“Now that you’ve lured me into consenting to my own kidnapping, where are you taking me?” Shenar squinted at Frank through the stinging haze of fresh sulfur and skunk weed smoke.

He was grinning, glancing at her sideways. “I have this place up in Pinetop, I thought we’d spend the weekend there...”

“Oh! One of my favorite places!” She smiled back at him, holding a hit deep and long. “I used to live up there!”

“I remember,” Frank said. “You never said whether you liked it or not, but I thought I’d take the chance that you did and surprise you with a trip up there.”

Shenar eyed him, appreciating his desire to please her. “You took a good chance. I loved being up there, but my life was, well, another matter. I’d live there again, but never under the same circumstances.”

Both were quiet for several miles, except for occasional exclamations over the landscape, as they rose dramatically from open, blossoming spring desert to cloistered, snow-flocked conifer forests and, finally, the edges of the snow-blanketed alpine prairie.

“I love hiking this country,” Shenar ventured.

“I haven’t hiked it, much, but I’ve wanted to.”

“We should go hiking this summer. I love camping up here and I know some prime spots that only locals collecting dead down know about.”

He cocked his head at her and said, with a bemused grin, “You think we’ll be,” he paused, “seeing each other this summer?”

Shenar suspected she was blushing, but continued bravely, “Well, if you care to go hiking, it’s beautiful up here in the summer.”

“I know.” Frank looked back at the road, still grinning.

Shenar pointed out significant dirt paths and described the isolated cabins she remembered. “I used to live in a cabin up here,” she said.

“My place up here is a cabin,” Frank offered lightly.

“Is it in a development?”

“You did live up here, didn’t you?” Frank smiled approvingly at Shenar. “It’s part of a development just southeast of Pinetop. It’s a country club type of deal.”

“I know the one you mean. In fact, I know, or, used to know, someone who lived up there part of the year. He’s sort of a celebrity. Lou Warner. Of that car dealership, ‘Lou’s Bullish On You’.”

“I bought my cabin from a Lou Warner, Jr.” Frank said. “I got a good deal on it. Lot’s of room. Very easy to get to, summer or winter. It needed a lot of remodeling, though.”

Shenar snorted. “I’ll bet it did, if it’s the same one I’m thinking of! As I recall, it was a lascivious old man’s pleasure palace!”

Frank’s eyebrows shot up. “When were you there?”

“Oh, several years ago, when I lived in Pinetop.” Shenar was conscious of her voice becoming higher, lighter, speeded up. “It was 1981, I think. I met Lou Warner, senior, I believe, or first, or, whatever, at a bar. He was 89. I remember his age because he, well, astonished me. I was there with a girl friend of mine, Barbara. She was an exterminator and I’d been fired from my job so I’d spend days with her on her rounds, snooping around in the historic houses, you know, up in Snowflake.”

Frank nodded.

“We decided to stop off at the bar for a drink after a long day on the road. I forget the name of the bar but it was one in east Pinetop, set back off Highway 260 a ways. It was one of those places tourists hardly ever find. This was after my ‘bar phase’...”

Shenar placed quotes in the air with her fingers as she spoke, pausing long enough for Frank to break in, “Your bar phase? Do I need to hear about that?”

Shenar blushed at the suggestion and looked away. “I was never an alcoholic. But, alcohol is an important social lubricant in small towns, and it makes living in the cold a lot more bearable. When I first got here, I gravitated to the bars because that’s where my friends were. I was hardy and didn’t have a problem putting away alcohol all night and working all day. After a few weeks and a few too many Jack Daniels on the rocks, and some wonderful nights in some extraordinary houses, I started staying home, assuming my friends would seek me out at my house. They did. They brought their own beer, and by that time I had reverted back to my normal I-rarely-drink-alcohol stance, which was okay with them.” Shenar glanced at Frank.

“So, what about Lou Warner? Did you have a Jack Daniels with him?”

“Oh, more than that!” Shenar laughed. “Barbara knew him slightly from business and when she spotted him she said, ‘I know this crazy old man who you’ll get a kick out of meeting.’ When I met him, although he was talkative and interesting, I didn’t really notice any craziness. He seemed to take a liking to me. He invited me to his place, gave me directions. I didn’t consider going until Barbara told me I should. She told me he had this incredible cabin-type estate and it would be worth my while to see it.” Shenar laughed again. “She had no idea!”

“So,” Frank gave Shenar a side-long glance, “that’s how you know what the inside of his cabin looked like.”

Shenar said nothing.

