“Why should I trust you? How do I know you’re not the one who’s after her?”
“Ah,” said Jennifer, turning back to me, “so you do know where she is!”
Damn, I thought, What an ass! And by that, I meant me. There was no use denying it anymore. “How am I supposed to reach you?”
She stopped and turned at the door. “My number’s burnt into that little excuse you have for a dick. Figured that’s the only place I could put it where you wouldn’t lose it,” she said, before slamming the door.
Those numbers were going to become gigantic the next time I saw Allie, I feared. I sighed deeply and felt my heart returning to my chest. I began to think I might actually survive. I went to the fridge for a Miner’s, thinking, What the fuck?
Then I became aware that my near-death encounter had given me a firm desire to go to the bathroom. Why not check out her number while I did? It should have bothered me that I had to open the bathroom door, which I hadn’t closed, but it didn’t. Waiting for me, cowering in the shower, I found Rebecca staring at me through her rose-colored glasses.
“Is she gone?” she whispered. When I just stood in disbelief and didn’t respond, she said again, more emphatically, “Is she gone?”
I nodded, and she came running at me like a bill collector. “You didn’t tell her anything, did you? Did you?”
I shook my head, thinking, I’m not gonna get killed again, am I?
She stuck her head through the doorway and looked down the hall in both directions. As she passed, I held my beer bottle over my crotch—irrationally, perhaps—to keep from being violated again. . “You got my phone call, right? I tried to warn you she was coming.” Then she began to pace back and forth in the bathroom. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I really am. But if I’d told you where the B.I.B. was, you’d have led Jennifer right there.”
I had even less of an idea what was going on now than I had before. “Maybe you should start from the beginning. How do you and Jennifer know each other?”
She paced for a moment, then sat down on the edge of the tub, her elbows on her knees and her hands on her head. “You’re not going to believe me, but I have these special powers. I’m not like other people…”
“You’re a Super Born, just like the B.I.B. and Jennifer.”
“You know?” she said, looking up at me in relief. “I met Jennifer about a year ago. It was a rough time in my life. My powers were just coming on and I thought something was wrong with me. I put my fiancée—my high school sweetheart!—in the hospital; I don’t even know how. He still won’t take my calls. I discovered I could make things happen with my mind, communicate with machines…” She glanced back at me, as if checking my credulity quotient. “I didn’t program your website, I just thought it, and there it was.”
“So how’d you get hooked up with Jennifer?”
“Jennifer came to my house and said she had been looking for me. She knew I had powers I didn’t understand, and she would help me. She said there were others and she needed my help to find them. It made me feel a lot better to know I wasn’t alone…you know? So, of course I agreed and, right away, using the Internet, I found a woman named Victoria. She had just started having premonitions of things that were going to happen, and it was driving her crazy. Her husband left. She started to get sick over it. When we found her, she was thin and almost gray.
“After a few days, she felt better too. She told Jennifer a number of things that were going to happen in the world financial markets: stocks, commodities. Jennifer made a lot of money. Even I invested a little, and it worked. Then, for some reason, Victoria started to get sick again, and her predictions turned sour.
“Around that time, Jennifer told me about the B.I.B. and asked me to find her. But I couldn’t. She was like a ghost. That’s when you met Jennifer for that fake survey at the coffee shop. When she realized that you had been marked, she knew you would know where the B.I.B. was. When you called me for the survey, she already knew about your ugly website and knew you’d take the bait and hire me if I let it slip that that’s what I did for a living. That way, we could monitor your site, your communications, and your phone. She was sure you would lead us to her.
“That’s when it all went wrong. Victoria disappeared. Jennifer started talking like she was glad to be rid of her. I started to suspect that Jennifer had her killed. Then she sent two men to my apartment with guns, guns like I had never seen before, to kill me…”
“Kill you? What happened?” I asked.
Rebecca stood up and turned away. “I don’t know. I saw them point the guns, and the next thing I remember, they were gone. The room was empty. There were just black burn marks on the floor.
“That was right when you helped me find the B.I.B.’s home address. I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I told Jennifer the address, then she’d kill the B.I.B. too. I couldn’t let you lead her to the B.I.B. either. So I gave you the phony address and decided to go to the B.I.B. myself and warn her. But then I started to worry that Jennifer was having me followed. She called me and we had a fight. I’ve been running from her ever since.”
“Quite a story,” I said.
“It’s true,” she said, empathically, turning to face me. “Do you really know where the B.I.B. is?”
It was then I started feeling suspicious. Was I being scammed….again? “No, I have no idea where she is. She worked up a whole new identity after you closed in on her.”
Rebecca looked at the ground. “Then we’re lost…without her help, I don’t know what’s going to happen…Jennifer will turn on you too! She’ll kill us both! As soon as you are of no use to her. She has to believe you know how to find the B.I.B., or you’re not safe.”
“Listen, you’ll be safe with me. She’s already been to the apartment, so she won’t expect you to be here. Stay here for now, until we figure this out. Don’t call or visit anyone you know, no friends no relatives. She’ll have my place watched, so don’t walk out in the open…Is your car here?”
