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Jack has just gotten comfortable
with the idea that life around Ben will be one long rollercoaster ride when his
life coach basically abandons him. Left with no blueprint for living, he goes
to the old assignments: breakfast on the roof, two games in the amusement room
(this time the Skee-ball and an old-school Asteroids machine), and a lengthy
search for skipping-rocks. This ruthless agenda gives him a whole new store of
energy, so he extends his hike to the coffeehouse, where he makes the radical
departure of trying the Guatemalan, which proves a little smoother than the
Peruvian – albeit without the psychogenic aftereffects. The blonde dwarf
barista is absent, her place taken by a perky college brunette named Cher. On
his return home, he surfs the seemingly limitless channels on the high-def,
finding the greatest satisfaction when he lands on a well-done documentary or a
familiar sitcom. The prime-time dramas are too gory and self-important, the
reality shows too clearly aimed at idiots. Jack knows than Ben is trying to
teach him open-mindedness, but when it comes to stupidity he intends to remain
a bigot.
Against
the backdrop of his recent chaotic adventures, this sudden solitude has created
something new, a sense of relaxation that he hasn’t felt for years – perhaps
ever. The only glitch is a trip to the computer, where a scan of the job sites
reminds him of all the number-loaded jobs he will not be getting, and returns
him to the desperado mood of two weeks before. He tries to console himself with
a trip to Mr. Toots, but the echo of Suzanne’s voice – now playing along the
walls of a laundromat café in San Francisco – is not strong enough.
Just
as his overanalytic tendencies begin to crowd back in, Saturday arrives, and he
knows he’ll have lots of other things to worry about. The very idea goes
against a dozen tenets of the house-sitter’s code, but then, when it comes to
Thompson, perhaps he’s allowed an exception. He’s just emerging from the
shower, fully spruced, when he hears a snatch of jazz trumpet (he is later
informed that it’s Miles Davis) and recalls that this is the doorbell. He
wanders downstairs and opens the door to a red flame holding a pet-carrier.
“Jack!
You look all slicked-up. Gimme a kiss, wouldja?”
In
consideration of the sash just barely holding his bathrobe together, Jack leans
over rather stiffly and gives Audrey a kiss on the cheek. Audrey responds with
a disapproving look.
“Jesus,
Jack. Are you that afraid of cooties? Now stand still, and close your eyes.”
He
does so, and receives a kiss the texture and warmth of hot cocoa, topped off by
a playful tongue-flick.
“Ah,
there,” says Audrey. “Now let’s go to the roof so I can release my captives.”
Jack
follows her all 47 stairsteps, marveling at the tasteful brevity of her white
shorts, the way the fibers in her legs tighten and relax as she climbs. On the
roof, she extracts a small blue-bar and hands it to Jack, then reaches back in
for Mamet. Jack turns the new bird upside-down and strokes its chest.
“Marvelous!”
Audrey exclaims. “A man who retains his lessons. That one’s called Martini, by
the way. Now turn her back around, and we’ll go for the release.”
They
count off the same gentle toss, and the birds react as they did in Salinas,
taking a double-circle survey before heading out for Watsonville.
“I
think they follow the shore,” says Audrey. She watches until the two birds are
nothing but an umlaut against the clouds. “I suppose if I wanted to know for
sure, I could get a teenie-weenie video camera…”
“Or
learn to speak pigeon English,” says Jack, completely unaware that he’s making
a pun. Audrey attacks him with another kiss.
“There,”
she says. “That’ll keep your trap shut. Now put on some beach clothes, honey.
You and I are going on an expedition.”
“Oh,
um…” Jack taps two fingers against his temple. “Isn’t everybody showing up
soon? Don’t I need to be here?”
Audrey
bites her lip, a gesture that Jack finds excruciatingly appealing. “I’m under
direct orders from Star Command. Ben is concerned that you’ll be too nervous to
watch us re-make your household. So he figured I could distract you while the
Monkeys go about their Monkey business.
Jack
smiles. “I’m thinking you probably can.”
“Damn,
Jack. I think I finally got a rise
out of you. I was beginning to think I was losing my feminine wiles."
This
is clearly an opening for another saucy retort, but Jack has used up his daily
quota.
“Okay,”
says Audrey. “Don’t hurt yourself. Go, put on something beachy. I’ll be
downstairs by the amazing whitewater machine.”
