The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. Volume 3

Horsepower by Tom Piccirilli

Cole was coming out of the comic shop on Bleeker Street with a bag full of silver age Fantastic Fours when she caught him from behind.

Terry somebody, Italian last name, he knew her a little from high school. She’d gone goth pretty heavily over the past couple of years. Lots of black and fishnet now, one eyebrow pierced with a chain hanging to her ear, a spiderweb tattoo working itself out of the low-cut collar and up her neck. The city could do it to you.

He wasn’t sure if he liked the change, but he let that go for the moment. She stood with two other girls who were much more into the scene, leather and latex and gossamer, dragon tats wrapped around their arms down to the wrists – one real and the other henna. They’d hardly seen any sunlight in the last six months, even now only coming out at dusk. He liked the goth trappings but saw trouble coming as they looked him up and down, giving him the slow once-over. The pudgy belly, the glasses, the sweatshirt, sneakers, holding comic books. They both wanted to be lady death and they did a good job at it, and he knew they wouldn’t be able to resist taking a shot at him any second.

There was a war already under way and he had no idea how to stop it. Something about him pissed the new goths off and always had. Maybe it was because he had no real style, too much vanilla padding, totally whitebread. Screaming taxis and family cars with slipping trannies slid past, barging through potholes. One of the lady deaths bent her knees as if she might lunge at him, shove him into traffic. Cole felt sort of weak until a blue ’64 Pontiac Lemans GTO 389, the pioneer of the muscle car era, sped by with its dual exhaust bellowing. It gave him some poise back and he almost felt aroused, able to meet their severe eyes now.

Terry Scoletti, that was it. They’d had some good conversations back in Film Studies, sitting side by side in the middle of the class. Peckinpah and Hitchcock and Arthur Penn, film noir, Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Easy Rider and Two-Lane Blacktop. She found herself a football player and that was about the end of it.

She seemed to remember something about him and cocked her head, blinked a couple of times, thinking back. He could smell a touch of gin coming off her, the others stinking of stale smoke. The dipping sun shed a splash of blood over everyone, pooling at their feet. He could tell by Terry’s glittering eyes that something was up, some kind of game being played in there. He was about to be toyed with, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. One lady death grunted, and then the other.

Hopeful, he decided to wait it out. Terry said, “Hey, how’re you doing? Haven’t seen you for a while.” He nodded, watching, as she became all angles and arches, slinking towards him. He got it now, she was going to put on an exhibition right here, for anybody watching. This was display, this was exposure.

Grinding it into him, pressing at his throat, she was against him in an instant while he stood tightening into stone. “Are you shy?” she asked. The reek of gin was much stronger as she brought her lips up almost to his, the blaring horns growing louder. She let loose with a grin that made him heady. Sometimes it could be like this, seeing old acquaintances out of context. Free of past circumstances.

He knew he appeared almost exactly the same, and maybe he was except for a few threads of silver in his curls, out in front. Terry wanted to have some fun with him, put on a show for the ladies death or maybe, just possibly, for Cole.

Or perhaps it all had something to do with murder. He remembered she had a sister who’d died down in the subways – mugged?… pushed onto the tracks? His imagination moved along too fast and he could look into her mind and watch her pulling out a three-inch blade, stabbing him between the fifth and sixth rib, leaving him there on the street because she had to get the rage out. It was an ache he could understand.

Dry-mouthed, he let out a tiny chirp, trying to keep his hands from flashing up to protect his chest. He could see the ladies were voyeurs and had watched this game before. Even this little bit of it was already having an effect. The death gurrls huddled closer, holding hands, their tattoos touching and forming some new picture he couldn’t understand. Terry continued to grind on, right there in the street, with businessmen swinging their briefcases and Chinese delivery kids riding by on their bikes.

OK, so it was going to be like that. Terry’s blouse was satin and the buttons opened easy, as she slid against his chest a couple of times. They popped open, one after the other, and the hint of her tits made him groan softly, clenching the bag tighter. She was trying to meet his eyes, but he kept staring past her, into the street, waiting for another classic car to come by.

