“Will you keep it down in there?” a man roars from the next room, voice slurred with drunkenness. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
I giggle again, and then go into the bathroom and splash my face with water. I can’t stop smiling. I feel like the silliest woman in the world, grinning like this. Perhaps part of it is because I know there’s a real possibility that I will see him again. He is Carol’s boyfriend’s co-worker, so if the memory of the hot, steamy, wet, close, animal sex grows too difficult to ignore, I can always ask Carol to get me his phone number. Even if he has made it clear he doesn’t want to exchange numbers, I can always take that step.
I’m about to leave when I remember that I’m in a hotel room. What if Roman hasn’t paid for it?
I go to the phone and dial down for reception. The woman who answers is chirpy and bubbly. “Hello, how can I help you this morning?”
“Uh, hi,” I say. “I was just wondering . . . um, this is going to sound strange, but—”
“Your room has been fully paid for, Ms., eh . . . Sherlock. Wow, cool name!”
I grin to myself. “Thank you,” I say, and then hang up.
Perhaps it’s the nurse in me, but I find I can’t leave the room without first giving it a quick tidy. With that done, I leave the room and make my way downstairs to get a cab. I’m in such a good mood, such a step-bouncing, ear-to-ear grinning, giggling-randomly mood that I don’t even feel embarrassed when people look at me. And why should I? I’m not doing the Walk of Shame. I’m doing the Skip of Shame, the Spring of Shame, the Dance of Shame. Once, I even start whistling a tune, something I never do. Was the sex really that good? I wonder as I climb into the back of a cab and give the driver my address. I look out of the window, at the neon signs and towering buildings, all dull now in the rising sunlight.
Was the sex really so incredibly that it’s going to put me in a good mood for the rest of the day? The answer is in my body, in my burning nipples, the aching between my thighs. I curl my toes in my heels and remember how my toes curled last night, endlessly, as orgasm after orgasm surged through me. I close my eyes, see his muscular, chiselled body, leaning over me, tight, tense. Then, as the cab comes to a stop, I shake my head, try and shake the memories loose. Soon I’ll be at work, with no room for Roman in my head. I pay the driver and go into my apartment building, up a flight of stairs, and into my one-bedroom apartment.
The place is neat, which is a product of me somehow dragging my double-shift-tired body around the apartment and tidying when all I can think about is sleep. Even now, when I need to shower and change quickly, I undress and put my clothes in the wash basket neatly, and then stand in the shower. Last night and this morning is strangeness stacked upon strangeness, because as I stand here, the water cascading down my body, I am slightly annoyed: annoyed that the water cleanses away Roman’s touch as well as the sweat and the grime of last night; annoyed that now I cannot pretend I still feel his lips on my nipples.
I step from the shower, dry myself off, blow-dry my hair, and then get dressed in my scrubs. I think about applying makeup—I have a whole bag of it, just in case—but I can’t really be bothered. Some of the girls come to work plastered in makeup, eyes all black-ringed and panda-like and sexy, cheeks blooming red (not flustered red like mine often are), painted nails, the works . . . But that’s never for me. When I go to work, I go to work, not to walk up and down the hallways pretending it’s a catwalk.
By the time I stand in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom, it’s difficult to accept that only a few hours ago I was writhing around with Roman in the sheets. And it really is only a few hours ago; we were touching and kissing and screwing until around four o’clock in the morning. This woman, with her hair scraped close to her scalp in tight no-nonsense ponytail, her scrubs like a military uniform on her body, sneakers battered and needing to be replaced, does not look like the moaning conquest of a yin-and-yang tattooed man. I shrug. That woman will always exist in memory, and, anyway, I can always ask Carol for his phone number. A bit stalker-ish, perhaps, but he did walk out on me without a single word.
