by Jeya Jenson
I’m not stupid, she fumed. I know men use me because I have a lot of money, but this takes the cake. Kevin hadn’t beaten around the bush or even tried to be casual about his request. And even though he’d apologized, the evening was totally ruined. The rest of dinner was all grating and snappish, not enjoyable. Agreeing to take a drive with him to a secluded area…
Mistake! Her mind screamed.
“My whole damn life is a mistake,” she muttered.
She bent over and popped a piece of pineapple into her mouth. She winced when the sweet juice made contact with her tender lips. “Fucking leech,” she cursed. She’d only been dating Kevin for six weeks. At thirty-six, she would have thought she had a bit of wisdom when it came to men. Not true. She was still unwise about settling for males who’d use and abuse her. The basic theory behind all her relationships was that the 'bastard' was the one she wanted. She didn’t necessarily mind being slapped around and manhandled. A couple of her husbands had considered it foreplay. The masochist in her liked the feel of a man’s hands binding down her wrists while her thighs were parted by the thrust of his hips. It was a spellbinding and erotic sensation that never failed to bring her to orgasm.
Rape, however, went out of bounds. Kevin had intended to hurt her, badly.
I’ve been playing with fire too long. She was walking a slippery edge, soon to fall if she didn’t step away. But self-preservation was not in her nature. At a moment of crises in her life, she’d chosen the free fall, forgetting the need for a parachute. No one survived the landing. She shrugged. Oh, well. Life fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.
She ate a few more pieces of fruit, dipping a few strawberries in chocolate, savoring the rich sweetness as she chewed. Later she’d come back downstairs and stuff herself like a pig. Presently, she needed time to unwind and relax. A hot shower would help. Grabbing the wine and a single glass before kicking off her high heels, she climbed the stairs to her second floor suite. The house really was too big for one person to be rattling around in.
She laughed to herself, remembering the awe her rescuer had shown when she’d directed him to her home. She lived in what was, literally, the mansion on the hill, a three-story behemoth that her grandfather had built. The house was a white elephant. No one wanted it because it had too much of a history behind it. She didn’t blame them. If she had her druthers, she'd drop a match on it and walk away. She’d always thought that would be a glorious way to walk out—with a bang. She’d watched Natalie Wood do the same thing in Inside Daisy Clover, her favorite movie. She might just do it someday. Wouldn’t that shock the shit out of the whole town?
It was almost a cruel joke, being the richest person in town, living in the biggest house. She didn’t even like the area. But her grandfather had. The desert was supposedly good for his asthma and arthritis. She supposed that’s why she kept the place. She really liked and admired the old fool, even though he hadn’t the sense to jerk the reins out of his son’s hands before he killed himself.
Walking up the stairs, she passed portraits of her family, almost a layout of their entire family history in paintings and photographs. She didn’t particularly like having them there. She’d always had a hankering to jerk them down and stick them all in the attic. Not because she hated her family, but because she was tired of being the last one hung on the wall. She’d never done a damn thing to distinguish herself in this lifetime. Nothing. At least some members of her family had left their mark.
She paused to look at her great-great grandfather’s black and white ghostly image.
Everyone knew who H.B. Wilson was in the scheme of the business world. Officially, he’d founded a small company making paper products in 1879. Then, in 1896, Hartwell Brady’s son, H.B. Junior joined the company at the age of 21. It was that year that the Wilson Paper Co. marketed the first rolls of toilet paper. By 1925, the small obscure venture had become the leading toilet paper company in the world. Success was practically guaranteed. People needed to wipe their butts, preferably with something besides the Sears and Roebuck catalog.
And that’s how her family made its fortune—because people were basically full of shit. Leave it to a dour old Scotsman to manufacture something so practical.
She took another couple steps up, passing to a more recent generation of Wilsons, specifically her father, Brady.
“Hey, Daddy.” She reached out to touch his picture. She didn’t recall very much about him. She was very young when he died. Her mother had always told her to be grateful that she could not remember the man. She wished that she had known him—surely there had to be a good side to him. Her mother said no and refused to give him credit for being anything more than a sperm donor.
Her father was a dilettante film producer with only a talent to fritter away good money on bad movies. He’d financed a lot of clinkers, films that only cult enthusiasts recalled. Hollywood was his life—he had it all. The tan, the pretty wife, the prettier mistresses and every toy a rich boy desired.
Popular on the party circuit because he never failed to pick up the tab, Brady Wilson also had a massive drug habit, overdosing on heroine when he was forty. Because he fancied himself a showman, it was only natural that his demise would take place in front of a popular Las Vegas nightclub with his ex-porn star mistress on his arm. His soiled dove had had the good sense to smile for the media cameras as paramedics struggled to revive her lover. She later turned their affair into a best-selling biography and made the talk show rounds promoting it.
Cassie believed that a great infusion of failure and disappointment into his veins had also killed her daddy. He’d always wanted to make an Oscar winning film—a Holy Grail that eluded him because he had no sense of how to choose a decent script.
