“Uh, I actually agree with you. And I am not saying this just because I want you to like me, OK?”
“Good answer,” she said and smiled.
“Let’s have a toast, then,” I said.
She looked at me curiously, and I raised my glass and said, “Screw all lazy, selfish friends with no backbone who say that they can’t fight love.”
She raised her glass and said with a cute giggle, “Screw them.”
Then we laughed together, and when I looked her straight into her sparkling eyes, I felt a giant warm wave crashing hard against my stone heart. It was just so wonderful to talk to a real woman and know that I didn’t need anything from her. I didn’t need her to sleep with me, and I didn’t need her to accept me or even like me. That allowed the authentic me to remain on that barstool, and all the horseshit and pretentiousness that horniness so often produced was totally absent. Of course I wanted to sleep with her, but I wasn’t going to change my behavior because of that. Love, or fucking, was no longer a priority for me, and I was prepared to go home alone. I had no illusions, and I had accepted my limitations as a man already a long time ago. I was an old bastard in a creepy van, and she was a goddess from heaven’s puffy clouds, sitting in a place that normally catered exclusively to the deranged and neurotic.
Monica ordered another cosmopolitan, and I asked in a surprised voice, “Did you actually like that drink? Ramses has no idea how to mix a cosmo or any other drink that has more than two ingredients, for that matter. He was just winging it. But don’t tell him that I said that. He might cut me off.”
“It wasn’t that bad, to be honest. A little too strong for my taste, but not bad at all. And you should know that the second drink always tastes better than the first one.”
“That is correct, ma’am.”
She looked me straight into my eyes, crossed her legs, ran her hands through her hair, and tilted her head slightly upward. Then she rested her chin on her right hand, and, goddamn, she was sexy. I looked at her hands in a state of subdued arousal and said, “You have beautiful nails, Monica. I mean, really, really beautiful. I have always liked women who take care of their nails. It tells a man quite a lot about a girl.”
“Uh, thanks,” she said and looked surprisingly pleased about my compliment.
I finished my drink and started to scan the bar for Ramses with my thirsty gaze. I was getting ready for a fresh godfather to arrive and join the party.
Monica took a sip of her drink and asked, “What do you do for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I am a math teacher,” I said.
“Cool. I really liked math in high school, but I don’t need it much anymore.”
“Yeah, numbers can be sexy if you have the right numbers under your clothes.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked with a coy smile.
“Well, I am just saying…”
“You are a bad boy, aren’t you?”
“I can be bad, yes,” I said and felt my penis tingle a little. Then a hot wave of unexpected opportunity started rushing through my bloodstream and sex with a gorgeous woman started to feel like a remote possibility. I was excited about that prospect but also scared, because I knew that I could blow my chances by becoming inauthentic. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
“Are you a CEO or something, Monica?” I asked after a moment of silence that was just long enough to start slowly pulling the dangerous Mr. Awkwardness closer to us. “You are so stylish and smart.”
“No, God no. I am a happy veterinarian.”
“That is a very nice profession.”
“Thanks. Do you like animals?”
“Well, to be completely honest with you, I am not so crazy about the domesticated kind, but I do like wild animals and nature in general. It’s just sad how we are treating this planet, you know.”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“Well, think about this. If you would give an average family of five an option to choose between a free vacation package that includes five first-class plane tickets to Orlando, five nights at Disney’s Polynesian Villas, five five-day tickets to all Disney resorts plus all the food they can eat, or a chance to push a magic button that would save one endangered species in Papua, New Guinea, which option you think the family would choose?”
She looked at me for a long moment and said with a deep sigh, “That is depressing. But I see your point.”
“I am going to get another drink,” I said. “You want one?”
“Sure, but you haven’t even told me your name.”
“My name is a secret.”
“A secret?”
“Yeah, I can’t tell you my name. Not tonight, at least.”
“Why not? Are you famous? Married? Wanted dead or alive? The illegitimate son of the king of Sweden, maybe?”
“No, unfortunately not. I just can’t tell you my name, but I promise that I will tell it to you if you ever come back here, OK?”
“OK, stranger, whatever you say,” she said and laughed softly.
Monica was a fantastic woman, and we talked about life and its ups and downs for a couple of wonderful hours. We seemed to understand each other fairly well, and we clicked as nicely as two drunken strangers in a shitty bar could ever click. But all the fun ended abruptly when a group of loud college students in bright team jerseys stormed into the bar on their misery quest and started shouting some stupid sports chant. I knew that the night was going to be ruined if we stayed there, and I said to Monica, “Well, that’s my cue,” and glanced at the college students with disgust. “I just can’t stand that shit.”
“You are not going to drive, are you?” she asked.
“Uh, I guess not. But you can drive me if you promise to treat me well.”
“Don’t be silly. I had like seven cosmos. We can share a taxi, though. Where do you live?”
“Not far, but I don’t want to go home yet.”
“Well, do you want another drink? I have some port wine at my place.”
Oh, my Lord! I was so incredibly happy to hear those words that I wanted to jump up and down like a drunken desert monkey and tell everyone in the bar what magnificent human beings they were, but I knew that it wasn’t a good idea to expose my excitement, so I just said to Monica nonchalantly, “Yeah, but only if the wine is good.”