“He gave you a tour,” he prodded.

“Well, yes,” Shenar was not meeting his gaze. He noticed her nipples were erect beneath her blouse.

“Why did you call it a pleasure palace?” This was a diplomatic way of approaching the subject, Frank decided.

Shenar looked at him, innocently. “When did you buy it?”

“Oh, 1991. Why?”

“Maybe Lou died and his family converted it before they put it on the market, but if they didn’t, well, the mirrors, the indoor Jacuzzi with vineyard murals that looked liked a Roman bathhouse and pretty much operated as one, the bedrooms, all decorated in periods of historical sleaze, I mean, weren’t those things there when you bought the place?”

Frank refocused on the road. “Yes. That’s why I remodeled. You must have had quite a tour if you saw the mirrors.” Frank wondered if he should mention that he had left the wall and ceiling mirrors in the master bedroom, although he’d replaced the waterbed and taken out the floor mirrors.

He decided to leave out the mirrors. She might interpret it as an innuendo that she had personal knowledge of the bedroom. Or that she would have. Either avenue, it seemed to him, was risky.

Shenar solved his dilemma. “Lou was, well, an obscene old man. Pleasantly obscene.” She glanced at Frank analytically.

He hoped his level of surprise seemed low.

“He made flagrant sexual advances. At first, I was shocked. I left quickly, without seeing much of the house, although he alluded to the Jacuzzi at one point, and I noticed the frosted glass picture windows looking into the living room.” She paused again.

“You went back.”

“Yes. The most shocking thing, to me, was that I was, ah, titillated. So much so that I found myself masturbating that afternoon and imagining doing some of the things he suggested.”

Is she really telling me this, Frank wondered, do I want to hear this? What am I supposed to say? He tried to approach it as though someone was telling him about a potentially fatal error on a production. “Things he suggested you do with him.”

“Yes.”

“What kind of stuff did he, ah, suggest?”

“Did you ever see the movie Klute?”

“Yeah...” Frank let out a long, slow, sigh.

“It was pretty sensual stuff. Pretty indecent stuff.”

“Look,” Frank broke in. It was time for him to say something, before, just in case, he wasn’t sure, “I’m curious. About you. I want to know about you. It seems as though you want to talk about this. I have to warn you, though...”

“I know, I think. You can’t help being curious, but you’re wondering if you should be hearing this,” Shenar looked at Frank.

He held her gaze for a moment, then shifted to her nipples. “I hope I’ll react...”

“So do I,” Shenar broke in, “because I seem to want to tell you this.”

Frank shifted in his seat and propped his left elbow on the edge of the window frame. Shenar continued, as if on cue.

“When I first went over there, he kept asking to see my breasts. I was at one of my thin stages, and they were a little withered. But, as soon as he mentioned them, it was as though my breasts burned to be exposed, as though having them gazed on would plump them. I didn’t care whether he would find them appealing or not. I remember watching his fingers nursing his thighs like kitten paws at a teat. I remember staring at his fingers, then looking up and realizing he was staring at my breasts.”

Frank reached over and rubbed the tip of her left nipple with the palm of his right hand, lightly, then with more pressure. She placed her hand over the back of his and pressed down, closing her eyes. Then, she placed his hand in his lap.

“He teased me and asked me if I was a virgin. I had this urge to lie. It seemed like he wanted a virgin, and that it might be, well, stimulating. I didn’t think that, though, until that afternoon, after I’d gone home. It was weird because, maybe a minute after I’d, well, climaxed,” she glanced at Frank, didn’t wait for a reaction, “my phone rang. It was Lou. He wanted to know if I would come back that night. No apology. No pleading. Just a randy gentleman making his desires known. Although the idea had been stimulating, when he called I felt uncomfortable, like, I wasn’t sure how I was ‘supposed’,” Shenar flicked her signet quotation marks in the air, “to react to this kind of sexual invitation. On the one hand, I was curious and obviously, uh, eroticized, by the idea. On the other hand, it seemed depraved and I, well, I felt strange about going back. I wasn’t afraid, just anxious. I guess I wondered what it would say about me, if I went. Anyway, I told him I’d have to think about it. He gave me his number and told me to call him back anytime.

“I felt like I needed to talk to someone about his proposition, so I called an old friend of mine, Judy, who’d been indirectly involved in my move to Pinetop. She possessed a flexible morality, rather like mine, and I wondered what she would think. ‘You still don’t have a job up there,’ she said. ‘And you’ve been blacklisted by the business community, right? And you seem attracted to the idea,’ which I agreed was true. ‘Well, then, what are you waiting for? Tell him, twenty bucks to look at one titty, another twenty to look at both, another twenty to touch one, another twenty to touch both...’” Shenar laughed and inhaled to continue.

