Derailed Read online

  He understood. It was one thing to make out in a car and another thing to check into a hotel with the intention of having sex.

  The inside of the Fairfax Hotel looked pretty much the way the outside looked — shabby and faded and just this side of destitute. The lobby smelled of camphor.

  When they walked up to the desk, he could feel Lucinda’s white-knuckled grip somewhere up by his throat. He told the deskman that he’d be paying in cash and was given a key to room 1207.

  They rode the elevator up in silence.

  When the doors opened on twelve, he said, “Ladies first.”

  And Lucinda said, “Age before beauty.”

  So they walked out together. The floor was in need of a few more light bulbs, he thought, since the only light seemed to be coming from a half-draped window to the left of the elevator. The carpet smelled of mildew and tobacco.

  Room 1207 was way down at the end of the hall where it was darkest, and Charles needed to squint just to make out the numbers on the door.

  This is what they got for ninety-five dollars in New York City: a room smelling of disinfectant, with one queen-size bed, one lopsided table lamp, and one table, all pretty much within two feet of one another.

  A room that was virtually equatorial — with no discernible thermostat to help.

  There was a white paper sash encircling the toilet lid. Charles did the honors; he had to go the moment he entered the room. Nerves.

  When he came out of the bathroom, Lucinda was sitting on the bed, playing with the TV clicker. Nothing was actually appearing on the TV screen.

  “I think you have to pay extra,” she said.

  “Do you want to . . . ?”

  “No.”

  There was an awkward politeness to their mannerisms, he thought, as if they were a couple on a blind date. Jitters masked as solicitude.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Charles?” she said.

  “Fine.” He sat in the chair.

  “I meant here. ”

  “Oh. Right.” He slipped off his coat and hung it up in the closet next to hers. Then he walked over to the bed — a very short walk given the dimensions of the room — and sat down.

  I shouldn’t be here. I should get up and leave. I should . . .

  But she laid her head on his shoulder and said: “So. We’re here.”

  “Yes.” He was sweating right through his shirt.

  “Okay.” She sighed. “Do you want to stay, or do you want to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?Which is it?”

  “Stay. Or go. What do you want to do?”

  “Fuck you,” she said. “I think I want to fuck you.”

  It happened when they were ready to leave.

  They’d dressed quietly, and Charles had searched the room to make sure they hadn’t left anything.

  Then they’d walked to the door.

  He opened it to usher her out. She moved past him, and he could smell the perfume she’d just dabbed on in the bathroom. Then he smelled something else.

  There were two of them standing there — Lucinda and him, and then suddenly there were three.

  He was knocked backward onto the floor.

  He was kicked in the ribs, then kicked in the stomach as the air was forced out of him. Lucinda was thrown on top of him, then not on top of him, then she was lying there beside him.

  The door slammed. The lock turned.

  There were two of them, and then there were three.

  “Make one fucking sound and I’ll blow your heads off,” the one who wasn’t either Lucinda or himself said.

  A man with a gun — Charles could see him, could see the gun, too, something stunted looking and oily black. He was panting, as if he’d just run a long distance to get there.

  “I’ll give you all my money,” Charles said. “You can have it.”

  “What?” The man was black but Hispanic, Charles thought, a kind of accent, anyway. "What the fuck d’you say?”

  “My money — it’s yours.”

  “I told you to shut the fuck up.” He kicked him again, not in the ribs this time, but lower down. Charles groaned.

  “Please,” Lucinda said in a trembling little girl’s voice, a voice that didn’t seem capable of coming out of a grown woman. “Please . . . don’t hurt us. . . .”

  “Don’t hurt us," the man said, mimicking her, taking pleasure in making fun. Of her fear. That little-girl voice . . . like she was going to cry or something. “Oh, I ain’t gonna hurt you, baby . . . uh-uh. . . . Now throw me your fucking wallets.”

  Charles reached for his pocket, through the folds of his down jacket saturated with sweat — reached in and grabbed his wallet with a shaking hand.