The light had begun fading. She touched the sides of his face and drew him aside. He saw that the web tattoo started at her right nipple and went all the way up. Terry had large, dark areolae. The sight of them made him nose forward, lips parched but his tongue feeling too large and wet in his mouth. She closed in on him, wrapped a leg across his thigh, as she rubbed against his crotch, which was springing up a tad. He probably would’ve dug this a little more if they weren’t out in the middle of the sidewalk, and if two murder gurrls weren’t giving him the killing eye.

Or maybe it didn’t matter. This wasn’t going to work anyway, there was no heat in the seat, no horsepower. Terry laughed, throaty, deeper than he could remember, one hand at the back of his head now and pulling him down. She was holding on to him tightly, had some real strength for such a tiny girl, and he brushed his cheek against her breast. It was the right thing to do and she let out a gasp. She kissed him, both of their tongues working together roughly, even though the make-up, this close up, didn’t do anything for him.

There’d been rumours about this sort of thing happening in the Village. A couple of kids just start going at it, right there in a doorway or on somebody’s front steps, on the kerb, while the homeless wandered out to watch. The guy left there dying afterwards with his throat cut, the girls laughing. The games had escalated, it seemed. But maybe that was just his naïve perspective – perhaps the world had always meant for him, and failures like him, to croak in the gutter for no reason.

He tried thinking about it but Terry wouldn’t let him. “Here,” she said. “How’s this?” Her hands were claws, capped by two-inch black nails, flecks of red on them like she’d been scratching somebody down to the vein. He let out a hissing stream of breath and she did the same, sort of tugging on him now, leading him. He took four or five steps and she stayed wrapped around him just as firmly. Where were they going? Was she going to toss him into traffic? Taxis kept blaring, mufflers off half the cars in the street, so loud they set his back teeth to shaking. There was no muscle to them.

Terry pulled a funky move, something out of the WWF, spinning until she was behind him, one arm around his waist, jerking him all around. It was a surprise and she kept it going, twining up his back and yanking him once more, as she grooved against him. He almost smiled even though he knew he was being led somewhere he didn’t really want to go. She backed off a step and pounced, came into his arms too quickly and crushed the bag in his hand.

“My comics!”

It hit her as if he’d just chopped her in the throat. “What?”

“Listen -”

“Your comics?” There was a titter at the edge of her voice, but it didn’t come all the way through. The death ladies tightened their grip on one another until their fingers had grown ashen. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Come on, for Christ’s sake,” he said, realizing he should shut up. “Issue ten features the third appearance of Doctor Doom.”

“Issue?”

“… ten, yes…”

Now she was back, all the way, even if her eyes still sparked. If she’d wanted him to die before, as a sacrifice to an indifferent divinity, she no longer did. His value had diminished. It was over, and she buttoned up, confused and ashamed, and even the gurrls became appalled. “What are you, five years old?”

But what could he do? There was a difference between complacency and satisfaction. Opening a vein didn’t daunt him, but you had to draw the line. “Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, these are classics, cost me half my paycheck.”

“For that kid stuff?”

Of course they couldn’t understand, no more than he could see sticking sharp pieces of metal through your body or loving Anne Rice’s gay vampires or trying to be the goddamn Crow. You all came to fate on a different curve in the road. Lady deaths one and two were already done with him and marching up the street, fingers splayed as if hoping to find and disembowel a cat. Terry was half-smiling, maybe thinking him a fool or perhaps knowing they were off on tangents but heading to the same place.

He tried again. “Listen. This has age, this has presence. This is twice as old as you or me, it’s got wisdom. There’s muscle here.”

“You need to grow up, Cole,” she told him and, surprised as he was that she’d remembered his name, he also sincerely believed her. He remained exactly who he had been, and it gave him some pause.

He took the train back out to his mother’s place in Queens and let himself in. She was out as usual, working the night shift at the hospital. He went to the garage and leaned against his father’s workbench. The dust had piled up but the tools were still in their proper places. The hedgecutter, saws, levels, hoes, and coiled garden hoses all outlined in magic marker on the peg board.

