Pliers
My girl, Shendra, holds the clerk's bottom lip between the teeth of the pliers and purrs into his sweaty face. I can only guess what she's saying. A few weeks ago she demanded I start waiting in the Camaro, her reasoning sound: What member of the male species is going to admit he's been taken for fifty bucks from a wisp of a thing like her? Uh, Sir, some chick held me up with a pair of pliers. The little weasels would just as soon replace the money themselves, Shen says, or better yet overcharge for the rest of their shift to make up the difference.
But I know better. My girl likes to do it alone. She's in there getting off.
Bent over the counter on her tiptoes. Right hand around the pliers, left running down under the miniskirt that barely covers her firm little ass. The tighter she squeezes the black rubber grips, the louder the kid squeals, the harder she comes. I see it in the glaze in her eyes when she returns to the Camaro. Fingers sticky with herself, nipples big as soda caps under the baby tee.
In their pain, most of them try to give her three twenties, sometimes the whole goddamn stack, but Shen demands two twenties and a ten. She's as disciplined as she is kinky, my girl. At this point she'll release the pliers, take a step back and tell them, in a honey-coated voice, that her big mean man is waiting in the car with a forty-five automatic and if you value your promising young life, buck, you'll count this as a bad dream. At least that's what she's supposed to tell them.
A few have followed her outside, clutching their faces. Which is why I keep the tinted windows rolled up. Big? Hardly. Mean? Not unless you count the time I cold-cocked Shen's father with a tire iron, stole her out of that hellhole of a home. There is a gun in the glove box, but it's a rusty, out-of-whack little .22. Shen had to pull it on a guy near Orlando; aimed it straight at his gut, three feet away, and the damn thing tore a piece out of his collarbone. He kept coming, tearing the sleeve off Shen's shirt before I could pull away. We got the hell out of Florida that night.
As for the pliers, she's tried them on me a couple times, latching onto a lip, a lobe, but I told her, I don't play that shit. Shen would curse, call me a gump, try to roll off, and I would struggle to hold her in place, to stay inside my girl.
Because if there's a heaven-and I really don't give a rat's ass one way or another if there is-but if there's a heaven, it's gonna feel like Shendra.