Big-dick Bottom Pt. 11

I walked up the rickety wooden stairs and knocked. I heard rustling inside. Voices. Then, there was a creak and I saw an older woman's face appear on the other side of the dirty screen door.

"Yes?" she said.

"Is Stacy here, ma'am?" I said.

"Just a moment," the woman said, and she shut the main door in my face.

I heard more voices, more creaking, and then the inner door opened again. I saw Stacy's face.

"What are you doing here?" she said.

"Just come out, OK?" I said.

Stacy gave me a long look and then sighed. "Hold on," she said.

She shut the door. I walked back down the stairs and went to stand next to my truck. I walked around the Blazer, kicking the tires and running my fingers over the handful of nicks I'd accumulated over the many miles of driving I'd done this summer. Despite a few new dents and scratches, the truck was still in pretty decent shape.

After several minutes, I heard the door slam and looked up to see Stacy walking down the stairs, pulling a cigarette out of a pack. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs to light it, then walked over to the truck.

"Up for a drive?" I said.

She blew smoke out of her mouth and didn't answer.

"Unless you need to get to church?" I added, with a grin.

She exhaled quickly and cracked a smile. She ran a finger through her bangs and swooped them up off her forehead. Her purple hair was slicked back with water and she had fresh makeup on. Smirking at me, she walked to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door. I opened the driver door and hopped in.

"Where are we going?" she said, as I fired up the engine.

"Oh, just a drive," I said.

Out on the road, the early morning air blew coolly through the truck. It was maybe ten minutes before Stacy broke the silence.

"You know, Paulie..." she said, staring out the window.

"Yeah?" I said, when she didn't go on.

Stacy took another drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out the window, then turned to look at me.

"I'm not sure I can forget it, Paulie," she said.

I didn't answer immediately. My mouth hardened to a line. After a minute, I said, "So are you gonna tell someone?"

Stacy blew smoke out of the window. "I don't know. It's pretty heavy."

"Yeah I know," I said.

We rode along another few miles in silence. Stacy finished her cigarette and lit another. When the Piggly Wiggly came into view, she shot me a nervous look.

"Paulie, what the..."

"No, don't worry, we're not going there," I said, as we whizzed by the turn to the quarry.

"Where are we going?" she asked again.

"I need to get something. From home," I said.

"From home? Didn't you just come from there?" Stacy said.

I turned and gave her an embarrassed grin.

"You mean...?" She smacked my leg. "Seriously, Paulie?"

"C'monn," I said, deepening my voice. "Cut me a break, huh Stace?"

Stacy just snorted and shook her head again.

"You know, it's not going to be the same at the Hut with you gone," she said.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"He's a mess over it, already."

"You mean more of a mess?"

"It's not a joke, Paulie. You know how he is. At least I hope you know by now."

Thinking about Mario made my throat tight and my head hurt. My body was still ringing with the touch of his hands and I could still smell him on me when I took a breath.

"If I know Mario," I said, after a moment, "he'll be back to himself inside of a week."

"Maybe you're right," Stacy said.

"And if you really want him to feel better, just call out and let Amanda cover a few of your shifts."

Stacy chuckled and so did I. We were in my neighborhood now, and I turned onto my street. A minute later I pulled up into my driveway.

"Hold on a minute," I said, cutting the engine.

I hopped out of the truck and ran into the house. Just as I'd hoped, my parents were gone, at church. I ran up the stairs and into my room, then fished the shoe box from where I'd stashed it, in a new spot, just in case, under a layer of old clothes in my bottom drawer. I pocketed a few stacks of bills, doing some quick math in my head, then re-hid the box and ran downstairs.

Hopping back in the truck, I turned to look at Stacy.

"What the fuck, Paulie?" she said, "what's going on?"

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the wad of cash. I held it out to her. She looked startled. She shook her head, slightly. When she didn't take the money, I reached out and took her hand, and put the money in it.

"Paulie," she said.

Then I reached for the Blazer's key chain, which was hanging in the ignition. I put the key chain into her hand, too.

"Here," I said.

"Paulie," she said again, looking at me, with surprise and confusion.

I pushed her hand back toward her when she tried to push the money and the key back at me, "No, Stace," I said, "this is for you. The truck, and the money." I pushed her hand back again.

"Paulie, cut the shit," Stacy said.

"How many times have you talked about getting away?" I said. "How many times, Stace?"

"Fuck you, Paulie, I can't take this," she said.

"Yes you can. I want you to have it."

She flipped through the wad of bills.

"Paulie, there's gotta be..."

"A thousand."

She looked at me, her face stricken. "No, Paulie," she said.

"Enough for rent and food for a couple months, at least, so you can get your feet on the ground, down in the cities."

She shook her head again. "I don't want your guilt money, Paulie. I can't take this."

"It's not guilt money, Stace," I said, and then I laughed. "Remember all those calls you sent me on, all those guys? Think of it as... finally paying my pimp," I said.

Stacy gave me an incredulous look, then she burst out laughing. "Pimped out at the Pizza Hut," she said, wiping a black-streaked tear from her cheek.

