contributions good

��A GOOD THING
CONTACT _Con-3D1B1ACC1 \c \s \l Robert Cody


Hank looks up at the top floor of the Stratmore hotel in front of him. Hank picks up a half of a cigaret he sees a kid stomp out on the sidewalk. The kid offers Hank a fresh cigaret.
"Waste not, want not" says Hank, as he lights the stomped-on half of a cigaret.
"Just take a full one," says the kid, holding an open pack of Marlboros. "I got enough to go around."
Hank shifts his focus from the cigaret between his fingers to the kid standing in front of him. The kid wears clean, pressed khakis, a sweater made to feel as soft as pussy (the kind to which Hank was never given the chance to grow accustomed), and some gold chain. The kid’s eyes are lucid at ten at night. The kid has a kind, understanding smile.
Hank reaches out and takes some of the sweater in between his index finger and thumb. The kid steps back blindly into a parked car.
"Merino wool or some shit," Hank says under his breath.
He throws the half-cigaret on the ground and draws in close. The kid can’t step back any further.
"I ought to cut you," says a dead-eyed Hank, half-joking as he takes the offered cigaret. Hank turns and walks to the nearest bar, a fresh cigaret between his teeth.
*
Hank sits at a table on the floor of the Gold Dust Lounge, drinking rum Coca-Colas, and watching the house band play "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction" before transitioning into Van Morrison’s "Gloria". A gaggle of middle-aged women dance, blocking the pathway to the men’s restroom. They call out to men (who are full of piss and shit) as they pass, in a fashion reserved for younger women with a kinder relationship to gravity.
Hank gets up from his chair and dances for a moment with the gaggle of women before relieving himself in the urinal. Hank chuckles. He would have fucked any one of them.
*
Hank crosses Powell Street with a big, dumb smile on his face. Five rum Coca-Cola’s later, he is forty dollars above water and as he should be. Hank is Hank and Hank is drunk.
He enters the Stratmore and asks how much for a room. The woman behind the desk keeps her eyes down, locked on the magazine she’s reading. The woman points to a sign above her head.
23$ A NIGHT.
Hank puts a twenty and a five on the desk. He leans slightly to the right and reads the title of the magazine the woman is reading - - Movie Mirror, an ancient film magazine with Mae West on the cover.
"Too much of a good thing can be simply wonderful," says Hank.
"Is that right?" The woman trails a sentence on the magazine page with her index finger and taps the page twice at the end of her sentence. She closes the magazine, looks up and smiles at Hank.
"Mae West said that," says Hank.
"I believe she did," says the woman. She cracks her knuckles above her head, extending her arms and pushing out her bust. She slides the bills off the counter into her pocket and hands Hank two dollars change.
"What the hell are you doing reading a magazine twice your age?" Hank asks.
"We have piles of them in the basement, collecting dust. Might be worth something if I could get the owner to let me sell any of them."
Hank follows the woman into the elevator and then to his room on the fourth floor. Hank stares at her plum of an ass, an ass not unlike his ex-wife’s, as they walk the hallway to his room. He has an erection. Hank is Hank and Hank is a man.
He walks into his hotel room and closes the door. He lies down on the made bed without taking off his jacket and thinks about the woman behind the desk, thinks about how great it would be if she were to sit on his face. He handles the remote and turns on the television. He stands up, falters, and falls to a knee. He lifts himself up and carries his dead weight into the bathroom. He tries out the faucet and flushes the toilet. He takes out his cock and gives it a couple of tugs, but his erection had been lost with the fall to his knee. He turns off the television and leaves the room.
Hank walks the hallway towards the stairwell and sees his reflection in the window at the end of the hall. He takes a hold of his gut and sucks it in and out. He thinks of Elvis, shooting out televisions, and does a roundhouse kick for his own amusement. The woman comes up the staircase. Hank, in a threatening forward-leaning stance, blushes. The woman takes a step back and giggles.
"What the hell you doin’?" says the woman.
"Practicin’ my kar-a-té. A man’s got to stay fit." Hank makes a flurry of his hands and legs. He kicks once to the right of the woman’s thin frame and then once to the left of her. "I see I could take you down easy. Well, if I were in a pinch."
The woman laughs, "Don’t be so sure."
Hank corrects his stance, extends his hand.
"Name’s Elvis, but my friends call me Hank."
"It’s a pleasure, Hank. Lorene is the name my mother gave me, but Lord knows I might’ve fared better with a name like Elvis."
"Wouldn’t we all’ve."
The woman’s hand fits perfectly into Hank’s. He feels the blood rush to his cock and knows no fall to the knee could possibly shake this erection.