wait that long…and you’re distracting me, anyway.”

“Distracting you?”

She turned on the bench, still grasping his hand. “You’re the one who wanted to hear my story. I didn’t want to tell you, but you insisted.”

“And you told me. It’s a great story, and I believe it. But what’s that got to do with—”

“My story’s not over,” came the abrupt information.

Damn it…“There’s more?”

“Everything I’ve told you until now is squat compared to the rest. Now. Do you want to hear it, or not?”

“Yes…”

So this was how she checked her boundaries. I don’t care, Collier thought. He was content to sit with her hand in his, their shoulders touching…that is, he was content, but the same wasn’t holding true for a certain part of his anatomy. Deal with it! Don’t be an asshole and piss her off…

“The stench from room two, like I was saying, disappeared so fast, I honestly don’t see how it could’ve been there. I must have imagined it.” You didn’t. Collier kept the correction to himself.

“And I found no trace of the old guy with the screwed-up nose, so I told myself that was my imagination, too. Shit, it happens sometimes. Tired, long day, hadn’t eaten much—it happens. No big deal, right?”

“Right.”

“But I told you, except for room two, the other rooms had their doors open, and the second-floor rooms on the stair hall all have balconies overlooking the garden, the courtyard, and then all that scrubland past it.”

“I know, it was the first thing I noticed about my room when I walked into it. So…what happened?”

For the recital’s entirety, Dominique had maintained a smooth, none-too-serious composure, as though she were fine with the likelihood of it all being imagination. Now, though—

Collier’s gaze on her face hardened.

It was akin to a Hollywood morph the way Dominique’s expression went dark. Her eyes, at once, looked troubled, and she almost stammered a few times. “In one second, there was—was—orange light, real bright—”

“Orange light? Where?”

“In the French doors right when I was standing at the doorway of the room you’re staying in.”

“Dominique, I don’t understand. Orange light?” Alarm. “Was part of the house on fire, or the fields?”

“That’s what I thought at first, but no, and then I thought I must’ve fallen asleep and woke up at the crack of dawn.” She paused. “But my watch said it was going on two in the morning.”

“So you went to the balcony, right? And looked out—”

A stifled nod. Was her hand shaking? “I went out the French doors, and saw that it was a fire, all right. And I heard a ringing sound, too. The entire backyard was lit up, and shifting. I could feel wafts of heat…”

Now something began to nag in Collier’s mind—

She spoke in front of her, not to him. “There’s an old Civil War-era iron forge out there. I don’t know if it’s still there but—”

“It is,” Collier spoke up. “I saw it the day I came. But Jiff told me it’s never used for anything but a barbecue nowadays, for holidays and parties.”

“Jiff wasn’t there, and this was no barbecue. Ore was being smelted in that thing. Every time the bellows pumped the orange light doubled…that and the intermittent sounds of a hammer made the whole thing feel maniacal. There’re several different chutes on the walls of the forge, and all that light and heat just poured out of them.”

Collier remembered the look of the thing, and the vents, one quite large. “What next?”

“There was a man down there, too, of course, but I couldn’t really see any details. He seemed to be working in cycles: pumping, hammering, pumping, hammering, like that. But every so often he’d disappear around the other side of the forge, and the light would go down some ’cos he wasn’t pumping.”

“Probably skimming slag or whatever it is they do.”

“He was pouring molten metal out of a little crucible,” she verified, “but I didn’t find that out till I got down there.”

Collier considered the scenario. “Must’ve been pretty scary.”

Another slow nod. “The whole thing was so crazy, I had to go out there. Somebody smelting iron in a bed-and-breakfast garden at two in the morning? You’ve got to be kidding me. I was freaked out, yeah, but I was also mad. I ran down there—”

Collier couldn’t help but anticipate. “And the guy was gone and the forge was cold.”

She nudged him. “Hey, I’m telling the story!”

“But am I right?”

