Before She Met Me

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes Page A

Book: Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes Read Free Book Online
Authors: Julian Barnes
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to speak, when she comes right up to me and says, “How’s about finding a holster for your gun, cowboy?” So that’s what the chicks are like over here, Buck, I says to myself.
    ‘Now, I’ve known some spirited gals in my time, stranger, but that little Annie … Back at the hotel she was hustling me outa my duds in the elevator. And then she really took off. Fightin’, bitin’, scratchin’—I even had to
re-strain
her a bit. The studio might have wanted a tub shot or something, and I jest had to haul her nails outa my back. I hauled them out and slapped her down, but that only seemed to make her wilder, which I s’pose I should have anticipated, so I jest reached across to my pants and slid out my lizard-skin belt and tied her wrists out of harm’s way.
    ‘And after that, every time we balled she made me tie her wrists up. Jest seemed to excite her some more. Not that there was much room for more. She was right off that scale, stranger; hurricane force nine was a gentle breeze where she came from.
    ‘But what she really liked me to do—after I’d tied her up, natch—was to chew her ass. You do that to her, stranger? She
let
you do that to her, stranger? I’d get me down there and start eating her out; I mean, it was a carry-out lunch counter as far as I was concerned. Then I’d sorta slide down a bit further, and I’d feel her squirm, and that current went
raht
through her body. Then I’d eat some more, then slide back to her ass. I’d chew it some and diddle my tongue around, and then, when she was all wound up, I’d jest plunge my tongue right in, and when I did that she’d
ex-plode
. Never missed. Bang, like a mousetrap. She used to say, now she understood what a cowpoke was.
    ‘She ever let you do that?’ The tone became more taunting. ‘Mean to say, I bet you kiss a lot of ass one way and another; but you ever do it for real, stranger? Or does little Annie only let the other fellers do
that
to her? You wouldn’t know, would you? That’s jest the trouble with you fag fellers. You get all uppity about
unnerstandin’
chicks. Never met a chick yet who wanted to be
unnerstood
—least, not when getting balled flat was the alternative. Still, you carry on
unnerstandin’
the chicks, and I’ll carry on ballin’ them.’
    In the pool behind Buck another shimmering bottom broke the surface. This time it stayed suspended there for a few seconds, and as Graham gawped the buttocks slid wetly apart. Graham, from his shoe-shine stool, looked across at Buck, who stuck out the tip of his tongue and ran it round his lips. Graham hurled himself at Buck, but the cowboy, with a swivel of the hips, made him miss his aim. As Graham lurched past, a Frye boot caught him in the thigh and twisted him into the pool. Though he normally swam strongly, the water proved so viscous that he progressed in slow motion. Eventually, after several minutes, he got both hands on the pool’s rim. As he prepared to haul himself out, a shadow fell across his face and a boot was placed firmly on the fingertips of his right hand.
    ‘Say, stranger,’ Buck spat down at him, ‘you still hanging around my prahpurty? Thought you’d been run out days ago. When I say kiss off, I’m gonna mean kiss off.’ And with that he took his glass of Pina Colada and threw the milky froth into Graham’s face.
    Graham woke up in the dark. The fingertips of his right hand were jammed between the mattress and the base of thebed. He had dribbled on the pillow and his face was wet with his own spit. His pyjamas were twisted tightly round his legs and to his surprise he found he had an erection.
    He didn’t think she possibly could have. Surely not a tubby, bogus cowboy like that. But how could you know whom your wife might have fancied before she fancied you? For a start, women often succumbed for such odd reasons: like pity, and politeness, and loneliness, and rage at a third party, and, sod it, sheer sexual pleasure. Graham sometimes wished

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