I take the bus to work, as I usually do, and despite what I consider to be my world-rocking experience last night, the first five hours of my shift proceed as normal. I deal with patients, surreptitiously help some doctors diagnose illnesses, treat the patients, comfort them, bathe them, change their sheets, talk to them, make them feel like humans instead of half-lives with their tubes and beepers and wires. And then, with my feet aching and my forehead damp with sweat, I go into the breakroom and tuck into my lunch/dinner: a microwavable pasta bake.
I’m sat at the corner table, some soap opera playing on the small wall-mounted TV, when Carol comes in. Even now, after years of knowing her, it can be a shock when she walks into the room. For a second, I think: why is somebody carrying a mirror in here? Then I grin at my stupidity. Carol, looking like my slightly more carefree twin (her ponytail is a little looser) drops into the seat opposite me.
“So I heard,” Carol says, her face difficult to read as she tears open a yogurt container with her teeth.
“You heard? Really?” I’m so surprised by this that I drop my knife and fork. So we had the best sex I’ve ever had, and then he snuck out, and then he . . . what? Went and told Carol’s boyfriend, who then told Carol? Why would he do that? “Oh,” I say, but still, I’m not annoyed. It was fun. I don’t regret it. And I was going to tell Carol, anyway. So I guess it’s okay. As long as he doesn’t go around telling everybody who’ll listen, in which case we’ll need to have words. “Yeah, well—I know what you’re going to say. I told you so. You said I needed a good time, and you need to hear the words, don’t you, you psychopath? Fine, Carol, fine, I’ll play your wicked game. I had a good time. Okay? Understand?” I lower my voice. “I had a great time, if you get my meaning.”
I giggle, expecting Carol to giggle along with me. She’s always ragging me about men, about fun, and now here I am, triumphant. But she doesn’t giggle. She squints at me, her hazel-brown eyes—eyes that could’ve been transplanted from my head, I swear—full of confusion. “Wait, what are you talking about?” she says.
“I’m talking about Roman—well, Sam, as you called him. Are you sure your boyfriend’s his friend, Carol, because he told me his friends call him Roman. I went on that date, and I had a great time, and—Why are you looking at me like that?” I demand, as she continues to squint at me.
“I heard,” Carol says, “that Sam had to cancel, but because of my idea not to give you his phone number, he had no way to contact you. I only heard about it at lunchtime. I expected you to be in a bad mood about being stood up. So, hang on . . . Roman?”
I give her a quick rundown. When I finish, Carol asks me in a quiet, sensitive voice, “Are you okay?” Her quiet, sensitive voice cannot hide the laughter which she manages to contain only by bulging her cheeks like a hamster, though.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m fine. You can laugh.”
She laughs, and after a moment I laugh along with her.
“It was crazy,” I say. “I . . . he was so smooth about it. He didn’t miss a beat when I asked him if he was Sam, and I even mentioned you, and he went right along with that, too. I thought I was a human lie-detector, Carol, I really did.”
“Well, it seems you found somebody who is even more skilled than you,” Carol says, clearly delighted. “Are you really okay?”
“Listen,” I say. “He was gorgeous, charming, and we had incredible sex. Surely that’s all that matters?”
Carol nods in agreement, still smiling.
But I won’t be able to reach him now, I reflect. I’m never going to see him again.
Chapter Three
Roman
In my dreams, my mother appears like one of the Red Cross nurses in the First World War. I know that’s not how she was dressed, ever, but in my dreams—nightmares—it’s how I see her. She’s in that white get-up with the hood and the big Red Cross which tells the worl
d she’s here to do good. I crouch low in the street, which is the only street, the only street which has ever existed: everything else is blackness, yawning out for miles and miles. I know the story, but as I crouch behind an overturned dumpster, it plays itself out, as it has played itself out a thousand times before.
Mother, charging down the street in her Red Cross get-up, kneels beside the gang member and starts to mess with him, patching him up, telling him to breathe, all that horseshit. I’m back here rooted to the spot, but if I wasn’t I’d just run up ahead and curb-stomp that gang member into the ground. What’s a Red Cross lady doing out here? What business does she have in a fuckin’ warzone, patching up some gang scum? But she does it, and I watch, and somewhere faraway a grown man writhes and rolls over in bed next to the woman he just laid.
