Bloodbrothers (20 page)

"Do you think you might be able to spare a new bag?" She smirked, drumming long nails on glass. Butler took out the stockings, crumpled the bag and tossed it behind him. He put the stockings in a new bag. She gave each of them one last hard stare before leaving the store. Butler ran in front of the counter, spread his legs, grabbed his crotch and shook his basket at her back.

"That fuckin' lady's been breakin' my uncle's balls for years."

"
Peach
puff?" Stony gawked.

Butler returned the other stockings to their box. "I'd like to give her douchepuff."

"She had nice fuckin' legs, Butler. I bet you get laid in here before the end of July."

"I shoulda banged her on the Fourth. You see those legs? Very patriotic." Butler slapped the box into place. "Red, white an' blue."

"Hey, meanwhile, speakin' a Old Glory, guess who I racked with last night?"

"Martha Raye?"

"Close, Three-Finger Annette."

"Really?" Butler grinned, pulled up a chair facing Stony. The el train roared overhead, deafening everything within two miles. Stony waited for the train to pass.

"Yeah ... I was watchin'
Mary Tyler Moore
last night an' I got horny. I always get horny watchin'her ... anyways, I was a cunt hair away from callin' Cheri."

"Bad news."

"So I figured. Anyway, I'm going berserk and I don't know what to do. Suddenly the goddamn phone rings. It was the seventh cavalry." Stony pretended he held a phone to his head, his pinky in front of his mouth, his thumb in his ear.

" 'Hello, Stony? This is Annette Palladino.' 'Hey, Annette, howya doin'?' 'I got my own place last week. Stony, an' I was wonderin' if you wanna come over.'" Stony clasped his hands together and smiled beatifically at the ceiling. "Thank you,
God!
Butler, I was over there before she hung up. She got a nice crib on Dyer Avenue, one room, but nice. Anyways, I got over there and she lays this dynamite boo on me, I mean
super
shit. One jay between us an' we're flyin'. I just took her fuckin' face in my hands"—Stony closed his eyes, his hands in front of him—"an' I started kissin' her. This sounds nuts, Butler, but we were just kissin'. Her lips felt so fuckin' good, like warm and firm, an' I was goin' bananas. We weren't even tonguin', Butler." Stony puckered his lips and kissed the space between his hands. "It was fantastic. I felt really warm, you know?"

"That all you did?" Butler bit his thumbnail.

"Hell, no! We got in the bed. I just laid there an' she took all my clothes off. It was like heaven. You ever have your nipples sucked? It's the most incredible feelin', Butler. It stings but nice. Anyway, she just peeled me down. I was comin' before she even got to my pants. She unlaced my boots, everything. She goes into the bathroom, comes out, she's wearin' only these panties. I almost had a heart attack. They were this deep blue, silky, with tiny straps by the hips. My fuckin' dong was blowin' itself ... an' she comes out with this coconut oil ... you ever see that smile she got? She's the fuckin' sexiest bitch I ever racked with. I swear to you. Anyway, she's rubbin'this coconut oil over me ... oh!" Stony shuddered. "My fuckin' armpits, my toes, in
between
my toes, my cock, my fuckin' cock was
screamin'.
She started jackin' me off with the fuckin' coconut oil an' both hands twistin' in different directions up an' down." Stony slowly jerked off an invisible cock with both hands, a pained expression on his face, his shoulders heaving with every stroke. "
Jee-
zuz!...an'just as I was gonna come ... glomph!" Stony spread his lips over the top fist. "Sucked the juice right up from my balls. An' later when I was eatin' her out, her fuckin' pussy tasted like honey. I was goin' down on her an' lookin' through the pubes up at her face. She was doin' one a these numbers." Stony arched his back, extended his arms from his sides like limp wings and slowly did a grind on his seat, his face a cross between ecstasy and agony. "I swear, Butler, I almost got off again. An' then she starts licking her own tits." Stony imitated the action, a cupped hand under each nipple. "An' she starts
screamin',
pullin' my hair, pullin'
her
hair. An' when we were ballin', Butler, it felt like I didn't know where my cock ended and her cunt started. It was like we had a Siamese crotch an' she kept comin', an' comin', an' comin'...
rivers,
Butler; the goddamn bed was like a
swamp
... oh! An'she would grab my ass an' wrap her legs aroun' my ribs an' she would be like climbin' up me with her legs, an' that coconut oil smelled
ree
-lly nice through the whole fuckin' thing." Stony lit a cigarette.