“Still at my apartment. I knew she could trace it.”
“Good. You can use the back bedroom…stay away from the windows.”
She nodded in agreement and then gave me a hug. Her body felt like a furnace against mine. “Jennifer didn’t unmark you, did she? You’re not working for her?” she asked, feeling my crotch.
“What is it with you people?!” I exclaimed, pushing her away.
“Sorry, I just had to be sure …”
I waved her by me out the door. “I know. So if you don’t mind, I have to pee!”
She walked by, then turned back. “Sorry.”
“I know, I know! Get the hell out!” I slammed the door and hesitated before checking for Jennifer’s phone number.With Allie no where in sight, the digits weren’t as gigantic as I’d hoped.
When I emerged from the bathroom, I found Rebecca in the living room, appearing distressed. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
She turned to me with a burning stare. “Have you seen your back bedroom?”
“What?”
“Have you seen those nasty sheets, the stained pillows? Do you even own a vacuum?”
“If it bugs you, take my bedroom.”
“Do you really sleep in there? And do women actually have sex with you in there?”
“Okay, I’ll get you new sheets and pillows. The vacuum’s….around here somewhere,” I said, scanning the room till I spied the vacuum in a distant corner. “Right there.”
“And the blankets—whose horse did you take them from?”
“Okay, blankets too.”
She reluctantly stood up, crossed the room, and touched the vacuum with the tips of two fingers. “Eeewww, gross.”
“You said you got along with machines.”
“It’s the slime I’m worried about.”
“I’ll be back. Don’t show yourself or answer the door or phone, okay?”
“There will be someone watching you,” she warned.
“I know,�
�� I said, scooping up my keys and wallet from the kitchen counter as I passed.
“And food. I love Miner’s Lite, but I can’t live on beer and eggs,” she added.
Did everyone know the contents of my fridge? I nodded. “Got it, chick food.” I stopped as I passed her, trying to get a look behind her glasses. I slid them off her face and checked her eyes.
“Something wrong with my eyes?”
“No, they’re a pretty gray, very piercing,” I BS’ed.
“Gray? I don’t think so! Try hazel.”
Hazel, my ass, I thought to myself.
Before she could speak again, I slipped out the door. Didn’t know I’d gotten married, I thought. All of the Super Born had been at my apartment except the one I wanted to be there. Life is weird.
As I walked to my car, I looked around checking my peripheral vision for a tail.. I didn’t see a candidate, but knew someone had to be there. I hopped into in my car, slammed the door shut, and reached to put the key in the ignition, when a forearm pinned my neck to the seat.
“Do you want to tell me why the two people who are looking for me have both been at your apartment within minutes of one another?” asked the B.I.B., tightening her grip further.
“Allie! Be careful, I’m being watched, they’ll see you,” I said, with great difficulty.
“The guy tailing you is over there,” she said, gesturing with her head to a group of cars nearby. “Caught him too busy playing B.I.B. Rescue on his mobile phone to notice me. I don’t think he’s in any condition to do much watching anymore. Now, answer my question.”
“It’s so weird, you won’t even believe it.”
“Try me.”
“Take your arm off my throat, and I’ll tell you. Remember? I’m on your team.”
Allie lessened her grip, then her arm disappeared into the backseat.
I turned to look at her. The serious concern on her face was unlike anything I had seen before. Which explained her aggressive attitude. “Well, hello, nice to see you too!” I said, rubbing my neck. “Jennifer was in my apartment when I got home from visiting Jones; I thought she was going to kill me. She wanted me to help her find you. She said ‘someone’ was going to kill you. She said you were next on their list, but that she could stop them if I let her know where you were…”
“And?”
“And that’s it.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her the truth. I didn’t know where you were and didn’t have a way to reach you.”
“And?”
“She left…after feeling me up pretty good.”
“What about Rebecca? She was the one outside my old apartment.”
I shook my head, not believing the words coming out of my mouth. “She was hiding from Jennifer in my bathroom. She is convinced Jennifer killed one of the other women like you and that she tried to kill her too. They had a fight. She wouldn’t give Jennifer your old address. She was trying to reach you herself to warn you but was afraid of leading her to you. She has nowhere else to go and thought I would understand. She’s hiding out at my place for a while…this all just happened. I didn’t ask for any of it.”
“Yeah right, I’m sure you just hate these women throwing themselves at you. Where does Rebecca use her super powers? In the bedroom?”
“Is that why you’re pissed? It’s not like that…so far, she’s like the pain-in-the-ass sister I never had. Besides, you marked me. ‘Live with it’, remember?”
“Right.” Allie looked concerned, staring past me through the windshield, her mind clearly racing. “Who do you believe?”
I don’t know why, but the questions made me think of the image of Jennifer’s cleavage for a second. Focus, I told myself. I flashed on Rebecca’s panicked face, her questions about the B.I.B. “I don’t know. They could be still working together, you know, good cop/bad cop. Who besides them would be after you, anyway?”
“Who indeed
“Jones thinks you’re genetically like bees, queen bees. Only one of you can survive.”
“So this Jennifer must think she’s the queen bee.”
