Denny was still panting, but different. “You bet your black ass I did, Nigg!”

“Shit,” the nigger said. “You mean your sore one. I know what you like, boy.”

Hogg rubbed his wet hand in my hair. He had his foot in my lap and was rubbing my soaked crotch. The last of his piss dripped off my chin. He reached down and thumbed piss out of my eye, then ran his thumb in his mouth.

The nigger and Denny were standing near the woman, laughing together about something.

The wop stood, one shoe either side of her; he was closing his jumper. He wiped his knife on his hip—it made a wide smear—and put it in his pocket. The woman was still breathing, though. And I didn’t see much blood on the floor, so maybe he had only made shallow cuts.

Hogg’s cock—almost soft now—fell out my mouth; and he shoved himself back into his fly, pretty fast. Yellow hairs still stuck through the fly flaps. “Come on, you guys. Get yourself together, huh?”

Drops from the edge of his cuff caught in the bright hair on the top of his dirty foot, rolled between the grimy ligaments, ran down the blacker troughs between his toes.

I put my hand around the back of his leg and pushed my fingers between his wet thighs. He shook me by the hair. “Come on, get up. Let’s go.” Hand on the back of my head, he walked me across the rug. “You see,” he said. “Now this is more like what I usually do.”

We waited at the door while the wop cut the phone wires. I stood next to Hogg, who kept rubbing the back of my neck. Piss kept dripping from my hair, running over his fingers, and down my neck.

I looked back at the woman.

I think she’d moved. Her face was straight down on the floor, which was a way I never thought you could lie because your nose got in the way. But maybe hers was broken. Her legs were wide and there was blood inside her thighs. By now, some was spreading on the rug. One arm was bent funny, so her hand lay among brown and white ceramic.

Closing the cabin door—the seven had come loose from one screw and leaned against the eight—it looked just like the other cabin doors that curved down toward the motel office. The red Vacancy sign blinked and blinked at the driveway entrance.

I climbed up into the truck next to Hogg. The wop slid over next to me. Hogg slid his hand under my ass without saying anything.