“You’re dead wrong. By the time I got down there, if anything, the light was brighter, the air even hotter. The guy’d come back around, pumping the bellows and hammering something on an anvil, but now…I could see him…”

Was she doing it on purpose? Collier didn’t think so. He used the old line: “You sure know how to keep a jackass in suspense. Tell me. Who was the guy?”

She looked directly into his eyes, straight-faced. Now her hand was slick with sweat. “What did you think? It was a blacksmith—circa 1860. High leather boots, canvas pants, a slick rawhide apron. He was hammering a strip of metal, and alternately yanking the bellows chain. So I said, ‘Hey, what the hell are you doing?’ and I said it loud. But he didn’t hear me, just kept whacking away.”

“What did he look like, I mean, his face?”

“Big bushy mustache, and the skin on his face was like pitted leather. He wore this hat that was sort of like a leather cowboy hat but without the sides curled up, and the front flopped down. I yelled at him again, and he kept ignoring me. He walked back around the side of the forge and that’s when I saw him dipping the crucible into the vent. He took it out and poured it into a stone mold that looked like it had wax or something in it, and he did it very carefully. Then he picked the mold up with tongs and dunked it in a tub of water.”

Collier could feel the pulse in her hand pick up.

“He brought the mold around, knocked the metal out with a hammer, and started beating on it—the cycle beginning again.”

Collier felt dour when he asked, “Was it a mold for shears?”

She looked at him, startled. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

He knew he couldn’t possibly mention the morbid nightmare. “I saw one in Mrs. Butler’s display cases. A mold chiseled out of stone, for wooling shears.”

“Well, that’s what these things looked like. They were big, like tin snips. He had a mold for each half, and after he’d banged on them a while, he tossed them aside with the tongs. There were two piles of them on the ground, sizzling.”

“Did you tap him on the shoulder, give him a nudge to get his attention?”

Dominique seemed tired now. “To tell you the truth, that’s the first thing that came to my mind, but I didn’t. Because I was afraid if I touched him—”

“There’d be nothing there.”

She nodded. “I shouted at him one more time, and I mean at the top of my lungs…He obviously didn’t know I was there, but when I shouted, he kind of paused and stood up straight. Then he turned around and looked right at me.”

“I thought you said he didn’t know you were there.”

She made a nullifying hand gesture. “Or I should say, he didn’t look right at me, he looked right through me.”

Collier thought on that.

“Then”—she visibly gulped—“I noticed the rest.”

“What!” Collier nearly yelped in frustration.

“His eyes,” she said in the lowest tone. “The whites of his eyes. They didn’t look human. The whites were yellow, like someone with a disease, with darker smudges like soot. His face, right just then—the way his eyes looked, I mean…I was more terrified at that moment than I’ve ever been in my life—that one second of looking in his eyes. Because I got the sickest feeling that for maybe a sliver of a second, he saw me.”

Collier was keyed up. “What did he do next?”

“He grimaced, and it turned that pocked, leathery face into the grossest mask. Then he starting pumping the bellows again.” She let out a long sigh. “So there. That’s my story.”

Crickets chirruped around them. The night had deepened and grown more humid; Collier felt clammy at his armpits.

“Wow,” he said.

“I forced myself to walk back into the inn, all that light and heat raging behind me. It was a wall of heat. I got back inside, looked out the window, and—of course—the backyard was dark. The furnace was cold, and there was no one there.”

Collier believed her at once. Unlike many he’d met thus far, bullshitting wasn’t her style, nor was exaggeration. But he’d seen some things, too, hadn’t he?

He elected not to mention them.

A question popped up. “Was this…back in your drinking days?”

She smiled. “Fair question. And, no. This was years later. Hallucination? Sure, it could be, but I don’t think so, and I don’t think it was lucid dreaming or any of that stuff, and I wasn’t on medication for anything. I’ll never know the answer”—she pressed a hand to her heart—“but in here, I think it was a ghost. A revenant, discorporate entity, or whatever it is they call it these days.”

