Black Leather

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  It was a small price to pay.

  ~~~

  At ten-fifteen, a taxi pulled up at the entrance to her apartment building, and he knew. He knew.

  He started the car and sat while it idled, while his heart died, while he watched the doorway.

  The glass door opened, and there she was. In jeans and a t-shirt and a black leather blazer. She wore sunglasses, even though it was dark outside, and she looked both ways up and down the sidewalk before jumping into the cab. No luggage.

  Pizza, Joseph said to himself. Please, Irene, you’re just going out for a pizza. Or a cappuccino to help you through the paperwork.

  He put the car into gear and followed the taxi.

  He had a fleeting moment of pleasant surprise when they didn’t get on the freeway headed for the airport.

  He hoped for a moment that she was going to visit Cynthia, but his spirits sank again as he followed the cab down to the Mission District, and he knew exactly where they were going.

  The cab stopped right in front of the 2020 building.

  Joseph pulled over, turned off the engine, cut his lights, and waited. He could predict the rest, and that made him angry. He was surprised at how angry.

  By the time Miss Lillian, in short-cropped black wig, thigh-high, spike-heel boots, leather shorts and bustier, came out of the apartment building, Joseph’s jaw muscles ached from clenching.

  She stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking like the nastiest hooker he’d ever seen, and he wanted her. He wanted her bad. This was his woman, and she was independent and kinky and hot. She was the best he’d ever had and he wanted more. He wanted to jump out of the car and grab her—

  A taxi pulled up just in time. He’d been about to blow it.

  She got into the cab, and he followed again. This time he was eager, because she was foolishly predictable (how dare she be so predictable!), and he wanted to get out of the car and get his hands on her. He wanted her to pick him out of a crowd and then pick him up. He wanted her to seduce him. He wanted to seduce her. He wanted to be the one who could take care of her needs. He wanted to show her that she didn’t have to do this anymore, that he was the one, he could do it for her, he was the only man who cared enough about her to do whatever was necessary to make her happy. Whatever was necessary.

  Whatever.

  Sure enough, the cab drove across the bridge into Oakland. Joseph followed at a discreet distance, followed them right into the parking lot of The Serpent’s Tooth.

  Rock music blared out of the old warehouse-turned-biker bar as Joseph parked. He didn’t watch Irene get out of the taxi, he was having a hard time breathing, thinking he’d soon be in that biker bar, and face to face with all fantasies of his pubescent youth. The place would be crowded with hot flesh, and it would smell like used sex. He had wanted to go in there so bad for so long it frightened him. It had always frightened him, so he avoided it. Now he was here, and he couldn’t avoid it any longer. But now he was an adult, and he didn’t need to get caught up in anything unhealthy.

  Yeah, right, like stalking Irene Nottingham was healthy. Like even going into that leather-and-chains-and-blades place was healthy.

  Like pursuing Irene in any way was healthy.

  Joseph took a deep breath. Eyes straight ahead, trying to focus on his purpose and not his excitement, he locked the car and walked across the vast parking lot, past dozens of custom painted and chromed Harleys, and through the doors.

  Smoke, beer, stale, unwashed sweat and ear-abusing music. He almost gagged.

  Sweat-slick skin, black leather, silver studs and tattooed, pierced and otherwise exposed flesh surrounded him. It was hot, humid and smelly, and there were only a few black faces that he could see. The reality of the place was nothing like his imagination. Uncomfortable and wondering what the hell he was doing there, he pushed his way through the crush to the bar, desperately looking around for Irene.

  He needn’t have worried about getting caught up in a place like this. He’d never hang out here. Maybe if he had slid into this culture when he was younger, he could have made it second nature. But he was an adult, he was a professional black man; he was close to his Ph.D. He owned his home. He had pride. He didn’t belong here. Not now.

  What about Irene? Did she still belong here? Had she ever?

  Would she ever outgrow it?