  This only happens in movies. This only happens on the front pages. This only happens to someone else.

  He threw his wallet to the man with the gun. Lucinda was fumbling inside her pocketbook, looking for hers, the one with the picture of a five-year-old girl on a swing somewhere in the country. Somewhere other than here — the threadbare floor of room 1207 in the Fairfax Hotel.

  By the time she threw him her wallet, he was already looking through Charles’s, pulling the cash out of it — quite a bit of cash, too, the cash Charles was going to use to pay for the room. But after the man took the cash, he kept looking at the wallet — grinning at something.

  “Well, look at this,” he said.

  He was looking at Charles’s pictures — Anna and Deanna and him. The Schine family.

  “Funny,” he said. “That don’t look like you . . .” talking to Lucinda. “That sure as shit don’t look like you.”

  Back to Charles. “That don’t look anything like her, Charles. ” Smirking at them.

  Then, looking through her wallet and finding a picture of hers. “Ain’t that something,” he said. “Thisguy don’t look like you, Charles. Uh-uh. This guy ain't you, Charles.”

  He snorted, laughed, giggled; he’d figured something out.

  “Let’s see here. Know what I think? Hey” — he kicked Charles again, not as hard this time, but hard enough — “Isaid, Know what I think?”

  Charles said, “What?”

  “What?What? I think you guys are fucking around with each other. Stepping out on the old lady, huh, Charles? Getting some strange, my man. That what you doing, Charles? ”

  Charles said, “Please, just take my money.”

  “Just take your money? Just take your money? Thanks, but I already took your fucking money. See”—holding the cash out to him—“this is your money. I got your fucking money.”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “I see. I promise we won’t go to the police.”

  “You promise, huh? That’s fucking nice of you, that’s real fucking kind of you, Charles. I can take your word on that, huh? You won’t go to the police. Well then . . .”

  He waved the gun around in little looping circles, first toward him, then her, then back again. Inky black, snub-nosed barrel. . . .

  “Well then . . . if you ain’t gonna go to the police and all . . .”

  Lucinda was trembling beside him, shaking like a wet stray.

  “Hey, baby,” the man said. “Hey,baby . . .”

  “Please . . . ,” Lucinda said.

  “How is she, Charles? Better than the old lady, I bet. Nice pussy, Charles? Nice tight pussy?”

  Charles started to get up. He was back in the bar and the man was insulting her, and Charles would have to set him straight, to show him what’s what. Except the man pistol-whipped him across the face and Charles went flying back again. Hearing a crack before feeling the pain—first one and then the other, first the sound of his nose being broken, then the nauseating pain of his nose being broken. And the blood starting to seep out on the floor.

  “What was that, my man? I didn’t hear you, Charles. What’d you say? You said you can fuck her if you want? Why, thank you, Charles. That’s fucking kind of you. Letting me have your bitch and all.”

  “No,” Lucinda moane
d. “No . . .”

  “No?Didn’t you hear him say that I could fuck you, Lucinda. ” It was the first time he’d said her name—in a way, it seemed every bit as horrible as kicking them to the floor and stealing their wallets. “That’s what the man said. You giving it to him—you can give it to me. Whore’s a whore, baby. Am I right, Charles? Am I?”

  Charles was choking on his own blood. It was pouring down his throat and clogging his windpipe — he was drowning in it, sputtering for air.

  “Sit up here, Charles.” The man pulled him up, led him over to the lone chair, which had fluff seeping out of a ripped cushion decorated with a faded floral design. He sat him down on it. “Feeling better there, Charles? Take a deep breath. That’s right—in, out. You’ll want a good seat for this, Charles. Championship fucking, my man. Twelve rounder. You don’t want to miss this.”

  Lucinda ran.

  She’d caught him by surprise — the man with the gun, lying there trembling like that, and then suddenly springing up and making a run for it. She made it all the way to the door.

  She even turned the knob and got it half-open before he reached her and pulled her back in. By her hair. That dark, silky hair that tasted of shampoo and sweat, so soft you could comb it by hand — twisted in his fist as she screamed.

