Monster (12 page)

“
Those well
s make a fortune,” he said. “
They've pum
ped
better than a thousand barrels a day for the past
five
years. And they don't make much noise. You can
only
hear them now because it's late and everything's q
uiet.
They're modern wells and work on air pressure ra
ther
than gasoline moto
rs.”

“You sound like you like them.”

He grinned
. “
My dad owns a twenty per cent interest
in
all twelve of them. That car I drive came from mone
y from those wells.”

She let go of his hand and shoved him playful
l
y
in
the side.
“
Here you're not even out of high school,
and
you've sold out to the money-hungr
y destroyers of our environment.”

He
gra
bbed her and pulled her close. “
Who cares about this world? I
t's only here for our pleasure.”

“
What about our childre
n? And our children's children?”

“I
can't worry about th
em.”

“
You should,
”
she said, feeling his warm breath on her
face.

“
Why? They might never be bo
rn.”

He
kissed her. He kissed the way he ate, and that wasn't
ba
d. Deep and hard, but still with enjoyment. She felt hersel
f sink into him; he pulled her ti
ght against his body. He
was
like a redwood, strong and firm. His arms went round her, and his hands went down her back and over
her but
t.
He was aggressive
–
Mary had told her. But she wasn't Mary, although last summer she wished many times she had been. She wasn't an expert in the art of making love. She had never even had a guy touch her below the
waist
.
Jim
moved his right hand to the front of her blouse and started to slip it down. God, it felt
good,
just his fingers
getting
close. But she pulled back.

“
Don't I get a chance to come up for air?
”
she asked,
tr
ying to joke.

He reached for her. “I'll give you my air.”

She held up her hand. “
Hold on a sec. This is a little fast for me
.”

He smiled. He dropped his hands to his side and stared
out
at the water.
“
Do you want to go for a swim?
” he asked.

“The water's too cold.”

He started removing his shirt.
“
Hah
!
We're both hot
.
Besides, the night's warm. Come on
.”

“
I don
't
have a bathing suit.”

He pulled his shirt over his head
, laughing. “
That's the
best part.”

Angela felt dismayed. This was their first date, after all.
No
thing like this had ever happened to her in Chicago.
J
im
unzipped his trousers and began to pull them off. It
didn’t
look as if he was wearing underwear.

“Wait,” she said.

“
What?
”

“
I
can't swim
,” she lied.

“
We don t have to go out deep
.”

“I have a cold.”

“Angie.”

“
I'm just getting over one, r
eally. I shouldn't go in the water.”

He threw back his head and laughed at the moon.
“I’m
going swimming. You can join me if you want, or you
can
watch. But you'd
better be careful if you watch, because
I
might suddenly jump out and pull you in.
I've done it before, you know.”

She giggled nervously. “I didn't know that.”

Angela tried not to look while he pulled off his trous
ers,
but she ended up getting an eyeful. He had a nice
– well,
he was a nice boy, in all respects. Great buns.

Except he was kind of pushy, a side of him she
had
never seen before. It was funny how you really
didn’t
know someone till you got intimate with them.

This is not int
imac
y. This is sexual insanity.

Jim
ran naked into the water, splashing like a kid. At waist level he dived under, and she counted more heartbeats than she wanted before he reappeared, at least fifty
yards
further out
.
He was a powerful swimmer. The light
of
the
moon swam around him, and the ripples he sent out w
ere like miniature silver waves.

“Come on!”
he called.

“
Next time!
” she called b
ack.

He swam to the centre of the lake, a quarter of a mile
out,
and had her worri
ed that he'd cramp up and drown. But
then he rolled on to his back and leisurely began to padd
l
e back in. She took off a shoe and touched the water with her f
oot.
She shook her head. I
t must be fed with underground s
treams, she thought. The daytime temperature had averaged over eighty degrees
for the last few months, and the
water couldn't have been more than sixty degrees.

Jim
must have a hardy constitution.

She saw an example of
that
hardy constitution a few min
utes
later when he reached
the shore and came running out
of
the water towards her. She couldn't believe it. Until a
f
ew
days ago her life was dull, and now she had a hunk,
naked
no less, chasing her in the middle of the night. She
too
k
one look at him and
realized
he had every intention
of
dragging her into the water, clothes and all. She ran off
t
he
grassy shore, across View Street, and into trees. She'd
be
damned if
Jim
wasn't still hot on her tail.

“I
have a cold
!”
she shouted back to him.

“I
don't believe you
!” he answered.

Angela darted behind a clump of bushes, hoping to
lose
him, and bent down low to hide. She figured he'd
be
able to spot her in a second and had resigned herself
to
a
drenching when she suddenly heard him cry out
in
pain. She stood up tentatively, figuring it might be a ruse. But she spotted him only fifty feet away kneeling
beside
a tree, holding his right arm. It looked as i
f he'd tripped and cut himself.
Surprisingly, he had his trousers on again.

He gets dressed
and undressed faster than anybody I
’
ve ever
seen.

She hurried to his side and helped him up.

“I g
uess
I
was in too much of a hurry to catch you,
”
he
sai
d
ra
ther sheepishly.

“G
od
,”
she whispered. His right arm was covered with
b
lood
.
She couldn't even see where the cut was
. “
What happened?
”

“
I
ran into a tree.”
He touched the tree they were stand
ing b
e
side. “
This one
.”

