In Times of Cold Rain
The room was filled with the dank smell
of cat piss, flat beer, and worn-out pussy.
The kind of beer that costs less for a six-pack than a tank of gas; the
kind of pussy that makes you want to get tested, even just smelling it. “Strip club pussy,” you might call it, if you
were the kind of person honest enough to say it. Truthfully, the room didn’t
look anything like it smelled. Egyptian
cotton sheets, full-length mirrors, and a lakefront view from huge bay
windows. That’s all any of them
noticed. Not the stain on the carpet, or
on the comforter. Not the half-empty
packs of cigarettes strewn about the desk.
Because, the truth is, underneath all of the rancid odors lingered a
sweeter smell. For most of them, it
lingered about a foot and a half above everything. The crisp, emerald scent of money was and
always will be the greatest aphrodisiac of them all.
Until it runs out.
The money running out explains
why the packs are half-empty and why the beer is so cheap, and why the pussy
hadn’t showered in a few days. It’s hard
work being rich, but it beats waking up hung-over and scratching your balls
wondering if this particular itch is going to go away any time soon.
“Damn it,” he muttered, rolling
over to switch off the alarm that buzzed on the night stand. “Fucking bullshit,” he hissed as he stepped
on a beer can trying to get out of bed.
He stumbled to the bathroom, shielding his eyes from the light sweeping
in the hotel window. It didn’t burn,
that was something. He shook himself and
washed his hands. He started the shower.
“What are you doing, John?”
“Jesus fuck, woman,” he howled,
slipping on the tile and catching himself on the marble counter. “What are you still doing here?”
He vaguely recognized her from
the coffee shop the night before. He had
been sitting alone in the corner, trying to be subtle and convey a sense of
desperate longing, a wounded soul in need of commiseration. Apparently, he had been successful.
“You fucking drove me here,
dicksore,” she said, pushing him out of the way and pulling her hair back in
front of the mirror. “How was I supposed
to leave?”
“A cab?” he volunteered, then
winced as she punched his shoulder.
“You’re pathetic,” she said as
she splashed water on her face, further smearing the heavy eye-shadow she had
pasted on the night before, unsubtly trying to convey the sense of a desperate
soul longing to get laid.
“I’m pathetic? You’re the pathetic one, sweetheart,” he
said, not awake enough to be aware of sounding like a fourth grader on the
playground. He pushed her to the side
with his hip, and she grabbed him, pushing him back against the sink.
“Fuck you,” she said, glaring at
him.
He held his hands up in mock
surrender.
She wrapped her hand around him
through his boxers. “You don’t
remember?”
He pushed her away. “I really don’t,” he said, as he pulled his
underwear off and stepped in the shower.
“Aren’t you going to invite me
in?”
“No,” he said, “but if you’re
lucky, I’ll try and leave some hot water for you.”
As he slicked his hair back he
heard the bathroom door slam. After a
few minutes, he thought he heard the door to the room snap back against the
deadbolt, and a muffled “fuck” before the door slammed again.
His cat meowed through the door
to the bathroom.
“Sorry, buddy, she’s not mad at
you. I don’t think,” he gargled through
the running water.
The squealing tires he could
hear through the walls and the rush of water.
“Fuck!”
He snapped off the flow and
narrowly avoided slipping on the tile again, grabbing a towel and rushing out
the door. He took the stairs three at a
time, and made it to the side entrance in time to see his only slightly-used BMW peel off down the hill away from the hotel.
“Oh, shit,” he mumbled as he
trudged back up to his room only to find the door locked securely behind him
and his cat scratching mournfully trying to get back in. “Well, buddy, you’ll have to tell me if that
was worth it.”
Somehow, as he walked down the
hallway of the hotel towards the front desk with a few of his neighbors
peering out at him in his towel, he didn’t think so.
Chapter 1
“Where the fuck
were you, man, your boss is going ape-shit right now, she’s called me probably six
times hounding me about the labor reports and I’m running out of clever things
to say.”
“Now there you go,
exaggerating again. If you’ve run out of
the clever things to say, it’s only been, what, two or maybe three phone
calls?” He razzed his assistant and
tapped him on the forehead. “I lost my
keys.”
“Well, fuck, you
could have called.”
He muttered under
his breath, his cell phone had been in the car.
“Sorry, I forgot.”
His assistant
handed him the stack of daily updates, a sheaf of papers thick enough to be
Stephen King’s next manuscript.
“What the fuck am
I supposed to do with all of this? You
can’t send emails?” he picked up the
pace, trying to make it to the back room that served as his office before
anyone else noticed him and thought to wonder why he was still wearing
sunglasses and avoiding the brighter lit areas.
His assistant just
shrugged and handed him a smaller stack of sticky-notes. “Here’s your messages, and the conference
call starts in fifteen minutes.
Apparently Sonny-Boy is on the rag again.”
A light bulb went
off in his head: that was what that
fucking smell had been earlier. Stupid chick had her period. His scowl deepened
and he wiped his lips, certain he could taste a little of that menstrual
blood. He fought back the urge to gag.
He handed the
bigger stack of papers back to his assistant and shuffled through his messages.
“Erin called? God damn it, Josh, this should have been the
first fucking piece of paper you handed me.
When’s the damn conference call?” he said, collapsing into the chair
behind his desk.
“Fifteen—make that
thirteen minutes from now,” Josh offered.
“You better hope I
finish this call in ten, then,” he said, “now, tits or gee tee eff oh.”
He picked up the
phone to dial Erin’s number, and gestured again for Josh to shut the door after
he left.
“Twelve minutes,
boss man,” Josh said, holding up his hands with his fingers outspread.
“That’s ten,
fucking idiot,” he said and swiveled around to face the parking garage that
lurked outside his office window.
Josh shut the door
and stepped out into the main office area, muttering “dick” under his breath.
“I heard that,”
John said from inside his office. “Bring
me some coffee, too, you insubordinate fuck.”
“Sure thing,
asshole,” Josh mumbled again, heading to the break room.
*
* *
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