“Excuse me,” a voice said, “is someone sitting here?” She glanced up at the man standing behind her right shoulder. Tall, very tall, broad shoulders and a face that looked too kind. His close-cropped black hair played counterpoint to a finely trimmed crescent of a beard. His smile was warm and genuine; she would devour him, she thought.
“No, not yet,” she answered, and her eyes twinkled. For the next three hours, they talked and drank, touched, and flirted. She was charming and elusive, he was straightforward and open, a door with no lock, not even a latch.
Before the elevator in Kilbourn Towers had ascended a third of the way up to his fifteenth story apartment, her hands were down his khakis and she had licked all the residual Jameson from the inside of his mouth. Standing outside his front door, she pulled her sweater up and over her head, while he fumbled with the key in his door. She had learned that she was six years older than he was and at thirty, he claimed to have had very few sexual partners, just three long-term relationships going back to when he was thirteen. If that were true, she was about to give him enough material for wet dreams and masturbation fantasies to last him years.
At last, he got the door open, just as she stepped out of her short gray tweed skirt and stood before him in heels and black lace panties. They rushed through the door and he swung it shut, then turned to drink her in before pressing her back against the closed door and kissing her deep and hard while she masterfully undid his belt and khakis and helped them to the floor. His erection pushed impatiently at the constraint of his boxer briefs and she freed it gleefully. He removed his socks while she unbuttoned his shirt, all the while their tongues and lips danced together in an age-old bachata.
When they were both naked she threw her arms around his neck and lifted herself up, placing her legs on his hips. He held her up and then gently lowered her back down onto his erect penis. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the electric charges that pulsed from his body to hers and back again when he entered her. From this position, he was, without even knowing, pushing against the spot inside her that made her lose all control, the spot she craved and the reason she went out tonight. She began to move up and down violently so that he struck the spot repeatedly. She pulled her mouth from his and brought it down on the back of his neck nibbling and sucking and then, drawing blood, tasting the iron and the salt. If he felt any pain, he gave her no indication, as she stimulated the twenty thousand nerve endings of his uncircumcised penis with the muscles of her vagina wrapped around it.
Her first orgasm was a slow rolling boil, that he may have missed, but she thoroughly enjoyed. It did not slow her down a bit. She continued to ride him up and down enjoying his strong hands on her breasts, his solid supportive hips, his clean smell but most of all his cock deep up inside her giving her what she was there for. She wondered briefly how it was possible that he had not come yet, how could he stay hard so long the way she was riding him, he was too young for Viagra she thought, suppressing a laugh.
Her second and third orgasms both came in quick succession and differed greatly from the first and from each other. When he began to suck her nipples, he kept hitting that spot and she lost all sense of civility, crying in his ear loud enough for anyone in the hallway to hear. “Fuck me harder, harder, that’s a good boy, right there, oh my godddddd,” and she came with such a violent reaction, jerking her whole body spasmodically while still riding him, that she began to see bright stars through closed eyes and a somewhat painful yet completely freeing pounding in her head. She collapsed exhausted on him, but he continued to support her dead weight.
Now it was his turn and he slowly began to withdraw and thrust, gently at first, and then with greater frequency and deepness. She had thought she was done, but when she saw what it was doing to him, the arousal began anew, she met his thrusts again, and this time buried her tongue in his mouth as they collectively came together in a richly romantic way that Kimberly wanted no part of. It intimidated her and decreased her orgasm just enough to let her know that she was done here. There would be no sleep over, no slumber party and no breakfast in the morning. Kim out, she thought.
As she rode the elevator back down, having declined his offer to accompany her or have her stay the night or even drive her home, she realized she didn’t know his name. Her iPhone buzzed to alert her that her Uber car was at the front of the building. She checked her holster, just to make sure her gun was there, although she knew full well that it was, and melted into the dark June, Wisconsin night.
Chapter II
It was nearly dawn, but not quite bright enough for him to relax yet. There were still stars in the sky, the dark side of the morning still ruled this day. Once the light came through, he would feel much better, his thoughts would be clear and uncomplicated, not like his evening thoughts, not like his thoughts in the dark. Although it was better when the day was bright, and the world was up, it never went away completely. It was like a sore inside his mouth that his tongue just kept poking and poking and poking.
There had been a fire burning in an old trash can most of the night, even though it was late spring, and the air was warm, but he had run out of things to burn an hour or so ago and it had died. He always tried to keep a light on because in the dark things could get in. And oh, what things they were. They were the things that had exacted payment for the promises he had not kept. No one knew how hard he struggled just to hold onto his own mind amidst this truth of his that he had to hide away. The bottle helped but he was not a drunk that drank to inebriation. He drank just to dull the reality of what he knew, what he knew that was different from what everyone else knew. He was as broken as Buck under the club of the man with the red sweater. But, like the dog in that book that he had read so long ago, there was still desire burning inside.
