Bullet Through Your Face (improved format) Read Free Page A

that on the first date. By the way,
I have it on some very qualified authority that my sperm tastes good.
    The girl stared out the windshield and stroked her chin as if
pondering a puzzle. “I wonder if what’cha eat effects the taste of your
come? Ya think?”
    Gray’s smile of incredulity bloomed on his face. “I . . . don’t
know. But I suppose it’s an interesting question.”
“Like, if all a guy eats bacon, does it make his come taste like
bacon? Er-er-er, what if he eats lots’a candy?” Her stare beyond the
glass deepened. “I wonder if it makes his come sweet.”
“Perhaps it does.” Gray could barely stifle a chuckle. This is
some conversation. “You’re really great,” he finally said when he got
his breath back. Now she was daintily rebuckling his slacks, tucking
the shirt in, making sure the zipper’s tab was right when she pulled
it up.
“There ya go . . .”
“Look, you know, I mean,” he began to babble, “didn’t you say
said you walk this way a lot?”
“Yeah. Ever nat. Ever week-nat that is.”
“Well, see, why don’t we make a deal? I drive home this way
every night too, the same time, and I was thinking that maybe I could
pick you up like this and drive you home, for, you know—”
She seemed elated. “You’s’ll drive me home ever nat fer a blow job an’ gives me twennie
five ta boot?”
“Yes,” Gray said. “Why not?” The quiet calculation registered: twentyfive dollars a night, five nights a week. A little over six grand a year. Piece of cake . His two ex-wives were remarried now—no more alimony. “I mean, you need the money for your baby, and I,
you know, I need—”
Her hand, perhaps unconsciously, squeezed his crotch. “That’d be dandy
‘cos, like, most’a the guys who give me rides ever nat, they’se only
pay like five’r ten bucks an’ a lotta times they’se try to do things I
never agreet to. They’se all mostly crackers, see, dirty
fellas and mostly drunk. But I like you. An’ you’s say you give me twenniefive fer a blow? Ever nat?”
“Sure,” Gray said. “Every night.”
    She lived way back in the boondocks, all right. An old county utility
road took them deep into the woods. The moon had risen higher; it was
a half-moon, a yellow lump hovering. Gray kept taking sideglances
at it, for whatever reason, but it just made him more aware of the girl.
For the whole time he drove, she never took her hand off his crotch.
He could feel her hand’s warmth through the material. Then she was
rubbing more intently as her big dark-caramel eyes wandered over
the scape of the forest. It didn’t take long before Gray was hard again.
    The Corvette’s tires crunched over gravel. At
the end of the
road, a clearing opened, and a little two-story farmhouse sat wedged
into sprawls of high weeds. Blistered once-white paint peeled back
to reveal old, dull-gray wood, and there were dark shutters with
slats falling out. An attic with one blank window peaked out of the
structure toward its rear, some shingles missing from the small
belfrylike roof. Alarge garage branched off one side, obviously a
makeshift
addition, and behind it, an expansive area surrounded by an
eightfoot-high plank fence, more old unvarnished gray. Amid the weeds
crawling around the house, Gray noticed orange bloated objects
sitting lopsided, and then he realized what they were. Pumpkins, he thought. Well that’s damn appropriate, because this dump could
pass for a Halloween house of horrors any day. Gray didn’t want
to hang around. She had a kid, so she probably had a husband. And
the husband must have a shotgun, to fit right in with the rest of this
backwoods cliché.
    He pulled up at the end of the gravel drive, stopped.
“Look,” she said, “I means, you been real nice’n generous to me,
‘specially offerin’ ta pick me up ever nat, but, see, I lives here with
my two brothers Jory’n Hull, but, see, they’se’re mechanics, they’se
work on cars.”
“What about . . . I mean,