Getting Off

EIGHTEEN

The thing about Coca-Cola was it had a good strong taste. You could add almost anything to it and it would still taste like Coca-Cola.

That was the good thing about it. The bad thing was that if you dropped a pill into a glass or can or bottle of Coke, it did its Old Faithful imitation and fizzed like crazy.

She knew this because of a pre-teen experiment. The word at school was that you could get high by dissolving an aspirin tablet in a can of Coke, and she’d tried, and what you got was a geyser that bubbled all the Coke out of the can. After a couple of attempts, she figured out that the carbonation had something to do with the reaction, and that all she had to do was let the Coke get flat, and then add the aspirin. So she did, and the tablet dissolved without generating a burst of bubbles, and she drank the resultant mixture, and, of course, nothing happened. You didn’t get high. You didn’t even get sick. A big nothing all around.

But, if she’d gained nothing else from the experience, she’d learned not to drop pills into carbonated beverages. Happily, her pharmaceutical score had included a couple of little bottles of chloral hydrate, and Google had led her to all anybody needed to know about that marvelous substance. It was the active ingredient in the legendary Mickey Finn, invented a century and a half ago in San Francisco. A few drops of chloral hydrate in a beer or a highball, and the next thing you knew you were part of the crew of a clipper ship in the China trade. You’d been shanghaied — that’s where the word came from — and you were stuck there, at least until you got to the next port.

A few drops in a glass of Coke? Well, let’s see.

“Here,” she said. “Coca-Cola, with just a little lemon juice for flavoring. Come on, drink up. We’ll toast our future, Peter.”

Perfect.

“It could be a lot worse, Peter. Like, you wake up on the heaving deck of a ship bound for Hong Kong, and the last thing you remember is knocking back a glass of red-eye in a Barbary Coast saloon.” She frowned. “But maybe this is worse. It’s hard to say.”

He didn’t say anything, but how could he? He had a six-inch length of duct tape across his mouth. He was on his back, spread-eagled on the bed, held there by restraints from the Pleasure Chest. (Gentle! Will leave no marks!)

And she’d used other toys as well.

“You were sleeping so nicely,” she said, “and I thought I’d just let you sleep forever, you know? Smother you in your sleep, or give you a shot of something lethal. The good thing about that is you’d never know what happened, but that’s the bad thing, too, because, well, you’d never know what happened.”

God, the look in his eyes. He was trying to make sense out of this, and how could he? Nor was she helping, her words wandering all over the place.

“Just to fill you in,” she said, “if you’ll pardon the expression, well, that’s a butt plug you feel in your ass. Just to keep you from feeling lonesome for the hot nights in prison. No, no really, because I know you were too much of a tightass to let yourself go that way. It’s more to set the stage, but we’ll get to that.

“And the constriction at the base of your dick, well, you’re wearing a cock ring. That’s why you’ve got such a raging hard-on, even though you came like crazy less than an hour ago. The vein’s constricted, but not the artery, so the blood gets in but can’t get out, and your dick stays stiff as a board even though sex is the last thing you want right now.”

He was trying to say something. He couldn’t, of course, but a certain amount of sound came through his nose. Pathetic, really.

“Okay, cut to the chase,” she said. “I couldn’t let you die without knowing this part. Remember that woman you went to prison for?Maureen McSomething? You didn’t kill her, dumbass. I killed her.”

Wide eyes. Zero comprehension.

“You fed me a Roofie, Peter, way back when. And that wasn’t supposed to happen, because I picked you up intending to fuck you and kill you, and the next thing I knew it was morning. So we had a little party, and on the way out I spiked your vodka so that the next drink you took would be your last. But I guess you weren’t much of a vodka drinker, so Maureen got it instead, and since you told the cops about the Rohypnol, they didn’t run a good enough tox scan to find out what else might have gotten into the little darling’s system. And off you went to prison, sure you deserved whatever they gave you.”

And she explained how she hadn’t even known about it until he was a few years into his sentence, how she’d had to track him down, and how she’d been willing to do this because he was one of only three men she’d slept with who still had a pulse.

And she told him why it was important to her that he die, that she be able to cross his name off the list. She was pretty sure it wasn’t making any sense to him, if indeed it was registering at all. Hearing her own words as she spoke them, she wasn’t sure it made any sense to her, either. Why did she have to do this? What difference did it make if an ex-lover was still alive? Why should she care?

But she did care. No getting around it, she cared. Her whole life centered upon it, for better or for worse.

“So here you are,” she said. “What do you figure, is it good news or bad news? You didn’t kill that girl, so that’s a relief, right? On the other hand, you did all that time in prison and went through all that guilt for nothing, so that’s not so good, is it? But either way it doesn’t matter too much, because in a few minutes you’re going to be dead.”

She showed him the noose.

“Autoerotic asphyxiation, sweetie. To heighten your pleasure. You’ll be wearing a butt plug and a cock ring, which just might give them the idea that sex is a component here, and after you’re dead I’ll lose the restraints and the duct tape, and, well, what are they going to think? And if some CSI-type genius figures out that you had a woman around, for at least part of the proceedings, do you think they’re gonna knock themselves out looking for her? You’re a known pervert, you already drugged a girl and served time for her death, so what do they care? Poetic justice, right?”

And what would he say to that? Well, she’d never know, would she?

Two.