A
half hour later, Jack and Audrey are walking the long lot that usually plays
host to trailers, RVs and senior citizens. Now it’s loaded up with kiddie rides
and carnival games. Audrey stops before an inflatable slide. A little girl in a
pink jumper comes soaring down, lands in a pile against the cushioned wall,
then jumps right up and scales the ridged steps back to the top.
“Such
energy!” says Audrey. “Did I ever have that much energy?”
“I
get the feeling you did.”
“Yeah.
I guess so.”
Jack
picks at his blue admissions wristband. “So what’s this all about, anyway?”
“They
put this on every year to raise money for local schools,” she says. “Just a
kiddie carnival, really, but they have some bands at nightfall, and then of
course the big fireworks show. It’s actually better than most of the 4th
of July shows. I think the pyrotechnics guys use it to try out new stuff for
next summer.”
They
stop at a booth where kids are using hand-held electric fans to propel tiny
sailboats along troughs of water. A little Japanese boy blows his craft to the
far end and raises both fists.
“Ha!”
says Audrey. “That’s so cute. Never had kids myself. Three marriages, no kids.
I guess that’s why I’m into pigeons.”
Jack
is always surprised that people (normal
people, he thinks of them, in contradistinction with himself) are capable of
divulging huge pieces of their personal histories in single sentences. He’s
further distracted when Audrey takes his hand and pulls him to the next
attraction, kids in safety harnesses scaling a rock wall.
“So
how did you come by this mansion? You said something about an extortion
racket?”
Oh God, thinks Jack. Must have been the pot. But he feels the
enormity of the past year welling inside of him like hot water in a teakettle.
“Thompson
was always saying, ‘Well, that’s the way they did it at my old company.’ Only,
his old company was Enron. He just barely managed to stay out of prison. But
it’s like he went through that whole mess and didn’t pick up a thing. What a
moron. He was very fond of what we call ‘soft closings’ – which is when you
send in the monthly reports without vendor confirmations. After all the
accounting scandals – WorldCom, Tyco – those kind of procedures were strictly
reined in by the SEC. I remember we were all walking around using the phrase
‘willy-nilly.’ ‘Well you just can’t send in those figures willy-nilly.’ And
that became our nickname for Thompson: Willy Nilly. He said we were being
worrywarts, wet rags. And… he had this way about him. He was the cool kid, the
one where, if you just got to hang out with him a little, you felt like
royalty. Plus, you know, among the number-farmers there was this unexpressed
feeling about those scandals: for a little while, they made accounting sexy.
People saw just how powerful we could be; if we really did things wrong, we could
wreak some major kick-ass havoc. We were action heroes. I remember an old
cartoon of three geeks in thick glasses and leather jackets that said ‘Hell’s
Accountants.’ And the smallest guy says, ‘Hey, you wanna go gang-audit
somebody?’
“We
got caught. It wasn’t huge, but Corporate needed to can somebody, and all the
reports were processed by me. Thompson could have taken the bullet – he was my supervisor – but he had that way
of smiling and saying nothing and just breezing along. I was plagued by guilt
and my own stupidity, so I just took it. They called it a ‘layoff,’ which
sounds a lot nicer, and they gave me a severance. So now, from what I can
figure, I’ve been blackballed. Fifteen years in the business, and I don’t even
rate an interview.
“A
few months later, I went on a road trip and ran into Thompson. He was cheating
on his wife, in a very public way. I was too surprised, too typically
chickenshit to say anything, but Thompson thought I was upholding some sort of
male code. Moron. I don’t even know if it’s possible that he felt guilty over
the SEC thing – I don’t think he’s capable of it. But he was grateful that I
didn’t rat him out about the mistress, and I’m assuming that’s why he’s letting
me stay at his house. I wasn’t about to turn it down, cause Lord knows I needed
something.”
When
Jack stops, he feels winded, as if he’s just given a five-minute compressed
performance of Hamlet. He finds
Audrey looking at him, her green cat’s eyes going all moist with sympathy. He
knows he shouldn’t be enjoying this – there’s something shameful about
relishing pity – but a beautiful woman actually seems to care about his sad, pathetic life, and there’s something in this
gaze that absolutely paralyzes him.
“I’m
so sorry, Jack. God, that is all so fucking wrong.”
She wraps her arms around his torso and kisses him on the cheek. “We are going
to have such a party tonight. We’re
going to piss off all of that
rat-bastard’s neighbors.”
