Koko. Peter Straub
screamed and moaned and gripped his head in her arms. ‘Good good.’ Her hand left his head and found his cock again. ‘Still hard? Good Tina.’
Finally she let him raise his head. A thin line of blood oozed from the bottom of her breast down her ribcage. ‘Now little Drac goes back to church.’
Pumo laughed and fell back on the pillow. He wondered if Vinh or Helen had heard her scream and decided they probably hadn’t – they were two floors below.
After a long delirious time Pumo’s orgasm sent looping ribbons of semen over her cheeks, into her eyebrows, into the air. She moaned and hitched herself onto his body so that his arms were pinned beneath her legs and astonished him by rubbing his semen into her face with both hands.
‘I haven’t come like that since I was about twenty,’ he said. ‘But you’re sort of hurting my arms.’
‘Poor baby.’ She patted his cheek.
‘I’d really appreciate it if you got off my arms,’ he said.
She looked down at him triumphantly and hit him hard in the temple.
Pumo struggled to get up, but Dracula struck him again. He found himself unable to move for a second. She grinned down at him, her teeth and eyes flashing in the murk, and slammed her fist against the side of his head.
He yelled for help. She struck him again.
‘Murder!’ he yelled, but no one heard.
Just before the twentieth blow to his temples, Pumo’s eyes cleared and he saw Dracula peering impersonally down at him, her mouth pursed and her lipstick smeared.
2
Pumo came to in darkness, he knew not how much later. His lips throbbed and felt the size of steaks. He tasted blood. His whole body ached, the pain radiating out from the twin centers of his head and groin. In sudden panic, he put his hand on his penis, and found it intact. His eyes opened. He held up his hands before his face – they were dark with blood.
Pumo lifted his head to look down his body, and a white-hot band of pain jumped from temple to temple. He fell back on the wet pillow and breathed heavily. Then he lifted his head more cautiously. He was very cold. He saw his naked body sprawled on dark wet sheets. Working its way from ache to ache, a thin hot wire of agony snaked through the middle of his head. Now his lips felt like rough red bricks. He touched his face with wet fingers.
He considered getting out of bed. Then he wondered what time it was. Pumo raised his right arm and looked at his wrist, which no longer wore a watch.
He turned his head sideways. The radio with its digital clock was gone from the bedside table.
He slid himself off the side of the bed, finding the floor first with one foot, then with both his knees. His chest slid across the sheets, and he swallowed a bitter mouthful of vomit. When he stood up, his head swam and his vision darkened. He propped himself up on the headboard with aching arms. A cut on the side of his head beat and beat.
Clutching his head, Pumo slowly made his way into the bathroom. Without turning on the light, he bathed his face in cold water before daring to look at himself in the mirror. A grotesque purple mask, the face of the Elephant Man, stared back at him. His stomach flipped over, and he threw up into the sink and passed out again before he hit the floor.
1
‘Yes, I’ve been lying low, and no, I haven’t changed my mind about going,’ Pumo said. He was talking on the telephone to Michael Poole. ‘You should see me, or rather you shouldn’t. I’m hideous. I stay inside most of the time, because when I go out I frighten children.’
‘Is that some new kind of joke?’
‘Don’t I wish. I got beat up by a psychopath. I also got robbed.’
‘You mean you got mugged?’
Pumo hesitated. ‘In a way. I’d explain the circumstances, Mike, but frankly, they’re too embarrassing.’
‘Can’t you even give me a hint?’
‘Well, never pick up anybody who calls herself Dracula.’ After Michael had laughed dutifully, Pumo said, ‘I lost my watch, a clock radio, a brand new pair of lizard-skin boots from McCreedy and Shreiber, my Walkman, my Watchman, a Dunhill lighter that didn’t work anymore, a Giorgio Armani jacket, and all my credit cards and about three hundred in cash. And when the asshole took off, he or she left the downstairs door open and some goddamned bum came in and pissed all over the hallway.’
‘How do you feel about that?’ Michael groaned. ‘Jesus, what a stupid question. I mean, in general how do you feel? I wish you’d called me right away.’
‘In general I feel like committing murder, that’s how I feel in general. This thing shook me up, Mike. The world is full of hurt. I understand that there’s no real safety, not anywhere. Terrible things can happen in an instant, to anyone. That asshole just about made me afraid to go outside. But if you’re smart, you should be afraid to go outside. Listen – I want you guys to be careful when you get over there. Don’t take any risks.’
‘Okay,’ Michael said.
‘The reason I didn’t call you or anybody else is the only good thing that came out of this whole thing. Maggie showed up. I guess I just missed her at the place where I encountered Dracula. The bartender told her he saw me leaving with someone else, so the next day she came around to check up. And found me with my face about twice its normal size. So she moved back in.’
As Conor said, there’s a flaw in every ointment. Or something like that.’
‘But I did talk to Underhill’s agent. His former agent, I should say.’
‘Don’t make me beg.’
‘Basically the word is that our boy did go to Singapore, all right, just like he always said he would. Throng – the agent’s name is Fenwick Throng, believe it or not – didn’t know if he was still there. They have a funny history. Underhill always had his checks deposited in a branch bank down in Chinatown. Throng never even knew his address. He wrote to him in care of a post office box. Every now and then Underhill called up to rant at him, and a couple of times he fired him. I guess over a period of five or six years the calls got more and more abusive, more violent. Throng thought that Tim was usually drunk or stoned or high on something, or all three at once. Then he’d call back in tears a couple of days later and beg Throng to work for him again. Eventually it just got too crazy for Throng, and he told Tim he couldn’t work for him anymore. He thinks that Tim has been agenting his own books ever since.’
‘So he’s probably still out there, but we’ll have to find him for ourselves.’
‘And he’s nuts. He sounds scary as shit to me, Michael. If I were you, I’d stay home too.’
‘So the agent convinced you that Tim Underhill is probably Koko.’
‘I wish I could say he didn’t.’
‘I wish you could too.’
‘So consider this – is he really worth risking your neck for?’ Tina asked.
‘I’d sure as hell rather risk my neck for Underhill than for Lyndon Baines Johnson.’
‘Well, hang on, because here comes the good part,’ Tina said.
2
‘I don’t think adult men actually exist anymore – if they ever did,’ Judy said. ‘They really are just grown up little boys. It’s demeaning. Michael is a caring,