Bedbugs (9 page)

Dennis waved his hand at her in casual dismissal. “Look, babe—if you don’t like it, then you can drag your sorry ass right on out of here. There’s no reason you should ruin the fun for me.”

“
Fun?
You call this
fun?
”

Dennis stared coldly at his wife; then, unable to stop the words, he poked at her belly and added, “Maybe you saw a little too much of yourself in Matilda the Fat Woman. Is that it?”

Sally’s eyes brimmed with tears. “That’s not fair,” she sputtered. Then, sniffing loudly, she spun the baby stroller around, not even bothering to apologize to the people she bumped into as she made her way back out the front door.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Dennis muttered.

Before moving on to the next exhibit, though, he quickly checked his watch. It was a quarter to one—fifteen minutes to go until they started selling tickets for the first show of
LaBELLE—THE VOODOO QUEEN
. He hurried through the rest of the FREAK SHOW, barely noticing the rest of the wonders as his mind filled with anticipation of LaBelle’s dance.

I
n the darkened tent, the music started out low with a slow, sensuous beat. The air was close, heavy with the smell of sweating men, sour beer, damp canvas, and old sawdust chips. Fifteen rows of low, wooden benches were crammed full of men, most of them wearing faded jeans and sweat-stained flannel work shirts. Only at the back of the tent did Dennis spot three or four women—probably college girls from Farmington, there to watch the show on a dare from their boyfriends. The rest of the audience, many of whom Dennis worked with at the mill—until yesterday, anyway—were watching the small stage as the tinny, pseudo-Egyptian music grew steadily louder. A man wearing a frayed tuxedo and top hat, and spinning a white-tipped cane in his right hand, strolled out onto center stage.

“And now, gentlemen . . . di-
rect
from the burning sands of Egypt, to entertain you here today, I present to you—the bea-
uti
-ful . . . the ex-
ot
-ic . . . the e-
rot
-ic . . .
LaBelle
, the Voodoo Queen!”

The audience exploded with wild applause, catcalls, and wolf whistles. No one, apparently, was bothered by the tenuous connection between “Voodoo” and “Egypt” when they saw a long, slender black arm reach out from behind the side curtain and begin to weave up and down like an entranced cobra in time with the music. The music rose louder as a shoulder and then a sleek, well-muscled back slithered into view.

Sitting dead center in the front row, Dennis sat gape-mouthed and staring as LaBelle slinked onto the stage. He had mentally prepared himself for disappointment, but for once, the carnival sign hadn’t lied. If anything, it had underplayed the heated eroticism of this woman LaBelle. Dennis shifted uneasily in his seat as he felt himself stiffen.

When she first came out, LaBelle danced with her back to the audience. The smooth muscles of her arms, legs, and back glided in sinuous curves beneath her oiled, ebony skin. Her ample hips shifted and pumped suggestively to the strains of the music. Over a thin bikini top and bottom made of shimmering purple silk, she wore a flimsy white veil that drifted like smoky mist in time with her swaying body. She moved like a river at night—lazy, curling ripples that flowed and eddied. The whole effect pulled Dennis into a silent, mind-numbed daze.

The audience, meanwhile, was going wild, filling the tent with shrill whistles and hoots. Overweight, unshaven men, who probably had been drinking since early morning, whooped and hollered.

“Come on! Turn around!”

“Take it off, baby! Take it
all
off.”

“Com’on! Let us see your titties!”

Their shouts almost drowned out the music, no matter how loud it was turned up to compensate for the noise.

Ignoring their requests, LaBelle continued her slow dance with her back to the audience, her hips thrusting and gyrating in seductive, sensuous circles as her arms coiled and twined like snakes. As he watched, Dennis found himself wondering what it would be like to feel those arms wrapped around him, to ride those hips, and to feel that body twisting and turning beneath his own thrusting pelvis. His mouth went desert dry when LaBelle reached up behind her back and teasingly pulled off the veil, letting it drift in shimmering slow-motion to the floor.