  “You want to shut the fuck up, Lucinda. ” He’d put the barrel into her mouth, straight in, knocking it up against her teeth. Lucinda stopped screaming.

  Charles was still wheezing through his own blood, dizzy enough to pass out, a white light searing the bridge of his nose. Watching as the man laid Lucinda onto the floor as if they were engaged in some eerie kind of dance, some modern pas de deux, laying her down and standing over her. As he pulled her skirt up above her waist. As he snorted and wolf whistled and slowly, slowly pulled her black lace panties down to her knees.

  As he unzipped his pants.

  TEN

  He passed out, more than once he passed out, but each time the man brought him back, slapping water onto his face, whispering into his ear.

  Don’t fade on me, my man. Round two . . . baby. Round three . . . four . . .

  It was like bad porno . . . the kind you don’t really want to see, but your friend just happens to have it, so you watch. Even as you pull your eyes away, you watch. The woman with the dog, the scat tape where she swallows it all — sickening, really, can’t believe she’s really doing that, but she is, and you’re watching it. Your stomach churning, your guts heaving, makes you want to throw up, but you have to look at it. Don’t know why, but you do.

  Him and Lucinda. Beautiful naked Lucinda and him.

  And she was beautiful. As he placed her on hands and knees and put it into her ass. Telling Charles what he was doing, too — keeping up a kind of running commentary. . . .

  See, Charles — they love it in the ass. They tell you they don’t, but all whores do.

  Telling her to moan for him. Putting the gun up by her head as he rode her and making her moan. Moans of pain, probably, but they sounded like moans of pleasure. Moans were moans. Hard to tell which were which, except for the fact that her eyes were squeezed shut, her mascara streaked and running, and she was biting into her lip until it bled.

  And Charles watching, sitting there in the chair as if he were tied down, even though he wasn’t tied down.

  See this, Charles — a born cocksucker. . . . That’s right, baby . . . suck that big daddy dick. . . .

  The tableaux changed, no longer fucking her in the ass, but standing in front of her, hands cradling her face, that beautiful Lucinda face. And Lucinda choking, gurgling, the sounds spurring him on . . .Oh yes . . . oh yes . . . you watching this, Charles, Charley . . . don’t want to miss the cum shot . . . gotta see the money shot . . . oh yes . . .

  And later, Lucinda lying there — how much later? Charles didn’t know, later that morning, later that afternoon. Lucinda lying there covered with sweat and cum, hardly moving. Was she dead? No, she was still breathing, if only barely. Charles looked down at the dried blood on his hands and wondered whose it was, forgetting that it was his, that his nose must be broken.

  And now the man was rubbing himself, naked except for his sweat socks and sneakers, staring at Lucinda on the floor and jerking himself. For another round. Round . . .what? Five, six?

  “Still with us, Charles? ” the man said. “Hang in there, bud. More to come. . . .”

  And there was.

  The man taking her again, propping her up against the bed as if she were a marionette, all loose arms and legs, twisting her into his vision of lewd. Legs up by her ears, hands spreading herself — giggling at this. Taking his time, placing her just right, an inch here, an inch there. Lucinda slack jawed, just a prop, a blowup doll.

  And Charles decided to give it one more shot—not him deciding, his machismo deciding, his reptilian cortex, maybe — pushing him up off the chair in the general direction of the man who was about to rape Lucinda for the fifth or sixth time.

  The first thing was — he was dizzy. It was blindman’s buff and he’d been spun around the room like a top and couldn’t tell which way was which. He staggered, he teetered, he wobbled — the man not even aware of him yet because he was still positioning Lucinda and had maybe forgotten that Charles was even in the room. So Charles eventually righted himself and actually made it all the way over to him. He grabbed the man from behind, around the neck, and squeezed.

  He squeezed for all he was worth, he squeezed like there was no tomorrow, a virtual death grip of steel. But the man calmly, almost lazily, stood up and sloughed Charles off him as if he were dumping garbage onto the sidewalk. Charles ended up splay-legged on the floor, wondering what happened, as the man grinned and shook his head.