“ ‘Ghost’ works just fine for me. And that was the last time you ever took a catering job at the inn?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ve done a bunch since then. But that’s the only time I ever saw anything funky.”

Funky is right. I’ve got voices, piss stench, dogs, nightmares about SHEARS, and some woman flashing my keyhole with a shaved crotch. Could we BOTH be crazy?

Collier dropped it.

She half laughed but it didn’t sound convincing. “Anyway, now that I’m done telling it, it all sounds pretty silly.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Collier argued. “The Gast House is a pretty chilling place if you’re in the right frame of mind—or, I guess in this case, the wrong frame of mind. Mr. Sute said that many, many people have had unusual experiences there.”

She tossed a shoulder to dismiss it, but it was obvious her retelling left her discomfited.

“Enough of all this ghost stuff, though,” he said more softly now. Her hand remained clasped in his.

He was looking at her again. He drew her back to him—had the story kindled her desires?—and found she was even more eager to kiss than before. Each tongue played around in the other’s mouth with more fervor this time. Her breath seemed hotter now, if that were possible, and a bit of that push-back barrier had lessened. Her hand ran up his arm and over his chest as her tongue seemed desperate. Collier fell into a luscious void right then. Dominique was the fresh-baked bread still warm from the oven, and he was the butter melting into it.

The words in his head arrived like a zombie’s drone: I could really fall in love with her…

Next she draped one leg over his to afford closer contact. For a moment he expected that smooth, bare leg to slide over his groin…but that never quite happened. Instead her hand around his back pressed him tighter to her.

He began to slowly suck down the side of her neck, and when his tongue laved over her jugular vein, he could feel her pulse beating like a hummingbird’s, but as his tongue continued to glaze her throat and bare shoulder, the taste of her sweat, plus the commingling scents of body spray, soap, and shampoo magnified his rising horniness. He had one hand around her side, part of it over the gap between the clinging top and waist of her skirt. He knew he was testing her now, encroaching her obscure boundaries, but she didn’t flinch when his hand pressed flat against her belly and the tip of his pinkie slipped an inch beneath the waistline of her skirt. Collier’s Evil Twin voice returned: Congratulations, stud! Right now your finger’s about four inches from Party Central! but Collier was too fevered to listen. He didn’t move his hand but let his tongue trace the rim of the cami-top. Something told him not to slide the top down and expose the breasts he’d sell his soul to see, but he very gently ghosted his lips over the top of the ruffly fabric.

Then his lips inched closer to the nipple…

“Oh, jeez!” came a frustrated whisper.

Collier brought his lips away, but his hand remained in place. “What?”

“This is my fault,” she sighed. “I know better. I need to tell you the rest…”

Collier was almost indignant. “No more ghost-story stuff!”

She paused to collect her breath. “No, more me stuff.”

Collier didn’t relieve his embrace. “If you don’t want to go all the way tonight, that’s cool.” He tried to sound understanding.

“I should’ve explained everything earlier but I don’t want to go all the way ever. What I mean is I don’t have sex—at all—anymore. I probably didn’t make that clear before.”

Collier contemplated a thoughtful response but couldn’t.

“I’ll put it bluntly,” she continued in a wearied tone. “I don’t fuck. I haven’t since college.”

Collier tried to manage his reaction. “I understand,” he assured her but really didn’t. A small chuckle. “We weren’t fucking, you know.”

“I mean,” she added, “I’m never going to have sex again until I’m married. Making out is one thing, but…that’s all I do. No sex out of wedlock, ever. That means any kind of sex—coitus, anal, oral. It’s part of what I was telling you before. It’s part of how I pay off that credit card I used to get my life back.”

Think! Collier thought, but the alter ego piped in, She’s just making an excuse so she won’t feel guilty after you ball her from one end of the street to the other! Keep feeling her up! In a few minutes you’ll have her so hot she’ll turn into a great big bowl of Do-Me Stew…

Was that really it? We were making out pretty heavy. He replied like a trained actor, “I understand.”