Jack
has a thought of telling her that he would prefer they didn’t, but he realizes that
this is not entirely true. He smiles, and feels a sudden lightness, like helium
coursing through his veins. (Although he’s pretty sure that actual helium in
actual veins would not be an advisable combination.)
“Yes,”
he says. “I think I would like that.”
Audrey
pulls him forward. “Come on. I know a booth with kettle corn and lemon ice.”
Jack
follows, feeling the pull of a good karma that he feared would never arrive.
They
return to the house just before sunset, and Chateau Flores is a hive of activity.
The driveway is stacked up with cars, a few of them spilling out onto
neighboring curbsides. Let the pissing
off begin, thinks Jack.
The
entryway is surprisingly spare. A trio of silver balloons stands guard at the
whitewater, and some enterprising soul has tied an inflatable monkey to the
rocks so that he appears to be body-surfing. The high-def is showing a scene
from High Society. He catches a
glimpse of Terra slipping a tray into the dumbwaiter, and hears the chirpy
laughter of Constance, but Audrey pulls him up the stairs before he can see
more.
“As
the lord of the manor, you are required only to show up and look spiffy. Now.
Do you have a suit?”
“A…
what?”
“Oh!
I can tell this is going to be a
project. Tell you what. Point me in the direction of your wardrobe, and
meanwhile take yourself a shower.”
“Right,”
says Jack.
Audrey
bats her eyes. “Unless milord requires some assistance with his shower?”
“I um… I um…”
“Yes, I’ve met ‘I um’ before.” She places
a hand on Jack’s back and pushes him toward the bathroom. “Closet?” she shouts.
To
the right of the fountain.”
“Jesus,
man. Someday you’ve got to actually live
in the house!”
Jack
soaps himself before the nudist shower with more of an audience than usual –
clots of family and friends taking the beach route to the festival. He gives
himself a thorough scrubbing, and then does his best to sharpen the edges,
going so far as to try out some of Thompson’s hair product. He’s not quite sure
of the recipe. Leave it slicked down? Wipe it off? Comb it out? He goes for
slick, and gets a good response from Audrey, who’s laying out men’s clothing in
one of the bedrooms.
“Well!
Ain’t you all Antonio Banderas/James Bond? Now here, put on these lovely silver
and blue boxers. With your sordid personal history of streaking, I am
color-coordinating down to the skin. After that, slap on these black pants –
and don’t be shy. I’ve seen your
junk, mister.”
He
manages to slip on the boxers while shielding his privates with his bathrobe.
Audrey gives him a scornful look. The black pants are his own, but the rest of
the ensemble…
“Thompson’s?”
“Well
yes, Thompson’s. I like you, honey, but nothing else in that closet is getting
into this party. Thompson, on the other hand, has exquisite taste. Are you sure
he’s not gay? Here. Put this on and… this.”
She
hands him a black button-down shirt and a silver paisley tie. The sleeves are a
little long, but the overall effect is pretty sharp, and it matches
surprisingly well with the pants. After three attempts, he gets the right
length on the tie, and fixes it with a diamond tack that bears the logo of
C-Valve, Inc. Audrey holds up a black Italian double-breasted jacket with
subtle gray pinstripes, and Jack slips his arms into the sleeves. When he turns
to look into the mirror, he can hardly believe the reflection. Something of
Thompson’s Latino wiseguy slickness has rubbed off on him. Audrey strokes a
hand down either lapel.
“Mee-ow!
If I saw you in these clothes, I’d want to tear them right off you. Except then
you wouldn’t be wearing these clothes.” She laughs, amused at her own wit. “Now
you need to wait here while I get myself cleaned up.”
Jack
grows bored as he waits, but he’s under orders from a beautiful woman and
powerless not to follow. He finds a copy of Maxim
magazine on Thompson’s dresser, and is astonished at the lack of clothing on
the models, some of whom are well-known actresses. When did this new slut
society begin, and where was he when everything changed? His interest causes
him to lose track of time, and soon Audrey is back, dashing in, spinning
around, requesting a zip.
Jack
is unable to move. She’s wearing a skin-tight, floor-length silver dress,
spangled all over with beadwork of cobalt blue. The dress comes to a high
collar, which conceals a lot of quality territory, but serves to accentuate her
bare arms, angelically white and toned. With the zipper down, his vista
includes most of her back, tiny freckles scattered across her shoulder blades
like grains of black pepper and paprika. He’s feeling quite averse to sealing
this from view, like a security guard locking up the Louvre at closing time.