The audience started shouting all the louder, yelling and whistling with delight, but Dennis just sat there, transfixed. He felt a stirring of disappointment when he began to wonder if this was how it would be for the entire show. LaBelle would maintain her air of mystery by doing her entire dance without once turning to face her audience. He could see the heavy swell of her breasts swaying from side to side as she moved in time with the music, seemingly
creating
the music with every twist and grind of her body.

And then, as the music rose to a crescendo that rattled the cheap speakers, it happened.

With a swirling flourish, LaBelle spun around on one foot.

Dennis almost passed out the instant he saw her face.

Framed in a cascade of frizzy black hair was—not the face of a woman—no, it looked more the face of a cat . . . or a snake! But her sleek forehead, her high, glossy cheekbones, her delicately pointed chin, and her thin, flaring nose and wide lips were nothing but a frame for her eyes.

Her
eyes!

In the glare of the single spotlight, against the orange backdrop of sunlit canvas, her slitted eyes gleamed with a golden fire as she looked coldly out at her audience.

Dennis couldn’t move. He had forgotten how to blink his eyes or take a breath as he gaped at the woman. The noisy audience and the blaring music all seemed to vanish in an instant, and LaBelle was staring at him, dancing for him . . . for him alone. She coiled and uncoiled her arms, her long, delicate fingers waving like slim branches in the wind, reaching . . . beckoning—to him!

She’s looking right at me!
Dennis’s mind screamed.
She wants me!

He could feel himself almost lifted from his seat as he was drawn into the twin golden pools of her eyes. He barely noticed as LaBelle reached behind her back, unsnapped her costume top, and shrugged it off her shoulders. After swinging it around a few times in the air, she tossed it backstage. Now freed from confinement, her heavy breasts bounced to the rhythm of the music. When Dennis shifted his gaze downward from her eyes, all he could imagine was his own, trembling hands, gently caressing and squeezing those magnificent globes.

As LaBelle continued to twirl and spin on the narrow stage, Dennis was swept away by her motion. Slowly, she peeled away the rest of her costume, sloughing it off like snake skin, but he barely noticed, so lost was he in the whirlpool of her dance and her flashing, golden eyes. When—at last—she slinked off stage stark naked, and the crowd exploded with cheers and whistles, Dennis felt himself only partially pulled back out of the spinning daze he had been in. Another dancer followed, but Dennis, his groin aching as if he hadn’t found release in years, got up and stumbled out the nearest exit.

The sudden burst of sunlight and the blaring sounds from other carnival booths and tents was like a cold, hard punch to the gut. Dennis walked on legs as stiff as broomsticks as he made his way over to the kiddie rides, where he had left Sally and Dennis Jr. When he saw his bloated, pimple-faced wife, the last vestiges of the illusion LaBelle had cast disappeared like smoke. It wasn’t until later that afternoon, after he and Sally and Dennis Jr. had left the carnival, that Dennis got an idea of what he could do about it all.

S
unday morning dawned bright and cold as Dennis tiptoed to the back door, clutching a bartered suitcase in his hand. Every floorboard seemed to creak as loud as a gunshot with each step he took, but he slowly made his way through the kitchen and out the back door without waking either Sally or Dennis Jr. Closing the door quietly yet firmly behind him, he started down the road without a single backward glance.

What the fuck difference does it make?
he thought.

He had a wife he didn’t love—maybe had never really loved. He had married Sally right out of high school only because he had gotten her knocked up. He had a threeyear-old brat who was driving him crazy as it was, and now another one was on the way because Sally said she “forgot” to take her birth control pills. And now, on top of everything else, he didn’t even have a lousy job. So there was nothing to keep him here in Hilton. But none of that mattered. If there was even the slimmest chance that he could—somehow—get to spend a night—just
one
night— with LaBelle, it would be worth leaving all of this behind!

