The Wind Is Rising 1

by Daniel Steele

  I walked to the granite island that separated the kitchen from the den and turned the phone so that blinking red light faced the kitchen. It wasn’t visible from the den and couldn’t be seen unless you walked all the way around the island. I leaned forward and rested my palms on the cool granite.

  Now I knew what I was going to do. I was going to do something as stupid as anything I’d ever done in my entire life. I was going to lose the hottest sexual fantasy of my life. I’d lost Debbie through my own actions but I’d been doing what I thought was right, Aline because it wasn’t meant to be. But this time, this time, I was throwing away a beautiful woman, probably the most beautiful I’d ever know in this life, and there was no reason for it.

  But I couldn’t stop myself. I remembered Paula Donnally’s terrible short dissection of my soul in Carrabba’s Italian Grill on Atlantic months before. It hurt, because it was true. And Debbie had told me the truth as well. Too late. But she had been honest with me.

  I knew myself. Pretty well. I was smart. Stubborn. Determined to the point of obsession. I was honest. I thought I was a decent man. I’d tried to do the right thing my entire life and be worthy of my father. I’d been obsessed with big breasted women since I’d discovered sex. I had a deep streak of anger that I tried to control and forget existed as much as I could. Professionally, I was successful and I’d made a good life for myself.

  But away from the courtroom, away from work, one on one with a woman, in the bedroom, I was a failure. Always had been. Even slimmed down, with the grace I’d acquired boxing, that dark streak that Aline had sensed, I was still a loser in the most important arena. You don’t live in the work world although a lot of people try. You live in your personal world, and in that world I would always be a short, not very impressive guy. I’d always be the second choice, the other guy. The one a woman settled for.

  I knew that was the shock speaking in the depths of my mind. That telephone message had knocked me off my moorings, had suddenly changed my life. In time I’d see my life more clearly.

  I moved out into the den and sank into a chair that massaged and provided firm support to provide a sensation that was almost, but not quite, better than sex.

  She came out of her bathroom, her hair up in a swirled heavy white towel turban, her body cloaked in a plush white robe. She sank into the chair onto my lap. She nuzzled the side of my neck.

  “I am sorry you have to go tonight. We’ll get together next week and I’ll make it up to you.”

  “That sounds like fun. Uh-“

  I almost stopped myself. Why was I doing this?

  “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything about this earlier. My mom’s invited me down to her place near Orlando for Thanksgiving. I haven’t been down there in a few years. If you’re free, I’d love to have you come with me. We can have dinner with them and then hit some places in Orlando. Or we could catch a quick flight down to Miami. Do you have plans?”

  She had leaned back as I spoke but again she nuzzled the side of my face. So I couldn’t look in her eyes.

  “I’m – sorry – Bill. I thought you’d have plans. I already told Valencia – she’s my sister from Homestead, that I’d spend Thanksgiving with her and her family. They moved up to Norfolk a few years ago and I haven’t spent much time up there.”

  If I’d been a perfect bastard, instead of merely a pathetic one, I’d have pushed it and asked her if I could go with her. But I’d already found out what I wanted to know.

  “Oh well, I knew I was asking late. You go – and have fun with your family. Someday I’d like to meet her.”

  “I’d like that too, Bill. I’ll be thinking of you.”

  Somehow I bit my lips and stifled the “I really doubt that,” which almost made its way out.

  She pushed herself away from me and stood. She held her hand out and I stood. She gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  “I know you must want to get together with your friend, Bill. Just don’t – exhaust yourself.”

  I grabbed her and pulled her to me and kissed those luscious, lying lips.

  “I’ll save myself for you.”

  November 12,2005

  Friday, Midnight

  I walked down the steps from Myra’s condo instead of taking the stairs. For some reason, I felt like hitting something. Or running. Or doing something. Nervous energy. I knew where I was going. Anderson was probably waiting at his suite in the Omni, with two or three or however many fame-inflamed groupies he’d managed to pick up over the last few hours. Which wasn’t the attraction. I didn’t know why exactly, but I wanted to talk to him.

  My head felt like it was about to burst. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t emotional. It was as if there was just too much – of everything jammed in there swirling around. Anger. Jealousy, Uncertainty. Guilt. Thoughts about trials and enemies and allies and the past, and the future. Maybe I should just go up to Richard’s suite and get drunk with him and spend the night there sleeping while he enjoyed the sybaritic never ending fantasy of guilt-free fame fucks. Maybe, if I was conscious at all, I could pick up a few pointers on how to live my new life.

  Because it felt so clear now as I stood in the cold early morning November darkness, I was never going back to my old life. There would be no reconciliation, no renewal of my life with Debbie. Aline was never coming back. Whatever relationship I might forge with Myra, if there was a chance of some kind of relationship, it wouldn’t be like anything I’d ever known before. Those four words uttered by Debbie what seemed like a lifetime ago, had blown my life to hell and gone.

  As I stood there, something drew me to talk toward the back of the condo and pool complex. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to be around people. Maybe what I needed was the quiet of still water and shadows. I needed time to absorb what had just happened.

