Free Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt

that,” he said, steering her away from a puddle of vomit with a high concentration of Cheetos. She looked around the strangely quiet Zipperhaus, now a war zone of party debris, alcohol stink, Doritos ground into the rug, the hallway to the soaked kitchen and sodden carpets. Some guys were going in and out of a small room across from the stairs where the lights were off; female laughter emanated from within. She saw Skip Baylor come from the bathroom heading to the little room; he looked up and did a double take seeing Jerilyn ascend the frathouse stairs with … what was his name again? Well, fine. It’s not like Skip and she are a couple. Skip clearly is playing the field, so why shouldn’t she?
    And then suddenly they were in a dark room with two single beds—one for each of us, she thought. But as she lay down he snuggled up beside her. He slid his hands around her waist and buried his head in the crook of her shoulder. To slow him down she reminded him, “I still could throw up, remember.”
    He didn’t say anything. “You just tell the Skanks I’m not some gay weirdo who wants to screw a sheep. These guys are … it’s so fucking unfair…” He punched at their mattress once with a clenched fist.
    Then he was kissing her. He tasted of beer and she imagined she did too. He was very insistent, a little rough but … but he kissed better than Skip who always gave her a tongue bath. Then he was undoing his jeans, and guiding her hand between his legs.
    Someone opened the door and light from the hall poured in; Jerilyn instinctively hid her head in the pillow. “Uh … okay. Next time use your own room, all right?” said the voice, before leaving and pulling the door shut.
    Then he rolled on top of her. He kissed her some more and she felt the pressure of his erection through her clothes. Okay, well, this was all right if it progressed no further … She was certainly willing to do things with her hands, like she’d done with Skip, so she reached for him down there and he took her hands in his own hands, which was sweet, and … wait, he pinned them back behind her head as he straddled her. He was inside her. Was her underwear off? When did that happen?
    “Wait,” she cried. “Stop. Hey stop—”
    And then one hand was over her mouth. She tried to bite it but that just got the hand pressed further, harder into her mouth. So she tried to kick and writhe and break free … but he was already doing the thing she didn’t want him to do.

 
    Gaston
     
    Gaston Jarvis, condemned to Plunkett, North Carolina, and its literati, beyond the reach of mercy or redemption, would offer himself to the sun. He pressed the button to lower the driver’s-side window and positioned his face. Indian summer, seventy-something degrees, sky an autumn blue, not really warm … cool, in fact, when a hint of a breeze made itself known, but still the sun could sear, could revive the spirit, could keep the dwindling flame of his humanity guttering a moment longer. It was like in France, this weather. Cool brisk days yet a warm sun.
    Well, that’s what he thought he remembered about Paris sunshine. It had been rainy, cold and damp most of the time, hadn’t it? American writers were supposed to go to Paris and write. That’s what he’d done in the late 1970s, once upon a time, when he was one notch above poor and had published his first, justly praised debut, The Rapeseed Field . Then his second novel was published, the one he wrote in Paris, the ponderous pretentious artsy-fartsy bullshit Paris Novel ( Reunions of the Tomb, taken from an inscription on the tomb of Abelard and Héloïse in the Père-Lachaise cemetery … oooh that was some High Art). Then, thanks to Book Number Three and his heroine Cordelia Florabloom, he landed again in Paris with beaucoup cash in pocket to debauch himself, eat richly and drink copious amounts of wine. Then the writing fell away and it was just the debauch. Still, he was working within a