  A quick glance in the bar mirror showed a horrified Joseph how out of place he looked. He looked like a goddamned preppy community college administrator doing research. He took off his sport coat and shirt, rolled them up and handed them to the bartender, who looked carefully at Joseph’s face before accepting the bundle and stashing it behind the bar. It was one of the bartenders Joseph had talked to earlier, one who identified the photograph of Miss Lillian and gave him the names of a few of her dates. It looked as though the bartender recognized him but couldn’t quite place him. Good. Joseph ordered a beer and looked in the mirror. Now he fit right in, wearing a tight white tank undershirt, with his hairy chest and waterfall-scarred shoulder.

  Despite the middle-aged spread that was beginning to accumulate around his waist, people, inmates, denizens, whatever it was that inhabited this bar, couldn’t keep their hands off him. He was fresh meat. They were particularly drawn to the scar on his shoulder. It was unique and apparently irresistible. At first he shrank from their touch, but as he warmed to the rhythm of the place, and walked through the musky crowd, disembodied hands snaked out and caressed his shoulder, his back, even pinched at his nipples, felt his ass, hefted his crotch. This was a place that pushed all the boundaries out—way out—beyond his experience. It was all that he had imagined in his nocturnal fantasies, all that and more. Only with a heavy dose of reality. It was uglier. Richer. Smellier. But that was okay. He was a grownup. He could swim in these waters for one night. For a good cause. He just had to keep focused.

  As he became accustomed to the steamy humidity, Joseph relaxed and began to enjoy himself. Maybe he could frequent a place like this without getting lost. He could become a regular. It might spice up his life, add a dimension to his character. Make him a more interesting person. Add a subplot to his dissertation. He felt a heated excitement grow in him as he watched the women parade by, as he watched the men watch him.

  One extraordinarily tall redheaded woman walked by, her large breasts barely contained by some shimmering material.

  True to the spirit of The Serpent’s Tooth, Joseph reached out and hefted one of her breasts.

  She smiled at him, a horsey grin with teeth too large, makeup too thick and a mole too hairy, and he wondered if she had always been a woman. He passed on by.

  A woman dressed only in a G-string and high heels danced on a small, round stage in the middle of the bar. She had a fairly large, appreciative and vocal audience, but Joseph was interested in other things.

  Irene stood at the dark end of the bar, sipping a beer, watching the crowd. There was a space all around her, as if she were a goddess, and nobody dared get too close.

  He understood. She looked stunning.

  He ached to touch her, to have her see him, to have the others see her leave with him, but there was something about just watching her, too. He wasn’t sure what he was going to see, and he wasn’t sure this was a healthy type of voyeurism, but he had to see the power she wielded over the men in this place. The men and the women, because a fair number of women were watching her as well.

  Joseph took up a station as far away from the music as he could get, and still keep an eye on Irene.

  She didn’t do anything but stand tall and drink her beer. People cruised in and out of her aura, irresistibly drawn. She was the light. She was a magnet. She spoke once or twice to people who spoke to her first, but her replies were clearly dismissive, because nobody stayed. And there was no “old home week” that Joseph could discern. She didn’t greet old friends, acquaintances, lovers or victims. She treated everyone the same. Coldly.

  She stood quietly, surveying her options. />
  She hadn’t made her choice yet.

  Joseph didn’t know what he would do if she chose someone other than him.

  That would be inconceivable, he told himself. That would be unacceptable. That isn’t going to happen.

  But it could, and his guts began to burn with the thought of Irene with some other man’s hands on her, with some other man’s blood on her blade. With some other man’s mouth on her breast, his mouth on her mouth, his sweat on her wrist restraints. His fear on her sheets.

  It not only could happen, it was likely to happen. If she wanted Joseph, she knew his phone number. In fact, he asked for her tonight and she refused him. What made him think she’d changed her mind?

  Joseph wasn’t the one for her tonight.

  Joseph clearly wasn’t enough to sate all her appetites. Maybe that was the truth he was seeking. Maybe that was the answer to the Irene/Joseph question. Don’t listen to what she tells you, watch instead what she does. Her actions will define her.

