Not a single guy on the team, including Ben himself, had jumped in to restrain Mrs. Garcia; instead, they’d all stood around grinning, watching the show, until Manny had jumped out the window of the men’s john, even though it was on the second floor.
But that was guys for you, and Ben didn’t harbor hard feelings toward them. If they were insulting you, you knew they thought you were okay.
Women, on the other hand … It suddenly occurred to him that Mazie might have seen the program. But she wouldn’t have taken it seriously, would she? Nah, she was too smart for that; she would have just laughed it off. Still … maybe he ought to call her.
She picked up right away.
“Mazie? Did you … uh …”
“I saw it. Sexiest Man Alive.”
He loved her voice. It was low-pitched, but with a kind of musical resonance he couldn’t describe in any other way than that it was sexy as hell. Which was basically the way he described everything about Mazie to himself.
Was it his imagination, or was her voice a little on the chilly side right now? “You didn’t believe any of that stuff, did you?” he asked.
“Like about the crepes Suzette? You seem to have been hiding your culinary talents.”
He laughed. “Speaking of food. The one good thing about this whole circus is that the producers of the program gave me a dinner-for-two certificate at that new restaurant downtown. It’s Moroccan—Shiraz, Sirocco, something like that. I thought we could try it tomorrow night.”
“I can’t. Juju and I are going to a passion party.”
Ben looked at his phone, wondering if he’d heard right. “Passion party? Does this involve full frontal nudity?”
“Yes, it does, Ben. It’s an orgy.”
He smiled. “How about a post-orgy dinner? All that activity should leave your famished. Nine o’clock?”
“Deal.” The smile was back in her voice.
“It’s supposed to rain. Better bring an umbrella.”
Chapter Four
The passion party was being held at a ranch house in the wilds of suburban Brookwood—not exactly the chateau in The Story of O—but you never knew what went on behind those JCPenney blinds, Mazie thought, extricating herself from Juju’s car, a yellow MINI Coop not much bigger than a Matchbox car.
The hostess greeted them at the door, introduced herself as Sadie, and led them into her dining room. “Go ahead and fill out your name tags,” she chirped, handing Mazie and Juju pens and heart-shaped stick-on labels. “And help yourselves to the snacks.”
So far this resembled the Tupperware parties Mazie’s mom had dragged her to when she was a kid, except that instead of burpable bowls and melon crispers displayed next to the seven-layer bars and the cheese balls, there were nipple clamps, vibrators, massage oils, blindfolds, and other items that looked more like instruments of torture than sex toys.
She picked up what seemed to be a short, tapered white candle shaped sort of like a Christmas tree bulb. It was only fourteen dollars and was probably the only thing in her price range, so she mentally earmarked it. Oh—here was another of the candles, only this one was blue and larger—and just over there, a red candle that looked like it would last half a year.
“I like this candle,” she said to Juju. “But where’s the wick?”
Juju choked back a laugh. “That’s a butt plug.”
Eww! Mazie dropped the thing, and it knocked over the bowl of Chex Mix. Forget the Chex Mix—forget any food within ten yards of those things!
Juju shook her head. “You’re such a child. You need to experiment a little—find your wild side!”
“Hah! I have a wild side a mile wide! I don’t need sexual appliances to express my wild side.”
A fib. Mazie was a seething mass of insecurities and wondered whether Ben found her boring in bed. Not that he’d ever complained. But was he secretly longing for more spice?
Juju ladled punch for both of them. Grapefruit, cherry juice, lemon slices, and vodka, Mazie decided, sipping. Whatever it was, it had a sting. First rule of home product parties: get your customers lubricated.
The woman next to Mazie, who was nibbling spinach dip on taco chips, picked up a lime green vibrator about the size of a supermarket cucumber.
“Oh, the Harry Balzac model—that’s a nice one,” commented a white-haired woman who was dipping into the punch. “But its battery runs down too quick. All of a sudden the thing stops and it’s like those times when—you know—your hubby turns to boneless pork.”
“Yeah,” said the first woman, “I hate when that happens.”