Chris Carter was a homeless man, a vagabond, a bum by most people’s definition. But he worked almost every day, had money in the bank, and managed to grab a hot shower a few times a week. He never begged. Seven days a week, he lined up with the illegal immigrants in the Home Depot parking lot, the day laborers. He had a reputation as a hard worker, so even though he did not speak their language, they never objected when he was chosen for a team, he’d carry more than his load.
It was grueling work, physical work and it kept him in relatively good shape. His frame was lean and his muscles taut. His long straight brown hair was tucked under a red bandana that was almost always tied around his head. A full beard reached halfway down his chest, reddish brown with strings of gray. He had a deep summer tan with new sunburn on his forehead and the back of his neck. Chris could get work most weeks between three and four days, at a hundred bucks a day, no taxes. In five years, he had managed to put over $70,000 in the bank. There were instructions left with one of the bank’s vice presidents, that if there was ever no activity in his account for three consecutive weeks, it would revert to the person whose name and contact info they had on file as his beneficiary.
Chris had spent three and a half years in jail, on securities fraud, and upon his release in 2010, he disappeared into the sidewalks and back alleys of New York City. He was aware of the burden he had placed on his brother, not a day went by that he didn’t think of that, but he just could not go on pretending that life was normal. He would do his best to pay his brother back someday, but not today. There was still so much danger to everyone he loved, and he could not risk that, would not risk them. The evil one still had a card he had not played, and Chris always wondered why not. What was he saving it for? Why did he go with the securities fraud and not the young girl with his semen in her mouth and stomach? That could have been good for life. That question hung over him like low storm clouds. The only answer he ever came up with was that the evil wanted him out here and that meant his family was always in jeopardy. No, he had to finish this himself, in his way, on his terms.
His summer street home, where he was right now, was a small strip of land in upper Manhattan, underneath an elevated portion of the FDR drive. The
re was an old construction storage area covered by a battered gray door that was built into the trestle, his safe storage, which he used to keep his extra clothes, laundry and shower supplies, an expired passport, his driver’s license, and a bottle of whiskey. No shopping cart for him. Somewhere close by, a dog barked, and all his senses went on high alert. His pupils dilated as he peered into the early dawn, sweat began to leak under his arms and beads perched just above his upper lip. The hair on his arms stood up like it did when there was an electrical storm overhead. He ceased all motion. The bark came again, two minutes or so later, this time farther away, and he began to relax. The stars in the sky paled with the morning light and his labored breathing returned to normal once the image of Yankee Stadium, across the East River in the Bronx, came clearly into focus.
Chris fished a clean set of clothes from his hiding place and changed from the ones he had been sleeping in. The secret to being picked was to look clean and healthy, be there early and be polite, non-threatening was what they were all looking for. He had two friends in this life, one was the guy he played chess with in Central Park, and the other was some kind of hot shot at The American Museum of Natural History. Chris loved that place and spent a good deal of his non-working time there and at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue.
The museum man, Roger was his name, had realized he kept seeing Chris over and over and one day struck up a conversation, curious about this man who was free to spend so much time there. After they had spoken a few times he offered to give Chris a free membership, but Chris told him he could afford his own membership and bought one the next day. It really was much cheaper than paying the daily admission he had been paying whenever he went. His research was mostly done at the library, but he always liked to reinforce what he learned there with an attempt to see some part of it live, and so, he did.
He brushed his teeth at the water fountain in nearby Harlem River Park and headed across the Third Avenue Bridge for the half hour walk to Home Depot. Today was Saturday, and that was not usually a great workday, early arrival was especially important. There were two young boys outside an apartment building on Exterior Street and they had fashioned wrapping paper rolls into lightsabers, one colored red and one colored blue. Darth Vader vs Luke Skywalker, he thought, and the tears began to well in his eyes. His son would be fourteen now and well beyond lightsaber battles, but that was how he always remembered him. That was how he always looked in Chris’s dreams.
Sometimes he would dream of his wife too and even though in the dreams he looked the way he did now, she always looked the way she did when Conner was four. He was forever four years old for Chris. The tears began to flow freely from his eyes, racing in pairs down his cheeks, pooling for a moment on his bearded chin and then falling away.
Chapter III
“Okay, look, I can’t promise anything but let me see what I can do,” he said, exhaling smoke as he spoke. He put the cigarette out in the ashtray, folding it in half and pressing the filter down on the lit tip to extinguish it. He sat back and folded his arms across his chest. His thinning salt and pepper hair, the bags under his deep-set eyes and the enormous beer belly that hung over his belt like an overflowing bowl of Jell-O, made him look ten years older than his forty-two years. “I mean, he’s like the best portrait photographer in L.A. but he’s been a friend of mine as long as I can remember,” he said, eyeing her with the interest of a pedophile in a playground.