The Red Cross Paramedic has almost got the gang member into a decent state when the cop and the rival gang member arrive. I never asked what gangs they were, ’cause the way I see it, who gives a damn? Gangs are gangs and they’ll always shoot each other, always kill each other, and anyway, both men involved died: one of his wounds; the other a few months later from another shootout. But now, the cop is skipping down the street, whistling, oblivious, and my mom is on her feet, screaming at the cop to get down. And then the rival gang member fires a slug right through the air, hitting the cop in the arm, and the Red Cross Nurse, instead of doin’ the goddamn smart thing and staying low and waiting for backup, just ups and runs toward the cop, and even manages to drag her to the other side of the street behind some steps, out of view of the gang member, and then she goes right ahead, fixing up the cop, bandaging the wound, and then, and then—
I bolt upright when I wake, sweat pouring down me. For a moment, I almost let out a growl, but then I kill it. Lily is sleeping next to me, naked, her pert, tight breasts illumed in the moonlight. I think about cupping one of those breasts, but I don’t. She might wake up, and if she wakes up I’ll want to take her again, and again. She’s by far the bounciest, sexiest, fuckin’ angriest little thing I’ve ever fucked. All tense and wound up. Fit for bursting, and she did burst, all over me, time and time again. But morning is comin’, and I don’t plan on being here when morning comes. The dream—but I push the dream away. The dream can go to hell. Nothing good can come of the dream.
I stand up quietly, and then go around the room picking up my clothes. She stirs, mutters something in her sleep, but she does not wake. I don’t reckon she will, either, after the way we went at each other. My cock is sore, my balls feeling drained . . . The best sex I ever had? I’ve had my fair share, but yeah, I reckon that was the best. Just thinking about it is getting my hard, so that when I buckle my jeans, my cock presses against the denim. Dressed, I stand over her for a few seconds, just staring. I could have this again, I tell myself. I could wake her up and go down between those lithe legs and lick that pussy until she comes, singing out her orgasm. But then I turn away. It might lead to other things, to other dates, to all that relationship shit.
No, that ain’t for me. I make my way toward the door.
I’m gripping the door handle when, behind me, Lily makes a sweet moaning sound. My cock somehow gets harder, pressing so firmly against my jeans it’s like the bastard wants to break out. But I can’t go back. It might lead to things I don’t need in my life. So I quietly turn the handle and walk into the hallway. I go down to the main desk, pay up for the room, and then get another room on a different floor of the hotel. I’m here for a reason, a reason that has nothing to do with Lily. As I ride the elevator to the top floor, where my new room is, I check my phone: no calls, no messages. But this Boss is always sporadic. Sometimes he’ll text me the second I walk through the door, sometimes it takes him a few days.
When I get into the room I lock the door and throw myself on my bed. My body is aching, aching even as it doesn’t after a job. For such a lithe, small woman Lily sure did know how to work a man over. I touch my neck, where her teeth have left an imprint in my skin. I touch my cock, flaccid now, and wince at the punishment it’s been put through. The hardest, wildest fuck I’ve ever had in my life, make no mistake. The sun is beginning to rise, and I find myself just laying on my side staring at it. I don’t want to go back to sleep, ’cause then that dream might return. It’s a stupid dream. I wasn’t even there when Mom got herself killed saving some cop; I wasn’t even there when the gangbanger gunned her down. I thought about killing ’em afterward, though, when I knew what killing was . . . but by then it was too late, they were already long cold. I wince, roll over, face the wall.
