Mmmmmm...the aroma of fresh-baked bread. The perfume of a bakery, caressing the nostrils with the scent of yeast, milk, and sugar;stroking the senses with obscenely delicious...
"Barker! Get a move on!"
"Yes, sir,
Mr. Spoonly."
"If you're late with that delivery, I'm docking
your wages!"
What an asshole!I drop the last of
the large cake-boxes onto my cart, and give the cart a kick so that it
wheels off ahead of me toward the door.I should just quit this
stinking job. Let some other sucker haul his cakes all over
town.
"And be careful with those cakes! If I hear that even
one of them has even the slightest tilt..." The door slams behind me,
shutting off the snarls of Mr. Spoonly.Of course, if I quit, that
means I'd have to take a job at the meat-packing plant. Instead of the
sweet scent of apple turnovers and sour-dough bread, I'd be assaulted
by the stench of sweet-breads and smoked buffalo rump. That wouldn't
do at all.
I open the rear doors on the deliver van and slide the boxes along the floor until they smack into the spare tire.Slave-driving asshole! If only I'd made it to the student employment center in time. Or early, like that jerk, Marty Halfslip. Of course, it wouldn't matter how early he got there. His father owns half the town. Even if he'd shown up a whole week after school was out, he'd still get a nice cushy job at a desk in an airconditioned office. assholes!
The van vibrates when
I slam the door. I hop into the driver's seat, check my list of
delivery addresses, and spin out of the T. Spoonly Bakery parking
lot. The first five deliveries go well. Birthday cakes. I get them to
the parties on time, and the people seem happy with them. Spoonly even
spelled their names correctly on the icing. Then I'm at the sixth
door, the back door of a swanky hillside home, leaning on the buzzer
with a cakebox propped up in my arms and the bill between my
teeth. Some fat-assed jerk opens the door and says, "You were supposed
to be here half an hour ago."
"Heawy twaffic," I mumble through
the bill.
He waves me into the kitchen, saying, "Just put it on
the counter. This is Howling Butte. We don't have traffic."
"There's a parade downtown," I respond, holding the bill out for him.
He ignores me and opens the cake box.
"First you're an hour late,"
he says. "Then you give me lame excuses and attitude. Then, to top it
all off, you bring me damaged goods. And now you have the gall to
wave that bill in my face like I'm supposed to reward you or
something."
"You're supposed to pay the bill."
"You won't get
very far with that kind of attitude, kid."
"I wouldn't get very
far with my ass hanging half out of my pants, either," says I, turning
my butt to him. "But it isn't, is it?"
He makes a big show
of running his stubby finger over the bakery phone number printed atop
the cake box, then walks over to a wall phone, yanking up his white
pants as he goes. As soon as he releases them, they start to slide
back down his butt. They continue their descent to hell while he talks
to Spoonly, revealing more and more of his bum, as if the crack of his
ass were a prehistoric creature slowly revealed by a melting
glacier. As he holds the receiver out to me, the smirk on his face is
like one of Spoonly's smiley-face icing creations left too long in the
sun. When I place the receiver to my head and say hello, Spoonly's
voice thunders and roars. I listen until the storm takes a break, then
say, "Yes, Mr. Spoonly."
"One more screw-up, Barker, and you're
fired!" his disembodied voice howls.
"Yes, Mr. Spoonly."
"And
your father will be the first person to hear about it!"
_s_h_i_t_!
I hang up the phone, crumple the bill of
sale and drop it on the floor. Smiling as I walk out the door, I say,
"No charge."
asshole.When I'm back in the van, heading toward the Legion for the last delivery, it occurs to me that Spoonly probably means what he says. And my father undoubtedly means what he says when he said, 'If you can't keep this job for the whole summer, don't come cryin' to me for tuition in the fall.' If I can't go back to university, I'll have to get a job at the meat-packing plant, just like him. Not that Howling Butte University is any great shakes, but it's all we can afford.Great. A career in venison lips and pork hocks, all because of some prick who thinks a dented swirl of icing is cause for a personal injury claim.
As I pull into the Legion parking lot, I glance at the next order. A wedding party. Smith. That's odd. To my knowledge there are no Smiths in Howling Butte - certainly no Legion members named Smith. I know because Dad is a member. I'm here every Saturday night, picking him up to drive him home after he's had a few with his buddies. I've met every single member one Saturday or another. We have every other name possible in Howling Butte. But no Smiths.
From the van
to the Legion entrance, I stumble over strings of tin cans between
flower-laden cars, peering around the tall cake box propped in my
arms.I wonder who's wedding it is.After pushing the door
open with my back, I teeter toward the head table in the banquet
hall. Ahead of me, there is an argument in progress. One of the
voices, the one closest to tears, belongs to Suzanne Piddledip.
