He lingered, motionless, for a while longer, watching Gary disappear into his house, not knowing what he would do next, just staring, but once again feeling the pull of the amniotic sea beyond the edge of the land. The result of the game they had played had startled him. While he felt good about his achievement, the fear of some other, tragic outcome had also come upon him. He imagined the BB penetrating one of Gary’s eyes, passing through the eye socket, and lodging itself somewhere in his brain. What sort of lifetime consequence this would have he couldn’t guess, but he shivered with the fear of it, and what would happen to him as a result. His life could have ended here on Land’s End. What awful punishment would he have gotten? Yet, the possibility of losing his own eye did not occur to him.
He turned away from the houses and walked toward the road that used to wind around Point Lobos, holding the rifle at his side. Exiting the woods, and feeling the salty, moist breeze coming off the water, he headed in the direction of the break in the road, trying different types of walking, such as he had seen in the movies. John Wayne’s walk , of course, was the best: the loping gait, the shoulders aslant, holding the rifle, like a god at the edge of the universe. He imagined people watching him, and admiring him for it. But there was no one. Then, he noticed a large gull, circling overhead in broad, lazy turns, hunting probably, but maybe just feeling its life, also showing off its style. He quickly raised the rifle and shot, knowing he would never hit it, but never wondering why he should. At this intrusion, the bird turned suddenly, cursed at him in a shriek, flapped its broad, graceful wings, and moved higher and away.
He forgot about Gary and the stalking game, feeling the sun warming him for the first time that day, and pointing the rifle up and down, listening to the BBs slide up and down and making a gratifying metallic noise against the walls of the chamber. He walked this way for a while, finally coming to the break in the road where it had slid down the side of the cliff. He looked across the chasm at the other side, where the road continued on. Getting there would not be easy, as he would have to descend into the loose mud and rock, and the thick vegetation that had already grown into the landslide.
They had met a few weeks ago.
He looked through the trees to the sea, and decided that he may as well go home too. He put the rifle in the plastic sleeve that it had come with, and walked on the soft, sandy soil up the hill along the fences. Arriving at the back of his house, he could see the landlady’s daughter over the top of the fence. She was moving stuff around in the back yard. He didn’t want to go in while she was there. They would have to talk, but whenever he saw her, he had a pleasant feeling; it made him shiver sometimes, afraid. She wore a loose, one-piece dress that came down to her ankles. So he waited, but she continued to putter around. He decided instead to go around to the street and come in the front door, instead of up through the basement/garage on the ground floor.
On the street, he walked up the hill on the sidewalk, past Gary’s house, up to his own house where they had rented the first-floor apartment above the garage from the Armenian lady and her daughter. They lived together upstairs. He knew nothing about Armenians, but that’s what they told his father, when they learned that he was Hungarian. Maybe they were distantly connected. What was the girl’s name? She must have been older, past high school. She had very dark, very long curly hair that went halfway down her back. It shone darkly in the sun. Black eyes, and heavy eyebrows on the whitest skin. And full lips that, oddly, had no color, just etiolated mass.
A few minutes after he had let himself into the apartment, he heard a knock on the door. He opened it and she was there. He felt as though he were choking, his ears pounding. He could barely hear her, when she asked if he could help her move something downstairs. He came to her wordlessly, closed the door behind him, and followed her back down to the dark, poorly lit garage. She left a sweet, exotic odor behind as she walked, and it enveloped him as he passed through it, following her. It was as powerful a scent as the sea and the pine woods behind the houses. It clung to him as the thin long gown clung to her, closely, around the curves of her hips. She spoke in a barely accented voice, explaining that she was finally getting the basement in order for her mom, but there were things that were too heavy for her to move alone.
“It’s this log, it’s too heavy and it’s in the way. Please help me move it out to the back,” she said as she brushed past him and her gown rustled along his arm. “I don’t know anymore why it’s here. My mother found it in the woods and thought it had value.”
As she leaned down to pick it up, facing him, so did he, looking at her for direction. The top of her loose gown dropped, revealing to him her blooming, heavy breasts. She noticed immediately what had happened from the stunned look on his face, and in an instantaneous angry fury, dropped her end of the heavy log and stood. He dropped his side of the log and stepped back, away from her . With a muffled growl, she stepped over the log toward him, pushing him back against the laundry sink. She reached for his right hand with hers, took it and, reaching under her gown, pushed his palm into the dense, wet fur between her legs. She grunted as her legs tightened around his hand, filling it with her hot sobbing liquid. Terrified, he held himself against the sink with his other hand. Leaning against him, she reached into his shorts, pushing them down and taking his penis and scrotum in her hand. Helplessly, he spurted himself on it and felt his legs giving way, twitching silently. She growled again, as though even more angry, pulling her hand away, and, glancing at the warm semen on her open palm, raised it to his face to show him, finally rubbing it in his nose and mouth and cheeks.
She let go of his hand on her sex, as he slipped to the floor, his left arm still holding on to the rim of the sink. She stood over him, looking down at the top of his blond head, breathless, covering it with her own jet black hair. He let go of the sink, and found himself kneeling before her. She put both her hands on top of his head and drew it to her, slowly exhaling her anger. Her gown now had a cold stain where her wet pubis met his wet face.
“You will never forget this moment; I don’t think I will either. But it is ridiculous, and we will try our best.” She turned away, heading for the stairs, her slightly wobbly step creaking on the first step. “Move the log out to the garden.”
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