“Ahem! Zipper, Jack?”
“I um… Right.” He
braces a hand against her shoulder and pulls the zipper tight, then hooks a
clasp at the top. Audrey circles back around and smiles. Her hair is tied up,
dangling here and there in artfully random tendrils. She wears a blue eye
shadow with just enough green to set off her eyes, but her lipstick is
unapologetic crimson.
“So!
How do I look?”
“I…”
Jack’s hands manage to settle on the swells of Audrey’s waist. “I’m…
speechless.”
Audrey
jabs a finger at his tie. “I would be much more impressed if that were not your
permanent state. Hold on a second.”
She
locates a small shelf built into the top of the dresser and pulls out a spray
bottle.
“This
is about the only thing I ever liked about my second husband.” She sprays it on
her fingers and dabs a sweet, sharp cologne at either side of Jack’s neck. The
alcohol evaporates quickly, creating the sensation of ice crystals on his skin.
“Now,”
she says. “Let’s go make that entrance.”
Audrey’s
tight dress and high pewter pumps should prevent her from scaling the two sets
of stairs, but she apparently possesses the powers of a Sherpa witch, and soon
they’re standing before the rooftop doors, which have been painted silver for
the occasion. (Jack prays it’s temporary paint.) He goes for the doorknob, but
Audrey stops him, and pulls a cell phone from God knows where. “Tonight, we’ve
got a little system.”
She sends
off a blank text message. Jack hears a Mozart-sounding ringtone from the other
side of the door. Two seconds later, both doors swing open, revealing a tableau
awash in the tangerine light of evening.
“Presenting
Sir Jack Teagarden, Lord of the Manor, and his escort, the divine Lady Audrey
of LaBrea!”
The
declaration is operatic and baritone; Jack is unsurprised to find it coming
from Willie. What does surprise him
is Willie’s outfit, a gray English suit with an ascot tie, top hat and silver
walking stick. Holding the other door is Ivan in a classic James Bond tux,
single-breasted black with white pleats, a black-and-silver bowtie and an
eyepatch. He smiles like a gregarious maitre’d in a Fitzgerald novel.
“And
how is my lord?”
“Geez,
Ivan. What’d you do to your eye?”
Ivan
lifts the fabric to reveal that all is well. “A pirate in a tux is still a
pirate. It does, however, create an issue of depth perception.”
“Remind
me to keep you away from the steak knives.”
Ivan
goes from smile to grin. “The master is jovial this evening.”
Audrey
takes Jack by the elbow and leads him to the tiki bar, done up in silver
streamers and hosting two crystal pitchers.
“Gin
or vodka?” asks Audrey.
“Martinis?”
asks Jack.
“By
the pitcher, in the old-school style.”
“Gin?
I guess?”
“Gin
it is!” She fills an oversize martini glass halfway up, inserts two olives on a
toothpick, and hands it over. Constance walks by in a gown of salmon taffeta,
with pink gloves that go all the way past her elbows.
“Hi
Jack!” she says. “I love what we’ve done with the place. Oh! That’s the lobster
bisque. Pardon me.”
She
hurries to the dumbwaiter and extracts a large silver bowl of soup that matches
her outfit. Jack watches her walk toward the main patio, feeling like he has
stumbled into Buckingham Castle. He finds Suzanne walking toward them in a red
retro ‘50s dress with white polka dots, poofy sleeves and a high starched
collar.
“Hi,”
she says. “Thanks for inviting me. Even though you didn’t know you were doing
it.”
“I…
well, I’m sure I would have…”
“Yes.”
They’re
joined by a lean, athletic-looking man with a face burnished by sun. He’s
wearing a beige Western suit with chocolate suede shoulder patches, a silver
bolo tie and a black felt cowboy hat over shoulder-length, gray-blond hair.
“Hi,”
he says to Jack. “I’m White Horse. You’ve probably…”
“The
rocks!” says Jack. “Wow. I feel like I’m meeting a celebrity. I really like
your… work.”
“Thanks.
I could teach you sometime. It’s not that hard, really. It just takes balance,
and a lot of patience. And… a lot of rocks. Dude! Here’s our hostess.”
Jack
turns to find Terra, looking like a Celtic goddess headed for the senior prom.