While Juju checked out the dominatrix section, focusing on the Mean Teacher paddles and the Nurse Nasty white stockings, Mazie scoped out the crowd. All female, they ranged in age from giggling teenagers to gray-haired grannies, but most appeared to be in their thirties and forties, looking to spice up their marital salsa with a little hot pepper.
Finally it was time for the sales pitch. The guests drifted into Sadie’s living room. Juju and Mazie claimed folding chairs next to a display of the Hurts So Good floggers. Sadie should have started sooner, Mazie thought, because the punch bowl had been drained and the overall mood had advanced from smiley to sloshed. Faces were red, voices were loud, and laughter was high-pitched. The loudest, most obnoxious of the laughers was a brassy-haired woman named Lottie, who was telling racist jokes and puffing on an electronic cigarette.
“Thanks, everyone, for coming tonight,” Sadie said, raising her voice. “I hope you all helped yourself to snacks. Don’t forget the bean dip on the table next to the Tommy Timbercrank phallic candles.” Sadie was a short woman in her fifties with overpermed red hair and a shape like crookneck squash—skinny on top and broad on the bottom. She was wearing a gold tunic top over denim leggings and so many skinny bracelets, her arm looked like a Slinky. “Raise your hand if you’re ready for the goodies, girls!”
Hands all over the room shot up. Mazie kept hers down. She wished she hadn’t come.
Sadie picked up a large picnic hamper, decorated with an oversize red bow. “Let’s start with our most popular product, the Jack Rabbit.” She held up a gadget that looked vaguely like bunny ears, if rabbits were made of blue plastic and one ear was lopped to a stub. “It’s waterproof, it has three vibrating speeds, and it’s touch activated.”
“I wish my boyfriend was touch activated,” muttered Juju. “And he’s only got one speed—Gone in Sixty Seconds.”
Mazie’s cell rang. Checking the caller ID, she saw it was Ben.
“Is it over yet?” he asked.
“No, but I think I’m done.”
“Did you buy some … uhh … stuff?”
“You’ll have to find out.” She gave him the address.
“There in ten.” He disconnected.
“This is brand-new, ladies,” Sadie warbled. “The amazing Remote Vibrating Panty!” She held up a pair of black lace stretch panties. “Aren’t they pretty? But what makes them worth the $79.95 price tag is the secret pocket with the little vibrating bullet. Works up to eight hours for hands-free orgasms! And the control mechanism operates up to twenty feet away, so your hubby can send you a surprise thrill even when he’s out of the room.”
“He always gives me a thrill when he goes out of the room,” snarked Lottie’s chum Krystal, who was wearing a T-shirt with RUB FOR LUCK inscribed across the chest.
“And now what you’ve all been waiting for—our bondage and discipline collection,” Sadie said triumphantly, pulling out a pair of hot-pink handcuffs. “These are our Love Links. Very strong and sturdy. No matter how much someone begs and pleads, the cuffs won’t break. They can only be opened with the key. We also offer the Kinky Kuff restraints—leather wristbands lined in fake fur.”
“Are they big enough for guys?” someone asked. “Because I’d like to slap the Kuffs on my husband to keep him from getting hold of the remote control.”
The doorbell rang. Lottie heaved herself to her feet and went to answer it, and a
minute later Ben Labeck walked into the room. Thirty necks craned, thirty heads swiveled, thirty mouths dropped, thirty pairs of eyes crawled over him. His eyes lit up when he spotted Mazie. He smiled.
He shouldn’t have smiled.
“Oh my God,” someone cried. “It’s him!
“The Sexiest Man Alive!” another woman gasped.
Snatching up her purse, Mazie attempted to jostle her way through the mob toward Ben, who was trapped, surrounded on all sides by shrieking, giggling women acting like groupies at a rock concert.
“Autograph my bra!”
“Take off my bra, Sexy Man!”
“Get his shirt off—I want to see his chest.”
“I want to see his biceps.”
“I want to see his everything!”
If these women had been guys on ice, there would have been bleeding bodies sprawled all over the rink by now, Mazie thought, but Ben couldn’t use brute force on a gaggle of plastered females. They had his shirt off in a flash. Another minute and his pants were going.
“Hands off, you guys!” Mazie yelled.
Nobody even heard her.
