Billy bends forward with his hands braced above his knees to ease his back, which is trying to cramp up. The stink of puke rising from her almost makes him feel like puking himself. He can smell alcohol too, but it’s faint.
Well, she offloaded it, he thinks, but if she really got her drink on he should still be able to smell it on her breath. He should have smelled it in the foyer. And—
He lifts his leg, smelling the mostly liquid vomit on his skin. He still gets only the faintest whiff of booze.
He looks her up and down. The skirt she’s wearing is denim, frayed at the hem, and short. He could see her underpants if she was wearing any, but she’s not. He sees something else. The outsides of her thighs are pale and white – like the moon – but the tops of the insides are speckled with drying blood.
3
The girl retches again, but weakly, and nothing comes out except for a dribble of cloudy drool down the side of her mouth. Then she starts to shiver. Of course she’s shivering, she’s soaked. Billy pulls off her sneakers. Tiny ankle socks come with them. There are hearts on the tops. He gets her to sit up, muttering ‘Come on, little help here,’ although he knows she can’t help. Her eyelids flutter and she tries to talk. She may even think she is talking, that she’s asking all the questions anyone might ask in a situation like this, but the only words he can make out are who and you. All the rest is just huzzz and whaa.
‘That’s right,’ Billy says, ‘all okay now, just don’t die on me.’
Although even now, as he’s trying to cope with this fucked-up situation, Billy realizes it might simplify things if she did. It’s a rotten thought, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
He gets her jacket – cheap, thin, and not real leather at all but some synthetic – off. Beneath is a T-shirt with BLACK KEYS NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 2017 on the front. He tries to pull it off over her head and it gets caught on her chin. She moans and he gets three words in the clear: ‘No, don’t choke.’
She starts to slide. He gets the shirt off just in time to catch her and keep her from falling onto the floor. Her plain white cotton bra is askew, one breast covered and one out because the strap that’s supposed to go over her left shoulder is broken. He shoves the bra down, turns it around, and manages to get it unhooked.
Once her top half is undressed, he’s able to lie her back down. He pulls off her soaked denim skirt and throws it on the floor with the rest of her clothes. Now she’s naked except for one earring, the other gone God knows where. She’s all over gooseflesh, still shivering. It’s because she’s cold, but it’s also shock. He saw shivering like that in Fallujah, and saw it turn into convulsions. Of course she hasn’t suffered multiple bullet wounds in the legs like poor old Johnny Capps, but there is blood on her, and now he sees three bruises on one of the girl’s small breasts as well. Narrow bruises. Somebody grabbed her there and squeezed. Really hard. There are two more finger-shaped bruises on the left side of her neck and Billy thinks of her saying No, don’t choke.
Mindful that she may not be done vomiting, Billy turns her on her side and then pushes her front-first to the back of the couch so she hopefully won’t fall off. She’s snoring again, the sound harsh but regular. And her teeth are chattering. She’s one fucked-up American.
He hurries into the bathroom and gets one of his two bath towels. He kneels in front of the couch and rubs her back, her butt, her thighs and calves. He does it briskly, relieved to see a little faint color rise into her pallid skin. He takes one of her shoulders （another bruise there, but smaller）， rolls her onto her back, and begins again: feet, legs, stomach, breasts, chest, shoulders. When he does her face she raises her hands in a weak warding-off gesture, then drops them as if it’s too much work, just too much. He makes an effort to dry her hair but he’s not going to get far with that because there’s a lot of it, and the rainwater from the gutter soaked it to the scalp.
Billy thinks, I’m fucked. No matter how this goes, I’m fucked. He drops the towel and reaches for her, planning to roll her back onto her side so that she won’t choke if she throws up again, then re-thinks. He takes her right leg and lowers it so her heel is on the floor and her vagina is revealed. The labia are enflamed bright red and split in several places, one of the splits still beading up fresh blood. The flesh between her vagina and her rectum – he knows the word for that part but can’t think of it in this stressed-out moment – is torn worse than her labia, and God knows what damage there might be inside. He can see several dried splats of semen as well, most of it on her lower stomach and in her pubic hair.