Free Twenty-Seven Bones by Jonathan Nasaw

spare them an otherwise inevitable awkward moment later.
    He asked her if he looked like a police officer. She admitted that he didn’t, but told him she had a rule: if she didn’t get a straight answer the first time she asked the question, she had to see his wallet. He removed his cash before handing over the wallet.
    Her concerns allayed, they left the bar separately, met on the corner, and walked to her apartment, a third-floor walk-up, one-bedroom efficiency. The living room, separated by a high counter from the kitchenette, looked like a college kid’s first off-campus housing, Indian bedspreads and flea-market throw pillows and a rabbit-eared thirteen-inch TV on the floor. Wary of being slipped a mickey, P refused her offer of a drink. She poured herself a stiff one.
    They settled their finances before moving on to the bedroom, most of which was taken up by the only genuine article of furniture in the apartment, a king-size bed with a brass headboard. She emerged from the bathroom wearing a filmy, wraparound peignoir. P was sitting on the bed, leaning back against the headboard. He had stripped from the waist down, and his erection was already blue-veined and shiny-headed. She might have thought this was not going to take long, that she’d be lucky to get the condom on it before the thing went off.
    She could not have been more mistaken. He insisted on straight missionary, and although she probably knew every trick in the book and tried most of them, or at least all the ones she could employ on her back, from talking filth to milking him with her vaginal muscles to inserting her middle finger up his rectum, there was no change in the quality of his erection, which might have been carved from ivory, his scrotum, which was clenched like a fist, his breathing, which was steady, or his expression, which was grim.
    After what was no doubt the longest hour of her life, the woman would probably have done, or have let him do, anything, at no additional charge, just to have it over, but he was deaf to both her offers and her pleas, and when she tried to wriggle out from under him, he shifted his weight and pinned her wrists to the mattress.
    She told him that was enough, that she wasn’t kidding around, and that if she screamed, someone would be there within seconds. This might have been an untruth. It was certainly a mistake. He put one hand over her mouth. His other hand had both wrists pinioned. She tried to bite him. He cupped his palm. She bucked and heaved and twisted her hips until she had dislodged him, then pressed her thighs together. His erection thrust blindly, futilely, sliding across the top of her pubic bone.
    Panting for breath, P told her they could do this the easy way or the hard way. It was a line he’d cribbed from a dozen bad movies. She went limp, presumably opting for the easy way. He nudged her thighs open but was unable to insert his penis again. She tried to tell him something. He raised the hand covering her mouth, but kept her wrists pinned. She told him there was a tube of lubricant in the drawer under the bed. He allowed her to retrieve it. She crawled to the edge of the bed, reached down and opened the drawer, and pulled out a small, chrome-plated revolver. He slammed the side of his fist against the side of her head.
    When she came to, her hands were tied behind the rail of the headboard. He was on top of her again, thrusting away. She could feel the barrel of the pistol digging into her side, just below her rib cage. She began repeating the word please. She might have meant please stop or please finish or please don’t kill me, or all of the above. He didn’t want to hear it. He pinched her nostrils shut with his free hand and covered her mouth with his own.
    Her breath was moist, acrid with converted adrenaline. Please, she tried to say again. Something about the way her mouth moved under his, the softness of her lips, the slight increase in pressure when she pronounced the plosive,