Bettie Page Bangs

***Author's note:** Very NSFW*

“I’m an introvert.  I’m not mean or snobby or antisocial, I just need alone time to recharge my batteries.  A lot of people don’t understand that and I get, like, judged.”

The blonde girl with Bettie Page bangs stops talking to suck sugary yellow sludge through a purple straw, fake caramel and ice blended and topped with a melting pile of whipped cream.  I take a sip of my espresso and admire on the “O” of her thin, chewed lips.

“The world is mostly extroverts, and it’s hard, you know.  Girls like me get overwhelmed when we’re exposed to too much social interaction, and we shut down.”

She has uneven blue eyeshadow, the sort they sell in little plastic trays at Wal-Mart.  Her top is pink and scoop-necked, faded and formless after too many machine washes, probably stitched by schoolchildren in a Pyongyang sweatshop.  A frayed sleeve slips off a milky-white shoulder.  Her mascara is clumped.  I choke down another mouthful of burned espresso.

“Like, I hate it when people force me to go out to a stupid club.  I get all awkward and it drains me.”

Her little pink mouth bends into a pout, big grey doe eyes lowered in a show of helpless little girl shyness.  I seriously doubt anyone’s ever tried that hard to get her through the doors of 1 Oak simply to bask in her presence.  I doubt she’d get past the bouncer.  She’s pretty, but not too pretty.  Not pretty enough to be an actress.  A writer, maybe?

She hates it when people drag her to clubs.  Fine.  I take her to Spago.  The skinny Asian hostess raises a perfectly-arched eyebrow at the girl, at her trailer park makeup and vanity-ripped skinny jeans.  I bet she wonders why I’m with her.  She gives me a pinup smile, ogles my Tod’s leather tassel loafers, Armani flat-front wool trousers, Stefano Ricci midnight blue plaid two-button jacket, Michael Kors slim-fit cotton button down, hands manicured by tittering Korean women at a cheesy little salon on Western.

We sit at a little white table with white chairs and napkins by the windows, overlooking gridlocked Sunset traffic, high-rise apartment buildings, tall billboards For Your Consideration, Arabs stalling at the curb in Honda Civics with white and black stickers pasted onto their windows, giggling women in cocktail dresses clinging to their third-rate gangster/rapper wannabe boyfriends.  I order Sonoma baby lamb with a sprig of rosemary, kale and collars braised in olive oil with little red pepper flecks on the side; she gingerly picks the Nicoise olives off her $26 mushroom wood-oven pizza.  We share a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the Trailside Vineyard in Napa.  She doesn’t like it; I buy her a cocktail.  Something with Hangar One and St-Germain and pureed lychee called a Bare Naked Legs.

I order desert.  Dark chocolate flourless cake, french vanilla buttercream filling, drizzled with coffee liqueur, cinnamon-nutmeg ice cream a la mode.  The girl is red-faced, glazed eyes laser-focused on my undone top buttons, rubbing her thrift-store lace-up boot against my ankle.  By the time we’re in the backseat, my driver noiselessly navigating towards the canyons, she’s on my lap, clinging like a spider monkey, slobbering down my neck.

We turn onto Laurel Canyon.  I stick my hand up her ratty pink shirt, over the soft bulge of her untoned belly, under the cheap elastic of her bra.  My rented Lincoln Continental buckles and rattles as we bound over jagged pavement, around tight curves, higher and higher, jerking along brown hillsides, exposed-brick cottages, wooden fences, cropped bushes dripping dried pink oleander.  I reach down and unzip her jeans.  My erection bounces against her black cotton panties.

The driver leaves us outside my rented house, off Mulholland, down a narrow little street called Raccoon Mountain; it's a squat bungalow at the precipice of a steep drop with no cell reception.  I lead the girl through the tiled, sparsely-decorated living room, past the Toshiba flatscreen and Sven mahogany sofa, out the sliding glass doors (she doesn’t notice me lock the door behind us), and onto the grassy patio.

She squeals.  Maybe she’s impressed by the bubbling hot tub, or the glowing fire pit, or the cinematic view of the Los Angeles basin.  She sits on the lawn recliner and unties her boots.  I fold my jacket, unbutton my shirt, undo my belt, lower my slacks, and bare down on her in my Kitson boxers, pinning her to the recliner.

She yelps in ecstasy.  I rip her t-shirt, unhook her Victoria’s Secret bargain bin bra, expose her deceptively-large breasts to the cool hillside air.  I twist a small, erect nipple, lick, nibble.  She moans.  I move downward, prod her convex belly, cup her hairless pubic triangle, stick two fingers into her cunt.  She tugs off her jeans and panties.  I eat her out, one hand gripping a breast.  She has really nice tits.

I slide down my boxers.  She climbs on top of me, caresses my toned torso, swallows my dick.  A few minutes of wet, toothy licking and sucking, a rough tweak of my balls.  I push her off, leave her naked and panting, go into the house, come back with a vial of cocaine I scored at an afterparty in the Warehouse District.  I do a line off her tits.  She does a line off my washboard abs.

We fuck on the recliner.  We fuck in the hot tub. I clutch her round ass, force myself deeper into her; she leans her head back, eyes closed, panting as she orgasms.  I place a hand against her face and slam her head violently against the concrete edge.  She goes limp.