“It’s good. Trust me. Sandeman Old Invalid.”
“OK, then. Let’s go, missy.”
We arrived at Monica’s condominium a little after midnight, and she keyed in a four-digit security code that kept the unwanted guests out of her private world. She pulled the door wide open with her delicate hands, and we stepped into to the trendy building where a tired security guard was desperately trying to stay awake. Monica said a cheery hi to the drowsy man, and we looked at each other and tried not to laugh at him, but when I tickled her a little under her ribs, she let out a series of high-pitched giggles and started pushing me toward the elevators. We rode to the seventh floor, and Monica opened her apartment door with a small silver key. The door to carnal heaven was wide open, and all I had to do was to step in and behave myself.
The place was big, and four beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows offered a striking view over the sleeping city. The living room was furnished with impeccable style, and it was clear that a fair amount of hard-earned money had been spent to transform the space into a home of her dreams. She was a class act of the highest grade, and I had never been in such a magnificent apartment before.
I walked to the window and looked out curiously. The view was truly glorious, and all the problems of the troubled city seemed so far away. I felt safe there and enjoyed the distance from the crazies who roamed the streets somewhere there with their yellow eyes and inexhaustible chemical needs. It was nice to know that they could never get past the sleeping security guard or climb the slippery glass walls with their sticky skeleton’s fingers. They could never be able to disturb my perfect evening or steal the beautiful lady from me.
Monica appeared behind the kitchen wall with two little glasses full of port wine in her hands, and she gave one of them to me with a sexy smile. We toasted, and I drank half the wine with one sip. Monica was a little more careful with her intake, and after enjoying an elegant mouthful of the Old Invalid, she laid her glass down on an ornamented lamp table next to a white leather sofa and started looking through the window. She pointed at a tall industrial chimney in the distance and said, “I really like how they fixed that old chimney. The lights are so cool.”
I looked at the chimney and noticed that it had been decorated with a set of glowing neon numbers. The numbers were 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and 55, and I said to Monica, “That’s the Fibonacci sequence.”
She looked at me and said with a smile, “OK, now I believe that you are a math teacher.”
I put my glass down and walked behind her and wrapped my arms gently around her waist. Her body was like a perfectly crafted sculpture, and I could feel the exceptional firmness of her abdominal muscles under my tingling fingers. I kissed her ear softly, and her head started to turn slowly toward me. We were soon face-to-face and started kissing like two horny teenagers who had sneaked behind a barn at a Christian summer camp. I lifted her light frame in my arms with an outburst of sexual energy that would have made a mighty lover from a romantic novel moan in jealousy and carried her into the kitchen. I laid her down on a large granite island that looked like it was designed for spontaneous sex and pulled her skirt over her trimmed buttocks with my strong hands. Then I removed the sexy underwear that probably had no idea that it was going to be touched by a real man that night with one perfect pull. Monica undid my belt with her nimble fingers, and I was soon inside her tight, steaming body.
I closed my eyes and started gently moving my penis back and forward inside her, gradually increasing my speed. The exact right amount of alcohol in my blood boosted my endurance beautifully, and I knew that there wasn’t any risk of that embarrassing premature ejaculation I had so often experienced during my younger years. I was in total control, and I wanted to reward Monica for trusting a man she had found in one of the shittiest bars in town with an experience that she wouldn’t forget anytime soon. I wanted to make her encounter with my enormous manhood truly enjoyable and show her the real stars and that original orgasmic galaxy that most men could never take their women to.
I was climbing steadily, and I performed like the young Don Giovanni, and Monica seemed to enjoy every moment of my carnal mastery. I had been blessed with a perfect lover’s tool, and I wasn’t afraid to use my gift to pleasure her in all the right places, as long as she needed. My penis was one of the rare things that had never failed to stand up for me, and it seemed happy to come out of retirement.
After about twenty minutes of passionate lovemaking, I felt the muscle tension built up rapidly in Monica’s vagina, and she released it all at once with a deep, pleasure-filled moan. The forces of seismic ecstasy engulfed her whole body, and I knew that she had seen the Milky Way and all the stars, too.
I looked at her content face and released the latch that controlled my own floodgates, and the liquid of life rushed inside her with a force of a twenty-bar fire hose, slowly putting off the inferno that was still burning inside her. We deflated like two tired carnival balloons, and Monica looked straight into my eyes. I pulled out slowly, and she got up with a kittenish look on her face and gestured me to follow her. I obeyed happily, and we took a long shower together and giggled a little afterward. The whole experience had been fun and exciting, and the small ocean of alcohol that was still in our bloodstreams made sure that awkwardness still had to wait a couple of hours before it could make its unwelcome entrance.
After we got dressed, we talked a little on Monica’s balcony, and she gave me a small plate full of different cheeses and a glass of cold water. We both knew that the night had come to an end, but we wanted to keep the conversation going for just a little longer because a hasty exit wouldn’t have felt right in our civilized hearts. Yet, the silent moments between our sentences grew gradually longer, and I knew that it was time for me to go. Monica seemed to tacitly agree, and I said to her after faking a long yawn, “Well, it’s getting late. I better get going.”