  I stood at the edge of the deep pool and wished I smoked. I wanted something to do with my hands. The moon drifted in and out of pools of darkness and the intermittent light revealed clouds of my exhaled breath condensed into drifting banks of fog.

  “You’re not going to spend the night with her? Did you have a fight?”

  She sat shrouded in shadow in a chair near the polar ice pool. A brilliant red flame lit the night and she let out a cloud of cigarette smoke. By that short-lived illumination, I saw she was wearing trousers and a sweater with UNLV towel draped over her shoulders.

  “No. Did you?”

  “Yeah. Leo, my friend – main fuck right now – got so drunk he couldn’t get it up. What kind of damned boyfriend is that? He’d rather be out drinking with his buddies than banging a hot girlfriend. Were guys that stupid when you were young?”

  “Trust me, he’ll regret it tomorrow. And yeah, guys are always stupid about the important things in life. Sad thing is, we say we learn, but we don’t. We stay stupid as long as we live.”

  “That’s depressing.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The cigarette flared a couple more times in the silence.

  “You don’t look that stupid, but you’re going to keep seeing her, aren’t you?”

  “That’s personal.”

  “It’s the boobs and that face and body of hers. Men are so simple.”

  “They don’t hurt. But she’s my friend.”

  “You know she’s a whore, don’t you?”

  “No. I don’t know that.”

  “I’ve been here a year and a half, and I can’t tell you how many guys have stayed over, how many have come through here.”

  “You might not have noticed, but she doesn’t wear a wedding ring.”

  She threw the blanket aside and stood, walking over to stand beside me at the edge of the deep pool.

  “My dad is an independent film producer. Works all over the world but he does a lot of work in Hollywood. He’s loaded. He put me out here on the other side of the country to get me out of his hair. As long as I don’t get myself arrested, and pretend to work on a college degree, he lets me live a good life. He’d been here twice the
first ten months I was here. The second time, she was in the lobby as we were coming in from supper. He went back out with her. I didn’t see him for two days.

  “He came back – to see me – three times in the next three months. I saw him about four hours. She spent every weekend with him. And then she went away with him for a week, to Cabo San Lucas. And came back with the most beautiful emerald necklace. A gift from him. It cost $25,000. I saw the receipt in his luggage.

  “She wore it a few times, but when he stopped coming by, it vanished. I’ll bet it’s hanging in some Florida jewelry store right now. And I’ll bet she gets nice things from every guy she goes with.”

  She took a deep drag and I was close enough to smell the marijuana, but I’d forgotten my prosecutor hat somewhere.

  “Like I said, Bill, she’s a whore.”

  “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but men give pretty things to women they’re attracted to. Expensive things. I’ve done it myself. And I didn’t consider the women I gave those pretty things to be whores. To be honest, if you haven’t already gotten them, I think you’re going to get some of those pretty things one day, and keeping them won’t make you a whore.”

  She stared at me and said, “What happened to you? You get into a fight over her?”

  “No. Just some foolishness in a bar. Just typical Friday night stuff.”

  “Boys.”

  Then:

  “You’re got it bad for her, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t, Cassandra. You might think so, but you don’t know me, or her.”

  She took a last drag on the pot and thumbed the butt into the pool.

  “I know you, Bill. I’m young, yeah, but I know guys. And you’re blind about her. Because she’s beautiful. And she’s going to hurt you.”

  “She’ll have to stand in line. And it’s a long line.”

  I almost reached out to give her a hug, but stopped myself. She wasn’t Kelly.

  “Have a good night, Cassandra.”

  “Goodnight, Bill. Good luck.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: NOTHING BUT A HERO

  November 12, 2005

  Friday, 12:15 P.M.

  I could hear the sounds of music from one of the doors on the Omni’s third floor as I stepped off the elevator. As I walked past another one, I heard laughter and what could have been shattering glass. Oh well, it provided employment for hotel maids and cleaning crews. The floor was carpeted with a plush fabric that gave underfoot without a whisper of sound. The corridor smelled good. Maybe a piney, or woodsy fragrance.

  I walked to the end of the hallway and made a left. 305 became 306 and 307 and finally I got to 310. I listened and thought I might have heard girlish laughter and maybe a little scream. I knocked, and then knocked again. And then again. And then I hit the buzzer on the door.

  “Hold it. Be there in a sec.”

  The door opened onto a very naked Richard Anderson. And a very tumescent Anderson. He looked at me, then down at his rampant dick and back up at me with a smile.

  “Sorry Bill, don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not batting for the other team. You just interrupted me in the middle of something –“

  “Very pleasant. I can see. But would you mind pointing that in another direction before it goes off and I really don’t want to witness that.”

  “Of course,” he said, grinning. He reached over to a chair behind the door as he gestured for me to come in and grabbed a robe and threw it on. Of course, his dick still stuck out, but the robe lessened the impact. I sat on a comfortable chair and he leaned back into a couch. There was a low coffee table between us. He stretched his hand and grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously.

  “I’m glad you decided to come by, Bill. I’d been wanting to have chance to talk to you. But when I got a look at that man-eater you were with, I figured I’d never see you. How the hell did you tear yourself away from that, anyway?”