Suddenly they all gasped and squealed.
“What happened?” asked Juju, who was even shorter than Mazie and had to jump up and down to see.
“Sadie slapped the Love Links on him!”
“Awe, come on, ladies,” Ben protested, trying to be a good sport about it. “Unlock them, okay?”
“Can’t get out of them without the ke-e-ey,” Lottie teased, snatching the cuff key from Sadie and dangling it in front of Ben. He reached for it with his shackled hands. She dangled it for a moment, then stuffed it into the valley between her Double Ds. “You want it, hot stuff? Fish it out with your tongue!”
“Why don’t we demonstrate our Big Bang Orgasm Oil on our Mr. Sexiest?” purred Sadie, squirting oil out of a tube and onto her fingers. “Oh, don’t be shy, sweetie—you’ll love how it feels!”
Ben grimaced at the fumes as Sadie smeared the oil on his chest.
“You want me to set her sofa on fire?” Juju asked Mazie, picking up a lit candle from a table. “While they’re distracted, you grab Ben and—”
“Tempting, but no.”
“Okay, Plan B. I yell, ‘Look—Jake Gyllenhaal!’—and point out the window.”
“Ladies, we’ve still got more goodies to look at,” Sadie reminded the crowd. “Do you know anyone who’s been bad? Someone who deserves punishment?” She whipped a wooden paddle out of her basket. “Because that person might need a dose of Mister Spanky Pants!”
“Mr. Sexiest has been naughty,” yelled Krystal. “He needs a paddling.”
“No paddling,” Mazie yelled.
Hearing Mazie’s voice, Ben turned in her direction, but while he was turned, Krystal snatched the paddle and whacked him across the butt. Ben, who hadn’t been expecting it, jumped a foot, which made all the women cackle like crazed hens. If a guy had done that, Ben would have garroted him with the handcuff chain.
“Here we have the Whipsicle,” Sadie announced, yanking a skinny whip out of her picnic basket. “For those times when someone has been extra bad.”
“Hmm,” Juju said. “I think I need one of those.”
“It’s made from kangaroo hide, so it’s really bouncy.” Sadie stretched the whip to its full nine-foot length, demonstrating its knotted end. “I’ve been practicing with this sucker—everybody get back and I’ll show you.”
Jostling one another, the women moved aside, leaving a space in the middle of the room. Sadie raised the whip over her head, threw her shoulder into it, and snapped it. It sounded like a sonic boom. What would that thing feel like coming down on your bare skin at two hundred pounds of pressure per square inch?
No way were these sex-starved sluts going to try the Whipsicle on her man, Mazie grimly vowed. Digging in hard with her elbows—a survival skill acquired during her prison days—she forged her way through the pack.
“Unlock the cuffs,” she ordered Sadie.
Sadie narrowed her eyes. “Well, aren’t you just the little Miss Prissypants? Who are you to tell me what to do?”
“She’s my girl,” Ben said, looking relieved to see Mazie.
“Her?” sneered Krystal. “I bet you can do better than that, hot stuff.” She snuggled close to Ben. “She looks like the runt fish you throw back in the water.”
Mazie glared at Lottie. “Would you give me the key, please?”
“Would you give me the key, please?” Lottie mocked in a singsong voice. She hauled it up out of the Marianna Trench. “Here ya go, pipsqueak.” She pretended to hand it to Mazie, then tossed it to Krystal.
Mazie tried to snatch the key away from her, but Krystal chucked the key to Sadie. When Mazie tried to get it from Sadie, Sadie tossed it to Lottie.
“Keep away! Keep away! Keep away!” the women chanted. Keep-away is always lots of fun unless you happen to be the one in the middle.
Screw this, Mazie thought. Rummaging in her purse, she found her Stanley sure-grip three-way pliers. She always carried pliers in her purse because—as any inmate would agree—you never knew when you might need something that could cut through metal.
Labeck held out his cuffed wrists; the pliers crunched through the links and the chain broke.
“Hey! Those cuffs cost sixty bucks,” squawked Sadie.
“Love Links,” Mazie corrected.
“You aren’t leaving until you pay for them.”
“I’m not paying for them. They’re broken.”
