A Ticket to the Boneyard Read Online Free PDF

afternoon.”
    “Oh?”
    “Someone new. He’d called, said he was a friend of Connie’s. That’s Connie Cooperman. You met her, remember?”
    “Sure.”
    “He said she gave him my number. So we talked, and he sounded all right, and he came over. I didn’t like him.”
    “What was wrong with him?”
    “I don’t know exactly. There was something weird about him. Something about his eyes.”
    “His eyes?”
    “The way he looks at you. What is it Superman’s got? X-ray vision? I felt as though he could look at me and see clear through to the bone.”
    I ran a hand over her. “You’d miss a lot of nice skin that way,” I said.
    “And there was something very cold about it. Reptilian, like a lizard watching flies. Or like a snake. Coiled, ready to strike without warning.”
    “What’s he look like?”
    “That may have been part of it. He’s kind of strange-looking. A very long narrow face. Mouse-colored hair, and a lousy haircut, one of those soup-bowl jobs. It made him look like a monk. Very pale skin. Unhealthy, or at least that’s how it looked.”
    “Sounds charming.”
    “His body was strange, too. He was completely hard.”
    “Isn’t that something you strive for in your line of work?”
    “Not his cock, his whole body. Like every muscle was tense all the time, like he never relaxed. He’s thin, but he’s very muscular. What you call wiry.”
    “What happened?”
    “We went to bed. I wanted to get him into bed because I wanted to get him out of here as soon as possible. Also, I figured once I got him off he’d be calmer and I wouldn’t be as nervous. I already knew I wasn’t going to see him again. In fact I would have asked him to leave without taking him to bed, but I was afraid of what he might do. He didn’t exactly do anything, but he was an unpleasant trick.”
    “Was he rough?”
    “Not exactly. It was the way he touched me. You can tell a lot from the way a man touches you. He touched me like he hated me. I mean, who needs that shit, you know?”
    “How’d you get the bruise?”
    “That was after. He got dressed, he wasn’t interested in taking a shower and I didn’t suggest it because I wanted him O-U-T. And he gave me this look, and he said we’d probably be seeing a lot of each other from now on.
That’s what you think
, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. He was on his way out, and he hadn’t given me any money, or left anything on the dresser.”
    “You didn’t get money in front?”
    “No, I never do. I don’t discuss it ahead of time, not unless the man brings it up, and most of the time they don’t. A lot of men like to pretend to themselves that the sex is free and the money they give me is a present, and that’s fine. Anyway, he was ready to walk out without giving me anything, and I came this close to letting him go.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    “No, because I was angry, and if I was going to have to trick a shitheel like that I was at least going to get paid for it. So I gave him a smile and said, ‘You know, you’re forgetting something.’
    “He said, ‘What am I forgetting?’ ‘I’m a working girl,’ I said. He said he knew that, that he could tell a whore when he saw one.”
    “Nice.”
    “I didn’t react to it, but I did say I got paid for what I did. Something like that, I forgot how I put it. And he gave me this very cold look, and he said, ‘I don’t pay.’
    “And then I was stupid. I could have let it go, but I thought maybe it was just an ego thing, a matter of terms, and I said I didn’t expect him to pay, but maybe he’d like to give me a present.”
    “And he hit you.”
    “No. He walked toward me, and I backed off, and he kept coming until I was backed up against the wall there. He put his hand on me. I was dressed, I had a blouse on. He put his hand right here and he just pressed with two fingers, and there must be a nerve there or some kind of pressure point, because it hurt like fury. There was no mark then. That