Man Down by Roger Smith Page B

his throat. 
    Turner saw the Peter’s eyes widen as a rush of blood pumped from the man’s neck and then he could see only the string of bad choices that had left him stranded out here far from the known world.

Part Two
     
    We are so accustomed to disguising
    our true nature from others,
    that we end up disguising it from ourselves.
― La Rochefoucauld
     

1  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    As Turner stepped into his skivvies—snapping the elastic over the stiffening cock that was greedy for more—he was struck, as always, by the sheer American scale of the woman sprawled naked across the motel bed: endless legs junctioning in a thicket of unpruned fuzz; wide hips and breathtaking ass; heavy, pink-nippled breasts dragged by gravity toward the mattress and a full-lipped, strong-jawed face half hidden by a thatch of blonde hair.
    It was as if she’d tumbled from the screen of the drive-in Turner had haunted as a kid, the screen on which Monroe and Mansfield had loomed like giant sex goddesses amidst the mine heaps and veld in the grim town west of Johannesburg where on summer nights he’d fled his house (his father out drinking and whoring, his mother anesthetized by Valium) and pedaled his bike the mile to the drive-in, sneaking in through the fence, ducking beneath the projector beam that played over the roofs of the dented little Japanese cars, watching movies that were old even back then—scratched, with torn sprocket holes that caused them to jump and judder—gaping at the majestic American women and dreaming himself into some bounteously carnal future.
    Grace Worthington’s blue eyes flickered open.
    “John,” she said, blinking, pushing her hair away from her face, “come here.”
    “I’m late,” he said, pulling up his chinos, buckling his belt.
    “Don’t go.”
    “I have to.”
    “Then before you go, tell me something.”
    “Tell you what?”
    “Tell me why you like me, John,” she said, dragging out the words in that breathy way she had, teasing him.
    “You know why I like you,” he said, pulling his golf shirt over his head.
    “Details. I want details,” Grace said, sitting, magnificent breasts asway as she reached for the cigarettes beside the bed, her ampleness so different from his small, scrawny wife.
    “I like you because you’re good,” he said, tucking in his shirt.
    “Good?”
    “Yes, good.”
    “Good in bed?”
    “No, not good in bed.”
    “I’m not good in bed?”
    “You’re messing with me.”
    She stretched like a cat and laughed as she put a Virginia Slims between her lips, clicking the lighter until it flamed, setting fire to the cigarette with little sucks and grunts.
    “Okay. So, I’m good ?” she said around the cigarette.
    “Yes,” he said. “I know in this cynical age good has come to mean dumb, or naïve, or silly.”
    “It has. Sadly.”
    “But you have it in you. Real goodness.”
    “I do?” Grace said, exhaling smoke through her nostrils, narrowing her eyes at Tuner’s unexpected seriousness.
    “Yes. I saw it the first time you came to the office, when you spoke to Lucy by the pool.”
    “So you like me because your kid likes me?”
    “That’s not the only reason I like you,” he said, and he sat on the bed and touched her inner thigh.
    She pushed his hand away.
    “Well,” she said, “this goodness has a shelf life.”
    “Grace.”
    “I mean it.”
    “Let’s not do this now,” Turner said, getting up from the bed and walking toward the door.
    “I’ve been offered another job,” she said, “in Phoenix.”
    Turner stopped walking and tried a smile that didn’t take.
    “You’re not going back to Phoenix.”
    She was on her feet, nodding, corralling her breasts and clipping her bra closed, something that never failed to arouse him, this reverse striptease.
    “I am. I’m going to take the job.”
    “I need you,” he said.
    She laughed.
    “You need the fucking, John, that’s all.”
    “It’s not all,” he said.