A pessimistic man would say I’ve let the darkness throw me into the darkness. A pessimistic man would say I’ve let the acts of a devil turn me into a devil; Mom died, and now I go into the world to take other lives. But the thing with pessimistic men is that they’re always looking for the worst. Maybe Mom’s death was what set me on this path, but really I just need money, and a job, and a secure line of work, and . . . “Liar,” a voice whispers, far back in my head. My subconscious, maybe, or perhaps I’m just going mad. “If that was true, you would’ve retired a long time ago. Don’t forget how much cash you’ve got stowed away, Money Man.”
I ignore the voice and roll over again, facing the sun once more. I want the phone to ring. I want to be about my work. The thing is, I believe there’s a balancing force in this world. God, or fate, or whatever folks want to call it, I reckon it’s there, an invisible hand. Or maybe I’m the hand, and I ain’t so invisible. Fuck it, I don’t know what fancy terms to clothe my beliefs in. The point is that this yin-and-yang tattoo on my arm isn’t just for show. I reckon that ’cause there are so many evil people killing innocents in this world, there’s gotta be some people killing evils. And that’s me. I’m not some dope-fiend hitman, I’m not some mafia tool, or any of that shit. I’m a clean, professional assassin, I work for the men behind the men in charge, and I only ever take out the trash: no innocents, nobody who doesn’t deserve a garrote around the throat.
“Who are you trying to convince?” I mutter under my breath, rolling onto my back. “Who says the men you kill shouldn’t be turned over to the authorities instead? Who says the politicians you work for aren’t just using you as a pawn in a bigger game?”
I laugh grimly to myself. This is what an honest assassin gets for thinking. It quickly turns to over-thinking. I pick up my cell, hold it inches from my face, staring at the screen. The sun has fully risen now, slanting into the room, glinting off the edge of the silver tray upon which lays complimentary champagne. Somewhere in this hotel, Lily is waking up, looking around the room, wondering where I am. She might still think I’m that Sam guy, whoever the hell that was. I had no clue what that was about, just went with it. I was walking across the bar just because she was damn hot and I wanted a piece, so when she offered up this Sam narrative, well . . . you know what they say about mouths and gift horses.
But there was something else about that girl, too. I swear to God, I almost felt something for a second, amidst all the writhing, the biting, the fucking. I almost felt something that wasn’t just pleasure. Closeness, maybe? I laugh, but it sounds more like a growl. I must still be tipsy from last night. I’m thinking some stupid shit. An image enters my mind, which makes me laugh even more: me, sneaking into the hotel room after she’s left and before the maids have gone over it, scanning it for any sign of who she is and where she works, maybe she’s even left a phone number behind. I consider this for a few moments, and then shake my head. And then what? Start along the road which leads to picket fences and children and cats and dogs, the exact life Mom tried to make for us in the suburbs, and the life that was wrenched away by a gangbanger’s slug. No, no, no. Not for a man like me.
I’m relieved when my cell finally buzzes. It means I can just focus on the work.
“Hello,” I say. I add: “Boss.” I always just call them Boss, whoever they are, Democrat, Republican, businessman. Always just Boss, and I try not to look too deep into who they are
or what they’re about. I guess that says a lot about me.
“Hello,” the man says. He’s a politician, one of the good ones as far as I know, and he sounds skittish, as though afraid someone might walk in on him talking to me. I imagine him hunched over his grand desk, in his grand office, making this call. “Darius Taggart. He’s a war criminal. He’s been wanted by the United Nations for years, war crimes, you know . . . selling deadly poisons and chemical weapons to corrupt governments, mostly, but also some very nasty stuff, like throwing acid in the faces of—”
“I know who he is,” I say, making sure to keep my voice level. It’s best this current Boss doesn’t know that once, a few years back, another Boss hired me to get Darius but Darius slipped my grasp; and especially that I spent a half-year trailing him after that and still had no luck. I’ve been looking for Darius for a long fuckin’ time, not out of any personal revenge, but just ’cause I never like to leave a job unfinished. “I mean, I’ve heard the name,” I add, to kill any suspicion.
BAD BOY’S SURPRISE BABY Page 48