"Don't stop now, I'm gettin' off!" Butler had been holding his crotch through the whole story.

"But the best, Butler, the best thing, the fuckin' coup de grace a the whole night"—Stony grinned triumphantly—"we did it up the chute." He smiled like a winner.

"You banged her in the ass! You fuckin' bastard! You fucked her up the ass!" Butler was jumping around like a hopped-up rooster. "I can't fuckin'believe it! You fucking cock ... sucker! You really did it up the ass!" Butler hit the cash register, pulled out a dollar and shoved it into Stony's chest pocket. "Buy that man a cigar! I
love
ass fucking!" Butler fell back into his chair.

"Oh, Butler, it was incredible, with the fuckin' pillows under her belly, the fuckin' K-Y jelly, mmmmuh! All the way in."

"She took it all the way, huh?"

"All the fuckin' way in, man, she didn't even flinch. It was so tight an' nice an' that fuckin' jelly. I don't know who invented that K-Y but the guy should get the Nobel Prize. It's greaseless, it's stainless, painless, you name it."

"Did she dig it?" Butler was spread-legged in his chair, eyes going in different directions.

"She came!"

"She came?" Butler slid off his chair and fell on the floor.

"An' in the mornin' I wake up and she made me breakfast in bed. Like a
sultan,
Butler, orange juice, toast, a mushroom omelet, hot coffee."

"Mushroom omelet!" Butler groaned, covering his face with his hands.

A girl came in, long black hair, dangling earrings, lean face, make-up. Butler scrambled up from the floor. "Yes."

"Two pairs, thirty-four, honeytone."

"Thirty-four, honeytone." Butler gawked at her. He turned to Stony, "Thirty-four honeytone!" He turned to the shelves. "Thirty-four honeytone!" Stony saw Butler had a hard-on a mile long. He pulled out a box, flipped it open on the counter, extracted two pairs, draped one across the inside of his forearm, caressed the material while staring at the girl. "This is honeytone."

"Yeah, I know." She looked at him suspiciously, opened her pocketbook and fished around for money.

"Anything else? Pantyhose? Bras? Panties?" he asked hopefully.

"No."

Butler handed her the package. She put a dollar-eight on the counter. Butler took her hand and placed it over the money. "On the house, dear." He looked like he was in pain. Stony held a hand over his eyebrows as if shielding his eyes from the sun. He tried not to crack up. She slid the money off the counter back into her pocketbook. "Thanks." She stared at him queerly.

"Come back soon." Butler waved at her retreating back, then squeezed Stony's knees. "Honeytone!" He got down on his knees. "I found my calling." He collapsed on his back.

Butler's Uncle Frank came into the store, a short bald guy with gray sideburns, gold-rimmed aviator glasses, a silky brown body shirt over a pot belly, gold and brown hound's-tooth double-knit slacks. He was startled to see Stony behind the counter. "Where's Bobby?"

"He's on the floor."

Butler got up, dusted off his pants.

"What the hell you doin' on the floor?"

"I lost a contact."

Frank leaned over the counter, looked down. "I thought maybe there'd be somebody down there with you."

Butler smirked at Stony. "Wise guy here."

Frank grinned, revealing perfectly even gleaming white false teeth. He grabbed Butler around the neck and pinched his cheek while grinning at Stony. "I love this fuckin' kid, he'd like to bang everything that walks inta this place, wants to get some nice granma in trouble." Butler's face turned red. He rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out in mock strangulation.

"Least I don't go after the delivery men." Butler straightened his collar, the red draining from his face.

"I'll fuck
you
under the table any day a the week." Frank laughed.

"You believe this old cocker?" Butler said to Stony.

Frank faked a punch. Butler ducked. "Bobby, I'm goin' home." He came behind the counter, flipped open a long rectangular covering over the keys on the cash register where the total receipts were registered. "Eighty-one fifty?" he squawked. "Whatta you
doin'
in here?"

Butler shrugged. "It's a slow day, Frank."

"Yesterday you had over two hundred!"

"So that was yesterday! You wamme to pull 'em in off the streets?"

Frank glared at his nephew, faked another punch. "I'll
kill
'em someday. I'll
kill
'em." He walked out from behind the counter. "I'll see you tomorrow, lock up nice." He left the store.

