The Birds (Psycho)

I awoke with a hard on. It lay aslant on the left side of my belly, in Listral's gentle grasp. Her head rested on my left shoulder. My numb left arm was behind her back, my hand lying in the shallow valley of her waist. I wondered how long we'd been this way. I also wondered if Listral's hand had made me hard, while I slept, or if it was a sleep-erection and Listral had merely discovered it. It was dawn, the heavily curtained first light turning the hotel room grey. Greyish.

My numb hand patted Listral's hip roll.

"You awake?"

"Mm?"

"I have to get up, sweetheart. I have to go pee."

Listral's head rose, a little. "I'll go with you."

With me? Did she need to pee too? Would we take turns? I was dying. Who'd go first?

Listral's naked body rose up as did mine behind her. I gave my arm a reviving shake. She preceded me into the bathroom.

"I'll hold it for you," Listral said. "I used to hold dad's. I like it."

I was confused. I laughed anyway, sort of. "If you hold it I won't be able to pee."

"No, I'll point it down," Listral said, gripping the whole of her long silky hair and tossing it over a shoulder. I wondered at that moment if the young woman understood exactly how the male sex organ functioned.

I stood over the toilet, seat up, with the front of Listral's body pressed against my backside. I could feel her hard nipples in my ribs. She held my cock with her left hand and, sure enough, bent the unruly thing downwards.

It worked. I peed a heavy, clearish stream. Listral said:

"I love the feel of it. It's very intimate. It makes me feel like my body's connected to yours. Or like I'm inside you or something. Plus, it's good to pee before sex. It prevents infections."

Listral was half my age, at best, but she'd just informed me about something no other woman in my experience had ever told me before.

After my stream lost its arc and I finished Listral gave my penis an expert shake. I now believed that she'd done this before—with her dad. I turned. Listral, holding her long brown hair back with one hand, bent. "I love the taste of pee, too." She wrapped her lips around my head, just behind it, and sucked out the last of it, the final salient drops. She rose.

I followed her back to bed thinking, What a curious young woman. Her dad had gone loopy toward the end but it was assumed that was because of his war experiences, PTSD. But what if, instead, his mental instability, to put it mildly, had been inherited? And had been passed on to his daughter? I felt guilty.

Listral lay down on the bed on her back and spread her slender legs. I climbed between them. As before she insisted on guiding me in, while wrapping her legs behind my back and crossing her ankles. Birds were chirping outside the windows. Sparrows I guessed, or chickadees. I was deep inside Listral. It was not too late to stop all this, to pull out. She clawed my back:

"Fuck me Uncle Bill! Fuck me!"

And I did, for the second time. Though I was not her real uncle and my name was not Bill.

Though only a couple of years older, I had been Bill's CO in the war. He'd been a good soldier, good not great. The kind you need to make up the numbers, in other words. We'd kept in touch over the years; besides, I now lived less than two hours away. It seemed only right, then, that I accept the invitation to attend his funeral. Especially under the tragic circumstances.

After the sparsely attended church service his daughter Listral stood below the raised pulpit in front of the closed, flower-bedecked coffin accepting peoples' condolences. I was struck by her beauty. How old was Listral now, 20? I'd lost track. Unlike her dad she was tall and slender—an almost boyish build—with long brown hair that hung straight down her back. Her face was oval, a long oval, a sad one. She wore a white dress, her breasts hanging low inside it. I assumed the contrary white among all the dark suits of mourning had symbolic value, I wasn't sure. Her translucent beauty, however...that I was certain of.

I tarried. Waited until the line diminished. I joined it at the end.

When I reached Listral, hand extended, she smiled at me, knowingly. "Hi Listral," I said. "I'm—"

"I know who you are, Uncle Bill. Thanks for coming."

She rose up in her open-toed heels to give me a kiss, on my left cheek. I was left speechless, looking down. I decided to let the mistaken name go. I'd correct it at a later date, if there was one. Christ, I thought. Even this girl's toes are beautiful...

"I'm sorry about your dad," I said. "He was a good man."

Listral shrugged. Her dress had thick straps, baring her shoulders. It was a summer dress. A summer dress in early spring. A white summer dress at a funeral. She glanced over a shoulder. "I kind of wish now I'd invited people to the burial."

"Who's coming?"

Another shrug. "Me." Her pouting lower lip only served to redouble her sadness at the moment.

"What about your mom?" Bill and his wife had divorced years ago. It would be easy to claim that the divorce started him on his downward spiral; but in fact his downward spiral had precipitated the divorce.