Frank broke in, “That’s prostitution! You didn’t seriously consider that!” Although he was scandalized, he hadn’t lost his erection. He moved his free hand over his lap.

Shenar sobered and looked at him like a deer caught in headlights.

“Did you?” Frank prodded.

“You know, I was just going to say, ‘That’s what I love about Judy, she can see the practical possibilities of any situation.’”

Frank shifted in his seat. “You did consider the idea, didn’t you?” he asked quietly. Before Shenar could respond he added, more constrained, “You didn’t just consider it, did you?”

Shenar gazed out the passenger window. Her enthusiasm had faded. She decided she’d better attempt to wrap this discussion up and bow out as gracefully as possible. “As it turned out, I decided to go back that night. I didn’t suggest the money angle to him, though.”

“You probably didn’t have to.” Frank’s voice was terse.

Shenar felt his eyes piercing through the back of her head. She turned to face him. “Just so you’ll know, you’re right. Maybe,” she remarked sternly, “I shouldn’t have mentioned this.”

Frank volleyed smartly, “Maybe you shouldn’t have.” He was staring directly ahead, making a show out of negotiating the highway. Shenar noticed an increase in their speed.

“So, are you sorry you brought me up here?”

Frank remained hushed and intent.

“Look, we’re almost to Pinetop and it’s a long way home. Why don’t we stop in town, get something to eat, and then you can drop me off at the bus depot in Show Low and I’ll go back home.”

“That’s ridiculous. When we go back to the Valley, I’ll take you,” he responded curtly.

“I’m not sure I want to spend another three hours in the car with you.”

Frank massaged his forehead and sighed. He continued driving.

Shenar slumped against her door, closed her eyes, and admitted, “I guess I should have waited to tell you until I was sure why I seemed to want to tell you. Maybe then I would have figured out it would have been a mistake.”

She expected Frank to say, “Yes, you should have.” He drove on in silence for several minutes.

Shenar could stand it no longer. She turned on him. “Look, what did you expect, that I had a spotless past? I am 38, Frank. 38! You already know enough about me to know I’ve pretty much explored my sexuality! I certainly wouldn’t have contracted onto this particular job if I hadn’t! What a prude you are! You know, you shouldn’t have anything to do with this project! Why in the world did you take it on, anyway? Out of some morally righteous self-interest?!?” She spat the last two sentences out, word by word. She hoped her eyes were searing her anger into his profile. She hoped her tone was sufficiently snide.

Frank turned to her. He looked troubled, rather than angry. She recoiled and looked away.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, “you didn’t deserve that.”

Frank turned back to the road. “No,” he said, so softly Shenar thought he might have just cleared his throat. “You’re right. Partially, anyway. I’ve had a much more, ah, conservative sex life than you.” He looked at her until she could no longer stand the pressure and faced him. “I got involved with the project because, well, I thought that having led a conservative sex life was the same thing as having led a sane sex life. I wanted to make sure that the eventual product wasn’t marked with aberration. I’ve learned a lot since we’ve started the project.” He reached for her hand and kneaded it in his. “The truth is,” he proceeded thinly, “I want to know about you and Lou. I don’t know why, but I know, before this project started, I wouldn’t have wanted to hear it. It would have been an automatic response. It isn’t, anymore. I’m not disgusted by what you’re suggesting. I guess,” he sighed, deeply, looking at Shenar, “I just wasn’t prepared.”

“You know what really attracted me to you?” Shenar did not meet his questioning glance. “A long time ago, when I began to understand sex, I used to wish I had a brother I could experiment with. I considered a cousin or two, for awhile, but I always figured that sisters and brothers fooled around sexually. I was shocked to find out that they rarely did, that it was tabú. It seemed as though having a sexual relationship with a brother would be a perfect sexual relationship. I feel toward you as though you are my brother, sexually. I want to tell you everything, try everything with you, feel everything with you. I’m even comfortable refusing you.”

Frank dropped her hand and stared at her. “You’ve never refused me.”

Shenar looked at Frank and grinned. “Well, I can imagine feeling comfortable refusing you, like I’d feel comfortable saying, ‘Nah, not today,’ to a brother!”

Frank retrieved her hand. “Don’t get too comfortable...” he broke off when he noticed Shenar turning toward him sharply. He wondered what was wrong with what he was saying.