  She was hunting.

  Joseph’s spirits wilted, even as his desperation grew.

  Chapter 33

  Irene felt her whole world wash away with the sound and the smells and the feel of The Serpent’s Tooth. No longer was she an upscale trial attorney, being considered for a judge’s seat. No longer did she have guilts and suspicions and remorse. In The Serpent’s Tooth, she felt normal. She felt like she fit in. She felt like one of the sleazy people she rubbed up against. One of them, and yet superior to them. Just a little bit superior. Not much.

  There was no danger of her throwing up out of anxiety when she was in a place like this. Everything in this place was transient. Everything was an illusion. Everything was immediate and had no lasting consequences.

  People didn’t meet their mates in a bar like this. This was no dating bar with clever pickup lines. This was a fuck ‘em in the toilet stall kind of place.

  Irene hated to think that she was this, that she was Miss Lillian, but in a way, it was undeniable. She was also Irene Nottingham, heir to Judge Harcort’s judicial throne, but that suit was a lot harder to pull on over her tender skin. Miss Lillian’s suit fit her like wet paint.

  It had been a long time since Irene had been in The Serpent’s Tooth. As she looked around, she tried to minimize the depressing fact that she saw so many of the same people, looking exactly the same, doing exactly the same thing they had been doing for years.

  Just like her.

  She’d been gone, it was true. Miss Lillian had been taking her show on the road, but here she was again, back where she started, and the only thing that had changed was that she was older.

  And a little bit better with her talents.

  But the biggest change in her had come about because of Joseph. He had altered her perceptions. He made her look at herself in an entirely new light, and she didn’t think he ever suspected that he did that.

  She was afraid of the suit she might slip into with Joseph. She was afraid that the domestic routine, perhaps even the motherhood role would fit her easily and well. She didn’t want to look in the mirror wearing those outfits—mother, wife, homemaker, but the longer she was with Joseph, that particular mirror was getting harder and harder to avoid. It scared her. And it intrigued her. She liked to think that someday she would be worthy of those roles, but she never would be, not as long as she was spending her Thursday nights in The Serpent’s Tooth.

  Irene stood by the bar, swaying to the music, looking fine and enjoying the admiring glances and attention she was getting. She encouraged The Serpent’s Tooth to wash Joseph and all of the possibilities he roused in her from her mind. She encouraged them all to proposition her with steady eye contact and then she refused their offers.

  But the attention from these people was feral, lustful, shallow, and The Serpent’s Tooth smelled like bad breath.

  Everywhere she looked, she thought she saw Joseph out of the corner of her eye. Every time she saw a flash of tooth or a gleam of perspiration on a black man’s skin, her heart leaped just a tiny bit, hoping it was him.

  She’d like nothing better than for him to come and seduce her here in this bar. She’d like to dance with him when the lights dimmed even further—about midnight when the band slid into those sleazy blues that swirled through her like liquid sex. She wanted to bite him, to dig her fingers into him, to let everybody in this cesspool know that she had a man, had a real man, had a man with her mark on him, and they could all go home alone and jerk off, wishing they had it as good.

  If she had such a great guy, what the hell was she doing here? Why wasn’t she at home with him?

  Because she didn’t want him to tie her down. She desperately fought those domestic feelings. She didn’t want to be married, didn’t even want to be monogamous. Joseph was a stable professional man who wanted home and hearth and marriage. He even wanted children. Irene was exactly the opposite. Irene needed her freedom. Irene needed to be able to go when she heard that train whistle. And she didn’t want to turn Joseph into a shadow imitation of what her mother became when that whistle blew through her life.

  And yet... Why was he so attractive? Was it his stability? Was it his desire for commitment? Is that why she found him so attractive?

  Agitated and scowling, she went back on the prowl, parting the crowd with her slow walk. She knew she looked good, she knew she felt good, she knew that any straight man or kinked woman in the place would readily give up a healthy patch of skin in order to go home with her.