  “Her time of the month and you can only survive so many blow jobs before you might blow – no pun intended – some of the wiring out.”

  “Oh, so you had to escape in self-defense? I can understand that. By the way, how the hell do you do it? Two hot blondes with huge tits. And I hate to break it to you Bill, if no one has, you’re not good looking enough or rich enough to merit ass like that. Now me, at least I’m famous and tall and relatively good looking – and hung, don’t laugh – me I can understand. But you?”

  “I’m pure of heart. It’s apparently an aphrodisiac.”

  He laughed again. “God, it’s good to see and talk to you again, Maitland. I’d love to hug you, man.”

  I pointed to his still rising erection and said, “Not with that thing sticking out there.”

  He grimaced and pointed behind him to what had to be a bedroom.

  “I really was busy, and after a while, you take enough Viagra and coke and booze and pharmaceuticals, it’s either going to blast off into orbit or fall off. I’m not sure which.”

  “You’re apparently not planning on living to collect your Social Security.”

  “What’s that?”

  A female voice rang out from the bedroom, singing, “Ricky, Ricky, you gotta get back in here. All our hot places are getting cold.”

  And another: “Rickkkkyyyy, I need another one of your hot injections. I’m burning up.”

  I looked over his shoulder.

  “Apparently your public needs you.”

  He looked over his shoulder with a satisfied little smirk.

  “They just need it over and over. Believe it or not, but they’re school teachers. And they’re making me practice over and over until I get it perfect.”

  “That’s an old joke.”

  “But very young and nubile teachers. God they are flexible.”

  “Look, Richard, I can see I came at a bad time. You have business to take care of. I’ll leave you my cell number and you call me when you get a chance.

  “I really could use your help, Bill. The blonde must have left a little in your tank. Why don’t you come back and take one of them off my hands.”

  I threw my hands up.

  “I’m an old man, 42 now, and I’ve blown a load twice in the last four or five hours. I’ll probably regret this later, but I really came by just to talk to you for a bit. But you go ahead. My feelings won’t be hurt.”

  He looked back toward the bedroom and sighed.

  “Oh well, believe it or not, this is fairly standard orgy fare. Not too hard finding ladies that want to have an up close and personal acquaintance with a hero dick. But how many times will I have a chance to shoot the shit with The Angel of Death himself?”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “I guess it’s true what they say about the rich and famous, Richard. They really are different.”

  “They really are.”

  He stood up and yelled, “Girls, take a break. Got to talk to a friend for a couple of minutes. Enjoy the booze, the champagne, the coke, whatever goodies are back there. And keep each other warm. I’ll be back there as soon as I can.”

  A minute later the bedroom door and two naked ladies jiggled outside with a great display of jiggling ability and girlish laughter.

  “Dickie, baby, it’s not the same without you back there,” said the one I thought had the better tits when she was dressed. Naked I could see I’d been exactly right. She plopped herself into his lap and feed one of those soft round breasts into his mouth.

  “Suck, baby.”

  And while she tried to force-feed him, the second lady whose breasts might not have been quite as impressive but who had an ass that begged to be bitten, squatted down in front of him and pushing her girlfriend over, found his cock and began sucking, moving her lips up and down. I didn’t think either one really even noticed I was there.

  Finally Anderson pushed both of them away and stood with them.

  “C’mon girls, please. This is an old friend of mine. You don’t have to work tomorrow, do you? No school on Saturday. I promise w
e can party hard tomorrow. And I’ll give you autographed pictures and if you are VERY nice, I’ll give you some private autographed photos that none of the your girlfriends will ever be able to match.”

  After much grumbling, they trotted back to the bedroom.

  Anderson looked back at me and said, “You know, of course, that I was referring to a few cases of Coca Cola I have in my bedroom, right? My favorite soft drink.”

  “Of course, I know you wouldn’t be breaking the drug laws.”

  “Of course.”

  Then he couldn’t help himself and collapsed on the couch in helpless laughter.

  “Why the hell do I like a law-breaking reprobate like yourself, Richard?”

  “You’re envious, Bill. But don’t blame yourself. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make myself believe this isn’t all one long, pornographic dream.”

  He looked back at the bedroom. Then at me.

  “Do you realize there was a time when I’d have to work for weeks to get one of them naked and in bed and it would have been the highlight of my life to have gotten two honeys like that in bed at the same time? And now I walk into a bar and they wind up inviting THEMSELVES up to my room to fuck my eyes out. Fame is a wonderful thing. But you ought to be seeing some of that yourself. ‘The Angel of Death!’ My God, that should send pussies creaming all over Jacksonville at the least. And you probably stand to harvest a few hot Bible Thumpers.”

  I grinned.

  “Not exactly.”

  He leaned forward.

  “C’mon, Bill. This is me. Let your hair down. I read something online about your divorce. And I am sorry about that. I could tell without ever meeting her how hung up you were on – what was her name?”

  “Debbie.”

  “Yeah, Debbie. But that must have opened the floodgates. You were the most married man I ever met. But when she dumped you, and you got that ‘Angel of Death’ rep, you must have gone out and made up for – what? 20 years – of monogamy.”