“Does the brother thing bother you?” she asked, her eyebrows raised, her hand limp in his.

Frank placed her hand on the seat between them, covered it with his and met her gaze. “No. I understand what you mean.” He thought of Tomás, of his own longing for a sister before Tomás, arrived, never understanding why he wanted a sister.

Shenar sat quietly. Frank fought to modulate his voice into an area of calm, “Tell me anything you want. It’s not going to make a difference in how I feel about you. Well, that’s not true. It already has. The more I know about you, the more I want you. This,” he gestured toward her, his hand bridging the space between them, “episode included.” He stopped and looked at Shenar again, pleading. “So. Tell me, I remember Lou Jr. as being plain. Tall and old looking.” He cradled his hand between his thighs. Frank noticed Shenar glancing at his hand. He became aware that it was covering his lower groin. She seemed to be considering what the rest of her account might incite. “Go on,” he said, very low, very soft, reaching again for her, this time slipping his hand over her thigh, nudging her closer until their outer thighs touched.

“Lou Senior was tall and old. Very old. He looked older than my grandfather looked before he died at 96. I could tell that he was, well, aroused. If he wasn’t nursing his thighs with his fingers, he was rubbing his dick through his slacks. I could see how far it reached, how thick it was. That was another thing that shocked me, how I stared.”

“You hadn’t seen a man, before?” Frank moderated his tone so it showed neither doubt nor sarcasm. He wanted Shenar to understand that he was asking out of curiosity, not judgment.

Shenar blushed. “Well, yes,” she stammered, “but not like that, in shock, like an electrical shock, not being able to pull away, but afraid of what might happen if I didn’t. I think that’s part of what appealed to me. I think that’s when I began to understand the importance of graphics in sex. It’s not the aesthetic quality that matters; it’s the level of involvement portrayed.”

“So, it sounds pretty experimental.” Frank didn’t know whether he was relieved or not.

“Well, yes. I’d never done anything quite like that. He would tell me what I was feeling, and what he was going to do about it, and I’d trace his story with my fingers all over my body. We never undressed completely, although we were always completely exposed. I’d work my way closer and closer to him, doing these belly dance things, feeling really limber, and responding to what he was saying.”

“Like how?” Frank decided not to worry about whether his interest was appropriate, but he took his hand back and rested it in his crotch.

“Well, he’d talk about how I needed to be taken from behind, and I’d sort of hula around and present myself, and reach behind me, and pull myself apart. He was very verbal with his encouragement.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

Shenar glanced sharply at Frank. He flushed.

“Well, yes.” Her voice was firm and flat.

“Did he, ah,” Frank cleared his throat, trying to sound more sympathetic, “touch you much?”

“Yes. His hands were thick and stiff. His index fingers were,” she held her left hand in the air over her lap and hovered her right palm a few inches above the tips of her fingers, “incredibly long, and arthritic. He’d talk about how I needed it up the ass, and I’d slide the backs of my thighs up his knees, exposing my asshole on his lap. He’d spit on his longest finger,” she dropped her right hand and punched her index finger toward the ceiling of the cab, “and push at my anus until he’d poked through. He’d ask me questions like, ‘When was the first time you ever took it up the ass?’ and he’d take his finger out and run the tip around my asshole, and I’d try to think, in this agony of arousal, and then I’d say, ‘I can’t remember,’ and he’d cackle, and puncture me again, and as I was sighing and driving myself further onto his finger, he’d say, ‘No wonder! You’ve been taking it this way a long time! It won’t take long...’ and he’d pull his finger out and repuncture me with two fingers while I pulled my cheeks apart, and he’d ask me another question...”

Frank slid his right hand behind her back and rubbed down between her buttocks and the seat. Through the material of her dress he felt for her rear cleft with the flat of his middle finger. She moved sinuously around his exploration and settled onto him when his finger pressed between her buttocks. “Did he, you know, put his dick...”

“Yes,” she answered, softer than before, “but, you know, even with his hardness, and his control, he never came inside me. He would always say he couldn’t marry me because he couldn’t mark me,” again, she stabbed quotation marks into the air, this time, trance-like “that he’d be able to stimulate but if he couldn’t mark me with his seed, he’d be leaving me to be stolen away from him. I think he was a Mormon. What he said sounds like a Mormon kind of thing.”

