All White Girls. Michael Bracken
do you know?”
“I plucked her from the bus station myself.”
A tan sedan cruised past but the two men ignored it. It turned left at the corner and disappeared from sight.
“What’s she been doing?”
“Hand jobs. She’s intact,” Bleach said. “Not even a Tampax up there.”
“Her ass?”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred.”
Canfield peeled ten fifties off a roll he retrieved from the right front pocket of his tight-fitting jeans and handed them to the other man. Bleach smiled—a small tight smile that barely moved the corners of his thick lips—as he placed the bills in his wallet and slid the wallet into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.
Bleach grabbed the girl’s elbow and pulled her aside. He whispered harshly into her ear. “This be my man,” he said. “You treat him right. You don’t, you know what’s gonna happen.”
She nodded quickly and Bleach released his grip on her elbow. He’d only hit her once—a backhand across the face that caught her attention—but she’d seen what he’d done to one of the other girls with an electrical cord. The whipping had been so bad the girl had been unable to work for a week, and when she did return to the street no amount of make-up had been able to cover the welts and the scabs, and her earnings had been dangerously low.
After Bleach left them, Canfield took the girl to a room he’d already rented at the Grafenberg Hotel—a room with water stains on the ceiling, a television which received only two channels, and a bed with a brand-new mattress. He had insisted on a good mattress.
“Wash your face,” Canfield demanded as soon as he locked the door behind them.
She stood by the bed, her fingers already fumbling with the zipper on the back of her skirt.
“Now,” Canfield demanded quietly. When she hesitated, he took her arm and propelled her toward the bathroom. “Don’t come back out until you’ve washed all that shit off your face.”
Canfield waited until he heard water running in the sink, then he peeled off his pale blue polo shirt, revealing the thick muscles on his arms, his slim waist, and the snake tattoo over his left nipple that danced when he tensed his pectorals.
He pulled back the thin beige cover and the off-white top sheet, revealing faded blood stains in the middle of the bottom sheet, stains from a previous guest that hadn’t completely bleached away. Two thin foam pillows had been knocked askew when he’d pulled away the covers, and he straightened them. The double-bed had no headboard, but on either side of it stood a night stand. Each night stand had a single drawer and into the drawer nearest him, next to the never-opened copy of Gideon’s Bible, Canfield placed the switchblade he wore inside his left boot.
After sitting on the edge of the mattress, he pulled off his black, silver-toed cowboy boots and placed them next to the bed. Into each boot went the corresponding sock. Then he popped open each button of his black button-fly Levi’s, peeled the jeans off, folded them, and lay them in the room’s only chair. He wore no underwear.
The girl stepped from the bathroom, still wiping her face dry with one of the bath towels.
“How’s this?” she asked cautiously. Her voice carried the inflections of a person born and raised far south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Canfield turned to face her and saw what the thick layer of make-up had hidden, that age had not etched even one line in the delicate skin of her face.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.” She bit at her bottom lip. “I’ll be seventeen tomorrow.”
“Pretty damn old to be a virgin.”
Her shrug was barely perceptible.
“Take your clothes off.”
She reached behind herself and finished undoing the leather miniskirt. It dropped to the floor at her feet. She pulled the tube top up, over her head and off, letting it fall to the floor with the leather mini, then she stepped out of her skirt and out of her pumps. She rolled her black pantyhose from her hips and down her thighs, until she could step out of them.
She stood facing Canfield and waited.
“Get on the bed.”
The girl sat on the edge of the bed, then pushed herself into the center and lay back. Canfield joined her a moment later, kneeling between her legs. He grabbed her thighs and pulled her to him as he forced himself into her. She was tight and dry and he buried himself deeper and deeper.
She struggled, but Canfield completely covered her, pinning her to the bed with his weight. He covered her mouth with his and tasted the blood where she’d bitten her own tongue to keep from screaming.
He pulled back and drove into her mechanically. Then he pulled out of her and she caught her breath.
“Roll over.”
He twisted the girl onto her belly, then pulled her up onto her knees. He took her from behind and this time she screamed. The sound penetrated the thin walls into the surrounding rooms, but screams—like sirens—were so common in the neighborhood that no one ever heard them.
He held onto her hips and drove into her, thrusting faster and faster until he could no longer restrain himself. He released into her, held her tight until the throbbing stopped, and then he pulled away.
She collapsed on the bed, crying silently, her tears staining the pillow she’d buried her face into.
Canfield stood beside the bed. “Roll over and sit up.”
When she hesitated, he gripped her arm, forcing her over and then up into a sitting position. She stared at her feet, her hair hanging around her face. Canfield caught her chin between his thumb and his forefinger and forced her to look up at him.
“Now lick it clean.”
She hesitated again, so he slipped his switchblade from the night stand, snapped it open, and pressed the point against the soft underside of her jaw. She opened her mouth and took him in, gagging as a tiny bubble of blood appeared around the knife point.
Afterward, he showered and dressed, wiped his knife blade clean on one of the wet towels, then slipped the switchblade back into his left boot before opening the hotel room door and stepping into the hall.
Just before he closed the door, Canfield looked back at the girl on the bed.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
* * * *
Rickenbacher didn’t want to return to his empty apartment and another evening of black-and-white reruns from the fifties and sixties. He didn’t love Lucy and he wouldn’t leave it to Beaver. Instead, he drove, windows open to let the grimy city air curl around his face and tickle what remained of his hair.
His trench coat lay on the seat beside him, his fedora covering it. He’d rolled up his shirt sleeves and he drove with his left arm resting on the open window frame, his elbow jutting out. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, ash whipped away by the breeze as it grew too heavy at the burning end. He sucked on it, blew the residue smoke through his nose, and reached for the radio to improve the reception on a station that kept fading in and out.
He turned off the main street, away from the rental cars and low-riders that claimed the avenue, away from the restaurants and nightclubs that attracted the crowds, away from the bright lights and into the darkness. He cut off a late model Eldorado and the driver, a balding fat man wearing too many gold chains, gave him an upraised middle finger in return.
Parked cars crowded both sides of the street, apartment and tenement residents fighting for parking space because their buildings lacked garages. The cars were beaters—city cars dented and scratched, with broken windows