The night before, after Dennis Jr. had been tucked into bed and Sally was dozing in front of some lame-brained show on TV, he had gone down to the river again and watched as the roustabouts dismantled the carnival, packing it up for the trip to the next town. After Sally had gone upstairs to bed, he had quietly packed a few changes of clothes into his old suitcase and hidden it in the downstairs closet.

The morning air was crisp, with just a hint of actual springtime warmth. The woods were damp with dew and filled with birdsong as Dennis made his way quickly down Marsh Street to the bridge that would bring him by the most direct route to Moulton’s Field. As beautiful as the morning was, though, it all paled beside the burning memory Dennis had of seeing LaBelle, the Voodoo Queen, dance . . . dance just for him!

He hoped, he prayed that no one from town would see him. It wouldn’t take a powder keg mind to figure out what he was doing, walking down the road with a suitcase in hand. In some ways, he felt the same stirrings of freedom and joy he had felt when, as a boy, he had run away from home because of the whopping his father had given him for some long-forgotten offense. But the image that drew him onward now—the sensuous beauty of LaBelle the Voodoo Queen—was something no ten-year-old could even conceive of. He no longer wanted just to watch! No, he wanted to touch . . . . He had to feel LaBelle do her dance all around him!

He made it to Moulton’s Field, and it didn’t take long to find the trailer of the carnival boss, a man named Josh Logan. After telling Logan how he had lost his job at the mill—and conveniently forgetting to mention the fact that he was leaving a family behind—he had himself a job as a roustabout. The pay was minimum wage, just as he had expected, but he would share a trailer with several other men and be provided with three squares a day. All in all, Dennis thought, his prospects were looking pretty damned good. He would be able to keep body and soul together hopefully at least until he could see LaBelle again and maybe meet her. After that, he might think about going back home to Sally and his snot-nosed little brat.

Maybe. . . .

By nightfall, the carnival crossed the state line into New Hampshire. Dennis spent most of the night with his new workmates, setting up the carnival in an open field just outside of Franconia. The work was hard—much harder than anything he’d ever done at the mill. Even though the regulars treated him a bit standoffishly, he began to sense a spirit of camaraderie among them, almost like a secret brotherhood, and he felt that—with time—he just might be able to share it.

But none of that really mattered because what he had come for, what filled his mind all night as he worked, was a vision of LaBelle with her long, sleek, black arms wrapped around him, hugging him tightly . . . her legs squeezing his back as he drove himself deeper and deeper into her.

The only disappointment Dennis experienced that first night on the job was that he never caught even a glimpse of LaBelle. Apparently she kept to her trailer when she wasn’t performing, and she never came out, even during setup or for the late evening meal. Whenever Dennis got close to her trailer, he would feel a queasy discomfort in his gut as he stared at her closed door, fully expecting to see some man—maybe Josh Logan—step out of her trailer with a self-satisfied grin on his face. What were the chances that a woman like her didn’t already have a man in her life, maybe dozens of men?

The few times Dennis even mentioned LaBelle to his co-workers, everyone either would look away as if they hadn’t heard him or else cast their eyes to the ground and shake their heads, muttering something under their breaths that Dennis never quite caught.

It was well past midnight when the carnival was finally set up and ready for the crowds the next day. Feeling bone-tired, Dennis was making his way back to his trailer for some much needed rest. Out of a habit he knew he would follow until he at least caught another glimpse of LaBelle, he detoured past her trailer.

As he looked up at the full-length sign depicting her dance, his head felt bubbly and light, but the darkened windows stared back at him like cold, uncaring eyes. He knew he would have to seek out his cot before he collapsed right there on the ground, but he lingered, staring at the closed trailer door and letting his fantasies run wild. He was just turning to leave when he heard a faint
click
and then the high-pitched
squeak
of a door opening.

With his heart throbbing heavily in his chest, Dennis looked up at LaBelle’s trailer. He almost convinced himself he was hallucinating when he saw the door slowly swing outward and then stop, less than half-way open. From the darkness within, Dennis thought he saw a soft flutter of motion, black against the darker black of the doorway.