She wears a blossoming satin gown with alternating swaths of spring green and
copper, capped by a snow-white wrap, her blonde ringlets falling to either
side. She smiles, pleased that her entrance has been noted. She comes to Jack
and kisses him on the lips.
“Thank
you, Jack. You don’t know what a thrill it is, seeing my Monkeys all dressed
up. But enough of this. Let’s eat!”
The
word “eat” echoes across the rooftop, and the Monkeys make way for a long table
at the beachside railing, covered in a blue-gray tablecloth. An arrangement of
fine china and silver carries the most elaborate spread of foodstuffs that Jack
has ever seen. Terra ticks off the comestibles as they pass.
“Duck
l’orange, whipped garlic potatoes with rosemary, braised vegetables, escargot
(which Constance somehow figured out how to prepare), mushroom caps stuffed
with crab and parmesan cheese, fresh-baked rye bread from Willie’s oven. Rack
of lamb with caramelized onions (that’s White Horse), Suzanne’s family-secret
jambalaya, and later, courtesy of yours truly, a dessert of crème brulee. And
that large white dish at the end is either Colonel Sanders or Ben.”
Ben
rises from his chair. He’s dressed in top hat and tails, brilliant white down
to the bowtie and cane, as if he’s just stepped away from a Busby Berkley
musical.
“Got
a friend in the costume shop at Cabrillo College,” he says. “If I spill
something on this, I’m a dead man. But I think it’s worth it. Monkeys! Take
your places!”
The
tribe produces a high-pitched chittering, but somehow less chimpy than usual,
more South Hamptons. The Monkeys stand at their seats as Audrey leads Jack to
the far end of the table. Ben lifts his martini glass.
“I
hate to break it to Jack, but this party is yet another excuse for me to
expound upon life. And tonight’s lesson is this: that a truly open-minded,
worldly person should not only pursue the loony extremes of life, but should also
learn to appreciate the finer points of so-called ‘normal’ society. In other
words, the monkeys do clean up well.”
The
monkeys cry out “Hear, hear!”
“That
said,” Ben continues, “it is equally true that every worthy person deserves to
be the focus of one whole entire toast, and one whole entire occasion, at least
once in his or her lifetime. And so I raise this glass of gin and say, Hey-ho!
All hail Jack Teagarden!”
The
Monkeys shout the phrase back and drink. A silence arrives soon after, a space
normally filled by the honoree’s response, but Jack is not about to magically
produce a speech.
“Let’s
eat!” he says, a suggestion that is not about to be refuted. The space above
Big Brown fills with the chatter of utensils, like a flock of silverware seagulls.
After
a serious bout of eating, the poor fat Monkeys take a while to recover. Willie
is the first to find his feet, opening his guitar case and playing every
soft-rock ballad he can think of: Eagles, Clapton, Orbison, Ronstadt. Terra
finds her voice and begins tracing the overtones with harmonies. Then Ivan
comes in, low and rumbling. Audrey gives Jack a certain look, leaving him no
choice in the matter. She leads him to a spot on the rooftop underlain by a
square of burnished rock, and he tries to remember what he can of slow-dancing:
one hand on Audrey’s back, the other held against the cobalt beads at her
waist, taut flesh swimming beneath his palm. He’s afraid to look at Audrey’s
face, for fear that he will be overcome, but when he does she gives him a
beatific smile, well worth the risk.
At
this point, Willie flashes his jester’s grin and begins to walk away. The
dancing couples give each other querulous looks and then link arm-in-arm to
follow. Ben and Constance achieve the traverse with a tango. They round a
wicker dividing wall and come upon a hidden enclave tiled in a black-and-white
checkerboard and lorded over by a six-foot tiki god, grotesque features etched
in black igneous jags, his enormous jaw-drop mouth hosting the coals of a fire
that must have been burning all during dinner. At the far side is Suzanne,
looking at home behind her keyboard, teasing the patterns of a song but not yet
revealing her intentions. The eventual winner is an old torch song, “What’ll I
Do?” The stuffed monkeys are quick on the uptake, and return to their dancing.
Jack
feels that he is beginning to understand this: clockwise the direction of
choice, the hint of Audrey’s magnolia perfume taunting him at a subterranean
level. Suzanne is playing out the tail of the song when an explosion causes her
to mangle a chord. The dancers look to the Concrete Boat, where an emerald
flowerburst is attempting to embrace the sky, lighting up the crowd on the
beach below. Then a silver aster; then a golden hydrangea. The monkeys dash to
the railing, but Audrey holds Jack in place, turning her eyes to his like an
astronomer grazing the Milky Way.