"Couldn't make it," Listral said coldly.

"I'm sorry." I didn't know what else to say. By now we were the only two left in the small church. The pastor had hurried off with his check and the last of the mourners had exited through the pair of double doors at either aisle's end. Or should I say their beginning? Outside, I presumed, the funeral home director, the hearse and the attending limo waited.

I looked at Listral. Even in half-heels she was nearly a head shorter than me. She was shorter up close. Up close. "Well if you like I'll go with you."

Listral looked up at me, hopefully. "Would you?"

"Sure. Afterwards..." I cleared my throat. I was in my mid-forties, an experienced man. But do you ever get too old to lose your composure in the presence of a beautiful young woman? "If you like, afterwards, we could go, I don't know, grab some lunch?"

Listral smiled. "That would be nice. Thank you." She insisted on hugging, there in front of her dad's casket. I didn't know quite what to do with my arms. I kissed the top of her head, the center part in her brown hair. She smelled of shampoo. Of youth. Beauty. I thought of Keats for some reason.

"Or at least a bourbon or two," I added, trying to lighten the moment. I had a hard-on beneath my dark trousers, which I hoped—prayed—Listral had not felt in our impromptu embrace. "Or...I forget. Are you old enough to drink?"

"Technically...not quite. But I'll take a sip of yours."

As we crossed the cemetery, after the ceremonial lowering of the casket, a burial attended by two—not counting the pastor, the funeral director and two cemetery employees—Listral asked: "Where are you staying?"

We were holding hands. Listral's was slender, almost lost in my moist, meaty grip. The grassed ground was irregular, oak tree roots and shallow depressions disrupting the path to my car. It was as if the ground was sinking in. Rodents? We kept bumping shoulders. Listral stopped at one point. Said: "These shoes hurt my feet."

Adroitly, one foot at a time, using me as her stout steadying post, as if the trunk of one of the nearby oaks, she removed them. She was barefoot now. We walked, we held hands again, the shoes dangling from Listral's free hand by their skinny heel straps.

"Where are you staying tonight?"

"Oh. Well I wasn't planning to. I was just going to drive back. But..." I forced a smile: "If we're going to have lunch, and a bourbon or two..."

"If it's inconvenient..."

"No, not at all darling."

Listral looked up at me. I looked off, evasively—through the oaks at the curving drive and my grey 911 parked at the curb, behind the vacancy left by the hearse and the unneeded limousine. I went on:

"We passed a big Marriott on the way here, I noticed. I'll get a room there."

Listral squeezed my hand. "If I'd known you were staying over I would've offered you a room at dad's house, my house now I guess."

"The Marriott'll be fine." I desperately wanted to change the subject: "Aren't your feet cold?"

"No. The ground's cold, not my feet. I'm not good with heels. Always been something," her smile blossoming like the snowdrop flowers in our uneven path, "of a tomboy."

"Oh. Well..."

"That Marriott's nice. I went to a party there once. A girlfriend's wedding. They have a restaurant, a really nice bar in the atrium. Palm trees, light...You feel like you're in the tropics."

"Fine. We'll kill two birds with one stone then." There were birds overhead in the oaks but they were grackles, commonly mistaken for crows, which are larger, even nastier. Both species are highly intelligent, however. They're said to use tools. Sticks and such. Their reputed intelligence camouflaged by the rawness of their voices: "Caw! Caw!" It was as if the birds, these grackles, were following our progress, hopping from tree to tree. When I told my therapist at the VA about my interest in birds, she said this was something I should pursue. "There are all kinds of bird-watching groups," she told me, as if I didn't know. "I'm not much of a joiner," I replied. "You joined the army all those years ago. And spent all those years serving our nation in its time of need," she told me, she told me, as if I didn't know. As if I didn't know. "That's why I'm not much a joiner anymore," I explained.

I wondered if Listral's bare feet, their soles, were turning green from the damp spring grass covering the graveyard. I wondered if they would taste sweet like grass if I kissed them, or even kissed the fleshy tips of her perfect toes. I wondered—

"These birds..."

"Nice car!" Listral proclaimed, upon our arrival. At the stone curb.

"Well, you know..."

"Dad drove an old Pontiac at the end. They don't even make 'em anymore."

