The Hollywood Trilogy by Don Carpenter Page A

yourself,” she said. “I’ll run get something for it.” She came out in a couple of minutes with a coldsoaked washrag. I was limping around the terrace cursing and crying.
    â€œHere, sit down,” she said.
    I sat and pulled up my pantleg to where I had skinned my knee, and she pressed the cold washrag against it.
    â€œOh,” I said, “that feels good.”
    â€œDo you have any iodine?” she asked me.
    â€œI hope not,” I said.
    She was looking at me like I was a wounded Boy Scout and she was the nurse at school. I was not crazy about this, and hopped after her, through the bedroom and into the bathroom. The sun was streaming in the open window over the shower and bouncing off the white towels racked everywhere, making her glow. She had the cabinet over the sink open and was going through my shaving kit.
    â€œI ain’t got no iodine,” I said.
    â€œIt’s okay,” she said, “I have some down at my place. It’ll only take me a sec to run downstairs and get it. You don’t want an infection.”
    She started past me and I grabbed her by the arm. “What’s all this concern for my health?” I asked, and kissed her on the mouth, hard. This time I could feel her whole body tense up in resistance, and for some reason this pissed me off. The case was closed, we were going to fuck, skinned knee or no skinned knee, and I didn’t care if it was in the bedroom or the bathroom, just as long as we got into it and over it.
    She pulled away a few times but I just grabbed her some more and kept kissing her, and let my body sag so that we were both pulled down to the tile—it was the elevator dream all over again, only real this time, and cold, and angry, I don’t know what got me so angry. While I was kissing I was also grabbing at her body, and she was trying to get me off her, grunting from the effort and talking whenever she could get her mouth free.
    Finally she scraped her fingernail across my knee and made me howl, and then jumped back, into the bathtub.
    â€œWhat the hell’s the matter with you?” she asked me.
    I got up and went after her. She tried to get around me, her eyes wild but not frightened, and I grabbed her and turned her around so that I was pressing up against her ass and that head of hair was crushed against my face. I could smell it, woman-smell, the first womansmell we all go crazy for as kids, clean hair and plenty of it, one arm around her waist and the other on her tits.
    â€œgoddamn you,” she said, “You can’t just up and fuck me . . .”
    â€œWhy not?” I asked her, and pulled her into the bedroom.
    We didn’t get as far as the bed, though. I started unzippering her jeans and had them down around her knees when we toppled over and hit the carpet, but even scraping my bleeding knee on the pile didn’t stop me, I pulled herplaid shirt open, she didn’t have anything on underneath, and her tits just sprung out at me. She was talking in grunts this whole time but I wasn’t listening. I pulled down her underpants, ripping them a little, and then turned her over on her back and held her down with one arm around her while I pulled off my own pants.
    â€œYou can’t . . . do this!”
    â€œLike hell I can’t,” I said in an amazingly normal voice.
    I stuck my cock deep into her, no hesitation bumps, just one long diving thrust to the bottom.
    She was moist and tight and perfect heaven. She gave a long groan as I went into her, and then not a sound. I had her rammed up against the wall between the bed and the closet door, one leg up over my head and the other, with the jeans and torn underpants still on it, tucked under my arm.
    â€œOh, hell, you’re right,” I said, and I pulled out of her and got to my feet.
    I was panting like I’d run up ten flights of stairs. She was still crammed up against the wall, her legs apart, her mouth open, her eyes