“There
are certain moments, Jack, that can never be re-created.”
The
way that she pauses on his name sends a string of cherry bombs down his spine.
She closes her eyes; he descends.
After
the fireworks, the streams of humanity make their way up the roads and
hillsides under a fog of sulfur smoke. A few rivulets course beneath the high
walls of Monkey Mansion. The Monkeys themselves are beginning to disintegrate:
ties untied, high heels abandoned, long hair unloosed. The tiki god now
overlooks a smoking lounge equipped with two bongs, a pipe shaped like a penis,
two joints, Ben’s grand hookah and a single Dominican maduro cigar, firmly clamped
in Willie’s tycoonish grin. Jack is seated on a long teak bench, Audrey’s
gorgeous head upon his lap, framed in a blanket of lush red Rita Hayworth
tresses.
“I
think you got my story,” says Jack. “So what’s yours?”
Audrey
gives a coquettish smile. “PBS could do a nine-part documentary on me, babe.
But you have to promise you will hold not a trice of it against me.”
Jack
looks away at the string of taillights running a conga line along the cliffs
over New Brighton Beach. But he’s doing this mostly to pretend he’s thinking.
He hasn’t felt this lucky in years, and why in the world would he hold anything
against this mistress of pigeons who has delivered it all to his doorstep?
“Of
course not,” he says.
“Okay.”
She runs a finger along her lips, running her databases through a quick merge.
“I
believe I already confessed to the three marriages and divorces.”
“Yes.”
“All
by the age of thirty.”
“Shit!”
“Hey!
You cursed. Do this: say ‘fuck.’”
Jack
has had at least two visitations with a joint, so he sees no problem with this.
“Fuck.”
“Ooh!
That makes me all… well. We’ll get to that later. Let’s see. During my last
divorce, I was a cocktail waitress in Vegas. When the papers came through, I
celebrated by gambling – which generally, when you’re a townie, is not a good idea. Put it this way: we
secretly refer to the gamblers as ‘donors.’ This time, however, I won a hundred
thousand dollars on a progressive slot machine. I immediately moved to Big Sur
with my best girlfriend and opened a percussion shop. It took seven years for
me to run it into the ground, but I was generously bought out by a wealthy
restaurateur. I moved to Monterey, got a realtor’s license right before the
boom, and now I own a lovely little house up the hill from Cannery Row, where the
neighborhood car-owners have no appreciation for the artistic expressions of my
pigeons.”
Jack
takes all of this in, and finds that the whole of his response is a chuckle.
“What?”
says Audrey.
“You’ve
had a rich goddamn life, Audrey.”
“And
you’ve been talking in complete sentences almost all day now. I like that.”
Jack
loses his vision once more to distant objects: Terra and Ivan on the main
patio, slow-dancing to an unplayed tune; Suzanne laughing open-mouthed at
something that White Horse has told her; Ben in the corner with his hookah,
smoking half-asleep.
“What
would you like, Jack? What would you like most of all? Don’t think – blurt it
out.”
Jack
tries to wire a shortcut to his impulse drive, but of course when someone tells
you not to think you’re bound to think a little.
“I
want to get out of my… of Thompson’s suit. I’m tired of being elegant. And… I
would love to take a shower.”
Audrey
curls to a sitting position, pivots counterclockwise, stands up and reaches for
Jack’s hands.
“Let’s
go do that,” she says.
Willie
is just picking up a spare to launch his score past 100 – Constance at the
barre, stripped down to her stockings to try out some old ballet moves – when
Jack and Audrey descend the stairs like a royal couple, completely oblivious to
the athletic pursuits of their subjects. Just before they reach the next
stairwell, Audrey asks, “So what’s the deal with that shower? Can people see
you from outside?”
Willie
smiles at Constance. Constance smiles back. They both burst out laughing.
In
a way that he’s never experienced, Jack feels that he is close to waking – but
he doesn’t want to. He’s running film loops of last night, unable to understand
this thing between himself and Audrey. It’s what other people have always
described as “chemistry,” a third person who shows up at the bedroom doors and
goes around knocking down the concentric walls that people build around
themselves. The entranceway was the shower, and he never realized, no matter
how stupidly obvious it might sound, how intimate
a mutual shower could be. Once the clothes are shed, the water engaged, the
gels and soaps introduced, absolutely nothing is out of bounds. Each body
belongs to the fingers of the other, and almost nothing is considered rude or
intrusive. He studied Audrey’s flesh with the care of a sculptor, taking note
of each small flaw or asymmetry. She did the same with his, and somehow the
tickle reflex that would ordinarily come in to interrupt had been shut off.
