Salvage by Stephen Maher Page A

with Karen while he started fucking me, and Bobby was fucking Karen, while Karen and I kept making out. Then we just, uh, switched. It was fucking crazy.”
    She turned to look at him. “This bother you?”
    He shook his head. “Not too much,” he said. “Karen and Bobby been together seven years. I guess I’m over it.”
    He looked at her. “So, how was it? Did you have fun?”
    â€œI always wanted to fuck that guy,” she said. “I don’t know why. There’s something about him. Maybe the money. Maybe whatever it is that drove him to get the money. It was pretty good. Really good. Yuh. And Karen’s some hot, but you’d know that. She and Jimmy seemed to enjoy themselves just as much as me and Bobby.”
    â€œDid Bobby and Jimmy ever talk business, talk about coke?” asked Scarnum.
    â€œNo,” she said. “It wasn’t like that. It was just, you know, party­ing and fucking. Doing coke, not talking about it.”
    â€œHow many times did you do it?”
    â€œMaybe half a dozen.”
    â€œYou always did it in the same place?”
    â€œYeah. Always in her studio.”
    â€œYou ever fuck Bobby when Jimmy wasn’t around?”
    She thought for a minute. “Yeah, and I never told him. That wasn’t part of the deal. That was cheating.” She shrugged. “For all I know, he was fucking Karen on the side.”
    Scarnum put on the signal light and started to turn down a little access road.
    â€œWhere we going?” said Angela.
    â€œThere’s a little clearing up this road, by the river,” he said. “I plan to take you up there and, uh, show you something.”
    She looked down at the crotch of his jeans. “Oh my God,” she said. “What a pervert. You got turned on hearing about our orgies.”
    Then she reached down and squeezed him through his jeans. “Is this what you want to show me?”
    They had sex by the side of the road, with Angela straddling him in the back seat, her jeans around one ankle, Scarnum’s jeans around his knees.
    It was frantic, urgent, and it didn’t last long.
    Afterward, she stayed on top of him, their gooey loins pressed together, and they smoked.
    She leaned back against the seat behind her and looked down at Scarnum. “I don’t think you are over Karen,” she said.
    He raised his eyebrow at her. “Yeah?” he said. “Why’s that?”
    â€œWhy haven’t you had a girlfriend since then?”
    He laughed. “Maybe I’m not boyfriend material,” he said.
    â€œYou were then,” she said. “You were with Karen.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t a very good boyfriend. I was drinking a lot, running around on her. When I met Karen, we were students in Halifax. She was going to go to law school. A few years later, I had her living on my old fucking boat in the Back Harbour. Not really the lifestyle she was accustomed to. I wasn’t making no money. Looked like I was going to lose the boat, and then Bobby hired me to fix up his big ketch.” He laughed. “I thought our problems were over.”
    â€œYou never told me what happened,” she said.
    He laughed again. “But you heard, didn’t you?” he said.
    She nodded. “You went to town to get a part for the boat,” she said.
    â€œYuh. I left Karen on the ketch, working on the upholstery, while I went to Halifax to get the fuel pump rebuilt,” he said. “Only I realized after twenty minutes on the highway that I didn’t have it with me.”
    â€œSo you drove back,” she said, studying his face.
    â€œThat’s right,” he said. “And when I got back to Charlie’s, I noticed that Falkenham’s truck was parked by the dock and that big old ketch was rocking, and there wasn’t a ripple on the water.”
    Angela studied his face.
    â€œSo I