Page 121 of Bend
“Impulse and instinct. It’s how I do everything.”
“You’re very beautiful,” he says.
“Thanks, hon. You don’t need to flatter me to get under my skirt.”
“I’m still trying to decide if it would be worthwhile.”
“Oh, I promise…” I reach out to touch him, but he grabs my wrist.
“Put them behind you, on the dash.”
Oh. A bossy one.
“You came into the bathroom,” I say. “Do you still have to pee?”
“I’m good.”
“Uh, huh. I don’t know what you’re into, but I’ve done that.”
“You let someone piss on you?”
“It was a give and take.”
“And how was it?”
I shrug without moving my hands off the leather dash. “Scratched it off my bucket list.”
He takes half a pause before he laughs so hard and deep I can see his chest moving. I can’t help but smile. Pleasing him does something for me.
“How old are you?” he asks.
“Old enough.”
He’s perturbed by that answer, and he snaps up my bag.
“Hey!”
“Hands on the dash,” he says while looking in my bag.
He flips past my packet of birth control pills and extracts my wallet. I’m nervous, like Sister Elizabeth is standing over me with a napkin and I have a wad of gum in my mouth.
“This your kink?” I say. “Looking in a girl’s bag?”
He flips my wallet open. “You seem quite willing to let me use your body, but you don’t want me to look in your bag. I don’t know if the boundary differences are cultural or generational, but the fact is, I want to keep myself out of jail if you don’t mind.” He rifles through the wad of hundreds to the stack of cards. The Amex Black has a quarter inch of white dust on the edge. He presses his thumb to my driver’s license and pushes it out. “Twenty-two.”
“My birthday’s Groundhog Day.”
He tucks my license back and puts the wallet back in my bag. “What else is on that bucket list of yours?” He tosses the bag aside.
I bite my bottom lip. “Getting nailed in an alley downtown.”
“A real one.”
I would have gotten bored with this shit already, but I want to impress him. I want him to like me. “Ride dressage in the Olympics.”
“Dressage? I would have taken you for a dancer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
