Darling Clementine by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online Page B

tit, prick, cunt, lips, eyes, breath. It was there, present, everlasting, unholy. It was not rational nor was it passionate; it was not even man or woman, heterosexual or homosexual; but it was not selfless because there was no self to be less. We were on the bed and he was pumping into me and I had my hand on his buttock and was crying out and the sound and the motion and the flesh and the feeling. Civilization did not fall but only because it had never stood, was a great lie, built atop a landfill of orgasms and purposeless pleasure. I had no mother, we were my mother; I had no father, we were my father. There could be no mistake, no betrayal, no loss: This was love; carnal knowledge; knowledge of the instant, all there was. And for one brief shining moment that was known, I came a lot.

Three
    If there is anything on earth I hate, it is Dr. Blumenthal. All I want is to be an orchid, and he keeps asking me about my old man.
    â€œHe fucked me,” I say finally; insouciantly is the word I want.
    â€œDid he?” says Blumenthal.
    â€œEvery night,” I say. “He came into my room and did it to me.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œNo,” I say sullenly. “No, he never did that really.”
    â€œYou sound sorry,” says der doc, shifting.
    I shrug. “I remember it—him doing it. As if it happened. I have a visceral memory of it. It was what I expected in a way, like a rite of passage. My period, learning to drive, my father making love to me. It’s hard to explain.” I give him my steely, blue-eyed glare: I have a top-notch steely blue-eyed glare. “It’s like now, though. I’m sitting here, you’re sitting there—and I feel like you’re fucking me good and proper.”
    Blumenthal shifts. “Why should that bother you? You’re a woman: you should enjoy a good fuck.”
    Have I described Blumenthal’s voice? It’s a real Jewish whine, a real nasal, wimpy, don’t-let-them-hurt-me whine. It’s ridiculous. The fact is, I do feel somewhat titillated sitting there; my skin warm, my muscles relaxed: a little breathless altogether.
    Harshly I say: “So God tells me.”
    Blumenthal glances over his shoulder, as if he might have left the window open. “How’d God get in here?” he says.
    â€œArthur broke my mug,” I tell him.
    Blumenthal puts his hand out flat and indicates the web between index finger and thumb. “Put your hand like this,” he says, “and slam it once real hard into his throat.”
    I laugh. “Fuck you,” I say.
    â€œNo, no, I’m the Daddy,” Blumenthal says. “I do the fucking.”
    I have to tell him: Christ, it’s as if he knows. “I did it to Arthur.” He doesn’t answer. “I gave it to him up the ass. With my fingers.”
    â€œDoes that upset you?”
    â€œIt was wonderful. I wanted to make him drink his own come but I didn’t.”
    Blumenthal hangs there like: in the Sistine Chapel (Arthur and I honeymooned in Rome the week before we got married) there’s one part in the Last Judgment which is supposed to be a self-portrait of Michelangelo: it’s the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew being held by himself, dangling down, a face and body collapsing into folds of loose flesh: Blumenthal hangs there like that.
    I jut my chin out at him. “He broke my lousy mug,” I say.
    The mug in question was a thing of beauty and a joy for about a week. I had bought it with the ten dollars I received from “Heat Winds, A Quarterly,” for my rhymed satire beginning,
    â€œTheir romance could ne’er endure,
    The odor of his love’s manure …”
    It was a simple coffee mug but had a glazed finish of robin’s egg blue which transfixed my eyes and, anyway, I liked it.
    Arthur comes home—this is about five days ago—and he’s all fired up because he has just been battling an attempted coverup