Excerpt

“Hell! I’m not certain it’s even legal.” Stace cried. “The girl, standing between your legs, she’s a child for Christ’s sake.”

“It’s legal. She performs no sexual act.” The woman argued.

“No? None?” Stace scoffed. “She’s there while they are being performed. Are you certain that is not in itself a sexual act?”

“She is not! Did you even watch?” The woman demanded.

“Hell yes! I watched.” Stace snarled.

“She was not there at the moment any sexual act was performed.”

“That’s slicing it awfully fine isn’t it?”

“That makes it legal.” The woman said. “It can be remastered. Colorized. Placed before a mainstream audience.” The woman spoke quickly.

Stace cut her off. “That’s why we are hiding in a warehouse somewhere in the Trinity River bottoms with two dozen or so assorted perverts who jacked off during the first fifteen minutes of the movie?”

“It can be done! It will be done! It is our ticket out, our ticket away.”

“That’s why you found me! To show me this! For me to help you do this!” Stace cried.

“That’s just one of two reasons.” She tried to calm him.

“And the other one?”

“That one you will have to find yourself. You must know it for yourself or you will never know it, my love.” She placed her hands on his chest. “And two lives can never be complete unless you do.”

“Who could it possibly be that important to? You!”

“You! You, Stace. You!”

“And who else, damn you! Who else?” Stace cursed.

“You must know!”

“No. I must not or I would not be asking.” Stace chopped off each word, throwing them at the woman.

“No. I’m not saying you do know. I’m saying you must know. You must do that---know for yourself.” She pushed her hands against his chest. “Or it is meaningless. Don’t you see?” She begged him to see, to know, to understand.

He could not. He shook his head. The woman’s driver slid the limousine next to the corroded asphalt of the alley between the two warehouses. The woman grabbed Stace’s hand and dragged him to the limousine. Again Stace allowed her to pull him in. They sat silent, close and still as the limousine glided back across the Trinity River and into downtown Dallas.

They stood beside each other on the sidewalk of the Katy Building. The woman grasped Stace’s hand and worked her fingers between his. Stace looked down at their hands and up into her face and tried to see himself in her eyes.

“We were good together.” His voice said, but his eyes asked, ‘Weren’t we?’

“What did you think it was? Special, sacred, singular?” She laughed at him. Stace frowned. She pouted her lips at him. “At best it’s either a half-aborted glob of gooey mess running down the inside of my thigh. Or, and at the worst, it’s swimming around inside of me.”

“Then why?”

“Why?” She cried. “Because you.” She put her hands on Stace’s chest. “Because you, my love, and all men want it. They don’t care how or what or why. Don’t you know that yet?”

“I know that.” Stace growled. “But that’s not why?”

“Men don’t care why. They just care about getting laid.” She tossed her hair away from her face. “Getting it! Get it?”

Stace frowned again. “Men need to do it, the act, the release. It comes to us immediately with the ability to do it.” He stared into her eyes. She laughed. They did not. They sailed aloft, confused, yet hopeful, still doubting everything he said, but so desperate to believe what he said. Slowly Stace turned it over in his mind, tried to focus his mind’s eye upon it, until he approached the threshold of understanding it, her. “Women don’t understand that. Do they?” Stace swallowed, stared into her eyes and sucked for the courage to tell her. This time she stayed quiet and waited for him to continue. He did. “That’s what it is. We don’t realize that. That you don’t understand that.” He breathed heavily and close to her. She did not retreat. “From the first time it gets hard we know we want to stick it in something. That we can understand. From the moment we go beyond wanting that and want anything more we are lost. We no longer understand. We can’t.” Stace moved against her. She stood against him. He could feel the heat beneath her thin blouse. He gripped her beneath her left breast and held her.

She tilted her head, exposing her neck. ‘Was she inviting him?’ ‘Dammit!’ Age, experience and inexperience caused him to hesitate. Before he had not, had he?

“And you wanted more when you came into me?” She asked. She smiled. She reached to him with her mouth and kissed him passionately. Again he hesitated. “No. I don’t understand that. I’ve been too, too long dealing with insertion only. It’s what I do, Stace.” She kissed him again, more passionately.

He bent to her and touched her lips softly, trying to say, to scream, ‘Yes! Yes! I wanted so much more. I wanted it all! All of you! All of me!’

Before he could or did she laughed. “See? I kiss you with my mouth open to accept you. Any other man would open his mouth and devour me. But you?” She opened her mouth and offered to accept him again.

Again he failed to act. His mind swam with the silent words his heart screamed.

She moved away half of a step. “Someday…” She touched his saddening face. “Someday, my Stace, I will tell you something.” She pulled away from him, turned and disappeared into the Katy Building.

He stood on the sidewalk. She was hidden from him by the Katy Building. He was lost to himself by her words. ‘Someday I will tell you something.’