There was a fret in her eyes. “I don’t think you do, and I realize that most guys don’t—they can’t. It’s not reasonable for me to expect them to. And the part that sucks the worst is I really like you.”

Evil Voice: It’s bullshit, buddy! Just stoke her up some more!

He squeezed her hand. “Now it’s my turn to be blunt. I’m so fuckin’ crazy about you I could howl at the moon.”

Her face looked childlike when she laughed. Then that expression of seriousness-merged-with-frustration drained back to her eyes. “I don’t want you to think I’m a teasing bitch—”

“I don’t.”

Evil Voice: Not only are you a teasing bitch, you’re a teasing bitch who’s about to get serious blocks put to you…

“It’s a hell of a lot to ask of a guy,” she admitted, “even a hard-core Christian.”

“I’m not a hard-core Christian, but I’ve got it covered.”

“And for God’s sake, I don’t expect you or anyone to live by my personal spiritual standards. It’s just my thing.”

“Just trust me,” he whispered into her neck. They kissed some more. Collier was so intent on her that he wasn’t sure what he planned, and he had no idea how closely he’d been listening to his own dark side. He whispered, “Is this too much?” and lowered his mouth to her waist and teased her navel with his tongue. He licked a ring around it, then daintily pressed his tongue in and sucked.

Well…she didn’t say no…

He sucked harder, and was overjoyed by the way she flexed, squirmed, and moaned. Her hands came to his head; he expected her to push him off but it didn’t happen.

He was also getting away with his right hand half cupping a buttock, which squirmed and tremored as well. And again, “Is this too much?” before his tongue slowly licked a line straight up her several inches of bare stomach to the bottom of the cami but when he tried to hook his tongue beneath the hem, her hands nudged him off a moment and replaced his mouth back on the fabric. Collier continued to move up…

Testing more boundaries, he knew. His lips roved over the meager fabric that covered her breasts, and he replaced his hand over her belly, one pinkie returning to its previous position an inch beneath the waistband.

Her skin felt so hot now, and shedding sweat. The pinkie roved in the sweat but when he tried to slide it down another half inch, her hand pulled it back.

The bitch is still playing with you. Once you start sucking her tit through that cheesecloth tramp-wear she’s got on, she won’t stop you then, brother…

Collier wondered. But she allowed his mouth to proceed farther up the bottom of her breast. His lips felt sensitive as a stethoscope; they could detect the swelling heat, the racing pulse.

Keep going… But were they his words, or his id’s?

Collier’s mouth kept creeping up. Through the corner of his eye, he spotted an elderly couple walking by, but even in the dark he could see their eyes wide in shock. To hell with ’em, he thought. They hurried by.

At last, Collier’s lips found the very distended nipple, and began to slowly suck it through the cotton top.

Her back bowed, and she huffed in a breath.

But she didn’t stop him.

She’s all yours now. You just turned her stiff Christian starch into pudding…

Was Collier listening?

He sucked more fervently, and precisely; her breast was a pulsing bag of excited nerves and hot blood. When Collier took his mouth off, he could see how he’d sucked a dark, wet circle into the fabric, her inflamed papilla standing hard. In the next blink, he switched to the other nipple and began to suck even harder.

Dominique’s hands fisted in his hair. She was breathing through her teeth, inhaling her next words: “Oh, shit, I can’t believe how good that feels…”

That’s when Collier’s hand slipped between her legs and let his middle finger dip into the flooded vaginal groove.

“Damn it!” she yelled and yanked his hand out like someone pulling a snake out of a hole. “I knew it!”

When she jumped off the bench and strode off, Collier was thrown back. “What the hell? Dominique!”

Her heels clacked so loud down the brick street they sounded like a hammer smacking slate. Collier jumped up after her.

“Wait!”

She was walking real fast. Collier had to huff after her.