The old man had moved out five years ago and hadn’t taken a damn thing with him. It intrigued Cole that someone could leave an entire life behind and begin a new one – a different wife, with two other kids already. Cole occasionally went by his father’s house and peeked in the windows, watching the kids on the couch next to him, laughing, everybody always smiling. It gave Cole a warm but somehow unpleasant feeling. Sometimes he fell asleep in the backyard, head propped against the new siding. He’d been arrested twice but the old man hadn’t pressed charges yet.

The sheet over Joe’s Mustang hadn’t been changed in six months but still smelled of bleach. He drew it off and gazed at the car.

It was a cherry red Boss 429, with 375 horsepower and 450 lb-ft. Sixty-nine, the year that the rivalry between Mustangs and Camaros became well-defined, with street races occurring every night up and down the highways across America’s midwest. In 69 the Stang became bigger, heavier and gained in its performance options. Increased height meant a jump in horsepower. Handling was much-improved. The famous running horse in the grille was replaced by a smaller emblem, offset to the right of the grille. There were four headlights now. The interior was more rounded off with two separate cockpits, for the driver and passenger.

He’d almost killed himself with the car before he’d ever driven it. The black depression came down on him at about the beginning of ninth grade, took him low in the guts for three or four days straight and wouldn’t shake free. He shut the garage door, started Joe’s Mustang up, lay on the cold cement floor near the exhaust pipe and listened to the engine thrum. It made him calm again. About five minutes into it the carbon monoxide got him high and he felt a lot better, shut the car off, puked, and watched the Nightmare on Elm Street series on video for the rest of the night.

It was an heirloom. He remembered his brother taking him down to the beach, Joe’s muscles rigid in the sun, wet and roiling in the surf with girls in bikinis. Cole would sit up on the sand and watch them in the water, the girls frolicking for a while before Joe led them away behind the dunes. Later, when he and his brother were taking showers in the locker room, the scent of salt and seaweed and manhood all around, Cole would tremble at the thought of the engine. When they got back into the Mustang, the seats too hot to sit on, Joe would lay their damp towels down, and they’d fly out of there.

The first time Cole had toyed with himself was in the back seat, imagining that he was watching Joe in the driver’s seat, roaring down Ocean Parkway, some bikini girl working in his lap. Cole had no idea what the hell he was even doing, it started so oddly, just as a way to get back to a place of peace in himself. Ten years old maybe and barefoot, still sort of wishing he was dead but not quite there.

This had muscle. This had age.

Joe had died in the Stang, bolting down Route 25a and dogging it out with a 78 Camaro, 327 intake, Turbo 350 and B &M shift kit. Four in the morning, two miles past the worst of the curves, and they both blew a red light too late. Some baker was off to make the morning donuts, staggering through a left turn in a Gremlin with only one headlight, putting along off a side street. Joe slammed the brakes and spun out, they said, completing three full circles before coming to a stop in a fog of smoking tyres. The Stang didn’t have a scratch on it and neither did his brother. Joes neck was broken.

Cole went inside and made a few calls. It was easy tracking Terry down. Everybody was still in touch on the grapevine, more or less. Three years out of high school and they were all still tearing themselves up about it, eager to talk, to find one another again. It was stupid the way the system did it. Let you spend 13 years surrounded by the same couple hundred kids, then punt you into the rest of the frenzied world. No wonder he had no fucking social skills.

He learned that she lived off St Mark’s Place and Third Avenue, around there, but nobody knew an apartment or phone number. Someone said it was over a T-shirt shop, but Cole knew there were about 20 of them on that block so the info was no help. Somebody else said she visited her mother most Sundays, maybe for a family dinner, maybe just to settle her nerves after a weekend of raving. She didn’t take drugs and hardly ever drank. There was a whisper that she’d gone a little nuts since her sister was shoved in front of the E Train.

Cole showered, shaved, and dressed the way they used to. Jeans, T-shirt, black riding boots, and Joe’s leather coat. It was still in style and always would be. He’d kept the Stang tuned, fuelled, charged. A part of him thought that even if he’d done nothing to it at all, the car would still be ready.