“Listen, sister—you better pony up the cash.”
Mazie looked her coolly up and down and put on her cell block 19 look: eyes hard, mouth set, nostrils flaring. “Sadie,” she said, “you can go flog yourself.”
Then she snatched Ben’s hand, shouldered past Sadie, and together they blew out of the house.
Chapter Five
The restaurant was called Sirocco. At nine o’clock on a Saturday night it was jammed and Ben and Mazie managed to snag the last available table. The table was round, elaborately carved, and only two feet off the ground. In place of chairs there were fat, tasseled cushions. Sirocco’s color scheme was scarlet and gold, the waiters were dressed in burgundy velvet vests and fezzes, and the air-conditioning felt as though it consisted of a wet dish towel flapping in front of a nine-inch rotary fan.
Ben, who was having trouble adjusting his lanky frame to the low pillows—it wasn’t easy for him to pretzel his long legs into zazen position—frowned at the menu. “I don’t know what any of this stuff is.”
“The dishes are explained in the small print beneath the names.”
“It’s too dark to read them,” he grumped, holding the menu up close to a candle that was adding to the room’s suffocating heat. The separated Love Links, still braceleting his wrists, clinked as he moved.
“I’m not having any trouble reading it,” Mazie said. “Admit it, you need reading glasses.”
“I don’t need glasses. It’s just dark in here.”
Mazie had been teasing, but Ben seemed truly annoyed and she dropped it. Messing with male pride was risky. A guy admitting he needed glasses was the equivalent of being a ninety-eight-pound weakling who routinely had sand kicked in his face.
The heat and the overpowering incense were giving Mazie a headache. She wished she could take off her panty hose because the waistband was gouging an imprint into her midsection. She was wearing a narrow black skirt that made sitting on cushions difficult, black slingback heels, and a jade green top that looked way too Christmas-y against the crimson pillows. She’d spilled punch at the passion party, leaving a stain on her sleeve. Naturally, the blouse was dry clean only. People on wash-and-wear budgets shouldn’t buy dry clean only clothes.
“Try the zaalouk,” Mazie said. “It’s a salad made with eggs and tomatoes. Maybe with hummus dip and pita chips for an appetizer. Or a cucumber and yogurt salad.”
“Rabbit food,” Ben snorted. “I’m in the mood for a big steak.�
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“They don’t offer steak. They’ve got lamb, though.”
“I don’t eat lamb.” Ben made a face.
Somehow the lack of steak was turning out to be her fault. Had he forgotten that he was the one who’d picked the place, one of the perks of being chosen as a sex symbol? A sweating waiter whose fez was tipped far back on his head materialized and they ordered, both of them deciding on zaalouk, lentil stew, baklava, and hot sweet tea—definitely not hot-weather food. Mazie would have settled for a Popsicle and an Excedrin.
“How did your hockey practice go?” Mazie asked. Ben’s league played in the summer because the professional leagues booked the ice in the cold weather months.
Ben shrugged. “Okay.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, Mazie nervously shredding her napkin and rolling the bits into tiny balls. “How’s the editing going on your documentary?” she asked finally. Ben was doing a film based on the personal reminiscences of World War II veterans and already had the local PBS station interested in it.
“No time to work on it.”
Well, this was like rolling a boulder uphill, Mazie thought, beginning to feel seriously peeved. Why did she have to do all the heavy lifting? Would it kill him to ask her a few questions for a change? Why weren’t there articles in men’s magazines telling guys how to get their girlfriends to open up to them? Was it always the woman’s job to get the big brute to spit out a couple of monosyllabic chunks of speech?
What ever happened to courtship? she wondered. When her parents had been courting, her dad had never shown up at her mom’s doorstep without a box of candy or bouquet of flowers—at least that was the way her mom told the story. And look at the animal kingdom. Male prairie chickens made booming noises and stamped their little chicken feet. Boy bullfrogs inflated their air sacs. Guy seahorses twined and whirled around girl seahorses.
But in the human kingdom it was women who had to do the mating dances, put on the flashy show—the heels, the perfume, the boob-flashing dresses, the fake eyelashes. How was that fair?
The Sexiest Man Alive Page 3
