With his tongue out, Denny dropped his face in her box. I tried to push my head under his belly to eat my shit off his dick. I could smell it as I tried to wedge my head in there, and could feel his cock butting my forehead. (Her knee hit my ear.) He pushed up so I could grab it in my mouth. I got my head around; and, all slick with juice and shit, it went right in.

In the other room the nigger was laughing.

The girl was struggling again. Maybe I was hurting her knee. But Denny was holding her wrists and lapping out her box when—

“Now what the fuck—”

—the voice came from the front door.

“—do you little bastards think you’re doing?”

I jerked my head from under Denny and looked up.

Denny jerked around too.

The man took his plaid shoulder off the door jamb, shifted his weight to his other hip; he was tall, bony, with spiky brown hair. He had very buck teeth, dark gaps between all of them, some of which was decay. Chin and cheek were all patchy stubble. “Jesus Christ, ain’t you into some shit here.” Tattooed panthers stalked in the hair down his forearms, tails still under his rolled sleeves. With a knobby hand, he plucked at the crotch of his jeans—all those long muscles rolled: it seemed one panther took another step. “Ain’t this some shit, though?” He had big black workshoes on, laced high.

“Jimmy …!” The girl pushed herself up to sitting now, put one hand over her mouth, one over her cunt.

“Where’s your momma gone to, left you in here fuckin’ around with these two young som’bitches?”

Why Denny said anything, I don’t know. But after a second he blurted: “They got her, in the back!”

Jimmy frowned. He took a breath; something chattered way back out of his nose and he spat it out on the floor. Drops hit his shoe and made little dark spots on their dust. He walked around the overturned wheelchair, stepped across the paint cans—he was sort of stoop-shouldered and bobbed his head a little each step, like he was sneaking—and stopped in the doorway.

Denny and I looked at one another.

The girl had her face forward in her hands and was taking deep breaths.