She wakes up tied to the recliner, arms secured with zip ties.  Her eyes widen in terror; the ball gag muffles her scream.  I do a line off her stomach.  She writhes desperately.  I wonder, briefly, what small Midwestern town she grew up in, if she was a cheerleader there, who there will miss her.  I imagine the scene on Local 5 news five, six days from now, the fat Nordic mother sobbing in front of the cameras, the balding father’s eyes like a deer in the headlights.  I realize I don’t remember her name.

She tosses her head back and forth, to no avail, the ball gag is tight.  Her Bettie Page bangs stick feverishly to her forehead.  I pull out the drill.  I ram the tip into her belly button.  She bangs her head against the recliner in agony.  Watery blood and greenish goo leak from the hole.  I retract the drill and make another hole, below the first, careful to avoid her liver and other solid organs.  No good if she bleeds out.

I pull out the drill.  A pink section of intestines is wrapped around the tip.  I pull out my boxcutter knife and slice through it.  The girl’s big grey eyes bulge.  Cheap mascara and blue eyeshadow run down her cheeks.  I like this drill.  It’s a DeWalt lithium iron cordless driver.  I recently started buying my tools from the Home Depot website.  It’s really convenient; all I do is type in a credit card I’ve applied for with a Social Security number I find online, and they deliver right to my door!

I bought the drill, a Ryobi 18-volt sheet sander, a Milwaukee18-volt brushless, cordless circular saw and sawzall, a Dremel cordless variable speed MAX rotary tool, and a Hakko digital smoldering iron with a chisel tip.  Each leaves its own unique mark on her milky-white skin, pink muscle tissue, white ends of exposed bone.

I put a hand between her tits (I’ve saved her gorgeous breasts for last).  Her chest rises and falls.  Her blue eyes are glassy and unfocused.  Maybe she's still capable of conscious thought.  Maybe she’s thinking of her family, her wholesome quarterback boyfriend back home, the screenplays she’ll never write, all her talent and dreams lost forever.  Maybe she’s imagining her heart-shaped face on the cover of US Magazine, the Instagram selfie they’ll use in all the news reports, the episode of Frontline, the true crime novels.

I plug in the soldering iron.  I put the blue flame to a hard nipple like a birthday candle.  This gets her attention.  Her back arches, she bites down hard on the gag, she tosses her head.  Blood.  I wasn’t expecting blood, I imagined her perfect breast would wither and dry like a log.  Then burning fat, an acrid smell like used oil in the back of a fast food kitchen.

When the breast is reduced to a black chunk of overcooked meat, I unplug the soldering iron.  I climb on top of her.  I feel faint fluttering below the charred flesh.  Her pretty grey eyes stare into the void, dilated, bloodshot, unfeeling.  I place my hands over her nose and mouth.  Before me, below me, the lights of the city twinkle like the stars of my own miniature galaxy.

Mother by Danzig plays on the radio.  I cut south on Crescent Heights, pull a left onto Sunset.  The last of the girls in party dresses and the boys in Sean John button-ups and designer grills stumble from late-night pizza joints to waiting cars.  There’s a taco truck on the corner of Sunset and Doheny.

I leave her in a dumpster off Beverly Boulevard.  Maybe one of her co-workers will find her in the morning.  My hair is slicked back, still damp.  I’ve changed into Burberry cotton sweatpants and a blue Ralph Lauren track jacket.  It smells bad here, like old sweat mixed with cat shit.  I light a cigarette.  My hands are dirty.  My lighter doesn’t work.  I look at the tattoo, a messy little disc that resembles a clock with no hands, on the inside of my right wrist.  The smell of body odor gets stronger.

A shadow, then another shadow, then hands on me.  Strong hands.  Big men, two of them, with black collared shirts and cheap silver badges.

“Buddy, you can’t dumpster-dive here.  How many times do I have to tell you?”

\*\*\*\*\*

The blonde girl with Bettie Page bangs pauses in her cleaning of the espresso machine, looks through the window of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf where she works.  She watches two burly security guards hustle the middle-aged homeless man from the dumpsters in the alley and leave him on the sidewalk.  He is yelling something at them, running his hands through his filthy, receding grey hair.

Her chubby, Latino co-worker notices her looking.

“You know that guy, Kacie?” he asks.

Kacie shrugs.  “That’s Mr. Bateman.  He comes around sometimes, looking for food.  I feel bad for him.  He's pretty far gone. He keeps telling me he’s going to take me to some fancy restaurant that closed in the 80’s.”

Her co-worker frowns.  “I wouldn’t talk to him if I were you.  Ryan told me he did hard time at Rikers for killing a guy in New York.”

Kacie shakes her head.  “That’s bullshit.  He just likes talking, telling stories.  I Google’d him.  He used to be a millionaire trust fund brat, then he lost it all after some bad investments before the ’91 recession. Then he got involved with a boiler room or a Ponzi scheme, some big financial crime, but they got busted pretty quickly. He tried to make a run for it, strung out on coke, and ended up hitting three pedestrians with his car. I don't think any of them died, but that's why he was at Riker's."

She turns back to the window.  Mr. Bateman is still arguing with the security guards.  He wears dirt-caked loafers that might have once been expensive, sagging and threadbare dress pants, and a long-sleeved polo shirt stained yellow and brown.  His wrinkled, dirt-streaked face, if you could look past the grime, is still somewhat handsome.

“He must’ve been a real lady killer in his day,” Kacie says, as she returns to the espresso machine.