Great. The snub-nosed snot-queen of Howling High.I set the
box on the table, and look up to see three couples staring at me. The
snot-queen is garbed in a huge, white gown as if someone had thrown a
tent over her then lambasted her with cream pies. Beside her is the
groom, leaning almost horizontal to reach around her waist without
stepping on her dress.Maybe he's the Smith. Poor guy. The two
beside him must be his parents. They look miserable.Opposite the
groom is Mr. Piddledip and behind him the ex-Mrs. Piddledip. Her purse
is swinging as if she had abruptly halted, midstride. When I wave the
bill, she continues walking, pacing back and forth behind the group,
waving her arms and ranting, "You never change, Harold! Twenty years
of marriage and in all that time you never once listened to a word I
said I should have known better than to trust you to book a caterer
but noooooo you said you would handle it and now what do you give us
your own daughter has to have her reception in a god_d_a_m_n_ed
Legion!" She spits the last word out as though she had just sucked
poison from a snake bite. As she continues, her daughter starts to
bawl. When the groom tries to comfort her, the blushing bride jerks
herself away from him as if he were the cause of all her troubles, and
a sound erupts from her, rasping, like a tent zipper opening. Half of
her dress falls to the floor. When she runs from the room, trailed by
her mother, the groom pulls a tatter of her dress from under his feet
and stares at it blankly.
"Excuse me," I say. "Could someone take
care of this bill, please?"
This seems to wake them from their stupor. The groom's parents begin opening the cake box, and Mr. Piddledip motions me aside. He is a handsome man. I have often wondered, seeing him in the Legion when I come to pick up my father on Saturday nights, how it was that he got saddled with the wife and the snub-nosed daughter. When he was younger, he probably could have been a model, or a movie star. I sat with him one evening, waiting for my dad to finish his beer, and he seemed like a nice man. My dad had been ribbing him about his divorce. Apparently, the wife had taken the house, the kid, and all the money. Dad, probably still sore about his own recent divorce, was getting a little rude about it, or so I thought. I was embarassed. In an effort to soften the tone of my dad's rude cracks, I asked Mr. Piddledip why he had got divorced, if he stood to lose so much. He smiled at me and replied, mysteriously, that I would probably understand some day.
He looks frazzled. Poor guy.He is reaching for his wallet when there is a gasp from the table, and a cry of "Oh my God!" Mrs. Piddledip has come back and is now staring at the wedding cake. It is tilted like the leaning tower of Piza, and great chunks of hard icing have fallen off, crumbling, littering the table like confetti.
Mrs. Piddledip takes a deap breath and opens her mouth. Her husband
beats her to the punch, saying, "Shut up, Lou-Anne. Go look after your
daughter. I'll deal with this." She seems about to argue, but instead
turns on her heel and storms from the banquet hall.
Frowning at
me, Mr. Piddledip says, "Come with me."
I follow him to the
main entrance and up the stairs to the second floor where the offices
are. He is the executive director of the Legion, and it is to his
office that he now leads me. Once we are inside, he paces back and
forth, stroking his chin. "Look, son," he says. "I don't want to
cause you any grief. But I have to do something about this matter,
or...well...you saw the state they're in."
"Yes, sir," I say. I'm
feeling very sorry for him, sorry I had made things worse, wishing I
had taken better care of the cake.
He has stopped by his desk and
picked up the phone. "What is the number of the bakery?" he says.
"Please don't call them," I blurt out. "I'll be fired. And I won't be
able to go back to college if I lose this job."
He hesitates, then
says, "I don't see any other options."
His finger is poised to
dial. He is staring at me, waiting for the number. "Wait!" I
say. "There's another wedding cake at the bakery for a wedding
tomorrow. How about if you...um...tell Mr. Spoonly that you
underestimated the number of guests and need another cake? I'll pay
for it out of my pocket."
He looks at me for a moment, then says,
"The number?"
While he is dialing, I imagine how my dad's voice will sound when I get home tonight, jobless. I can picture him reaching for the strap still hanging on the wall above the tv in the living room. He hasn't given me a lickin' in well over a year now, but he'd warned me that that would be the first thing he'd do if I were to get fired. When I hear Mr. Piddledip order a second cake from the bakery, I close my eyes and sigh deeply with relief.Thank you, Mr. Piddledip.
"I'll still have to tell your father,"
he says, hanging up the receiver.
I'm looking at the floor. "Can't
we just pretend it never happened?"
"No." He sits on the edge of
the desk. "You've caused me a lot of trouble that I don't need right
now, son. I don't think you should get off scot-free. Do you?"
"No, sir." One of his shoes is swinging back and forth. My eyes follow
his pants up his legs. The material has bunched up around his crotch,
and I can't stop staring at the bulge under his belt buckle. Before
I'm even aware of what I'm saying, I hear myself blurting out, "Can't
you punish me yourself, instead...please?"
His shoe stops
swinging, and I look up at his face. He has an intense look now, as if
he were suddenly very interested. "How would your dad punish you,
boy?" he says.