"Lock up nice, what the fuck does that mean?" Butler laughed to Stony. "He's on his way out, Stones, he doesn't have that many good years left. About two weeks I'd say offhand."

"I dig him." Stony chuckled.

"Yeah, he's O.K." Butler tilted his head back and massaged his throat with his fingertips. "So anyways, Annette's the one now, hey?"

Stony shrugged. "She ain't gonna be my main squeeze, if that's what you mean."

"Where's Cheri in your head?"

"Cheri who?"

"Three-Finger Annette," Butler announced, "da woman dat makes you fo'git da
other
woman."

"Hey, Butler." Stony winced. "Don't call her Three-Finger no more, O.K.?"

***

At the age of ten, Annette Palladino had developed full woman's breasts that, coupled with the fact that she started smoking cigarettes at eleven, sealed her fate at Saint Anne's School for Girls as a hoowah in the eyes of students and nuns alike. Other girls smoked too, but they didn't have tits as big as Annette's. When she lost two fingers to a paper-sorting machine on a class trip to a newspaper plant, the sisters smugly attributed it to God's evening the score. Also at eleven, the powers that be advertised Annette's calling by putting scarlet letters all over her face, in the form of severe acne. She had no friends among her classmates—the
contempt was mutual. She ran with an older crowd, girls among whom she didn't stick out, so to speak. The only problem was that her body was about five years ahead of her mind and the track she ran on was a little too fast for a twelve-year-old. At fifteen she got knocked up by a twenty-year-old ex-con smack freak who told her she couldn't get pregnant if they did it standing up. Her mother sent her to a Catholic retreat for wayward girls to have the baby. It was a boy. She couldn't see it, name it or touch it. He was given away immediately to a couple in Florida with six kids. Their identities and address were verboten information. She returned home and stayed in her curtain-drawn room for eight months, eating canned ravioli, watching TV and lying in bed. When she finally emerged, she had gained sixty pounds—her complexion had gone from ruddy to death white and she had developed severe astigmatism. She hitched to Haight and Ash-bury streets, was informed she missed the party by about five years, got locked up on vagrancy and conspiracy to commit prostitution charges and celebrated her sweet sixteen in a detaining cell in a women's prison in Oakland. The court released her on the stipulation that she be sent home to her father in the Bronx. Her father shipped her off to a convent in the Hudson Valley to become a nun. She ran away from the convent after three days, fell in love with a bartender in Rhinebeck, New York, and lived with him in a farmhouse for a year. During that year, her skin cleared up, she lost seventy pounds, went back to school, got a high school diploma, discovered she had a mind and worked part-time with kids in a day-care center. But a year away from the city was about all she could take, so at seventeen she split from her boyfriend and returned to the Bronx, supporting herself by cocktail waitressing and every so often turning a few tricks. Even though she was the same age as Stony and his friends, she felt miles and years ahead of them and naturally gravitated to the bar owners, bartenders and older bouncers in the clubs where everybody hung out. She developed a crush on Stony because he reminded her of a younger version of Fred, her ex-boyfriend bartender, in Rhinebeck. The only problem was that Stony and his crowd related to her in a way reminiscent of the eleven-year-olds at Saint Anne's.

Stony was a little different. When none of his friends were around he smiled at her in a particular way, something in his expression conveying to her that he knew there was something else out there beyond his teen-age friends and chump-change family. And that, whatever it was, he wanted some. She knew that when he was back with his pals, he got into the "ol' Three-Finger Annette" number, but that didn't really bother her. Small thrills for small minds. She had watched him and his cocktease girlfriend who looked like that big-titted blonde in "All in the Family." She had
her
number from the git-go. The Jewish princess with the Crown Jewels between her legs. One of the true hookers of the world. When the grapevine had it that they split up, she waited two weeks until she figured Stony was climbing the walls with horniness, then called him up. He was over to her crib in ten minutes flat. Just to blow him out of his socks she gave him the Royal Harem treatment that night. She knew, by the expression of his face after twenty minutes in bed, that Cheri was nothing but a childhood memory. Annette had a nice time racking with him that night. He was a little too fast and sloppy and he had to learn a little about lying back, relaxing and appreciating things done to him instead of running through all the male performance numbers, but basically he had it in him to develop into a class A fuck.