Casino Moon

38

ROSEMARY CAME OUT of the bathroom wearing a black rayon teddy with nothing on the bottom.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” she said, “but I’m feeling kind of shy.”

Terrence Mulvehill was still lying on the bed waiting for her. He was a powerfully built young man, standing five foot ten, weighing 170 pounds. Muscles wrapped around his arms like steel cables and stretched across his chest like dark armor. He turned his body and casually threw back the sheet, as though he was used to having his physique studied. Thick dreadlocks fell over his eyes.

“Listen, like, I really wanna fuck you. You know?”

“I know, but I’m all nervous.”

“Can I tell you something?” he said in a high, delicate voice. “I ain’t been out in about a month. I stopped trying to fuck anybody. Now when I go out to a club I gotta have three bodyguards around me all the time to keep the women away. Because you never know when someone’s gonna like sleep with you and then say it was rape. Right? There’s a lot of bitches and hoes out there.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure.” Rosemary sat on a pink chair in the corner of the room and looked a little pale.

“Like the other night, right, I went out to this club in New York. The Palladium. Right? I’m dancing with this girl and she’s beautiful, you know. The ass was like right on time and she had the kinda titties you see in them magazines. Right? So just when I’m about to ask her to come home with me so I can make it with her, my bodyguard Amal comes up and says, ‘Yo, Terry, that’s a guy.’ I’m like, ‘Get the fuck outa here.’ And he says, ‘No, man, that’s Jack Pearson. I went to school with him at De Witt Clinton.”

“No shit,” said Rosemary.

“No shit.”

Terrence sat up and the covers fell back from his erection. “So then like I see this other girl and I look at her a long time to make sure it’s a girl. Right?” He rested the side of his face on his hand. “She’s four foot eleven and she got tiny little hands, so now I’m sure this is like a female. So Amal goes up and he starts talking to her, man. And I’m just like hanging back, waiting for him to bring her over. I’m dancing to Bobby Brown and just hanging.”

He closed his eyes and twitched his shoulders, savoring the memory of the beat.

“But then I look up and Amal’s got his arm around this girl. So I’m like, ‘Yo, Amal. What’s up with this shit? What am I payin’ you for, man? I ain’t payin’ you to hang around flirting with girls.’ I was disgusted. I was really disgusted, man. I walked right out and went to my car. My brand-new Porsche, right. And some like homeless guy is scratching his name on the side with a rusty key.”

“Oh no.” Rosemary started to laugh.

He went on, “I’m like, ‘What the fuck are you doing, man?” he asked in appalled falsetto. “And he’s like, ‘This is Terry Mulvehill’s car.’ I’m like ‘Fuck, I am Terry Mulvehill. Stop writing on my damn car.’”

He shook his head, mortified. “Damn,” he said. “I don’t never have fun no more. It’s got so I don’t trust no one. I’d rather be by myself.”

He touched his erection again and became very still. To Rosemary, he seemed like a confused child trapped inside a warrior’s body.

“That’s all right,” Terrence said, rolling over on his side. “I don’t mind being alone. I just close the curtains and stay in bed all day. Only time I get out is to train.”

Rosemary crossed her legs and lit a cigarette. The tinfoil packet of cocaine was on the ivory-colored bureau next to her. “I read that once,” she said. “I read how when you’re an athlete you’re not supposed to sleep with anybody the night before.”

“Man, that’s bullshit,” Terrence told her, putting both hands behind his head and doing half a sit-up. The musclesin his stomach bulged like oranges packed tightly into a crate. “When I was married last year, I fucked before every fight I had and I knocked every one of them suckers out. That don’t have nothing to do with it. It’s just they all bitches, man. Every one of them. Even my mother. They just after the money. My mother didn’t even call me ’til I got the title. My father brought me up and taught me how to fight. He taught me everything I know about women. And I love and respect the man for it. Otherwise them bitches would have all my money by now.”

“You always have to watch yourself,” said Rosemary.

In the mirror across the room, she saw herself swinging one leg over the other with the cigarette burning down in her hand. His erection never wavered, she noticed. Men were all the same. You’d have to strap a stick of dynamite to it to truly get their attention.

“That’s why when you called, I say ‘come on up.’” He smiled eagerly, “You ain’t gonna charge me, right?”

“Nope, this one’s a free ride,” she said in a tired voice.

“Yeah, yeah, see. And I know you like being with me, just to be with me. Right? Like you like me ’cause you a natural freak. Right? You don’t want nothing from me. You just like to fuck me.”

He was so sincere, so anxious to be liked, it was almost painful to listen. She caught sight of herself in the mirror again, guiltily tapping out her cigarette in the ashtray.

“See, that’s why I let you up, when you called before,” said Terrence. “Because I know I can trust you. And we just gonna hang and have a good time. Right?”

She forced herself to smile. “We’re gonna do the do, Terry.”

“Yeah, yeah. ’Cause otherwise I think I’d just rather sit by myself in the dark.”

He looked down at his penis sorrowfully as though it were a wounded pet.

“That’s kind of depressing.”

“Yeah, it do get lonely sometimes,” Terrence said. “I get to feeling so bad, I think I never find no one wants to be with me. Like sometimes I think I’d rather be dead. Just the other night, you know, I was standing right out on that balcony over there, thinking what it’d be like if I threw myself off.”

He stared at the window ten feet across the room, as if he was still considering jumping. Then he lowered his eyes and balled up part of the bedsheet in his fist. His left knee came up protectively in front of his groin.

“But then you called,” he said. “And things got much more better.”

He smiled and his gold incisors flashed at her. “Anybody ever tell you, you got like beautiful eyes?”

“Gee, I, uh, yeah, I guess so.”

“Well like don’t tell anybody I said that to you, ’cause they might like think I’m gettin’ soft. I’m supposed to be the Monster, you know.”

She forced another smile as she picked up the tinfoil packet from the bureau top. “I like you too, Terry.”

“So can we like do it now?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still kinda nervous. You sure you won’t get high with me first?”