She moved to the next picture, the only one showing her father and mother on their wedding day. Her mother had destroyed the rest on the day of her father’s funeral, when the porn queen and her entourage made an impromptu appearance. That hair-pulling melee between the two women had also made headlines. Her father would have been pleased to have two women literally battling at the foot of his casket. A scriptwriter couldn’t have written a better or more dramatic cat-fight.
Cassie sighed and shook her head. Her mother, Genice, was a lost cause of another kind; a woman who lived for the jet-set life, shopping in Paris, gambling in Monaco, skiing in Switzerland. An Anglophile and ardent WASP, she always claimed that her ancestors, the Barrows, came over on the Mayflower. Trouble was, the Barrows were poor as church mice. Pedigree in hand, they were more than willing to marry a daughter off into the Wilson clan, made acceptable by name recognition in the United States along with handfuls of cash. That they were also Protestants helped soothe the sting of marrying beneath one’s station. Cassie was four when her father infamously bit the dust, five when her mother remarried some English Marquis who had even more money than the Wilson family did.
She’d grown up an only child, shuttled around between nannies and boarding schools. She had no real ties to any place, no real friends she could call close. At twenty-one, she’d inherited full access to her trust fund. Always a young woman of privilege, she then become a young woman of incredible means. She had a finishing school education, which meant a degree in some branch of the arts she couldn’t even remember—but she did still recall how to match her tea cozies with the sofa cushions! As a debutante she seemed to have a life most would envy: a semi-respectable pedigree, beauty, and wealth. The world should have been her oyster.
It wasn’t. Neither a Protestant nor a total agnostic, Cassie was firmly a dreamy pessimist; imagining the best of the world until the bubble burst. Her cloud always had a silver lining—of gloom and doom. It was always darkest before the dawning of the apocalypse. Oh, well, what the hell? As Scarlett O’Hara had always said, “Tomorrow is another day.” Too bad her own days were numbered.
Why go into the past? she asked herself. It doesn’t exist anymore. As for her future…well, that was a negligible thing, t
oo. Money couldn’t buy happiness. Or love. Or health.
It can only buy stuff, she thought.
Heading into her suite, Cassie punched a few buttons on the console by her bed. Her room was outfitted with all the latest entertainment technology; giant flat panel television, DVD and CD player, all remote and all easily controlled without having to get out of bed. Hardly in the mood for the romantic classics she’d programmed in, she decided on something more kick-ass to listen to. The steady beat of Don Henley’s 'Dirty Laundry' began to play. She liked that song. It was practically her theme.
Mood set, wine in hand, she made a beeline toward the bathroom. There was every convenience at her disposal, including a full walk-in glass-walled shower and a bathtub big enough to swim laps in. She decided that a long soak in a hot tub would be just the ticket. Flipping on the taps, she decadently dumped in a handful of expensive bath beads. The scent of lilacs rose in the steam.
Waiting for the tub to fill, she sat down at her vanity table and poured a glass of wine. Wouldn’t her mother kick a complete fit if she found out she was drinking a cheap brand bought at the local supermarket. Wine with a twist-off cap and not a cork! Oh, gads. A snob with a capital 'S', Genice would faint dead away from the embarrassment. Cassie drank down a second glass just to hammer in the point.
“Oh, who really cares?” she sighed. “It’s not like she ever comes.” She had not seen her mother in over fifteen years. They just did not see eye to eye on anything; not her lifestyle, her choice of husbands, where she lived. Cassie could do nothing right to please her mother, so they simply preferred not to see each other. She was, as always, on her own.
Putting the glass aside, she flipped on the vanity’s mirror. She groaned when she saw the damage. Both her eyes were blacked, her cheeks swollen and her bottom lip three times normal size, with a nice split right down the center.
She leaned in closer, gingerly touching her swollen cheek with the pads of her fingers. Her skin felt thicker, harder. Forget the Botox, baby. All you need to rid yourself of those ugly age lines is to have a boyfriend slap you around a bit. Works every time.
She giggled, but it was hardly a sound of amusement; more like a whimper in the back of her throat. It wasn’t the first time a man had slapped her around. They usually had the decency to wait until she’d married them to start the heavy-handed abuse. Back in her younger days, when Los Angeles was the place for a fashionable heiress to hang out, she’d spent plenty of time hiding behind heavy makeup and dark glasses. The gossip columns quoted her as saying that she’d tripped and hit a door or whatever lie she could concoct. Those same papers also chronicled her five marriages and divorces as well as numerous love affairs within a ten-year span. Amazing it had taken her that long to figure out that she was neither a success as a starlet or at being married.
She’d fled California after her last divorce. Her Italian pool-boy, Paulo, had ended up costing her a good three million dollars. Her grandfather’s New Mexico estate had been empty for some years. She thought it might be a good place to settle down and sort out her life, far away from the public eye. Everyone who was anyone was fleeing Hollywood for the rustic plains of the welfare state. Julia Roberts, Val Kilmer…all the biggies were settling in the desert to live semi-anonymous lives.
Staring over, alas, had brought her closer to the ending. Some people had speculated that she didn’t have a brain in her head. Well, she did have a brain. She also had a tumor growing in it. After a series of headaches that had long been misdiagnosed as stress migraines and flights of fancy that went from grandeur to depression in a matter of seconds, the doctors had finally arrived at the true diagnosis. Glioblastoma multiforme was the official name of the cancerous mass growing in her brain. It was highly malignant, as infiltrating as an undercover CIA operative. She already knew that few patients with GBM survived longer than three years and only a handful survived more than five.