He got in, and it was like he’d never been gone.

The Stang started with a roar, the noise surrounding and filling him from the belly up.

He promised himself he was not going to get out of the car until he had her, and maybe not even then.

Cole prowled the area for two days, skulking along her parents’ block, living on drive-through, pissing in the extra-large drink cup, and forcing his bowels to back down. The Stang moved like a shark across the asphalt, heading through the Lincoln Tunnel and down through Jersey, gliding back into the city after the rush hour gridlock had eased.

Sunday, he parked up the street from her parents’ place, watching. He saw Terry come up out of the subway at around three and slowly walk along the sidewalk to the front door. She had a fluid grace about her that appealed to him. She’d toned the goth look down a little for Sunday dinner with the folks, but not by much. Cole sort of missed seeing the ladies’ death entourage, wishing they were here now to hear the tic of his engine. Terry would probably want to take the A Train back before it got dark, so he waited it out.

She ate and ran, sticking around for barely three hours. She was putting in her time, probably because Mom and Pop still paid her rent, or at least lent her cash when she cried for it. Cole threw the Stang into gear and eased up beside her as she made her way back to the subway station. He paced her for a few seconds until she finally looked over.

“Get in,” he told her.

Something like fear in her eyes, but not really. Some wariness and distaste, but mostly cool apathy. Whatever it was, he sort of liked it. Maybe she thought he was looking for revenge for the crushed comic book incident. “No, that’s OK.”

“I’ll give you a lift back to the city.”

He had muscle. He had horsepower, wisdom. The ancient dust of lost kings made up the fuel in his tank.

Cole was no longer himself, and could let go of his little boy nature. What he couldn’t do, the Stang could do for him. Here, in this cockpit, he had become a man and she somehow perceived it. So what if he needed a little help to get there?… everybody needed a boost, a kicker, some extra support. There was no shame in weakness. The Stang connected him to the ages of warriors, the rituals of maleness. He was complete.

Terry did a little double-take, checking to see if it was really Cole in there. She gave a head toss, her black tangled hair flopping one way, then the other. For a second he thought she might scream for a cop, try to ward him off with a cross, something like that. Scream for any murder gurrls in the neighbourhood to come to the rescue.

Then she sighed and shook her head, berating herself probably, thinking it just more mayhem, and stepped off the kerb.

She got in and he gunned it, letting the tyres squeal but only for a second, the way Joe used to do it. He didn’t need a big show, the action happened as part of the car, inside, not out there looking at the red roaring by. She giggled, an unnatural sound for somebody so far into the scene of romantic doom and anguish. It was easy to sense his need.

“You’re not thinking of your comic books now, are you?” she asked.

But he was, he always was, the way he thought about novels and movies and everything that mattered when he was younger. Even ten minutes ago. Twenty-one and already he was going grey. He’d be his father in another fifteen years, and he’d already outlasted his brother. You didn’t need to dress up like death to find it, all you had to do was start the engine, sniff the pipe.

He had a few wet naps, opened, unfolded them, and started wiping her face of all the powder and wax. The chain between her eyebrow and ear swung wildly. “Hey!”

“I want to see you,” he said. He worked at her clothes too, tearing, unbuttoning her skirt. “Get naked. I want to see all of you.”

“You’re slow to start but, once you do, you speed along.”

“Yes.”

She mattered but she also didn’t matter, right here next to him. He realized he was on the right track now, edging towards a new highway. She fit him perfectly but it wasn’t about that now. It was about the place they were going, where they’d been. His heart was killing him, but it wasn’t about that either. The road offered the earth before him, and he thought he might as well make a move for it.

Terry removed her panties, opened her blouse all the way up so he could see the entire tattoo. She had a couple of others, a rose on her hip, a wreath of skulls. There was room enough in the seat for her to turn completely around, show him her beautiful pale ass. Another tat at the bottom of her spine: a face he thought he recognized for a second and then didn’t any more. He brushed her with the back of his hand as she clambered around again. Terry reached over and undid his jeans, took him into her hand and began caressing him slowly, with a deliberate and almost familiar touch. She licked her palm and pulled his soul up out of him another half-inch.