  “Charles . . . Charles . . . what the fuck’s the matter with you? Giving you the show of a lifetime. Championship fucking—you’ve never seen fucking like this. And this is the thanks I get. Shit. I ought to kick your ass, Charles. I ought to kick the shit out of you.”

  Charles mumbled something back at him. What did he say? He didn’t know. . . .

  “Okay,Charles. Let’s calm down. Let me count to ten. You just wanted some for yourself, that it? Watching the fuck machine got you hot, that it? I understand. Only not today, my man. It ain’t your turn, understand?”

  Lucinda was still stuck in that pornographic position, like a bored model waiting for the shutter. Only she didn’t look bored as much as dead, not even turning to look at her would-be savior, who in the end had simply traded one seat for another. One in the balcony for one in the front row.

  As the man—fully erect, the clumsy violence had apparently invigorated him—knelt between her white thighs, the thighs Charles had lain between not two hours before, and began again. So close to him, Charles could almost touch him, even if he couldn’t hit him, even if he couldn't stop him.

  “Oh, Charles,” he whispered, “like velvet. Like smooth, fucking velvet. . . .”

  It took a while after the man left to know the man had left.

  Charles heard the door slam, even saw him walk through the door before he heard the door slam, even heard the man say good-bye to them — Hate to go, but . . .And Charles continued to sit there on the floor as if the gun were still trained at his head. As if the man were still moaning into Lucinda’s hair, that grotesque ass pumping up and down mere inches from his face.

  And Lucinda, too. Still with her legs apart like something wanton, like those Amsterdam hookers who lounge in shop windows with their legs spread in an open invitation. Only their expressions not quite as horrified looking, their hair not matted to their chins with sweat and blood and dried cum.

  Eventually Charles moved.

  One leg at a time, tentatively, like a man testing the water. As if to prove he could move even if he wasn’t quite willing to believe it. And then after he’d moved his legs, his arms, and then his whole body, getting up off the floor and standing, a little wobbly, but up on his own two feet again. And when he moved,
so did she.

  Not saying anything, nothing at all, but slowly bringing one thigh over to the other, hiding that open part of her that resembled a raw wound. And then slowly picking herself up off the floor and trudging over to the bathroom, where she went in and closed the door.

  He heard the water running, heard the sound of towel rubbing skin, then what sounded like retching. A toilet flushing once, then twice.

  He still hadn’t cleaned himself up yet. Bloody hands, blood all over his face, too, no doubt—his nose feeling twice its normal size, as though he had a clown nose on his face. And maybe he did—maybe that was entirely appropriate. Charles the clown, getting whacked in the head and booted in the bottom while the circus master had his way with the star attraction. Who was opening the bathroom door now. Still not saying anything to him—what, after all, do you say to a clown? Still looking dazed and battered, if a little more cleaned up. Still naked, too, as if that didn’t matter, as if she could never be more naked than she was fifteen minutes ago—spread open and violated, and after that, what could clothes do for you? And maybe something else—that clowns don’t count, they’re superfluous in the scheme of things, and it doesn’t matter what they see if they can’t act.

  Are you all right? he started to say to her. He almost had the words out of his mouth until he realized how hopelessly inadequate they were. How could she be all right, how could she ever again be all right?

  “I should take you to a hospital,” he said.

  “No.” Her first word to him in what must have been hours.

  “You should be looked at.”

  “No. I’ve been looked at enough for one day.” Her voice sounded dead, the way bad actors sound, wooden, no real emotion there. It was scarier than screaming, more frightening than tears. If she’d cried, he’d have put his arms around her and comforted her. But there was nothing he could do for her.

  She began to get dressed, slowly, one item at a time, not covering up, no coyly turning away from him like before. So Charles went into the bathroom, where he flinched at his own reflection, thinking at first that it was someone else staring back at him. It couldn’t possibly be him. But this was Charles the clown, remember? He of the bulbous nose and red paint and fright wig.