She sat at the white parson’s table in the windowed kitchen and drank a cup of coffee. It was a shame, she thought, that she couldn’t hang on to the apartment a little longer. But there was a dead man in the bedroom, and that meant she’d have to be moving on.

She picked up the phone, keyed in a number.

“Hello?”

“Rita?”

“Omigod, Kimmie!”

Oh, right, she was Kim, wasn’t she? And now, with Peter cooling in the other room, she never had to be Audrey again.

“I sent you a present.”

“I knew it was from you. Even if I didn’t know what it was.”

“It’s a butt plug.”

“Well, I know that now, silly. I had to Google it.”

“How? If you didn’t know—”

“I Googled ‘sex toys,’ and I found a site with everything illustrated, and I must have spent an hour just reading about one damn thing after another.”

“Just reading?”

“Kimmie!”

Funny how easy it was, talking to Rita. Funny how she’d missed this.

“…called a flange,” Rita was saying. “To keep it from, you know, getting lost in there.”

“Hard to explain to the intern in the emergency room.”

“God, wouldn’t that be embarrassing? ‘I don’t know how on earth it got all the way up there, doctor.’ ”

“They must hear a lot of stories.”

“Oh, God, you know what I read online?”

Her sudden departure was the elephant in the living room, until she had to force herself to acknowledge the beast. When the conversation hit a lull, she said, “Rita, I just had to leave. It was sudden, and I should have said goodbye, but I figured the best thing I could do was just hop on the bike and go.”

“I had this vision of you on the bike, trying to get over the Rocky Mountains.”

“I just left it at the bus station. I hated to abandon it but I couldn’t figure out a way to get it back to you.”

“I never rode it anyway. And it’d be impossible now, with a butt plug up my bottom.”

“You’re too much, Rita.”

“That’s why you left, isn’t it? Not because I’m too much, but because we were too much. That last night, when we were—”

“Jilling.”

“Yeah. It was so fucking hot, Kimmie, but then the next day it was scary.”

“I know.”

“I mean, it’s not a lesbian thing when you’re both talking about things you did with guys, right? And we never even touched each other.”

“No, but—”

“But what, Kimmie?”

“Well, if we did it again, I might have wound up sitting next to you. And I might have touched you.”

“I might have let you.”

“The phone’s safe, though, isn’t it?”

“I was just thinking that myself.”

“Rita?”

“What?”

“You’re wet, aren’t you?”

“Kimmie!”

“You have to tell me,” she said, “because I’m thousands of miles away, so I can’t reach over and find out for myself.”

“And what about you, Miss Smarty Pants? You’re a little moist yourself, aren’t you?”

“Just my cunt.”

“Oh God. When you say that word—”

“Have you been with anybody lately?”

“A guy. Two nights ago. It was okay, it was fun. But you know what I kept thinking afterward? That I wished I could tell you about it.”

“We could probably both think of things to tell each other.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Rita? Why don’t you draw the drapes and take your clothes off and get comfy on the couch. And I’ll call you back in, like, ten minutes? And you can put me on speaker phone so you’ll have both hands free.”

“Oh God.”

“And Rita? Wear the butt plug.”

“Here’s something crazy,” she said. “After all the things we just did, and all I got out of it, I’m hotter than ever. And what’s got me dripping is the prospect of telephone sex with a woman three thousand miles away.”

She sighed. “And why am I telling you all this, Peter? You’re still dead, aren’t you?”

No question, she thought. You didn’t have to look at him twice to know it, either. The noose that strangled him had had an effect similar to that of the cock ring, and his head was engorged with blood, his swollen face a deep purple.

And the cock ring hadn’t stopped working. He was still massively erect, and she could swear he’d grown larger since she’d left him.

Jesus, it was huge. She took hold of him.

Still warm.

Hmmm.

Aloud she said, “I dunno, Peter. What do you think? It’d be a first, wouldn’t it? And something for you to tell your friends about. ‘Yeah, I’m dead, but I’m still getting a little pussy now and then.’ ”

Except, of course, he wouldn’t be telling anybody anything.

“Of course there’d be a kind of poetic justice to it. I mean, Maureen McConnelly was probably dead when you fucked her. Not when you started, maybe, but by the time you got finished. God, that must have been a shock, huh? But I guess you’re shockproof now.”

She sighed.

“Maybe it’s too kinky. Anyway, I’ve got things to do. There’s a lady on the other side of the country waiting for the phone to ring.”

But she couldn’t keep herself from reaching out and taking hold of him again. She had her cell phone in one hand and his dick in the other. It was the same color as his face. Maybe a little darker.

She said, “Waste not, want not, isn’t that what they say? And when am I gonna get a chance like this again?”

She hoisted herself into position. A little lube? No, hardly necessary, she was sopping wet. Slipped right in, and it wasn’t her imagination, he was really gigantic.

She closed her eyes, rocked to and fro.

Picked up the cell phone. Multitasking? Sure, why not?

Hit Redial.

“So are you wearing the butt plug?”

“Uh-huh. Are you?”

“No, but I’ve got something in front.”

“Oh?”

“Very natural. You’d almost think it was real.”

“Like with veins and all?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And it’s in your cunt?”

“You really like that word, don’t you, Rita?”

“I love it. Tell me how it feels in your cunt.”

“No, you first. Tell me about this guy you picked up.”

“What do you want to hear?”

“Everything,” she said. “Tell me everything.”