She looked over at me, and then the tears really started to come. For both of us. She reached over and we embraced. After we hugged, Stacy looked down at the key and the money in her hand. She shook her head.

"You promise me you'll take care of yourself, Paulie," she said.

"Yeah," I said.

"No, I mean it, Paulie. You're a good person, but you're fucked in the head."

"Stace..." I said.

"No, Paulie. I want you to listen to me, OK? When someone hurt me you stepped up, you tried to fix it. But what about you? What about when people hurt you?"

"It's different," I said, my voice quiet. "You know that, Stace."

"Is it? Is it different, Paulie?"

"Ben said he was going to kill you."

"What, and you think those guys, your piece of shit neighbor, that asshole with the pool, you think they couldn't do the same to you?"

"What, kill me?"

"Yeah, Paulie, kill you. News flash. People like you get killed all the time. Don't you know that? Don't you care about yourself? What the fuck is it with you, anyway?"

She was really crying now, tears streaming down her face.

"You can be different, you know, Paulie? You don't have to be such a fucking asshole. I see you running as fast as you can toward it... You can't even see it. I watched Ben do it. I see Mario doing it... He's killing himself... drinking himself to death. It's so obvious, if anyone would stop to take even a fucking moment to look."

Stacy fixed her eyes on me. "And it'll kill you, too, Paulie. You're not special, you know? You're not the center of the fucking universe. You'll die, too. And after everything... after everything that's happened, you still can't see it."

I reached for her hand and she let me take it. She closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. She pulled her hand away from me and pulled a tissue out of her bag to wipe her face. She looked over at me, her eyes still glassy with tears.

"I hear you, Stace," I said.

She nodded, but she looked sad—defeated.

"You'll call me?" she said. "Any time, day or night, right?"

"Yeah."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

Stacy closed her eyes for a long moment and then opened them again. Then she said, "You're a real piece of shit, you know that, Paulie?"

We grinned at each other. Then Stacy ran her hand along the rim of the glove box and grabbed the little handle that moved the passenger side rear-view mirror back and forth.

"Holy shit, Paulie," she said.

"So, what are you going to call her?" I said, patting the steering wheel.

"Her?" Stacy said, with a laugh. "What makes you think it's a girl?"

"A lady," I said. "A tough lady. She's a little banged up, but otherwise she's in pretty good shape."

"I guess that makes two of us," Stacy said.

"Three of us," I said.

//

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Epilogue:

I walked down the jetway, carrying the brown, paper-wrapped parcel under my arm. Before I turned the corner and entered the plane, I looked back and saw my mom and dad waving at me from the gate. I waved back at them.

The flight attendant had to show me how to buckle my seat belt—the only other time I'd been on a plane was when I was five years old on a family trip to Arizona. I burned red with embarrassment as the attendant, a clean-cut young man with neatly gelled, close-cropped hair bent across the empty aisle and middle seats to where I was sitting next to the window, buckled the belt, and then pulled the strap tight across my lap. I flinched when his hand brushed against the outline of my hardening dick through my pants. When he stood up, he gave me a smile and a wink.

"Enjoy your flight," he said.

"Thanks," I said, foolishly, and moved my hands over my crotch to hide my erection.

When we were airborne, I watched the smooth geometry of the Midwest slide away, below, as we zoomed eastward into the morning sun. I ran my hands over the parcel and read the note again.

For P—figured you could use this. M.

"Who's M?" my mom had asked me, picking up the package from our front steps this morning as we left for the airport. It had still been dark out.

"Oh, just a friend," I replied.

"The friend you gave your truck to?" My dad asked, gruffly.

My dad had blown up when I'd told him that I'd given the Blazer to one of my coworkers. He had only calmed down when, at dinner with my grandparents, my grandfather had slammed his fist down onto the table and said, "Dammit John, it was the boy's truck to give!" The whole room had gone deathly silent. None of us had ever heard my grandfather swear before.

Now, on the plane, I smiled, remembering how quiet my dad had been the rest of the night. Later, my grandfather had slipped me an envelope with a hundred bucks inside. "Knock 'em dead, kiddo," he'd said.

I slid my finger along the taped seam of the parcel and unwrapped the paper. I laughed out loud. It was a shirt—one of the fancy manager's shirts, a black polo with the Pizza Hut logo embroidered on the chest. It was a small, unlike the many XL shirts that I'd had to borrow from the office over the course of the summer. Mario must have ordered it specially for me.

I felt myself starting to get choked up, so I folded the shirt up and put it into my backpack, next to the zip-lock bag containing the stack of Polaroids and the remainder of my cash—a little more than a thousand dollars. In combination with my earned wages, I was walking away from the summer pretty flush, even after what I gave to Stacy.

I sat back in my chair and watched as the wing of the plane sliced through bright, white fluffy clouds. Minnesota fell away behind me. All the people there, all of the men... all the things they'd done—all the things I'd done... it all seemed to fade. Up here, it was hard to imagine that any one person, any one event down there on the planet's surface could matter all that much. Not when it was so easy to climb up into the sky and fly away.