I look back at the floor, mumbling, "The
strap."
"I see."
He walks to the back of the desk,
opens a drawer, and pulls out a heavy-looking leather strap. "A strap
like this?"
I nod, feeling my stomach burn as if I had swallowed a
hot cherry turnover. He tosses the strap onto the desk and strides
past me out of the office. I can hear him closing and locking the door
to the stairwell. Then he is back, closing the office door, walking
past me, removing his suit jacket. He hangs it on a coat stand and
rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. His forearms are thick and matted
with dark hair. As if he knew my dad's routine, he pulls a chair into
the middle of the room, saying, "Take off your clothes."
When I'm down to my underwear, I stand upright and see him sitting in the chair. The strap moves slowly up and down, landing silently in the palm of his hand every time it descends. Neither of us speaks for a while. As I watch the strap move hypnotically in his hands, I can feel my _c_o_c_k_ rising, pressing against my briefs. He is looking at the tent in my underwear, and a slight smile has brightened his face. Leaning forward in his chair, he reaches out and strokes my _c_o_c_k_ with the strap. Up and down, slowly, as if he were holding a paint brush and my briefs were a bare wall in need of colour. "Take them down," he says. His voice is husky, intense. He keeps the strap in position while I bend over to remove my briefs. It is just below my face. I can smell the leather. My briefs in my hand, I linger, still bent over, smelling the leather. He raises the strap slightly, and I bend lower, feel its cool, hard surface against my lips. It pulls my mouth open as he moves it slowly up and down, dragging it over my face. Laying my tongue on it, I close my eyes and taste its sweet length. Sweet, sour, pungent leather. Hearing his buckle clink, I open my eyes. Past his strong, strap-lengthened forearm, his other hand is unfastening his pants. Unzipping. A glimpse of white underwear. Reaching inside. Pulling out. His _c_o_c_k_ is heavy, thick in his hand. Slowly, the strap pulls away from me. Pulls me. I follow it, moving closer to him. He is leaning back, thrusting his hips out. Sinking with the strap, I fall to my knees and crawl until his legs disappear behind me. The strap is now over his _c_o_c_k_, covering it, sliding over it. My mouth, on the end of the strap, my tongue under the strap as though I were going to swallow it, meets the head of his _c_o_c_k_. A drop of thick liquid on my tongue. My tongue slides under his _c_o_c_k_. Tasting him. Tasting the leather. The strap seems to pull me, and his _c_o_c_k_ slips into my mouth, filling, stretching. Then onward, deeper into my throat. The strap has disappeared, replaced by thick, curled hair. His hands are on my back. He is leaning forward. The strap curls around my buttocks, heavy, stroking. The touch of leather vanishes, and I feel his body tense up for the swing. The report rings harshly against the office walls, and I pull back along the length of his _c_o_c_k_ to let out a cry, muted and stifled by the _c_o_c_k_head in my mouth. His hand, on the back of my head, forces me down again as the strap whips through the air. It lands with searing pain, and again I pull back, squealing against his hardness. Rougher now, gripping my hair, he rams my head down. The strap burns on my ass. Again. Harder. Scalding. Wailing. His _c_o_c_k_ muting the pain.
The strapping stops. I can feel he is close. Immense hardness in my mouth and throat. The taste of him and of leather strong in my mouth and nostrils. He pulls my head off his _c_o_c_k_, lifts me higher. His arms are around me, the strap patting my ass gently. I undo his shirt, bury my face in black hair. Taste his sweat.
He pushes me away and pats his thigh. I crawl up between his legs, over one knee. My ass is high in the air, his shoe beside my face. His other leg clamps down over the back of my legs, and I hear the strap, sense it, before I feel it tearing at the stretched skin of my ass. Grabbing his ankle, his shoe, I grip tightly, as the strap whips another high squeal from my throat, ramming it against my clenched lips. Then he speaks. "Let it out, boy. No one can hear you up here." His voice, gentle, solid, startles me. I open my mouth, let out a cry. "That's it," he says, whipping the strap across my cheeks again, harder still. Again. And again.
His hand is rubbing, soothing, smacking gently. My sobs are diminishing.
I am bent over the back of the chair. His _c_o_c_k_ is stretching my ass open. Then he is inside, thrusting. I moan with each thrust, repetative, faster. Faster and gutteral like a lamb learning to bleat. His hands grip my hips as he rams into me, fiercely gripping. My hands on my _c_o_c_k_, on the verge, waiting for him. Then I hear him groan, slamming into me, and I stroke myself. I yell, shooting. Fierce, brutish, exquisite pleasure.
Standing. His _c_o_c_k_ still in me, my back against his chest, his hands roam over my chest, my stomach. My _c_o_c_k_. He is holding me. I'm propped in his arms like a cake box. "Now you know why I got divorced," he says.