Read Online The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy by David Handler - Free Book Online

“I’d like to see her crash and burn. I’d like to see her dead.”
    “She will be soon enough.”
    Clethra frowned. “She will?”
    “We all will.”
    She flicked her cigarette out onto the parking lot and stuck her chin out at me. “All the more reason to do what you want, right?”
    “Is that your philosophy of life? Do what you want?”
    She peered at me coldly. “Why are you dogging me again?”
    “I’m not. I’m trying to help you formulate your voice for your book. Were you under seventeen when you and Thor started having sex?”
    She shrank from me in horror. “Duh, what?!”
    “I need to know this, Clethra. I have to know this. Because if you were, then we’re talking about statutory rape.”
    “I was seventeen,” she said earnestly. “And that’s the truth. Not that I hadn’t, y’know, been wanting him bad for a while.”
    “How long a while? When did you start to think of him that way?”
    “I guess I was twelve or thirteen maybe. Like, I always had this crush on him, y’know? Sometimes when I was in bed I could hear the two of them playing Dick at Nite. Mom’s this really intense moaner. Just like I am.” She shot me a coy little glance. “And I’d think …”
    “You’d think what?”
    “That I could make him happier than she could. But I didn’t. We didn’t. I mean, I didn’t even know he felt that way about me, too. Not until that night she was, like, down in Virginia making one of her speeches. It was late and Arvy was in his room asleep. I was in my room studying …” Her eyes shined at me now. Her voice was nearly a whisper. “Thor came in and he just stood there staring at me for the longest time, not saying a word. Finally, I said, like, ‘What is it?’ And he said, like, ‘I can’t stand this anymore. My every fiber wants and needs you. I must have you this instant or I shall explode.’ So … So we kissed. With, y’know, tongues.” She ran hers over her plump lower lip. “And then he undressed me and I undressed him and we fucked our brains out all night long. It was so unbelievable. I mean, to know that I could give someone else pleasure—without inhibitions, without regrets, without her there telling me what a lazy cow I was. And to get pleasure back from him in return. I just felt sooo alive. And fulfilled, y’know? Maybe for the first time in my whole entire life.”
    “All seventeen years of it.”
    “It wasn’t my first time, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
    “It’s not.”
    “I mean, I’d done it all with Tyler, my ex-boyfriend. He was my first. But it all felt dirty somehow. Like he was, y’know, using me. Plus I never got off with him. With Thor …” She paused, searching for the words, a rosy, born-again glow on her face. “With Thor I felt cleansed .”
    “Did the two of you ever get cleansed in front of Arvin?”
    “That’s tabloid bullshit!” she cried, outraged. “We’d never do that. That’s, like, sick.”
    “Is it possible Arvin saw you two without you knowing about it?”
    “I guess,” she conceded. “But he never said anything to me about it.”
    “Would he?”
    “Shit, yes. Arvy’s my best friend. We’re everything to each other. God, I miss him …” She eyed me suspiciously, her mouth tightening. “Thor wanted me and I wanted him. I make him feel good in bed. Raisin Tits can’t. She’s too old and dried up.”
    “She’s fifty-six. That’s not so old.”
    “Oh, yeah? Who would you rather fuck if you had a choice—her or me? That’s cold, homes, I know. But who would you?”
    I didn’t touch that one. I didn’t like what my answer would be. I especially didn’t like that she knew what my answer would be.
    She was eying me playfully now, the way she’d eyed Dwayne. “Y’know, you’re kind of cute, in a dissipated, weary, older man kind of way.”
    Lulu immediately reappeared, a low, threatening growl coming from her throat. She’s exceedingly territorial when it comes to other women. I