  But all she wanted was Joseph.

  Shit.

  She walked up to the elevated dance floor where a woman in a black G-string was dancing like some go-go girl from the sixties. All she needed were a pair of spangled ankle-high boots and pouffed hair and she’d look just right.

  This place was disgusting. Irene hated it and she didn’t want to. She’d had too much fun in this bar and in places like it all over the country. She didn’t want that part of her life to change.

  She was afraid she was growing up, maturing, and she didn’t want that, either.

  She really didn’t.

  That professional/domestic life looked conservative and conventional and boring as hell. That’s the kind of life that drove human beings to alcoholism, to child abuse, to murder.

  This—she looked around—this was freedom.

  It was ugly. And loud.

  She’d never be able to hear the train whistle in here, it was too noisy.

  No, the train whistle blew in the quiet. In the domestic tranquility. The train cried out in the calm desert, when everything was settled, adjusted, sleeping. The train came when you least expected it, when you didn’t want it, but were afraid to miss it. Afraid it would be the last one. That’s what made it so seductive.

  Chapter 34

  Joseph couldn’t take his eyes off Irene’s back. He ran a million scenarios through his mind of how to approach her, how to pick her up, how to sweep her off her feet, how to just goddamn take her in front of all these people. She was hot and he was hotter, and he didn’t know what to do with all the energy he found searing his insides.

  A hand caressed his back.

  He ignored it.

  The hand came back, oiled.

  He ignored it.

  The hand rubbed oil all across the back of his neck and his shoulder, and it felt good.

  Then the hand dallied too long on the bumpy scars that ran across his shoulder and halfway down his back. Joseph pulled out from under the touch and turned around with a snarl.

  A pudgy, balding white man, grotesque with a studded black leather dog collar around his neck, stood smiling at him. “Hi,” he said, his pink cheeks flushed.

  Joseph was speechless. He just stared. What could these people be thinking?

  The submissive handed Joseph his leash. Joseph took it. He didn’t know what else to do.

  “I’m yours,” the man said, then started rubbing oil into Joseph’s shoulder again.

  “Please don’t,” Jose
ph said, raising his voice to be heard above the rising tide of music.

  The submissive dropped his hand to his side instantly, and looked at the floor.

  Good Lord, Joseph thought. So this is the game. The allure of this place was wearing thin. He was beginning to be irritated by his indecisiveness, his lack of knowledge, his frustration over Irene, and particularly this pathetic man. “Go stand in that corner,” Joseph said to the submissive, “and talk to no one, no one, do you understand, until I come for you.”

  The joy on the old man’s face tweaked Joseph’s heart in pity as he turned around and walked over to the corner, his leash dragging behind him.

  Goose bumps rose on Joseph’s back, but they were the bumps of revulsion. He didn’t like the smell of the oil, either, and wanted to wipe it off. Or shower it off.

  He turned back to watch Irene.

  She was gone.

  In panic, Joseph looked around, but he knew that if she hadn’t left, she would surface in a moment, because Irene was the classiest thing in this despicable place, and she was the focal point for everybody there. They’d point her out to him if he just waited.

  The music faded out and started again with a slow saxophone howl, and the crowd around the elevated dance floor began to whistle and shout.

  Some guy in leather pants and a chain mail vest jumped up onto the dance platform and elbowed the ugly woman off the stage, then leaned over and lifted Irene up. She rose to the occasion like a starlet in an elevator.

  She began to gyrate with the slow bluesy music, and Joseph, like everybody else in the bar, moved toward her, hypnotized, transfixed, enchanted.

  Chapter 35

  Cynthia paced in her ugly little apartment until she had ripped off all the fingernails she had so carefully cultivated in jail. She’d even torn some of the cuticle back until it was bleeding and raw.

  She thought of all the things she could be doing, things she should be doing: unpacking, eating, going to a movie, painting the walls, calling a girlfriend... but she didn’t want to do any of them.