I clicked the alarm off and opened the door for Listral, who slid in deftly tossing her heels in the footwell. I was a foolish 46-year-old ex-Army major who'd just fallen in love with the daughter of one of my former non-coms on the day of his funeral. I glanced up into the overhanging branches—at the black, hulking birds clawing the cool spring air with their discordant "song." I climbed into the low driver's seat. Listral reached over after I started the engine and I took her hand, again. I felt the full weight of mortality descend on me at that moment, like the funereal cries of so many overhead black birds.

"After lunch," I declared, "I'll, you know darling, take you home."

Listral remained silent; looked straight ahead through windshield's distorting curve.

"Put your sweetheart on, darling," I said, improbably. She didn't say a word. We roared off. We humans, we hear what we want to hear.

The bartender in the Marriott's towering atrium didn't card. He was a young guy, tall, handsome, and I guess he assumed Listral was my daughter. Or someone. Something respectable. We drank Woodford Reserve on the rocks, doubles.

We faced each other on our cushioned stools, all that tropical flora behind us (no birds). Listral's bare knees, below white dress's hem, met mine. I was hard—beyond hard. Bill's daughter reminded me of Mary. Mary Beth. A girl I'd fallen in love with way back when, before the Army. She sang in the church choir. Soloed in fact. A lovely soprano voice. She too wore virginal white dresses. She too had long straight brown hair down her back. Her breasts too hung low. For whatever reason I'd never gotten anywhere with her; made headway. We never dated. Not once. Then I joined the Army. Fuck it.

"So how does a man get to own a Porsche?"

Listral pronounced it "Porsch". No German "uh" at the end. So what? They had Pappy's behind the atrium bar. But screw it. There was no way I was paying $45 an ounce. I put my hand on Listal's half-bare thigh.

"Luck," I explained. "Still in the military, sort of. Connected. Armaments. Lucrative. Your dad?"

Empty stomach, I was drunk. Getting there. Listral replied: "At the end he was selling health insurance policies. He was...it wasn't going well."

"I'm sorry."

"It was a whole...slew of things."

"Sure. I'm sure. I'm—"

"They have mini bars up in the room," Listral suggested. "And room service."

"Are you hungry?"

"I could eat. But..."

"Yeah," I replied, finishing off my latest high-proof Woodford. "We could—"

Mary had leaned in. The bartender was far away. We were alone, except for the birdless palm trees. "You could fuck me, Uncle Bill, then...," looking over her white-strapped shoulder, "we could eat in the room."

I stood up, abruptly. I swayed. "Darling..."

She giggled. "Don't forget to play the tab..."

We kissed in the elevator. We necked, our tongues sliding past each other. Floor 11.

Listral was still in her white dress, minus her matching white panties, when I fucked her, on the made bed. We didn't care. I didn't ask if she was on the pill. I should have but I didn't. I came in her, at any rate, and afterwards, breaking the stunned silence, she confessed...

She confessed that this was how it had been with her dad toward the end.

"What do you mean 'how it had been'," I asked, standing by the bed, sobered up.

"You and me."

"No I mean...you and your dad. What do you mean at the end?"

Listral's slender legs were spread around the wetspot I'd left, created just now on the Marriott's generic quilted comforter. What if she wasn't on the pill? What if...?

"Like you and me," Listral repeated. "Dad and me were having sex at the end. It was wonderful! But then he kinda freaked out about it I think and..."

"You and your dad?"

Listral had scooted up from the bed's center wetspot and was now leaning against the pillowed headboard. Her sweet body so lean, so slender, it was hard to tell her hips from her waist. Tomboy. Slender legs raised. Grass stains on the bottoms of her feet. I was in love. Love! I could've died at that moment and been happy. Shoot me!

Listral nodded. "But then he kind of..."

"Yeah." I had been around countless soldiers in combat, under enormous stress. I was desperate, in this down time, to change the subject. And that's exactly why I'd quit seeing my VA-appointed therapist. She always wanted to stick to the subject at hand. While I—

"Let's order room service, baby."

"OK," Listral smiled. I'd never noticed her dimples before. Or had I? Mary had dimples. I wondered where she was, who she'd married. How many kids? Raising them as good Christians? Home-schooling the fucks?

Listral, by contrast, was skinnier. Prettier. Sweeter. Willing to fuck. And fuck. She leaned against the headboard, smiling. My cum inside her—what hadn't leaked out. I looked at the menu. Decided to order a Marriott Burger with aged cheddar and bacon. And curly fries. Bad for the heart.

"What do you want, dear?"

"Just a salad, Uncle Bill," Mary said.

"That's it?"

"I'm a vegetarian."

"I thought you were hungry.

"I am."

"Christ. You eat like a bird..."