”
“Apparently so. Although it’s the little princess in my apartment who’s getting on my nerves right now.” I gestured to the apartment, “Shewants new sheets, pillows, blankets, and she has this notion about having more than Miner’s Lite in the fridge.”
“Some people,” she said shaking her head. “Sounds like she’s building a little hive of her own.”
I nodded.
She popped the car door and began to leave.
“Allie, when will I see you again?”
“I’ll find you, remember?”
“No, I mean…like a date…the night at O’Malley’s, remember?”
“Let me get this straight. There are people trying to kill me right now, and you’re worried about a date?”
“Yes.” My answer was immediate and without question. After all, what else was there? She had become my obsession, my income, my purpose, and my passion in life, and also, with her mark, pretty much my only shot at getting laid.
“O’Malley’s? That was just one night.”
“No, it wasn’t. I spent months trying to make that night happen.”
“It was an accident.”
“So explain then why you marked me.”
Allie’s face betrayed surprise, her mouth left open by my remarks. She couldn’t fight the logic of it. “You have no idea what you’re asking for..”
She opened the door to leave, then came stopped. She sighed, hesitating— I felt her breath on my ear. Finally she leaned around the seat, and I felt her warm hand slide over the waist of my shirt, under my belt, and slowly drop into my pants. As her fingers drifted over me, she ignited a full and rapid erection. I leaned back in my seat and let out a low moan, inviting her to continue. She ran her fingers over my full length, stopping for an instant over the numbers Jennifer had burnt in, then her thin fiery fingers coasted back out. “Just checking, to be sure,” she explained. “I’m new to this marking thing. I wanted to be sure neither of them had got to you.”
“Anytime…twice on Sunday,” I answered in a mellow tone. “Feel free to check anytime you want. In fact, maybe you should check again…just to be sure.”
“Nice try,” she said, turning to leave. Then she turned back. “Logan, the last guy I did that to had to go through weeks of physical therapy afterward. I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
“That’s a risk I’m prepared to take!” I said, still feeling the effects of her touch.
I twisted around and reached for her only to find the seat behind me empty. “Maybe I should check you then!” I shouted after her.I took a little mental vacation, imaginingthe superwoman who dominated my life surrendering and being consumed by my touch. Instead, there she was walking away…again.
“So you’re afraid of me, Is that it?…Let me check my mark on you!” I said getting out of the car. I debated whether to run after her and press my point or be patient with her. Was this my moment? Eventually, in the way of my people, I just stood there and hoped there would be a tomorrow.
Allie stopped, looked over her shoulder, and came back toward me a couplf of steps “What’s with the numbers?”
“Gift from Jennifer. That’s how you can reach her,” I said. Then, after a moment of thought, I asked, “Those will wear off, right?”
Allie smirked and walked away from the car – for real this time.
“Right?” I yelled after her. “Allie?” Watching her leave was hard. Feeling her absence again was cruel. Just sitting in the car with her had lifted me back to a lofty place with a lively feeling of purpose in my life. With her gone, I came crashing back down to a melancholy world of middle symptoms; not down in the gutter but far from the exhalted place I wanted to be. She brought back me to life, and had just proven it again.
Chapter 29
Calm before the Storm—We All Have a Good Night
With the guy
who was tailing me out of commission, I saw no reason to rush while collecting all the items Rebecca could not live without. I even threw in some extras for her, and a gourmet treat for dinner—pizza. When I returned, my tail was still in La La Land, or was it La La-istan—meaning Allie had really put him out there. I tried not to enjoy his unfortunate state, or the thought of the new asshole he would be given by his superiors, but I smiled anyway.
It proved difficult to carry all the bags into my building in one trip, but the macho challenge was too strong; dropping one or breaking something by slamming a bag into a doorframe was of no consequence in comparison with the glory I would gain by succeeding.
When I finally got all the bags into the apartment—in one trip I must add—I found myself encircled by activity. My laptop screen flashed frantically on the dining room table, the TV surfed channels, the dishwasher ran, and I heard the sound of my vacuum cleaner moving back and forth in my bedroom. Amid it all, Rebecca sat reading one of my old magazines, no remote controls in sight.
Curiously, slowly, I paced to my bedroom, afraid I might step on something. I peeked around the doorframe to watch my vacuum round the bed, redo a spot it had missed, then retire to the corner and shut itself off. I crept back to the living room to find Rebecca digging through the bags.
“Pizza? You got pizza for dinner?” she asked me.
I quickly dug through another bag and pulled out a small container and displayed it. “And a salad,” I said, in my defense.
“You really eat this stuff?”
“You really like to bitch?” I responded, grabbing the food in question from her hand.
Then she stopped, smiled, and turned to me, holding some basic female toiletries in her hand. “Someone either had a lot of sisters or…” Then she laughed. “Or someone had a live-in girlfriend.”
When I began to blush, she knew she had hit a nerve and went in for the kill with a simple little song she made up just to irritate me:
“You had a girrrl friend
And you reallly liked her
But you’re a slobbbbbb
So she leffft you
Even when you bought her presennnts
Super Born: Seduction of Being Page 24