“OMG, I would be so…I would owe you anything,” she said, wanting to sound a little enticing but not overly suggestive. Emily Rovey had dressed the part for the occasion, wearing a sexy, flowery babydoll dress cut just low enough to draw his eyes there, repeatedly: A little tease without a big compromise of her principles. She was new to L.A., but they were eating alfresco on Hollywood Boulevard and this place wasn’t called the boulevard of broken dreams for nothing. She needed some insurance and Mario seemed like a well-connected ally, if a little sleazy. She twisted the bottom of her auburn curls and absentmindedly put the tip of one between her red painted lips and sucked on it, an unconscious habit.
Mario leaned forward to get a better look and rested his elbows on the table. He made a steeple with his fingers and pursed his lips. “I was just thinking,” he started, and then quickly added, “Nah, never mind.”
“What? What?” Emily prompted, beginning to feel the butterflies in her stomach in anticipation of where this might be going.
“Sometimes, they throw these parties for Hollywood hot shots, you know?
She nodded assent and her eyes grew even larger.
“Well, they’re these lavish poolside parties at someone’s mansion with caviar and champagne and all, but they always want pretty girls walking around. And god knows you sure got the looks.” He raised his eyebrows wolfishly and stared at her cleavage a moment before continuing.
Emily put a cigarette between her lips and Mario flicked his lighter and offered it. She leaned forward and drew in, lighting the smoke. “OMG!! Don’t tell me…”
“Well, you know, you do a favor for one of those guys and who knows where it could go.”
“Oh my God, could you really get me into one of those parties?” Emily asked with a grin as big as Laurel Canyon.
“Better yet, I think I could get you paid to go to one of those parties, good money too, maybe five hundred bucks. Of course, you’d have to kick twenty percent back to me.”
Emily’s bright eyes and bobblehead nods were hiding the apprehension that was crawling over her skin like spider crickets. She needed to go home and shower and then call her dad, god how she missed her dad.
She had not told her parents that she was mopping floors at night in an office building. She certainly would not tell them that she was about to accept a job as a paid party girl. She knew inside that she had what it takes, that she could be as talented an actress as Jennifer Lawrence, she just needed a break, needed the right contact. She fantasized about walking down Rodeo Drive or sitting in Starbucks when some star walked in, or some agent or producer or something, and they would meet and after a few minutes, she would be invited to audition for this part or that. She knew, really knew, that if she just met the right person it would change her destiny.
Chapter IV
The sun glinted off the candy apple red Ferrari, as it snaked its way through the hills above Los Angeles, making it impossibly bright and shiny. Anyone watching from the side of the road would have to shield their eyes as it flew by. Inside Jimmy Vale and Emily Rovey giggled uncontrollably as they passed a joint back and forth between them. Jimmy had hit speeds more than a hundred miles an hour on their trip back from the studio. His passenger, Emily, was the new girl in town, just moved here from Arizona and working as a cleaning woman, only until she was discovered that is, of course. She was working in the building next to his, and one day they had struck up a conversation in the parking lot when she recognized him. It had been about a week ago.
“Hey, aren’t you that singer guy?” she had started, waiting for his name to pop into her head. “You are,” she screeched, “oh my god, you’re Jimmy Vale!”
He paused, standing at the door of his Ferrari, and glanced over at the pretty, young girl smoking a cigarette and leaning against the gold Corolla with the dented door and missing wheel covers. She exhaled between slightly parted red lips that together made a very sexy smile. He would have ignored her despite that, if not for the note he had written himself in the middle of the night. “Well, aren’t you sweet to recognize me,” he teased and smiled back.
Last night he had noticed the lines on his face again, just a laugh line or two near the eyes, maybe a slight crease in his neck that hadn’t been there and yes, a touch of gray just near his sideburns. It had been a long time since the last one, too long, and it was beginning to take its toll. He had gone to bed thinking about the last girl, willing his brain to help him find the next. He had a knack for locating the girls who were alone, vulnerable, would not be missed, and who craved his d
angerous energy. But he always needed a sign, he didn’t dare do it on his own, there’s no telling where that would lead and there’d be no guarantee that The Cleaner would come. No, he needed the sign.
He had awakened in the middle of the night, with something on his mind, and he sat up to write himself a note on the pad beside his bed. The next morning, he remembered he had written something but had no recollection what it was. He picked up the pad and read the two words written there, “It’s time.” It was not written in his flowery script, but instead in the heavy block printing of his dead father, he’d know it anywhere. Beads of sweat had immediately dappled his upper lip, his blood pumped faster with anticipation and excitement for what he knew was coming.
“I cannot believe it, I love your music, oh my god… I’m sorry, I’m kind of freaking inside.” She threw her long brown curls back over her shoulders and made a teepee with her hands in front of her face as if she were praying.
Jimmy started walking towards her and noticed her warm tan skin was beginning to blush. He held his hand out to shake as he reached her. “I’m Jimmy Vale, it’s a pleasure to meet a fan,” he said. “Without you guys, I’d be nothing.”
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