“Does it hurt?”

“
The
tree? I
t
did
when it came running at me
.”

She
giggled.
“
Silly. That's what you get for trying to
drench
me. Come on, let's go back to my place.
I
can
dress
it
for
you.”

He
was agreeable to the idea at first. But when they got
to w
here he
had
deposited his shirt he wanted to wash the
cut in the
lake and bandage it with his shi
rt –
tear it into
strips, in other words. The wound was still bleeding,
but
Angela thought that was a bit extreme.

“
Why don't you just put pressure on
it?”
she sugges
ted. “
That will
s
top the bleeding
.”

“
Because
it
hur
t
s.
I
don't want to touch
it.”

She nodded to the lake.
“
Is this water clean enoug
h?”

“
We drink it every day a
t school.”

“So I've heard.”

“What have you heard?” he asked.

“
Never mind. OK, let's wash i
t.”
She reached down
and
picked up his shirt
. “
At least
we'll be able to see how bad it is.”

“I’
m surprised how much it s
ti
ngs,
”
Jim
said. She
sus
pected it was a nasty cut indeed. He hesitated
before
dipping it in the water. She knelt beside him and got
her
trousers wet, too.

“
Do you want me to help you?
”
she asked.

“
Am
I
acting like a baby?
”

“Not at all.”

“
Good,
” he said. “
Can I kiss you again?
”

Yes. But first let's—”

He shut he
r
up by leaning over and planting his li
ps on
hers. He couldn't have been in that much pain. Once
more
he kissed her long and hard. Again she felt his hands
on
her body, tugging at the
buttons on the front of her blouse.
She tried to stop him, but he persisted, and she did
n’t really
want him to stop anyway. Actually, she wanted him to
strip
her naked and make passionate love to her right on spot
.
He leaned her head back on the grass and
pulled
her blouse open. She had a bra on, but that wouldn't
be
an obstacle to him for
l
ong. Not this guy.

This is a
hell of a w
ay to get to know each other.

Then she felt a warm, sticky liquid being smeared
across
her belly as he squeezed her closer. It was totally silly
of
her, but for a moment she had forgotten he was
bleed
ing.
She sat up
with a start, knocking him back.

“You're bleeding all over me!”
she cried.

“It's OK.”

“No, It's not OK.”
Her blouse was lying completely open;
he
had
snapped free a couple of buttons in his eagerness to
get to
her breasts
.
The blouse was badly stained with blood,
a
s
was
much of her belly and chest. She couldn't believe he
ha
d
managed to bleed on her that much during just one
kiss.
She wondered how long it had lasted.
“
You've made a
mess
of both of us,
”
she complained.

He
laughed. “It'll wash off.”

“
I
don't think so.” She paused. “How's your arm?”

He held it up to the moonlight
– seemingly without a c
are
in
the world
–
and she could see that it was soaked with blood, more even than a few minutes ago.
“
It doesn't
loo
k
like it's going
to fall off in the next minute,”
he said.

“
J
im
!
You're really bleeding
.
You might have sliced a
vein.”

“
That's why I wanted to tear up my shirt,
”
he said.

“
You
just
wanted to tear off my clothes.”

H
e grabbed at her again
. “
Yeah
.”

She
pushed him back. 'We have to stop this bleeding
.”

He
grinned wolfishly. “
Why don't you kiss it and make
it be
tter?”
He
held it up to her face for her to do so.
“
Just
a little
peck.”

She turned her head. “
You're making me sick. Where's
y
ou
r
shirt? I'm going to tie it on your arm
–
the whole
thing.
Let's not wash the wound in the water. It'll only encourage the bleeding.
”

“All right, Angie.”

She
knotted his shirt directly over
the spot where she bel
ieved the cut to be
.
Jim
gave a grunt but said nothing
.
She sat for a minute to see if the bleeding decreased. It a
p
peared to do so. Her hands, all her clothes, were
by
this ti
me covered with blood.

“It’s
getting better,
”
she said, movin
g to get up. “
Let's
ge
t
back.”

“
In
a minute.”

“
Jim
.”

He
grabbed
her
and
started
kissing
her
again.
Somebod
y had eaten his Wheaties that morning.
But they were both
so smeared with gook that the passion had lost all ch
arm
for Angela. Well, most of the charm. It
still
fel
t
good
to
have his mouth on he
rs. He tasted great, like the steak
he'd eaten for dinner. That rare steak.

Ang
ie
, dear, that might be the taste of h
is
blood.

The thought was enough to cool her down. She fi
nally
managed to push him back and jump to her feet
be
fo
re he could kiss her again.

“We're going back,”
she said
.

He glanced up a
t her and flashed a little-boy s
mile.
“So soon?”

“
Yes
.”
She offered him her hand
. “
Before the sun co
mes up.”

He kissed her once more as she said goodbye to hi
m at
his car. He wouldn't let her take him to a doctor because
he
said his arm was fine. He touched her right breast, un
der
the bra,
while he gave her the last kiss.
She couldn't
believe
she let him.
Mary said he was a monster, all
right
.

But a dreamy thought swam in Angela's mind as she
let
him touch her.

M
aybe he's m
y kind of monster.