Afterwards,
they lathered each other into white gelatinous beings and washed it all off,
allowing limbs, digits, genitals and breasts to fall where they may. The
tactile overload tattooed one spinal knob and the next, creating seismic
shivers that shook up his respiration. His breathing fueled hers, echoing off
the walls, multiplying. Finally it built to a point of desperation, and he
pinned her against the see-through wall, consuming her mouth with his. As he
pressed harder, her legs opened, he slipped inside of her and pushed her
against the wall with such force that she was able to wrap her legs around his
back, airborne. He had never felt so hard in his life, had never gone that far
inside a woman’s body. He stayed there for a long minute, his eyes locked on
Audrey’s green stare.
“Hmm.
I’m thinking I can guess what you’re
thinking.”
Jack
gives up on the dream and finds Audrey kneeling at his crotch. His cock is
crazily stiff again (something about her having turned him into a god, a robot,
a barber’s pole, a porn star), and she appears to be sliding a glazed doughnut
down its length like a very weird game of ring toss. She nibbles on the
doughnut and then licks the head of his penis.
“Mmm…
sugar, lard and cock – there’s your well-rounded breakfast.”
Jack
is grinning so broadly he’s afraid his skin will crack. “Where the hell did you get a doughnut?”
“Ivan
went into town, blessed boy. Here, have a chocolate old-fashioned.”
He
takes a chunk from the outer wing. It’s indescribably delicious, but then all
his nerve endings have been reconstructed and the intelligence reports are
questionable at best. Audrey continues nibbling her doughnut down to his dick,
eyeing it with a concerned expression.
“This
must be made use of, but we’re
heading off in half an hour.”
“We
are?”
“Focus,
Jack, focus. We simply cannot afford a marathon session like last night… last
night… Well. No need for lubrication now. What’s the nastiest position – the
one that really gets your nuts churning?”
“I…”
Jack can’t possibly just ask for what he wants, can he? Can he?
Audrey
gives his thigh a hard smack.
“Ow!”
“Now, Jack. Tell me what you want. I’m
fucking horny!”
“I…
your rear end. I want to see it.”
“You
want to see it bounce, don’t you? You
want your own private porno. You dog.”
She
runs a finger down his nose, runs her tongue along his ear and then pivots into
the backwards cowgirl, straddling his cock, facing away. It’s now that Jack
realizes they’re in Thompson’s bedroom, which makes it nastier, and then Audrey
begins to churn those milk-white hips, which makes it nastier, and he knows
that one more nastier will make him blow up.
“Think
of someone else,” says Audrey, between gasps.
“What?”
“Someone
cute and bouncy and young. Someone you shouldn’t be fucking at all. I want you
to picture her bouncing on your dick. What’s her name, Jack? Tell me her name.”
His
mind flies of its own accord to the perky brunette at the coffeehouse, her blue
baby doll eyes and generous bubble ass. Oh, and the odd celebrity name.
Madonna? He sees them in the manager’s office, after hours. She kneels to suck
his cock, then takes off her jeans and turns around, her shoulder-length hair
flapping as she rides. Oprah? Uma? Yoko?
“She’s
fucking you, Jack! She’s about to come, Jack! She wants you to scream her name
so she can come!”
“Cher!
Cher! Cher!” He empties himself into her, in the manager’s office, and she,
Liza Selena Dolly, begins to shake. “Cher! Cher! Oh, fuck me, Cher!”
A
lost minute later, back in Thompson’s room, the perky brunette runs a hand
through her red hair and throws a wicked smile over her shoulder.
“Jesus,
pal. You catch on quick. But… Cher? I thought I ordered up sweet and innocent.”
Jack’s
too stunned and blissed out to explain. “You’re a witch,” he says. “You should
not know these things.”
Audrey
disengages from his cock with an “ooh!” and says, “The truth about men is not
so hard to learn, honey. It’s just hard for most women to accept the truth. I, on the other hand, have learned to harness the
truth for my own evil purposes. Now go get cleaned up. Cher-fucker.”
Jack
takes a deep breath, and heads for the shower.
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