Frank found her anal depression with the tip of his finger through the cloth of her skirt. He exhaled, and massaged it lightly. She looked at him. Her eyes grew wide and soft. She leaned forward. He felt her anus tighten, kissing his fingertip. When it relaxed, he pressed through the cloth of her skirt past her sphincter.

She closed her eyes and inclined her head toward her lap, moving forward on the seat. “Ohhhnnn...” she breathed. Her sphincter bound around him.

He gently removed his finger, once her sphincter relaxed, and slid his hand up her back, massaging gently to the base of her neck. Then he retrieved his hand and curled it back between his thighs. Her hand slipped beneath his and squeezed him, searched his swelling contours, then squeezed him again.

“Did he hurt you?” Frank’s voice was low and gruff. He knew it was useless, now, to try to disguise the effect the images in his mind were having on his body.

Her voice was barely a whisper. “No. He couldn’t. If I even seemed like I was flinching he’d go soft.” She stopped momentarily and stared fixedly out the windshield, then continued, dreamily, “It was something unusual for me. It was a different kind of erotic excitement. Not completely recreational. I feel like I know old men better. I feel like I know a truer meaning of the word lust. It confirmed for me the reasons why I’ve never been attracted to the idea of one lover for life.” Shenar turned back to him, her eyes recovering their direct interest. “After knowing Mr. Warner, I understood the wisdom of my choice. How would I ever have explored that kind of sexual, well, stuff, Mr. Warner was into, if I’d been married?”

“And he paid you.”

“Yes. Enough so I was able to stay up in Pinetop as long as I wanted. The business community and their black listing didn’t matter. In fact, before Lou went back down to the Valley for the winter, he said he’d be willing to fix things for me; but it wasn’t necessary, anymore. He’d paid me well enough so I stayed well over another year.”

They drove in silence, passing through McNary, their hands still in his lap. At the western outskirts of the town, he pulled over on a wood cutting road and stopped. He undid his seat belt and turned to face her. “Look at me, turn around and look at me.” She did as she was told. She knelt, facing him, on the seat.

There were many things he wanted to say to her. Looking at her kneeling expectantly before him, though, he was overcome with a stinging desire to touch her. He reached between her parted thighs. “What about your pussy, baby, did he mark your pussy?”

She guided his hand over her mound. He explored her folds. “No,” she sighed. “He came by masturbating when he was watching me and toying with me, but not when he rode me. Ooonnh!” She groaned when he found her vulval depression and probed her.

“I took the barrel of a gun up my cunt for him,” she whispered hoarsely. Her head slumped over his shoulder. “I was in the passenger seat of his car. We were at the Show Low Airport. He wanted to show me his jet.”

Frank’s hand froze inside her as she regurgitated her tale.

“His gun hung in a holster that he’d slung over his gear shift. It had a wide, short barrel. He caressed it and teased it with his hand while he was driving, and asked me if I’d ever taken one up my cunt.”

Frank tried to speak evenly, but his voice was thick with shock. “It was a sawed off shot gun.”

Shenar sobbed, moved her hand over Frank’s and eased his fingers in and out of her. He wondered if she was crying out of shame or confusion, or something else, entirely, something he didn't understand. He felt her breasts press against his chest as she breathed. His arm tightened around her.

“I wasn’t afraid,” she continued softly, into his neck. “I’ll never know why. He said he’d always wanted to see a woman with a gun up her cunt. He talked about a redhead he’d almost talked into it. He moved it in and out of me. I moved with it,” she butted over the tips of his fingers, her pulp ebbing and flowing over him. “It never occurred to me that it was loaded. Maybe it wasn’t. We sat out on a runway, in his car, facing the landing strip.” She paused, then, almost inaudibly, “I came with the gun barrel inside me.” She buried her face into his shoulder. He felt her tears through his shirt.

Frank was overcome with tortured carnality. He pulled her to him as best he could, took her face in his hands, and kissed her, delicately, at first, until he felt her lips swell and relax. Her hips moved against him responsively. He slid his hand deliberately between her legs. He rubbed her hard, squeezed her lips together, pushed three fingers inside her. Her vagina was so saturated and swollen that it almost rejected his fingers. He plunged and retracted harshly, repeatedly.

There was not enough room for him to take her the way he wanted. She pressed so close to him he ached. He slid his arms up her body and took her face in his hands again. “Let’s go. We’re almost at the cabin.” She turned her mouth into his palm, toward his coated fingers, smearing her juice across her cheek, licked his fingers, then turned back, rested her lips inside his and mouthed against his membranes, “Okay.”

Text & Graphics © 1999 by Gail Rae Hudson

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