Cassie was almost two years into her cancer. For her, surgery was not an option; the tumor was too deeply imbedded for surgeons to reach. Chance it and she’d surely die on the operating table or, worse, be left a total vegetable. That was not an option.
Radiation and chemotherapy treatment had proved unsuccessful. Learning that her cancer was going to be most likely fatal even if she underwent further treatment, she’d ignored the advice of her too numerous doctors and made her final decision. Since she was going to die, she’d live her life to the fullest. She had money enough to keep herself comfortable right through the end. The specter of death may be hanging over her head, but what the hell! Everybody in this world died. It was just a matter of how, where and when. She already had one answer. The other two, has already been settled, too.
She turned toward the rapidly filling tub. When it was time to shed her mortal coil, she’d take her cue from Hollywood and die in a picture-perfect setting; naked, the ocean, loaded with a stomach filled with sleeping pills and booze. Slipping under the waves under a full moon was the way she wanted to go.
Cassie had just had a birthday. Some of the world’s most beautiful women had passed away in their thirties; Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana… Like them, she was headed toward a total flame out like a meteor about to strike the earth’s atmosphere. She fleetingly wondered how much it would cost to get Elton John to redo Candle in the Wind a third time. Three times was supposed to be the charm.
Curses, drat and damn! Why waste time thinking dark thoughts?
The reaper, however, wasn’t laying hands on her tonight. And life was way too short to be wasted pining over useless pricks like Kevin. There were still a few days yet to be enjoyed and she intended to seize every moment. She didn’t care if people thought she were crazy or a whore or whatever. She literally did not have the time to worry about what other people thought of her.
Head swimming from the wine, which at least had helped to dull her headache, she stood up and began to undress. For the first time she realized that she was still wearing the biker’s leather jacket. She pulled in a breath to clear her woozy head. It was so comfortable and well worn that she’d forgotten that she’d forgotten she had it on.
She held out her arms, examining it. It was extra large, enveloping her tiny frame like a sleeping bag. It wasn’t fancy, even when new. The black leather was faded and scuffed, collar and sleeves frayed by years spent out on the elements. Her rescuer obviously wore it as a regular part of his wardrobe.
Gathering the leather in her hands, she lifted it to her nose. The odor of musk mingled with the smell of the dusty night desert and male sweat, not at all unpleasant. Like a junkie sniffing coke, she drew in another deep whiff. God, how she loved the scent of him. It reminded her of his strength.
She wondered if he were missing it. He did know where she lived. Perhaps he’d return for it.
Her heart began to beat a mile a minute. Everything about the man was solid, from the body that made her go weak in the knees to the concentrated gaze that had eaten her up without blinking. She felt herself shift from hot and bothered to downright blazing. Under her torn blouse, her nipples rubbed enticingly against the material.
Cassie closed her eyes, remembering the solidity of his flesh. He was all male and all muscle, moving with the ease of a wild coyote across the desert plains. She let her mind wander through a wonderful fantasy. He was her hero come to life and she wanted a taste. A soft moan escaped her lips. She could feel desire’s moisture dampening the crotch of her silk panties. It was easy to imagine meshing her fingers in his thick dark hair as he went down on her, pleasuring her…
She decided she wanted him. “I’ve got to see him again.”
Desperate to learn more about her mystery man, Cassie began to dig through the outside pockets of the jacket. To her disappointment she found nothing more than a pack of mints, some loose change and a couple of gas receipts.
Disappointed the owner’s identity was still unknown, she gave the jacket a shake, turning it inward. There were a couple of inner pockets. She delved
eagerly into the first, bringing up switchblade knife.
Ah, it was a beauty, just the thing a bad boy biker would have on hand. She pushed the button and the blade flicked open with a smooth 'shooshing' sound, eight solid inches of hard icy steel. Holding it sent a shiver of excitement up her spine. She wondered if he’d ever pulled it on anyone. She wouldn’t have minded Kevin having a flash of this.
She grinned and set the blade aside. What a useful thing to have. Too bad she didn’t have it in hand when Kevin slapped her. Might have been nice to cut that turkey-neck he called a dick clean off.
The image of that one brought a guffaw of laughter. “Oh, wicked me,” she giggled. She dug into the last pocket. Pay dirt! She pulled out a small sack. Inside was a small bottle. Reading the label, she could see it was a vet’s prescription for Maxitrol, eye drops for a cat. The owner’s last name was on the bottle, along with that of his pet.
“Gisele,” she read. “How pretty.” There was one more thing in the white bag, rattling against the paper. She fished out a brand new tag for a collar; not a common rabies tag, but a custom design.
She squinted to see the tiny print. Between her contact lenses clocking eight plus hours in overtime and the wine, her vision was a little hazy. Heart hammering in her chest, her hands were shaking so hard that she could barely hold it still enough to read the inscription—the name of the cat, her owner and the number she’d been assigned when given a rabies shot.