She faked a yawn, too, and said, “Yeah, I am getting tired, too. Thank you for a fun evening, mystery man.”
I looked at her sleepy eyes and said, “I don’t normally do this, you know.”
“Hey, that’s my line,” she said and started giggling.
Then we got up and walked to the door, and I said, “I am actually glad that you had that fight with your friend tonight. Don’t forget to thank her on my behalf, OK?”
“OK, I’ll do that,” she said and smiled a drowsy smile.
“OK,” I said and started walking toward the elevator, thinking what a wonderful night it had been. Monica was truly an exceptional human being, and I adored her great beauty and elegance. Yet the whole thing had been strange and unexpected, and I knew that I would never see her again. It was a freakish encounter of two night creatures from two different worlds, and it would have been delusional to hope for a sequel. I was OK with that, though. It was all just fine.
A quiet taxi driver in a black leather coat took me home, and after I had given him thirty dollars and a decent tip, the man disappeared back into the darkness to find another tired soul to haul. I stood in front of my door for a moment, looking at the night sky that was never going to reveal its secrets to the simple earth creatures and realized that I was starving. Monica’s yummy cheese had awakened my hunger, and I knew that I needed to give the master what it wanted before it allowed me to go to sleep.
I opened the door, walked into the kitchen and took a pepperoni pizza from the freezer. I unwrapped the frosty pie with hungry fingers, put it into the oven and started staring into the dark backyard, hoping to catch the gleaming eyes of a lonely owl that was preparing for the night’s last kill. I sat quietly by the window like a sleepy cat but saw nothing but emptiness in the silent forest. Then the oven beeped loudly and the artificial sound pulled me cruelly back from the abyss of drowsy thoughts and faded memories. I pulled out the hot modern wonder and started enjoying my meal while casually flicking through the day’s mail.
The mailman had been stingy that day, and most of the mail was just preapproved credit card applications and other unsolicited junk that was addressed to the previous tenant who had moved to Fort Myers to raise albino alligators and guineafowls. But there was, yet, one interesting thing in the pile. It was a flyer from Eden’s favorite cleaning company.
The company was called the Sapphire Express, and it offered the most expensive cleaning services in town. It was a normal company, in my humble opinion, but for some inexplicable reason, it had been critical for Eden—and for most of the other fine ladies in the neighborhood—that Sapphire Express was trusted with the weekly cleaning. It was the service that “all successful people” used, and other options weren’t even discussed in our household.
I figured that there must have been something mysteriously appealing about a company that owned a fleet of black Mercedes Benz commercial vans and even had its own cleaning academy where every new employee had to spend four months before he or she was allowed in the field. The expensive vehicles were part of their brand, and each van had a blue sapphire logo painted on its side, and the text “The Sapphire Express” written in bold golden letters under it. If the company’s Mercedes was parked in front of your house, everybody knew that you were a superior human specimen, part of the elite. The poor souls who couldn’t afford the Sapphire Express talked about the company with envy burning in their unworthy eyes, and someone had even heard that the cleaners always left a bottle of real champagne in the fridge before they locked the doors. That rumor was untrue, but the dreamers wanted to believe in it anyway because they hoped that one day they could afford to hire the distinguished Sapphire Express themselves and enjoy a bottle of free champagne just like the elite
.
The people who were fortunate enough to be able to afford the Sapphire Express compared their experiences at their backyard cocktail parties and game-day barbecues. Even the huddled grill masters in their black aprons, longneck Bud Lights, and manly beards joined the conversation from time to time and uttered proudly through the dancing ribeye smoke, “Oh, they are just the best, aren’t they?” The ladies nodded approvingly, and everything seemed so wonderful after two full glasses of Chardonnay on the rocks. All of a sudden, a fairly ordinary cleaning company was transformed into an immortal being that had hypnotized the entire neighborhood. It was a gender-neutral lovefest that filled people’s hearts with pride and tingling self-satisfaction, and if you weren’t a believer, or couldn’t afford to be a believer, you were seen as an outcast and encouraged to do everything in your power to join the exclusive club of the enlightened. It would have been unwise not to max out your credit cards or raid your savings account to become a member because the Sapphire Express was a powerful force of nature, and it defined you in the eyes of your peers. It was simply a priceless necessity, the God particle itself, and a critical building block in the passive-aggressive suburban universe. In my opinion, the whole damn thing was a neurotoxin that had poisoned the weak and insecure, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut. There was no way I could have prevailed over that kind of power. No way in hell.
7
Head on the Wall
The next day, I woke up with a massive erection and walked briskly to the bathroom to deflate it with a satisfying stream of strong morning urine. Then I went to the kitchen, drank a full glass of ice water, and started searching for a gun show online. I needed to arm myself and get ready for the unconventional task that I had, for some peculiar reason, agreed to perform. I wasn’t going to balk, even if I had been a little tipsy when I had promised to murder a perfect stranger—a man I knew absolutely nothing about.
The Sapphire Express Page 9