“You like this, hm?” She worked him fast for a minute before she let her lips ease along him slowly, inch by inch, keeping pressure up all the way. He wanted to know who the face was, who it was going to be. The Stang screamed. She made gleeful noises, licking, wiping him across her throat like a knife.

He drove like he’d never done before, easily, without a wasted motion, sliding in and out of traffic flawlessly, nobody caring.

“Say my name,” he told her.

“Hmm?”

He grabbed her by the hair and hefted her up. She appeared to be growing whiter, the ink of the tattoos standing out even more. He said, “I want to hear you.”

“You’re the greatest, you’re the best, God, I want you, c’mon -”

He held her like that and wouldn’t let her get back to it, even though she was struggling now. “Just say it, Terry. My name. Tell me my name.”

Her eyes cleared and she understood without judgment. “Cole. You’re my man, Cole.”

Releasing her hair, he settled back, as she dropped again and continued bringing him to life, switching him into something else. Her naked ass shined against the seat and when Cole checked the rearview, he could almost see Joe back there, watching him as Cole had once watched and dreamed of his brother. He looked around and didn’t know where he was any more, and didn’t much care.

Terry was a biter, chewing. He finally recognized the face on her back: it was her dead sister. Who had shoved her? Who had been down there in the tunnels for no reason? Where had Terry been that night, and how much anger and provocation had stood between them? How much love? More than him and Joe?

He was ready and shifted, drawing her up with his free hand, the other on the wheel, always on the wheel.

“Here?” she said. “Now? There’s traffic. Truckers.”

“Come on.”

She liked the idea even though it frightened her a little too, and that made it agreeable. They needed more fear at this moment, so that it would last. Maybe she’d never done anything in public with the ladies death watching. Always on the sly, alone, of course, in shadow not on the sidewalk. Or maybe she had started thinking of what would happen next, further down the line, when it was his time. She slinked across him, working one leg over, settling into his lap. She positioned him and slowly slid down, sighing, now hugging him and rocking gently. That’s what he wanted, to feel her this close, and closer. And they had to get closer.

Terry kept one hand closed, as if she was hiding something. He could guess. As she bit into his shoulder, he reached over and started tossing her clothes out of the half-open passenger window. He was hard everywhere, with the generations of cool and horsepower riding with him. He hardly had to do anything at all, the Stang took care of her.

Cole kept checking the rearview mirror, waiting, knowing what was coming. It took a while but eventually he saw Joe appear. His brother sat in the back seat, keeping an eye on Cole, watching the world unfolding all over again. Cole couldn’t make out the expression on Joe’s face – jealousy or disappointment? Probably both, it would always be both.

There was a blur of motion and it took Cole only a second to realize what had happened. She was quick and had practised the move for a thousand hours until she couldn’t be seen, slipping something small between her teeth. She leaned in to kiss him and he pressed his fist under her chin and shoved it up tight until her shoulders cracked. He’d been waiting for the move. If he hadn’t, he’d be dead.

He slapped her, and her head bounced against the driver’s window. “Spit it out.”

“Huh?”

Cole slapped Terry again, much harder, and it did nothing but bring a giggle up in her throat. He mashed his lips to hers and could feel the razor blade pressing through her flesh from the other side. They kissed and her lips parted, and then her blood burst into his mouth.

He took it in because he had to and he wanted to, then wiped the back of his hand across his chin. “Spit it out.”

She turned her head and spit the razor blade into the back seat.

“Don’t try it again,” he told her.

“No,” she said, “no, not for a while.”

Fair enough. It was getting dark now but he didn’t put on the headlights. He kicked it up to ninety, still weaving through traffic. She rode and he rode, the engine thrumming, gas gauge more than half-full, staring out at the world descending through the windshield, his neck unbroken, murder just in front, thinking about all the insane and uncompromising curves that lay in wait ahead.