“What the hell is wrong?”

“I should’ve known!” she seemed to sob and yell at the same time. “It’s always the same. No one gives a shit how someone else feels!”

“What are you talking about?” he pleaded when he finally caught up and grabbed her arm. He wanted to collapse when he saw tears welling in her eyes.

“What, I guess you just thought you’d get me horny enough and I’d decide to fuck you? Right after I just got done telling you I didn’t want to?”

“I-I—”

“Past a certain point all women are just bitches in heat? They’re all asking for it? ‘No’ really means ‘yes’?”

“No-no—”

She turned and resumed her strut.

“Wait! Please!”

When Collier grabbed her arm again, she almost hauled off and hit him. But he had to stop her, he had to find out what had happened.

“Why’d you have to ruin it?” she wailed in the street.

“What? My hand?”

“I told you, no sex, and you said okay!”

“It was just my hand! My finger!”

“That’s just great.” Her glare mixed with heartache. “Let me spell it out. If you put your penis into my vagina, that’s sexual contact. Why? Because my vagina is my sex organ. If you put your mouth on my vagina, that’s sexual contact, because my vagina is my sex organ. So tell me, Justin. If you put your finger in my SEX ORGAN, what is that?”

Collier’s jaw froze open.

Now she was wiping her eyes. “I’m leaving. Good-bye.”

“Wait!”

His shout cracked down the street. He was sure anyone within a block had heard it. Now he was squeezing her arm hard.

Let her go, man, insisted the Evil Voice. She’s the Tease from Hell. Forget about this nutty bitch. Go back to the hotel and use Lottie for an oil change…

Collier was getting sick of that voice. “Listen,” he began.

“Let me go. You’re hurting my arm.”

“At least give me a chance to talk. This isn’t fair at all.”

He released her arm. Now the street stood in total silence, like the silence after a machine-gun volley. He could see several late diners at the bistro craning their necks at them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t understand—”

“Come on, you were working me—”

He pointed his finger right in her face. “Let me talk, damn it. Give me two minutes, and then you can split and think whatever you want. But I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. You gotta admit, your rules are a little weird.”

“I know they are!” she yelled. “But they’re still my rules, and I explained them to you, and you said that was okay, but five minutes later you’ve got your hand down my—”

“All right!” he yelled just as loud. “I get it! I guess it was my male instincts or something. But you were letting me…do…other stuff, so…”

“So you figured it was okay to stick your finger in my pussy?”

Those words, too, echoed down the street. Jesus, he thought. This is too hard!

So why didn’t he just leave?

“We were just making out, Justin,” she said, “and it was wonderful. It was passion, it was desire. But that’s never enough for you guys, is it? If two people are making out, then that’s carte blanche for the guy. Everything’s got to be a nut. Everything’s got to be a piece of ass. If a woman makes out with a man, even after she’s told him she doesn’t want sex, all of a sudden she’s got an obligation to fuck him—”

“Now you’re being a cynical smart-ass,” he countered. “That’s not how I feel at all.” He felt the need to convince her. “And look at it this way. I know now that I’ll never get to have sex with you. Right?”

She peered at him with suspicion. “Yeah.”

“So if I’m just your typical cock-hound, if all I’m out for is a piece of ass… then why am I still standing here? How come I’m not long gone?”

Dominique couldn’t answer.

“Tell me that you’ll go out with me again,” he insisted.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Justin—”

“Bullshit. It’s a great idea.” He squeezed her arm gently this time. “Tell me you’ll go out with me again.”

She sighed. “All right.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Great. What time?”

She grinned. “Seven thirty in the morning.”

What! “That’s really early.”

“Take it or leave it.”

Collier’s shoulders fell. “All right. Seven thirty in the morning. Where?”

She pointed across the street.

Collier couldn’t see the building very well, for the shadows. But he could see the sign just fine: ST. THOMAS METHODIST CHURCH. JOIN US FOR OUR EARLY SERVICE!