Free The Cage Keeper by André Dubus III Page A

to lie down after.
    Freeze nudges her arm with the bottle, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Lorilee looks at it; she wants a Coke and a sandwich, maybe two. She takes the bottle and sips from it.
    “How’s your face?”
    “I have a headache.”
    “Your old man’s a fucking asshole, you know that, don’t you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So move.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Why?” Freeze slides off the hood.
    “I never worked before.”
    “You can work at a fuckin’ hamburger place.”
    “I can’t do the applications, Freeze.”
    “Jesus.” Freeze picks up a handful of gravel, weighs it in his hand, then throws all of it under the branches of the tree and out over the pit at Barry swimming on his back; they rip into the water around him like shrapnel.
    “Hey!”
    “Air attack, General. What can I say?”
    “
Fuck you,
man.”
    Lorilee sees Barry treading water, his shaved head glistening under the sun looking as black-nubbed and pink-white as a puppy’s belly.
    “You could’ve put an eye out.”
    “Then you’d really look like a killer.”
    Freeze turns to Lorilee, his face looking younger to her; she looks between the opening of his sleeveless denim jacket, sees the smooth skin of his chest, the neat divided sections of his stomach muscles.
    “He’s an asshole,” Freeze says. He looks straight into her eyes then down at her mouth. “Everybody’s an asshole.”
    “Not everybody.” Lorilee flicks her cigarette away then feels it, the sudden flesh awareness of all the openings of her body where shadows have formed and now lie and wait, her tissues preparing themselves without her permission, and she knows that when her eyes meet his she will end up saying and doing whatever he wants. Freeze picks up more gravel then paces with it, looking to Lorilee like somebody with something stolen in his hand and no place to hide it. She looks at the way he can’t seem to stop moving, thinks, Something’s wrong with you, Freeze Benito.
    He drops one pebble at a time from his closed fist then drops all of it, steps toward her. He looks from her mouth to her blue eyes then takes her hand and presses it down between his legs. “Let’s go behind the rock.”
    With her eyes closed against the sun her head aches less but she is sweating very much and it is beginning to burn the swollen side of her face. “C’mon, Freeze, c’mon.” She reaches down and pulls on his cheeks. “C’mon, baby.” She is beginning to chafe. She smells the coconut oil Freeze puts in his hair to slick it back, then feels cool drops of water land on her forehead and closed eyes.
    “What about me?”
    Lorilee opens her eyes to Barry’s white hairless belly, his upside-down smiling face.
    “Get the fuck outta here, man. I’m almost done.”
    Lorilee closes her eyes again and Freeze moves faster, pushes harder then stops, pushes once more then stops again, relaxes his weight on her. She scratches the back of his neck with her fingers. “Did you like it?”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    She moves her mouth to his cheek but he sees her and pulls out fast, is up zipping and snapping his pants, stepping over her.
    “Go for it,” Freeze says.
    Lorilee blocks the sun from her eyes with her hand, sees Barry still in his underpants holding the bottle of wine. His round face looks at hers then he glances between her legs, places the bottle on the rock, and pulls down his underwear.
    Lorilee sits up.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I have to wait.”
    “Why?”
    “I just do.”
    “You want some wine?”
    “No.”
    “Well then fuckin’ blow me or somethin’.”
    Lorilee looks up past the dark hair and rising penis to his face.
    “Come on.” Barry pulls her head to his middle and with shadows wavering over her tongue and behind her teeth, Lorilee closes her eyes to make them leave, opens her mouth to Barry’s ugliness, her head falling into a rhythm that pulses now through her hollow stomach, behind her closed and aching eyes. He pushes rough and